Was there ever a real threat the Japanese would invade the Pacific coast during World War II? Historians think not, but with the benefit of hindsight. In 1943, however, military attorneys argued otherwise, maintaining the threat was serious and justified a racial curfew on those of Japanese descent (including Japanese Americans). These arguments helped persuade the Supreme Court, which held in Hirahayashi v. United States that the curfew was constitutional given the severity of the threat.
But did the military ever really fear a Japanese invasion? A new paper by Eric Muller suggests not. In "Hirabayashi: The Biggest Lie of the Greatest Generation," Muller presents archival evidence that "military officials foresaw no Japanese invasion and were planning for no such thing at the time they ordered mass action against Japanese Americans." Muller argues national security had little to nothing to do with the racial curfew and (worse) the government attorneys who filed the briefs in Hirabayashi knew it. According to Muller, "the Article demonstrates that the Hirabayashi decision - which has never been repudiated in the way that the more famous Korematsu decision has been, and which remains a potent precedent for race-conscious national security measures - deserves to be installed in the Supreme Court's Hall of Shame, alongside Korematsu, Dred Scott, and the Court's other biggest mistakes." He has more on the paper here.
Wickard v Filburn... US v Reynolds... the list of such cases goes on and on.
I do recall reading that the head of the FBI did not think the relocation was required because he thought his men had all the spies targetted.
It's when committing an abhorent act seems most rational and necessary that we have to be most skeptical about the justifications put forth for it.
Midway effectively ended the expansion of the Japanese Empire--it ended the very real threat to Hawaii and moved a threat of invasion of the West Coast from the category of "wildly improbable" to "absolute fairy tale." And Justice still filed the brief. And the Solicitor General still made those claims in oral argument.
And the Supreme Court bought it. Damn.
However, wasn't the Office of Naval Intelligence far more heavily involved in the Pacific Theater? So far, I haven't come across any reference to their work.
Wow, you have really great hindsight. Oh, wait, you don't.
In the battle for Alaska Japan withdrew its troops intact in July of 43 and they were capable of landing again.
Two very long and hard years of war were still ahead of the US, and the landings themselves promised to kill the flower of American youth in a way worse than WWI.
As a small whiney aside, I wish people who put their stuff on SSRN would not double space their papers. It makes them twice as long (which wastes twice as much paper) for no reason. Professor Muller, since I know you read these comments, any chance you could post a single-spaced version of your paper? :)
There was never any "very real threat to Hawaii." Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully's great book on Midway, Shattered Sword, is persuasive that the Japanese couldn't even have taken &held Midway Island. Hawaii would have been beyond their ability to take, hold, &supply.
Any nonhysterical military planner in 1942 could have figured out the same thing.
I aim to please!
Was the government's claim based--really, actually, literally and not as a matter of revisionist PCness--on the threat of a conventional invasion of the West Coast?
After we won the war, it was clear that we won the war.
Stephen Vincent Benet and John Steinbeck both wrote as if we'd been successfully invaded. Steinbeck wrote "The Moon is Down" about the Japanese doing it and Benet wrote--iirc-- "Judgment of the Mountains" as if the Germans had done it. So it was not until things got settled down some that it was pretty clear we'd win.
We should also remember that, perhaps with exaggeration by the aggressors, ethnically distinct subgroups had been used as "fifth columns" in several of the pre-Pearl Harbor wars in Europe. In fact, the term itself came from the Spanish Civil War when one general said he had four columns advancing on a city and a fifth working within it. It would have been irresponsible for the US to ignore the possibility.
So, to claim that the feds knew there was no chance of conventional invasion is not necessarily to claim that was what the feds were concerned with.
When I see US=bad stories, I usually presume that there is some misrepresentation within them. And that's why I suspect there is more to the feds' case than the supposed fear of a conventional invasion.
If the military expertise of Benet and Steinbeck is what you've got to go on, then you got nothin'.
I just read the paper, and he spun the invasion the same way you did. They were two islands way out in the middle of the ocean.
We had just barely won Midway, losing another carrier in the process. Japan was bombarding the west coast, we had lost all our battleships in the pacific and were relying on some new fangled airplane ships to try to hold the japanese back while we rebuilt our fleet, they had invaded Alaska, we lost the PI (losing an entire field army there), we lost China, we were about to lose the last ring before australia, people from Japan worshiped the head of government as a god.
I think there were darn good reasons to take precautions.
I know we have to spin what was going on then to make sure the evil bussssh can't take precautions now, but spinning and lying are fairly close together in the arguments.
Hate to double-up, but that is an amazing statement. The U.S. gets a presumption that it can't have done anything bad? Exactly what does it take to rebut this "presumption" -- a choir of reproaching angels?
