The Pacific War

ON THE WORLD TODAY

THE return of the Gripsholm on the same day that Roosevelt, Chiang, and Churchill released a statement of the results of their conference brought home to Americans how long these two years have been since Pearl Harbor.

We could face this boatload of refugees from the Coprosperity Sphere, that greatest of all abstractions and most vivid of realities, with more pride in our accomplishment than we had when the Gripsholm made its first trip. We are now driving the enemy back. Our seizure of the military initiative is part of the unfolding of the grand strategy laid down in the early days of defeat.

One year ago we were strong enough to announce the real losses which we suffered at Pearl Harbor; today we have twice as many ships in commission as we had in January of 1943. Admiral Nimitz is more than keeping his promise of November 11: “ Our time has come to strike; henceforth we propose to give the Jap no rest anywhere.”

The Japanese, far from drawing advantage from their German alliance, are suffering from the application in the Pacific of experience and techniques learned in the fighting in Europe. They are watching also the relentless pounding of Europe’s cities from the air and are drawing their own conclusions. The tide has turned in our favor.

Considering our position in December, 1942, and our share in the European war, this is a tremendous achievement. Men who lived through Bataan, and hoped against hope for convoys which never reached there, remember with bitterness our willingness to take tremendous losses in pushing through convoys to Murmansk. Others returning from the East find it hard to forgive us the strategy of defeating Hitler first. But the relevant answer to this is the fact that the bulk of American forces has always been allocated to the Pacific. General MacArthur now has at his command larger land forces than the Allies are employing in Italy.

Near enough to strike

It took over a year to get these forces near enough to the Japanese to strike. For twelve long months a few thousand Japanese on Attu and Kiska immobilized hundreds of thousands of American troops in Alaska and forced us to build bases there with ships and materials which would have been very useful on other fronts. In the meantime the Japanese had plenty of time to refortify their northern approaches to Japan, which the development of our Alaskan outpost now puts us in a position to attack.

But surely, it is asked, the Philippines could have been relieved if units of the Atlantic fleet had been withdrawn for use in the Pacific? The feeling, so carefully fostered in some quarters, that President Roosevelt betrayed the Philippines will undoubtedly persist, if only because it is useful to unscrupulous politicians. But in the light of what we know now, and of what our General Staff knew then, few things could have helped the Axis more than a diversion of all American naval and military strength to the Pacific.

Thanks to MacArthur

We owe a great deal to MacArthur for his brilliant recovery of the initiative in New Guinea. The successful seizure of Guadalcanal was as important to the Pacific war as was El Alamein to the European.

The only effective strategy possible against Japan was to prepare for a contracting circle of offense. For this we had to clear the Aleutians, prepare a new fleet for Pacific waters, build up Australia as a base, assist in developing the industry of India, keep open the air route to China, and hold the Nazis.

At no time could we have thrown our whole weight behind any single drive against the Japanese Empire. The best results would come by waiting for the time when the Japanese could be hit from many directions at once. That process began in November with the Bougainville campaign, the attack on the Gilberts, the bombing of Formosa, and the stepping-up of patrol activity in Northern Burma. We have to use as many as possible of the “many roads to Tokyo.”

Evidence increases that we have convinced not only ourselves, but also the enemy, of the turning of the tide. The suicide of Seigo Nakano, an old enemy of Tojo and a violent as well as articulate expansionist, was perhaps a straw in the wind. Returning repatriates feel convinced that the Japanese see little hope of victory. Certainly many Japanese nationals in China are applying for passage back to Japan. It is also significant that the Japanese public was not asked to celebrate the sacrifice of several thousand Imperial marines on Tarawa with the same orgy of masochism as was whipped up for Attu.

Japan’s ships go down

Since Pearl Harbor we have sunk more than two and a half million tons of Japanese merchant shipping. Junks and wooden vessels now ply the routes once served by modern cargo ships. To cover up their inability to exploit the Co-prosperity Sphere in the way they had planned, the Japanese are fobbing off on their newly “independent” satellites the theory of self-sufficiency.

Our first fears of Japan were based on the assumption that she could bring the raw materials of her empire back to Japan. If the present rate of sinkings continues, this will become increasingly difficult. Today Japan is without enough shipping to distribute food from areas where it is plentiful to those which are suffering from famine. Soon she will find it difficult to move essential raw materials.

The superior technological capacity of the United States is beginning to have more and more effect. Japan has a real problem in deciding where to allocate her priorities. The vigorous attack upon her shipping forced her about a year ago to put shipping first on the list of production. At the same time tremendous efforts were made to resolve the shipping problem by the construction of wooden vessels and by developing a continental rail network.

It would help Japan a great deal to be in full control of the great trunk line of China from Peiping to Canton. It is essential that she complete, as she is undoubtedly trying to do, a railway network linking Burma, Thailand, and Malaya.

But now, because of the success of our air offensive, Japan has changed her priorities again. Instead of asking for “one more ship” she is now asking for “one more plane.” We can reasonably expect that concentration on plane production will not assist her shipbuilding program. The choice is not an easy one.

