It All Began at Pearl Harbor…

Did it really all begin at Pearl Harbor? The war in East Asia had begun according to some accounts in 1937 with Japan’s invasion of China after the Marco Polo Bridge incident. Certainly a very large war began then. Other writers have pointed to China’s almost constant conflict between rival warlords and factions since the revolution had occurred in 1911. Others point to Japan’s invasion, conquest, and establishment of a puppet regime in Manchuria in 1931.^[1] What really began in December 7–8 (depending on which side of the international dateline one is on), 1941, with Imperial Japan’s wide-ranging attacks from the Kra Isthmus to Pearl Harbor was American, British, and Dutch involvement in an already ongoing war in Asia. What did begin at Pearl Harbor, Clark Field, in Thailand and British Malaya, Guam, Wake Island, Hong Kong, and Singapore was a much broader Asian war that included the Pacific and many new belligerents: the United States, Great Britain, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Australia.^[2] It is only with this understanding that readers will appreciate this conflict’s vast scope and importance.

The ten essays in this collection are wide ranging – temporally, topically, and geographically. A number of them look at areas that have been either opaque or less studied by a general readership of World War II in Asia, as well as others that bring fresh perspectives to more traditional topics. The first essay by former Center of Naval Analysis chief science officer William O’Neil is of the latter type. O’Neil examines the strategic decision-making that served as the context for Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. In doing so, he highlights especially the cultural and institutional contributors to the breakdown of the relationship between the West, and the United States in particular, and Japan.

The second essay by Paul Thomsen, “Optics of Magic,” is an area that has been covered in the literature, but which is still rich in opportunities to expand our understanding of the “fog of war” that existed prior to the actual outbreak of hostilities on December 7th. This fog included how signals intelligence (SIGINT) information was processed and diffused to senior decision makers in the United States. Thomsen looks closely at the management of SIGINT and finds that Pearl Harbor proved a forcing function in the rationalization and processing of this valuable intelligence source. The third effort, by David Winkler of the Naval History and Heritage Command in the United States, examines the narrative of a single ship and its crew, albeit one of the most important ships in the history of the United States Navy. Winkler looks at the fate of the USS Langley. This ship was famous as the Navy’s first aircraft carrier, an experimental ship converted from a collier into a new warship type that helped revolutionize war at sea. By the time of Pearl Harbor, Langley had been converted again, this time into a seaplane carrier to support the American Asiatic Fleet based in the Philippines. This story represents the high drama of those early days and the sad fate of a famous vessel.

Steven McGregor looks at how American pilots were trained, especially the pilots from the Enterprise and Yorktown carrier task forces at Midway. His work aims to show how training and doctrine played a critical role in the United States’ victory over the Japanese First Carrier Striking Force (Dai Ichi Kido Butai) on June 4, 1942. Joshua Fogle offers another side of the story of Midway, the doctrinal developments and preparations by the Marine Corps Base Defense force in anticipation of a Japanese amphibious assault on the island. These two essays provide much new information on two areas that have received little attention in the narratives of this critical battle.

Often forgotten in narratives of the Pacific War are the operations that led to the seizure of the island of Biak in 1944 during General Douglas MacArthur’s drive toward the Philippines. Mary Hall looks at the decision-making of three key leaders: MacArthur, Lt. General Walter Krueger, and the on-scene commander of the operation Major General Horace Fuller. Hall examines Krueger’s justifications for relieving Fuller and replacing him with Lt. General Robert Eichelberger after Fuller had bogged down against fierce Japanese resistance. In the same vein, retired Army Command and General Staff College historian Gary Bjorge looks at the infamous relief of Major General Ralph Smith by Marine Corps Lt. General Holland M. Smith during the battle of Saipan in June 1944. Bjorge provides a superb “back story” on the mobilization and training of Ralph Smith’s 27th Infantry Division and how that and other factors, over which Smith had no control, played a role in his unjustified relief by his superior in the midst of a desperate battle.

Robert Watts of the National War College (United States) examines the United States’ Pacific submarine force’s offensive against Japanese merchant shipping in “The ‘Tanker War’ Against Japan.” Again, the main topic here involves how a system of SIGINT cuing needed to be created in order to effectively execute these operations as opposed to the standard explanation involving fixing the torpedoes of the Pacific submarine fleet. Trent Hone examines the conflict after Pearl Harbor from the perspective of high command using Admiral Chester Nimitz as his focus. His scholarship uncovers key areas that highlight how effective collaboration occurred on Nimitz’s staff that involved “rapid sensemaking” and the ability to take advantage of emergent, and often fleeting, operational opportunities. The result was a “vast and efficient organism” for fighting a Pacific war with Imperial Japan.

The final essay by D. M. Giangreco, a former editor at Military Review, rounds out the collection by showing how casualty estimates and orders for purple hearts reflected not only the bloody course of the war in the Pacific, but also the planning for the invasion of Japan. In particular, Giangreco’s scholarship highlights that the ordering of massive numbers of purple hearts was in anticipation of the invasions of Kyushu and later Honshu. In this way, he undercuts critics of the Truman Administration who argue that the expectation of high casualties for these invasions was a post-facto construction used to rationalize the dropping of the Atomic Bombs that ended the war. At the same time, he shows that American presidents over two administrations wanted Soviet involvement in the war against Japan and welcomed it when it came in August 1945.

Readers of this issue should prepare themselves for some surprises, perhaps, to their previously held notions of the Pacific component of World War II in Asia. What began at Pearl Harbor all those decades ago still resonates today, from debates over nuclear weapons to discussions about American power and prestige in the Pacific vis-à-vis the People’s Republic of China. Ironically, the United States finds itself in a situation where Japan is its ally, and not adversary. As usual, these issues almost entirely are about China and any discussion of them can hardly be divorced from American-Chinese relations.