"Just barely" is a bit of a myth (see Parshall &Tully, supra). We had several advantages going in, and the Japanese had handicapped themselves with a complex and contradictory strategy. As it ended up, we destroyed 4 of their 6 fleet carriers at the cost of only one.
Panic by civilians was perhaps to be expected, for the parade of horribles recited by Happyshooter; but it was the job of the military leaders to know better, and the civilians could and should have listened. Instead, they lied.
Lawyers told the Court in Hirabayashi that the principal danger against which military officials were preparing was a Japanese invasion of the West Coast. But the record is clear that military officials were not preparing against an invasion of the West Coast.
Perhaps military officials secretly anticipated a Japanese invasion but nobody in Army G-2, Naval Intelligence, the War Plans Division, or Chief of Staff George Marshall's office took the time to write it down. I doubt it, though.
And perhaps those officials had some other military-based reason for a racial curfew than invasion. But if so, that's not the reason that the government presented to the Supreme Court, and that's not the reason the Supreme Court rested its decision on in Hirabayashi.
When compared to conspiracy theorists and people with a political agenda to push? Yes.
But nice job conflating a mere presumption with requiring divine proof in your next sentence. Sarcastro would be proud.
Forgive this foreign invasion but my reading of the Midway battle was that as both sides were punching (virtually) blind it was a matter of sheer luck as to who would win. If the Japs had spotted the American carriers first, who knows what would have been the outcome, and part of the reason that they did not is because the recce plane scheduled to fly a route that would have taken it over Spruance's carriers was delayed 30 mins for engine trouble.
The Midway battle was never just about capturing Midway, as seen from the Jap point of view. Yamamoto only insisted on it, following the shock of the Doolittle raid, because he knew its importance to the Americans and that a thrust in that direction would surely draw out the American carriers which were, first, last and always, his prime target.
Even so, there was never any doubt as to who would win in the long run, as dear old Winnie's celebratory exultation indicated on news of Pearl Harbour. Poor old Pat Buchanan is still choking on his Jack Daniels at the awfulness of it all - damn Brits!
There's nothing amazing about that statement. There is a lot of "US=bad" revisionism, by writers who misrepresent history. That doesn't mean the US has never been bad, only that most writers who assert "US=bad" have an agenda and are not above misrepresentation.
Your astonishment seems insincere. You pretend that happyshooter said something he didn't and then attack the thing he didn't say.
Attu and Kiska are in fact west of Oahu, and would be west of the international date line if the line didn't bend around them.
There was never any "very real threat to Hawaii." Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully's great book on Midway, Shattered Sword, is persuasive that the Japanese couldn't even have taken &held Midway Island. Hawaii would have been beyond their ability to take, hold, &supply.
John J. Stephan's Hawaii under the Rising Sun: Japan's Plans for Conquest after Pearl Harbor contends that the Japanese seriously intended to try to take the islands, and "well into 1943 [Japanese] civilians prepared scenarios of Hawaii's political administration, economic reconstruction, and social transformation under Japanese occupation." Stephan contends that the threat of invasion was real, not a "bogey" used to frighten the civilian population. He also notes that occupation of Hawaii was extensively discussed in the Japanese media before Midway (and one wonders whether the US government was aware of this).
And, I didn't say the war was over in 1943. But the expansion of the Japanese Empire ended with Midway and Guadalcanal--both in 1942. By the beginning of 1943 that would have been clear to the military commanders on both sides (and any attack on the West Coast would have been relegated to the level of weather balloons carrying simple incendiaries).
Right, and didn't Hitler have a table set up in his bunker, showing how he was going to rebuild Linz after the war?
But nice job conflating a mere presumption with requiring divine proof in your next sentence.
Mr. Waxx, I am under the impression that you're an attorney or in law school, but perhaps not:
The types of presumption includes a rebuttable discretionary presumption, a rebuttable mandatory presumption, and an irrebutable or conclusive presumption.
My insinuation was that, for Mr. Aubrey's purposes (not Happyshooter's, as Egrim misread), the presumption of American virtue was in the third category.
Six battleships survived the Pearl Harbor attack.
Many naval vessels in the Pacific were at sea or docked on the West Coast at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack.
Attu and Kiska are across about 3,000 miles of water from Seattle.
(For comparison's sake, Omaha Beach is across about 100 miles of water from the British coast.)
War Planners in the spring of 1942 were beginning to plan for what would become the Normandy invasion. They well understood the logistics of landing an invading force across 100 miles of water, and therefore also would have understood the logistics of landing an invading force across 3,000 miles of water, or 5,000.