Japan tastes defeat

Growing difficulties on the industrial front may have led to the appointment of Fujiwara, a prominent industrialist, to the post of minister without portfolio. The three new cabinet advisers who came in with him, Suzuki, Aikawa, and Goto, are all industrial experts, especially the last two. Judging from the publicity which greeted them, however, it would appear that the militarists hope to gain political good will even more than increased production from their appointment. If the militarists are calling in the industrialists, they do it only out of dire necessity.

It is a long time since Japan’s militarists have been able to report to the throne or to the people victories which really occurred. They probably need all the support they can get at home. In this connection we should not explain the extraordinary inventions of naval victories in November purely in terms of the weakened domestic position of the militarists.

Those claims were also a very shrewd blow at the credibility of our own naval communiques. Japanese propaganda, which is admittedly based on the shortterm view, certainly showed a short-term triumph which lasted until the occupation of the Gilberts. As it is, the course of events so rapidly disproved Japanese claims that they have gone far to restore the credibility of Mr. Knox, whose contrasting Pearl Harbor announcements of 1941 and 1942 have provided the Japanese with so much ammunition for propaganda.

The time when we shall test the efficiency of the Japanese militarists in Greater East Asia is already at hand. We wonder how successful they have been in persuading the masses under their rule to accept the words of Foreign Minister Shigemitsu, that “Asia is our home. What is more natural than that we should defend it with our lives? Should we lose this war, we should be forever deprived of rule over our homelands. To America and Britain this war is a war for colonies — on our side it is war of independence. We are fighting for our life.”

Asia for the Asiatics

There is no way of saying how successful the Japanese are going to be in turning Asiatic peoples against us. Of some significance, perhaps, is the story that came from Makin Island. According to natives, the Japanese were afraid to give arms to the Korean laborers they had brought with them. The Japanese can hardly claim lack of time and opportunity for the indoctrination of a people they have ruled since 1910.

The incident, if true, stands out in sharp contrast to the current campaign advertising the East Asia Charter. It is perhaps an encouraging commentary on Japan’s efforts to arouse Asia to fight a race war.

There is no reason for us to tremble, as some would have us, at the prospect of a race war. It is those who have a nice but not historical conscience about imperial expansion in Asia who raise the bogey of a race war in its most extravagant form.

Without going into historical arguments, surely there is no equation between “race” and imperialism. What about the Japanese themselves? They are the chief argument against the theory that the white races are alone imperialistic.

The main point about the Japanese campaign of Asia for the Asiatics is not the emphasis on race solidarity. It is that the Japanese are offering these people something to fight for, however false their program may appear to us.

Our answer to this must surely stress not the bogus but the real interests of the people of Asia. Certainly a major part of our case is that we share with the Chinese and the Filipinos, as with the Czechs and the Greeks, a fierce desire to be free from the oppression of any master race, whatever its color.

A large part of Japan’s quarrel with us is that we have consistently stood for the political independence of Asiatic countries, including Japan. The passage of the Magnuson bill repealing the Chinese Exclusion Acts is further evidence of our good faith. But most important of all is the international recognition which we have insisted be given to China.

As friends and equals

The joint declaration of Roosevelt, Chiang, and Churchill did not formulate our purposes in highsounding phrases, but it went much further than would appear on the surface. For the first time in history the head of a great Oriental country sat in conference with the heads of two Western powers.

Great Britain and the United States gave formal recognition to China’s claim to Manchuria and Formosa. All three powers cleared the air by forswearing territorial expansion for themselves. A first step was taken in definition of the treatment of a defeated Japan. The vexed question of Korea came a step nearer to solution with the statement that “in due course Korea shall become free and independent.”

There were many things, it is true, that the statement did not cover. There is nothing about the future of Thailand or the status of French Indo-China. There is no mention of Hong Kong, of Indonesia, or of Burma. These things will come later. The main achievement was the status and recognition given to China. The main hope that arises from all these meetings is a clarification of the relations between China and the Soviet Union in Asia.

We back China

It is no secret that the United States has been China’s chief sponsor in all these international gatherings. We believe it is to our interest to do this, not out of any sentimental, traditional sympathy for China, but because we feel that the basis for peace in Asia must in the last analysis be founded on an Asiatic power.

The Far East must not be re-established as an extension of the European political system. Without a strong and friendly China there would be little hope of adjusting the Asiatic interests of the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain. When Japan has been stripped of her continental conquests, her Pacific islands, and “all other territories which she has taken by violence and greed,” China at long last will have the opportunity to carve her own future.

Americans, therefore, have something more than an academic interest in the future course of Chinese development. We are in the position now of sponsoring China as an ally at a time when we are most disturbed about the political trends in that country.

Some people hold the view that China after the war will become imperialistic. These are very often the same people who express themselves most bitterly on the fighting capacities of China’s armies, the alleged corruption of her officials, the political repression of the regime, and disunity within the country. But there is no reason for us to be alarmed over the course that a free China will take. If any country stands to gain by international coöperation, it is China.

Few countries have been more articulate about plans for post-war reconstruction. Many of these plans show that the Chinese themselves are keenly aware of the enormous job that lies ahead of them domestically — and all of them take international coöperation for granted.

We shall be the better able to judge the value of these paper plans as we watch the Chungking government face the greatest task of its history — the revitalization of a war-weary people in preparation for the grim days ahead. We are more interested in China’s future than in her past.