American History: UNIT 14 Required Reading
Sec. 1: JAPAN, PEARL HARBOR AND WAR
While most Americans anxiously watched the course of the European war during 1940 and 1941, tension mounted in Asia. Taking advantage of an opportunity to improve its strategic position, Japan boldly announced a "new order" in which it would exercise hegemony over the Pacific. Battling for its survival against Nazi Germany, Britain was unable to resist the Japanese in Asia, withdrawing troops from Shanghai. In the summer of 1940, Japan won permission from the weak Vichy government in France (the pro-Nazi French gov’t.) to use airfields in Indochina. By September, the Japanese had joined the Rome-Berlin Axis. Attempting to slow Japanese expansion, the United States imposed an embargo on exporting scrap iron to Japan. The U.S. also moved its Pacific fleet from the west coast to the naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
It seemed that the Japanese might turn southward toward the oil, tin and rubber of British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies. In July 1941, the Japanese occupied the remainder of Indochina; the United States, in response, froze Japanese assets in the U.S (bank accounts, property, etc. could not be accessed by the Japanese).
General Hideki Tojo became Prime Minister of Japan in October 1941. In mid-November, he sent a special envoy to the United States to meet with Secretary of State Cordell Hull. Among other things, Japan demanded that the U.S. release Japanese assets and stop U.S. naval expansion in the Pacific. Hull countered with a proposal for Japanese withdrawal from China and Indochina in exchange for the freeing of the frozen assets. The Japanese asked for two weeks to study the proposal, but on December 1 rejected it. On December 6, Franklin Roosevelt appealed directly to the Japanese emperor, Hirohito. On the morning of December 7, however, Japanese carrier-based planes attacked the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in a devastating, surprise attack. Nineteen ships including five battleships and about 150 U.S. planes were destroyed and more than 2,300 soldiers, sailors and civilians were killed. Only one fact favored the Americans that day: the U.S. aircraft carriers that would play such a critical role in the ensuing naval war in the Pacific were at sea and not anchored at Pearl Harbor.
As the details of the Japanese raid upon Hawaii blared from American radios, incredulity turned to anger at what President Roosevelt called "a date that will live in infamy." On December 8, Congress declared war on Japan; three days later Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.
The nation rapidly geared itself for mobilization of its people and its entire industrial capacity. On January 6, 1942, President Roosevelt announced staggering production goals: delivery in that year of 60,000 planes, 45,000 tanks, 20,000 antiaircraft guns and 18 million tons of merchant shipping. All the nation's activities -- farming, manufacturing, mining, trade, labor, investment, communications, even education and cultural undertakings -- were in some fashion brought under new and enlarged control by the federal government. The nation raised money in enormous sums and created great new industries for the mass production of ships, armored vehicles and planes. Major movements of population took place as Americans who had suffered for a decade from the Great Depression moved to industrial cities to take jobs in defense plants. Under a series of conscription acts, the United States brought the armed forces up to a total of 15,000,000 men. By the end of 1943, approximately 65 million men and women were in uniform or in war-related occupations.
The attack on the United States removed any argument in favor of isolationism and permitted quick military mobilization. However, as a result of Pearl Harbor and the fear of Asian espionage, Americans also committed an act of intolerance: the internment of Japanese-Americans. In February 1942, nearly 120,000 Japanese-Americans residing in California were removed from their homes and interned behind barbed wire in 10 wretched temporary camps, later to be moved to "relocation centers" outside isolated Southwestern towns. Nearly 63% of these Japanese-Americans were Nisei -- American-born -- and, therefore, U.S. citizens. No evidence of espionage ever surfaced. In fact, Japanese-Americans from Hawaii and the continental United States fought with noble distinction and valor in two infantry units on the Italian front. Others served as interpreters and translators in the Pacific. In 1983 the U.S. government acknowledged the injustice of internment with limited payments to those Japanese-Americans of that era that were still living.