In the end, though, whether you are right or wrong that "there were darn good reasons to take precautions," the reason that the government presented to the Supreme Court to uphold those precuations was the threat of an invasion of California. That reason was false.
Snide becomes you. Hardly anything else does. The point about Steinbeck and Benet is that there was no popular certainty--they were not alone--that we'd win until well into the war.
As to Midway, "just barely" is accurate as a matter of the prospects before our shattering good luck and the incredible bravery of the pilots. Afterwards, of course, we had won a good deal. But that wasn't the way to bet in advance. Not hardly. Counting on luck is a mook's game in war. It turned out, afterwards, that that was the Japanese high water mark, or the day before it was, anyway. Which we knew afterwards. There was no reason to expect the Japanese wouldn't get lucky themselves sometime, someplace, as at Pearl Harbor or Savo Island, and cut the new advantage back to even-up.
Eric Muller. That's interesting. I suppose the opposition wasn't in a position to query the Pentagon on their views of the situation. Had I, with my hindsight intact, been involved in the situation back then, I'd have been concerned about acts of sabotage in war plants and transportation. Ever see the famed Route Sixty-Six? I did, a couple of years ago, in Arizona. Not much to it to keep the country together. It was railroads, to a much greater extent than now (with Ike's National Defense freeways running everywhere). More choke points. The Japanese at the time must have been concerned about not losing, rather than winning, and invading wouldn't have suited them. But slowing down the US efforts by sabotage would have seemed like a good idea, if they could pull it off. And I would not, at the time, have seen a good reason why they couldn't. At any event, they didn't, and, I am assured, the internment had nothing to do with it.
Did the Office of Naval Intelligence have any pertinent information on your topic? If not, did the ONI mostly focus on intelligence gathering and other matters not directly on point to your article?
Why is "popular certainty" the yardstick here?
As to Midway, "just barely" is accurate as a matter of the prospects before our shattering good luck and the incredible bravery of the pilots.
If you are really interested in why "just barely" is inaccurate, I recommend Parshall &Tully's excellent book. There's too much luck in war, as Napoleon III complained, but we were on remarkably even ground at Midway, due to Japanese errors and American effort.
Still, why assume Aubrey thinks American virtue is an irrebutable presumption? He wrote
There's still nothing amazing about about the simple observation that revisionists frequently misrepresent history to promote an unstated agenda.
I am particularly puzzled why the same set of people who profess to think that the federal government couldn't find its way out of a paper bag, nonetheless also profess to presume that the government doesn't do wicked things.
There are just so many revisionists out there, you can never be too sure!
A rebarbative presumption, I suppose?
But the court wouldn't need to state the law differently if they knew the true facts. They ruled that a big enough threat can justify a racially-based curfew. If they knew the threat wasn't real, they would be able to rule exactly the same way and just apply it differently--a big enough threat still does justify a curfew, but this wasn't a big enough threat. As precedent, it would still mean that a big threat justifies a curfew.
Besides, the law is full of examples where the legal ruling is obviously based on a desired outcome, but is used for precedent in cases that have nothing to do with that.
Isn't the "Greatest Generation" more the young men who served in the war and not the old men that made policy and led the war?
But for an unbelievable codebreaking effort, and some incredible luck before and after, the Japanese plan would have succeeded. Hit Midway by surprise, US fleet still in Pearl, sub reports when fleet sails, and they're out there, waiting with 4 carriers to 2.5 (Yorktown badly damaged and still under repair) and a powerful battleship fleet as well (while all ours are still not floated). Not to mention great advantages in cruisers and destroyers and fighter aircraft quality. Even as it was, our torpedo bombers were annihilated, and the two dive bomber units located the Japanese fleet by luck and guesswork. And at that they sunk one of our carriers.
If their plan had gone off, they'd have bagged all three of our carriers. Now they have seven (three were off attacking Attu and Kiska as a diversion from the Midway operation) and we have none, plus their battleship fleet. Sounds to me as if Midway would be easy to hold, and grabbing Hawaii not impossible.
They couldn't hold them forever -- as Yamamoto said, he could run wild for six months or a year, but that was it -- but it'd fit nicely with a strategy that called for grabbing a big perimeter, making us fight for each outpost one by one over thousands of miles of ocean, and hoping we'd be willing to negotiate rather than fight for six or eight bloody years.
You don't want to go this way. Consider that homosexual activity is considered by many people to be an abhorrent act.
Thanks for the info.
O RLY? In a post about WW2 arguments before the Supreme Court, you bring in TEH GAYZ? I guess this means DangerMouse will be equating the curfew with abortion within the hour.
Prof. Muller- excellent article, and timely. A court (and the Court) is only as good as the information provided by the litigants; given the nature of the adversarial system, it makes cases involving state secrets or 'trusting the government' particularly pernicious and suspect.
Midway was a losing fight except for luck and daring and bravery. The comparative combat power grossly favored the Japanese. We were damned lucky to win that one. The incident of the recon airplane being a half hour late is only one instance of good luck, unanticipated good luck.
We were only on even ground if you take your cardboard pieces of Battleship and add forty percent to each American one IN ADVANCE for good luck, and another forty percent for incredible bravery. What the case was afterwards does not affect what the case was beforehand. See, before comes before, and not after after. Tricky concept, I know.
Incompetence and sincerity are mutually exclusive. If only life was so simple!
From whom, I can think of more than a few counter-examples.
But they most likely would have. Take the rule as stated by yourself. Do you think that the rule would have come out the same if the case of first impression on the issue had been, say, a curfew against all white people in Birmingham in the fall of 1963?
My point exactly.
Well, this is a pretty meaningless statement. OF course my statement assumed that the "abhorrence" of the act derived from the violation of some rational morality. However, if you prefer, you can substitute "disgusting and unjust violation of human and civil rights". Because, of course, that is exactly what the punishment and imprisonment of American citizens based on their ethnic background is.
Ranger, Wasp, Saratoga?
The discussion of internment in WW II leads to a don't-go-there place to not go. "They didn't do anything against the US!" repeated endlessly as a reason that the internment was unjust and unnecessary leads to a presumption: That "not doing" something against the US means internment by demographic is wrong. It puts the weight of the question on whether "not doing" is what's happening. If that's the case, what if they--some ethnically-distinct group or another--are, in fact, "doing something."? Or, as might have been the case going on seventy years ago, a few of them.
Guadalcanal was almost the end of the allies in the western pacific. The Marines were left hanging when the fleet was forced to withdraw, and reduced to eating captured food and using captured equipment. The Navy lost two major battles in the area. It was only by pure guts, really good fighter pilots, and excellent battlion level tactics that the Corps held on longer than the japanese forces did.
The correct lesson from the battle was that empire needed to attack at regimental strength with combined arms, and it was only because of their lack of willingness to change that they didn't learn the lesson and throw the allies back to the west coast.
The four destroyers who went in with South Dakota and Washington were all sunk. One Marine, all that was left, with one Browning watercooled thirty cal, held a ridge against at least a Japanese battalion. All that the jarheads had for a counterattack was seventeen cooks, clerks, jerks, and wounded. They started at hand grenade range. And prevailed.
But that would be one those good things America isn't allowed to do. So we see, among others, Anderson pretending that what happened at Midway was the way it was bound to go and what's the big deal. Being in a public space at this point, I am not in a position to spit. Arrgh.
But the question is what were they thinking at the time. And what was the context that would make supposedly intelligent men make such a decision.
(Or would you have supported the internment of German Americans during the war? After all, some Germans within the U.S. were collaborating with Nazi Germany.)
No, that's a question, one of many. The answer to that question can inform, but does not determine, the answer to the other question we are discussing - whether the actions they took were right. I, for one, understand why intelligent men would take the actions they did. I even understand why otherwise good and moral men would take those actions. That understanding does not change my opinion that those actions were wrong, that they were driven in large part by irrational fear and racial animosity, and that they set forth justifications for those actions that they knew were false at the time.
Good, intelligent people sometimes behave in evil and irrational ways. That their actions are understandable does not, in any way, relieve them of moral responsibility for those actions.
You'll note that Anderson's r&a is a matter of presuming that what did happen at Midway as a matter of unpredicable luck and bravery was bound to happen and so it wasn't such a big deal.
I don't know that there are that few people who hate veterans, or others better than themselves.
Anne. I'm not supporting anything. Just pointing some things out. But the libs' tactic is to insist that someone who points out the inconvenient must necessarily support it. That way, maybe he'll stop pointing out the inconvenient. And I wasn't aware the question was what label to put on the whole thing.
And I do caution against putting the "they didn't do anything" out front. 'cause there are some who are doing something right now. And if the whole thing stands or falls on doing or not doing, you have a problem.
Um, Australia?
I don't think that the valor and determination of American troops and sailors requires such exaggeration.
Arguing back &forth on Midway is a bit silly in the absence of facts. The Japanese had a terrible battle plan, a mediocre carrier commander (Nagumo), and a general lack of clarity as to what they were supposed to be doing. The Americans had an excellent plan (aided by our superb intel), great commanders (Nimitz, Spruance), and a focus on destroying the Japanese fleet. We were facing 4:3 carrier odds, which were not good, but were a helluva lot better than the 6:3 that the Japanese *should* have thrown at us.
Our coordination of air attacks was the glaring defect of the day, but the dive bombers were there when they needed to be, and that was most of the battle right there.