Sec. 2 THE WAR IN NORTH AFRICA AND EUROPE
Soon after the United States entered the war, the western Allies decided that their main military effort was to be concentrated in Europe where the core of enemy power lay. The Pacific theater was to be secondary.
In the spring and summer of 1942, British forces were able to break the German drive aimed at Egypt and push German General Erwin Rommel (the “Desert Fox”) back into Libya, ending the threat of Nazi control of the Suez Canal which connected the Mediterranean to the Red Sea.
On November 7, 1942, an American army landed in French North Africa (“Operation Torch”) and after hard-fought battles, inflicted severe defeats on the Italian and German armies. The year 1942 was also the turning point on the Eastern Front (Russia) where, after suffering immense losses, the Soviet Union stopped the Nazi invasion at the gates of Leningrad and Moscow, and defeated the German forces at Stalingrad.
In July 1943, British and American forces invaded the island of Sicily and by late summer the southern shore of the Mediterranean was cleared of Fascist forces. Allied forces landed on the Italian mainland, and although the Italian government accepted unconditional surrender, fighting against Nazi forces in Italy was bitter and protracted. Rome was not liberated until June 4, 1944. While battles were still raging in Italy, Allied forces made devastating air raids on German railroads, factories and weapon emplacements, including German oil supplies in Romania.
Late in 1943 after much debate over strategy, the Allies decided to open a Western front to force the Germans to divert far larger forces from the Russian front. U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower was appointed Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe. After immense preparations, on June 6, 1944, the first contingents of a combined U.S., British and Canadian invasion army, protected by a greatly superior air force, landed on the beaches of Normandy in northern France. With the beachhead established after heavy fighting, more troops poured in and many German units were stranded in isolated pockets. The Allied armies began to move across France toward Germany. On August 25, Paris was liberated and the Allies continued their advance through Belgium and Holland (“Operation Marketgarden”). At the borders of Germany, the Allies were delayed by a fierce German counter-offensive (the “Battle of the Bulge”), but by March 1945 the end was near. Allied troops advanced into Germany from the west while German armies fell before the vicious Russian advance from the east. On May 8, all that remained of the Third Reich surrendered its land, sea, and air forces. On May 9, 1945 the Allies triumphantly announced V-E Day…”Victory in Europe”.
Sec. 3 THE WAR IN THE PACIFIC
In the meantime, U.S. forces were advancing in the Pacific. Although U.S. troops were forced to surrender in the Philippines (the Bataan Death March) in early 1942, the Allies rallied in the following months. General James "Jimmy" Doolittle led U.S. Army bombers on a raid over Tokyo in April that had little actual military significance but gave Americans an immense psychological boost. In the Battle of the Coral Sea the following month -- the first naval engagement in history in which all the fighting was done by carrier-based planes -- the Japanese navy suffered such heavy losses that they were forced to give up the idea of striking at Australia. The Battle of Midway in June 1942 took place in the central Pacific Ocean and became the turning point for the Allies. The American victory resulted in the first major defeat of the Japanese navy, which lost four aircraft carriers, ending the Japanese advance across the central Pacific.
Other battles also contributed to Allied success. Guadalcanal, a decisive U.S. victory in November 1942, marked the first major U.S. offensive action in the Pacific. For most of the next two years, American and Australian troops fought their way northward along a central Pacific island "ladder" capturing the Solomon Islands, the Gilbert Islands, the Marshalls, the Marianas and the Bonin Islands in a series of amphibious assaults.
Sec. 4 THE POLITICS OF WAR
Allied military efforts were accompanied by a series of important international meetings on the political objectives of the war. The first of these took place in August 1941, before U.S. entry into the war, between President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill -- at a time when the United States was not yet actively engaged in the struggle and the military situation seemed bleak.
Meeting aboard a cruiser near Newfoundland, Canada, Roosevelt and Churchill issued the Atlantic Charter, a statement of war aims : (1) no territorial changes without the consent of the people concerned, (2) the right of all people to choose their own form of government, (3) economic collaboration between all nations, (4) freedom from war, from fear and from want for all peoples, (5) freedom of the seas, and (5) the abandonment of the use of force as an instrument of international policy.
In January 1943 at Casablanca, Morocco, an Anglo-American conference decided that no peace would be concluded with the Axis and its allies except on the basis of "unconditional surrender." This term, insisted upon by Roosevelt, sought to assure the people of all the fighting nations that no separate peace negotiations would be carried on with representatives of Fascism and Nazism; that no bargain of any kind would be made by such representatives to save any remnant of their power; that before final peace terms could be laid down to the peoples of Germany, Italy and Japan, their military leaders must concede before the entire world their own complete and utter defeat.
At Tehran on November 28, Roosevelt, Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin agreed to establish a new international organization, the United Nations. In February 1945, they met again at Yalta, with victory seemingly secure, and made further agreements. There, the Soviet Union secretly agreed to enter the war against Japan not long after the surrender of Germany. The eastern boundary between Poland and the USSR was clarified. After much discussion of heavy reparations to be collected from Germany -- payment demanded by Stalin and opposed by Roosevelt and Churchill -- the decision was deferred. Specific arrangements were made concerning Allied occupation in Germany and the trial and punishment of war criminals.
Two months after his return from Yalta, Franklin Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage while vacationing in Georgia. Few figures in U.S. history have been so deeply mourned, and for a time the American people suffered from a numbing sense of irreparable loss. Vice President Harry Truman, former senator from Missouri, assumed the presidency.
Sec. 5 WAR, VICTORY AND THE BOMB
The war in the Pacific continued after Germany's surrender and the final battles there were among the hardest fought. Beginning in June 1944, the Battle of the Philippine Sea wreaked havoc on the Japanese Navy, forcing the resignation of Japanese Prime Minister Tojo. General Douglas MacArthur -- who had reluctantly left the Philippines two years before to escape Japanese capture -- returned to the islands in October, clearing the way for the U.S. Navy. The Battle of Leyte Gulf resulted in a decisive defeat of the Japanese Navy, restoring control of Philippine waters to the Allies.
By February 1945, U.S. forces had taken Manila. Next, the United States set its sight on the island of Iwo Jima in the Bonin Islands, about halfway between the Marianas Islands and Japan. But the Japanese were determined to hold the island and made the best use of natural caves and rocky terrain. U.S. bombardment met determined Japanese resistance on land and kamikaze suicide attacks from the sky. U.S. forces took the island by mid-March, but not before losing the lives of some 6,000 U.S. Marines and nearly all the Japanese forces. The U.S. began extensive air attacks on Japanese shipping and airfields. From May through August, the U.S. 20th Air Force launched wave after wave of air attacks against the Japanese home islands.
The heads of the U.S., British and Soviet governments met at Potsdam, a suburb outside Berlin, from July 17 to August 2, 1945, to discuss operations against Japan, the peace settlement in Europe, and a policy for the future of Germany.
The conference agreed on the need to assist in the re-education of a German generation reared under Nazism and to define the broad principles governing the restoration of democratic political life to the country. The conferees also discussed reparations claims against Germany, agreed to the trial of Nazi leaders accused of crimes against humanity, and provided for the removal of industrial plants and property by the Soviet Union. But the Soviet claim, already raised at Yalta, for reparations totaling $10 billion remained a subject of controversy.
The day before the Potsdam Conference began, an atomic bomb was exploded at Alamogordo, New Mexico, the culmination of three years of intensive research in laboratories across the United States in what was known as the Manhattan Project. President Truman, calculating that an atomic bomb might be used to gain Japan's surrender more quickly and with fewer casualties than an invasion of the mainland, ordered the bomb be used if the Japanese did not surrender by August 3. The Allies issued the Potsdam Declaration on July 26, promising that Japan would neither be destroyed nor enslaved if it surrendered; if Japan did not, however, it would meet "utter destruction."