If so, then you need to rationally figure out if the act is good (in order to decide that abhorrence of it is rational) before you can rationally figure out that the act is good (in order to decide whether to do it). This seems either tautological or circular.
And in any case, everyone thinks their own beliefs are rational, so limiting it to situations where the abhorrence of the act is rational equals no limit at all.
Oh, pooh. Everything's unpredictable and mysterious -- that's a great way to go through life.
Parshall &Tully (at 432): "The most pernicious myth concerning the Battle of Midway ... is the persistent belief that in defeating the Japanese the Americans miraculously triumphed against 'overwhelming odds.'"
As the authors go on to discuss, much of this myth stems from the work of Fuchida, for whom it was very convenient to pretend that the American victory was due to "unpredictable luck" rather than serious Japanese mistakes.
that's funny. i'm constantly puzzled that the same set of people who presume the government is constantly doing wicked things also profess to wanting the government to be in charge of everything. weird.
Wrong. Plenty of criminal cases are tried on the basis of what the person knew at the time, or thought at the time.
Morality depends on those, not on what later views of those not under pressure have of the issue.
If they knew they were doing wrong, that's one thing.
If they thought they were doing right, but were wrong, that's another. Completely.
But you do make a point. To "understand" means to follow a thought process and know what the premises are. It doesn't meant to sympathize.
It does seem odd that a number of people with a war on their hands and a million other things to do and who were the least likely in the country to actually encounter Japanese Americans took time out of their busy schedules to indulge racial animosity. IMO, that's a red herring added by current libs for whom discovering instances of racial animosity is better than striking gold. But, outside of moral preening, what's the point? They're all dead and unable to defend themselves--which is a feature--but you don't have the fun of watching them trying to prove a negative.
The truth is your logic is completely ludicrious, because there's a vast difference between the individual heroism of our soldiers and the likelihood of victory in battle.
And I suspect that you know as well as I do that the reason "they didn't do anything" is often the most loudly stated arguments is not that it is the sole or best argument, but that (a) it's easy to understand; (b) it stokes the moral outrage level in a way "violation of due process" doesn't; and (c) it is in fact true. The fact "some of them" were doing something doesn't change the fact that the vast majority (we're talking 99%+) didn't do anything.
Well, let's see. The US also invaded North Africa from Norfolk (4,000 miles); invaded Tarawa from Hawaii (2,100 miles); and invaded Saipan from Hawaii (3,200 miles). So it wasn't all "100 miles across the English Channel". The Japanese invasion of Malaya launched from Hainan (1,300 miles); they invaded Java from the Philippines (1,500 miles); Wake Island from Japan (2,000 miles); and the Aleutians from Japan (2,000 miles). So, Japan was more than capable of doing multi-thousand-mile power projection operations, so enough with the jibber-jabber about 100-mile invasions. The Japanese wouldn't exactly have been meeting the Wehrmacht on the other end of their journey, as we were when we were planning Normandy.
would you have supported the internment of German Americans during the war?
Yes! And in fact, it happened - and the Italians, too. But hey, they were white, so no big deal, right?
Does he show this in some way? It is not supported by the statement that no invasion was believed to be imminent. The standard support for internment was a fear of sabotage / spying. These are national security issues even if no invasion is imminent.
Yeah, now that you mention it ...!
Irrational fear??? Thousands are dead, the Pacific Fleet is on the bottom of the ocean, the Philippines are doomed, and it's "irrational" to be afraid???
As for the fairness and utility of discussing - may I say a hearty BULLSHIT. First, they involved our government in their immoral and unconstitutional acts, leaving us with a legacy of really bad law, so it is absolutely still relevant. If only to prevent us from making the same mistakes again. Second, while most are dead now, they were very much alive and kicking when the reexamination of their disgusting actions began and had ample opportunity to respond to the critiques. Some recanted, some didn't, but they had more than ample opporunity to make their case. Third, they were never asked and, if they were here now, would not be asked to prove a negative. They were asked and would be asked to prove they had a reasonable, good faith basis for their vile acts that constitutionally justified the detention of thousands of citizens based on their ethnicity. By contrast, those who would defend these injusticies are asking those of us who condemn them to prove not just that the Japanese weren't a danger as a whole, but that no portion of them were a danger. Which of those burdens involves "proving a negative"?
Winston Churchill, in his stint in the Navy admin, said that some people thought battleships were like armored knights belaboring each other with swords, wearing each other out, knocking off pieces of armor here and there and eventually winning by a kind of attrition. Instead, said Churchill, it's like eggs attacking each other with hammers. IOW, first strike might mean win. Since playing blind man's bluff in the Pacific is a matter of luck, not of having some major advantage, it can't be said to be an advantage beforehand.
We were lucky to have found the Japanese before they found us. The bravery of our pilots turned defeat into victory, coupled with luck.
I don't doubt the heroism of our soldiers in Desert Storm, for example, but they do, when I've heard them talking about their forefathers taking the execrable Sherman against the 88, for example.
And yeah, it was irrational. We interned 110,000 people of Japanese descent - including all the U.S. citizens of Japanese descent on the West Coast (but not in Hawaii, where they actually made up a third of the population) - based on speculation that some of them might support a Japanese invasion of the West Coast (but not, apparently, Hawaii, where the Japanese originally attacked). But only 4500 Germans and German Americans were interned. Yeah, looks like a rational, racially neutral response to an attack to me. Couldn't POSSIBLY have anything to do with the fact that Japanese people were already the object of racial animosity and much easier to identify? Of course not, just prudent defense.
SPare me.
Sure, we have bad law following it. But that is separate from the question of what they were thinking, if you're going to be attacking their motivation instead of the actions by themselves.
Well, since they were accused of indulging racial animosity, defending themselves against it would be trying to prove a negative.
And you are still doing the lib thing; pretending that since I am pointing out flaws in your argument I must support the internment. Am I supposed to be concerned or something?
I'm not concerned about the origin of the "didn't do anything argument". I'm concerned about what happens if, having used it to stoke moral outrage among the unwary, we find currently a group which is "doing something". The logic would seem to demand that the latter be locked up. I didn't make the "doing something" argument and I'm not proposing following its logic. I'm suggesting that using it now might put you in a difficult spot. But go ahead if you wish. Sometimes just watching is the most fun.
As Prof. Muller has said repeatedly above, that "standard support" was NOT what the feds told the Supreme Court their motive was. Think about it.
Mad Max: if you are completely ignorant about Japanese logistical capacities, then okay. But you do I hope understand the difference between surprise landings on undefended coasts, vs. an opposed landing? And the enormous American advantage in materiel?
You're right. But the point was help on the inside by an organized group on your side, which happened to be on the outside. Later, Germans in the Sudetenland were both the reason for German attention and, supposedly, a help in the move. Ethnic distinction was a bonus. But the concept of a fifth column was so powerful that the name continues to be the term when no ethnic distinction--but possibly pro-or-anti-church--could be made.
I didn't respond to your so-called argument because it was an insult, not an argument.
Anderson's point, way back, is that we had so many advantages at that point in the war--even GOING INTO--Midway that fear of an invasion or anything else was ludicrous.
My point is that is silly, based on the facts. Anderson et al not so cleverly try to pretend that what happened during the battle was bound to happen because of our overwhelming advantages. And one of the reasons, in my experience, for claiming a near-run thing was pre-ordained is to dismiss the credit due for the guys who did the work. Given Anderson's attitude around here, that was my assumption.
I could as easily be accused of dismissing the credit due the guys who did the work by pointing out our luck, couldn't I? But I haven't been. Why? Because that's not your issue, in reality. The reality is that revising the situation at that point in the war is useful in the internment debate.
Hooray, you have correctly understood the point I was making! There is a huge difference between invading Normandy in 1944 with the Wehrmacht waiting for you, and invading any point of the US in early 1942, when essentially nothing is waiting for you. A Japanese landing in the western US in early 1942 would essentially have been unopposed. From the standpoint of the American defenders, there was a vast amount of territory to cover with very little in the way of organized forces.
Oh, and since we are on the subject of ignorance, when the US invaded Tarawa and Saipan, those were hardly "unopposed".
I think I mentioned our great intel, but thanks for supplying further detail. Nimitz made a great call -- the intel information was open to interpretation, and another commander might've feared that we were being played by the Japanese.
Get a grip. Anderson isn't playing with a full deck.
Aubrey goes on to recount some of the "myths" that Parshall &Tully wrote Shattered Sword to correct. Really, people, I can't recommend this book highly enough -- I only wish that all military history were written so clearly and with such research and detail.
To correct one of Aubrey's claims: the Japanese planes weren't on the flight decks when our dive bombers showed up; the "chaos" was down in the hangars. It wasn't "luck" that the Japanese couldn't get their act together -- it was the repeated American attacks on June 4, which while failing to hit the Japanese, forced them to take evasive actions and otherwise ruined their morning.
Luck is *always* part of war, but bad luck usually happens to both sides. The side that makes fewer or less grave mistakes, generally handles its luck a lot better.
Sigh. That is not the point -- we were addressing the Japanese successes, and why they were unlikely to be repeated.
America was able to make 100% successful landings vs. defended coasts b/c of our HUGE material advantage. (We had brave troops of course, but so did the Japanese.)
Japanese landing in the western US in early 1942 would essentially have been unopposed.
I am shaking my head in disbelief. Okay, so the Japanese land. What, exactly, do you imagine would happen next? They stroll over to Sacramento and accept Earl Warren's surrender of California?
Back to the real question- should the court have looked at the 1942 situation or the 1943 decision and which one was the Justice Department briefing?
It was not even imaginable that the Japanese would be able to turn the war around by early 1943- our industrial capacity was pouring out equipment, we were pouring out trained men- and Japan was not keeping up and even the lose of a few Midway like battles could have stopped us- Admiral Yamamoto's time to run free was up.
Did the Justice Department know the truth to put it into the brief- Was the truth of the situation even known to the public? Lots of ethical decisions had to be made in the administration for the Supreme Court brief and it looks like they made the wrong ones.
Once again, it's completely preposterous to equate individual heroism with the likelihood of winning. And therefore its completely illogical to think that Anderson is attempting to discredit our soldiers simply by stating we were likely to win Midway. Of course, why would you let a little loose logic and reasoning stop you from smearing your opponent and stating he wants to "discredit our soldiers".
By the time Warren became the Governor, in January 1943, the threat of invasion, if there had ever been one, was gone.
Got me. But did the Justice Dep't flash on that fact?
The code breaking only placed the inferior force of the U.S.carriers in the path of the split but vastly superior Japanese forces.
Oh goodness. If that's what they were teaching at Annapolis in 1980, then my appreciation for Parshall &Tully is only that much greater.
"Vastly superior" does not help much if your forces are "split" so that only part of them are actually in contact with the enemy.
The father of one of my high school friends was one of the soldiers who retook the Aleutians from the Japanese. He had a great time: a brief period of combat followed by an extended period of cross-country skiing.
I am shaking my head in disbelief at you. Just because they couldn't march inland, we should have been completely indifferent to the prospect of a raid on the coast? There were many valuable facilities on the coast, and if they occupied even a square foot of totally worthless US soil, it would have been a propaganda and domestic political black eye of tremendous proportions (not to mention it would have driven the public crazy). We exerted ourselves mightily to get Attu and Kiska back, even though that was an invasion that had even less places to go than a raid on the west coast.
Anderson is trying to influence the internment argument by insisting we were in far better shape at that point in the war than we actually were. To the extent we were in better shape, the internment decision is less rational. Making the internment decision less rational is the objective, hence the necessity to "improve" our situation at the time.
There is another reason for this, and that is to dismiss the credit due the guys who did the work. IMO, Anderson is guilty of both. He'd do the latter whenever he got the chance, and the former in discussions of internment.
Racism, I say. Damn those people who won WW2 were evil!
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was not the initial step in an invasion of Hawaii. Rather, it was a pre-emptive strike intended to disable the US Navy so that it would not interfere with Japanese activity in Indonesia.
Unfortunately, racist paranoia overcame the understanding of Japanese politics by the small number of experts who understood it.
As evidence of the long-standing and irrational nature of the belief that Japan intended to invade and occupy North America, I note that racist literature expressing fear of this possibility long antecedes the run-up to the war. For example, in 1921 Hilda Glynn Howard published "The Writing on the Wall", a fictional portrayal of the invasion that she saw coming. Among the features that shows how unrealistic her understanding of the situation was is the fact that in the book Japan and China cooperate in the invasion of the US and Canada. The same is true of the Fu Manchu novels, which portray a completely unrealistic general oriental conspiracy against the white man.
All bearded white men to report to jail immediately as pot-smoking hippies.
Were it not for the political issues involved, it probably would have been a good idea to let the Japanese garrison the place and use subs against their resupply.
I can say that, as late as the early Seventies, the US plans included responding to a Fifth Column "hippies and college students" whose mob assaults on military installations in this country would be timed--probably without consulting them but maybe they'd think it a good idea--with a soviet nuclear strike or other major move against the US domestically. If they could interrupt US defensive activities...why would the sovs scruple at it? One more advantage, and paid for by the Kid's parents, too. It seems more likely that the hippies and college students could have been induced to do that than that Japanese Americans could be assaulting the defenses of, say, San Francisco's naval facilities at the time a regiment managed to land on the seaward side to seriously tear the place up.
At this point, neither seems to have been likely, but, given the history of such things in Europe, the latter would not have been inconceivable to planners, either.
Seems to me that if we're supposed to reserve judgment of other cultures, that we might be wise to reserve judgment of other times. Both or neither.
I don't pretend to be a military expert, but even supposing that the Japanese got some troops to the western US, how would they be able to keep them supplied and what level of resistance could they expect from the National Guard and civilians of the Western States? Did the Japanese not make Mad Max's attack because they were stupid, or because Mad Max is flying with a screw loose?
Hawaii, unlike the West Coast, was therefore regarded almost as a lost Japanese possession.
The Japanese were an easy target. They were different. "Punishing" them served an irrational need to act out against a perceived alien. IT certainly did not serve any rational ends. And as for moral responsibility - I submit the well documented lies and distortions used to justify the imprisonment of Japanese Americans, the conditions of confinement, the theft of Japanese AMericans' property, in addition to obviously moral offensiveness of punishing a large number of American citizens for alleged treason on the part of some of their fellow Japanese.
As for logic, the statement "they were innocent!" does not imply that the internment would have been justified if more of them weren't. Only the logically deficient would think so.
(BTW, the kneejerk "only liberals blah blah blah" has even less force than usual when you're accusing people who oppose FDR's actions of using stupid "liberal" tactics)
In my view (from outside, both geographically and historically) Aubrey is entirely right. The following is as near the true as any history can get:
1: Whilst Nimitz guessed the Jap target was Midway (later confirmed definitely by the trick concerning the water storage tanks), he did not know Yamamoto's dispositions on the ocean before battle was joined. Thus Spruance, like Nagumo, was fighting blind.
2: At that time, American war planes, weaponry, tactics and combat experience were totally inferior to the Japanese.
3: The history of the Pacific campaign confirms over and over again, that it was the hopeless confusion of mistakes, and successes, by individual recce pilots and their observers which could swing a battle one way or another.
As an Englishman, I consider the courage of the American torpedo aircrews in their doomed attacks on Nagumo's ships to be one of the most highly commendable acts of bravery in the whole of WWII. They would not have been aware, and tragically, they would never know, that their action was critical in that it brought the Japanese CAP down to sea level, leaving the dive bombers an unopposed attack. Speculation, of course, but I, personally, doubt that Japan had the where-withal to take Hawaii after Midway, had they been successful at Midway.
If I may paraphrase very slightly the words of a famous American which sums up so much in military history but is particularly pertinent to Midway:
"For want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe, the horse was lost; and for want of a horse, the [general was lost; and for want of the general, the battle was lost]."
Oh c'mon you can't possibly be pointing out that during 1943 we commissioned 2 new BB's, recommissioned an older one, plus 6 Essex's, 9 Independence's, 6 Bogue's and 18 Casablanca's.
The Japanese commissioned 3 carries about the size of the Independence's in 1943 to go along with their 8 existing carriers. Oh wait, it sounds like we built more carriers in 1943 then the Japanese had in total.
Maybe, just maybe (I'll consult my Magic 8 ball) you're right, by 1943 the war in the Pacific was an issue of how much the US wanted to win, i.e. how much were we willing to sacrifice in order to win.
Thankfully there are no modern parallel situations...
This is not true. There was an *hour* between the torpedo attacks and the arrival of the dive bombers. The Japanese just didn't get their ducks in a row.
Keep in mind that the Japanese invented both the banzai charge and the kamikaze. Both involved the knowledge by the participants that they would not survive.
From time to time, they did some good with the banzais. I think it was on Okinawa that some got through an airfield's defenses and destroyed some aircraft before being killed.
Point is, a raid is different from an occupation. Even a raid where the entire unit is written off could be a problem, depending on what they accomplished.
Wars like WW II are not won by single ops, but by wearing down the other side. If you as a Japanese commander think--and it matters not whether you're right or wrong--that sacrificing a regimental landing team to tear up San Francisco's naval facilities and delaying their use for a month would be a net plus, you might as well do it. It would slow down US activities for a while, might make a negotiated settlement more likely, and you're losing that many guys every week in conventional ops anyway. Go for it. US planners would have been derelict to ignore the possibility. And that includes both defending the coast and keeping an eye on the locals.
And you don't need to be a military expert to see this.
As to logistics, keep in mind that the Japanese managed to occupy huge swaths of China and Manchuria because they were close and resupply was not, originally, opposed. And because they lived off the land, starving millions of locals in the process. The west coast is pretty fat. Also has or had ordnance facilities. They couldn't have conquered the US, but you could, at least, make up an alt-hist with reasonable verisimiltude that they could have held large parts of coastal CA and maybe OR for some months, doing untold damage. Unlikely, as I say, but not beyond the bounds of reality. If they'd attempted, presuming a good deal of help from the JA population, they'd probably have lost. Almost certainly. But, as Wellington said, the next saddest thing to a battle lost is a battle won.
Many things which didn't happen didn't happen because they were prepared for. It doesn't mean that, lacking preparation, the other guy might not have seen an opportunity.