1942: The Year That Tried Men's Souls

by Winston Groom

  Wise as the strategy was, there was still a long and bloody road ahead, and everybody knew it. Tiny islands that most people had never heard of, such as Tarawa, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and Saipan became charnal houses for the U.S. Marine Corps, as did big islands such as the Philippines and Okinawa for the U.S. Army. These places also became graveyards for hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers who fought it out, as they usually did, to the end. The last remaining Japanese soldier on Guadalcanal was apprehended several years after the war ended when he was caught stealing vegetables from the garden of the Solomon Islands constabulary, but it was not until the 1970s that the few surviving Japanese on other Pacific islands were persuaded to give themselves up. Suggestions have been made that there might even be a remaining Japanese soldier or two still out there in the remotest jungles, wondering to this day if the war was over and, if so, who won?1

  After the defeat of the Axis in Tunisia, the Allies quickly moved to invade Sicily, which they did successfully, and from which they invaded Italy itself in 1943. When that happened, the Italians just as quickly surrendered almost within the year, and the Axis was contracted even further. For a time it looked as though it might be a smooth ride through Italy up into Churchill’s soft underbelly of Europe, through the Balkans, and on into southern Austria-Germany. But this was not to be. When the Italians caved in, Hitler dispatched a fierce army into northern Italy, which stalled the American push forward through the rough and mountainous terrain, and they were still fighting it out there as the war ended. It took the massive Allied invasion of France at Normandy in 1944 to finally throw the Germans back in the west, and the great Soviet onslaught coming from the east brought down the final curtain on the Nazis.

  For the first six months of 1942, as we have seen, the Allies, and America itself, were in real danger. Our Pacific fleet and Pacific air force had been nearly destroyed at Pearl Harbor and in the Philippines, and our Atlantic fleet wasn’t much to begin with. Our vital coastwise shipping was being sunk at an alarming rate by German U-boats and Russia was on the verge of collapse, which would have given the Nazis control of one of the world’s most vast areas of food, natural resources, and manpower. This would have thwarted any advantage gained by the British naval blockade of German ports and released millions of German soldiers and their tanks and planes to fight against the Allies in North Africa and elsewhere. Likewise, the Japanese dragon’s tongue was lapping toward Australia and India. If any of these immense countries fell, who can say how much longer the war might have lasted or, for that matter, how it might have turned out?

  Of course it didn’t happen that way, for which everyone on earth should yet be eternally thankful; still the various scenarios remain chilling. It is a noteworthy tribute and a testimony to all Americans and to citizens of the British empire that, from beginning to end, most of them contributed and sacrificed in their own ways, great and small, so that the menace finally could be crushed.

  Profound social and economic changes swept through America beginning in 1942. Multitudes of people who had never been out of their own states or even counties now traveled hundreds or even thousands of miles to settle into war work. Women from Appalachia found themselves in places like Pittsburgh or Richmond or Indianapolis working on assembly lines; blacks from southern farmlands migrated to New Orleans, Houston, Mobile, Chicago, and Detroit to build warships, tanks, and airplanes. New and complex skills were learned, to be capitalized on later. Millions of soldiers and sailors finally got to the see the world, and so formed a broader, more enlightened world picture for themselves. Many never returned to their home places afterward, thus resulting in a significant shift in the U.S. population.

  For years, even until they were aged, they spoke passionately, as my parents’ generation did, in terms of “before the war,” “during the war,” and “after the war,” as they began to forge their own brave new world.

  Notes

  Chapter One

  1. Donald Kagan, On the Origins of War, p. 282.

  2. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. xv.

  3. Francis Trevelyan Miller (ed.), The Complete History of World War II, p. SI.

  4. Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. xix.

  5. Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919, p. 294.

  6. Kagan, On the Origins of War, p. 337.

  7. Ibid., p. 341.

  8. Hitler, Mein Kampf p. 359.

  9. Roy Jenkins, Churchill, p. 528.

  Chapter Two

  1. John Costello, The Pacific War, p. 14.

  2. Shigenori Togo, The Cause of Japan, p. 4.

  3. Costello, The Pacific War, p. 16.

  4. Author conversation with Arthur Stanton, Stanton’s nephew.

  5. Togo, The Cause of Japan, p. 4.

  6. Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex, p. 396.

  7. Fleet Admiral William F. Halsey and Lt. Commander J. Bryan III, Admiral Halsey’s Story, p. 12.

  8. Togo, The Cause of Japan, p. 16.

  9. John Toland, The Rising Sun, p. 63.

  10. Togo, The Cause of Japan, p. 17.

  11. Lionel Wigmore, The Japanese Thrust, p. 3.

  12. Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook, Japan at War, pp. 155–56.

  13. Craig Nelson, The First Heroes, p. 73.

  Chapter Three

  1. H. Montgomery Hyde, Room 3603, p. 148.

  2. John Toland, The Rising Sun, p. 53.

  3. Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, p. 123.

  4. Cabell Phillips, The 1940s: Decade of Triumph and Trouble, p. 163.

  5. General Leslie M. Groves, Now It Can Be Told, p. 33.

  6. Louis Morton, The War in the Pacific, p. 56.

  7. Geoffrey Perrett, Days of Sadness, Years of Triumph, p. 61.

  8. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, p. 167.

  9. Ibid., p. 166.

  10. Hyde, Room 3603, p. 125.

  11. David Kahn, The Code Breakders, p. 486.

  12. Ibid., p. 487.

  13. David Lowman, Magic, pp. 123–51.

  14. Kahn, The Code Breakers, p. 29.

  15. Ibid., p. 23.

  16. Ibid., passim; Lowman, Magic, passim; Ronald Clark, The Man Who Broke Purple, passim.

  17. Colonel Carlos P. Romulo, I Saw the Fall of the Philippines, pp. 3–24.

  18. John Costello, The Pacific War, p. 81.

  19. Samuel Eliot Morison, The Rising Sun in the Pacific, p. 46.

  20. Toland, The Rising Sun, p. 172.

  21. Gordon Prange, At Dawn We Slept, p. 21.

  22. Ibid., p. 278.

  23. Toland, The Rising Sun, pp. 24–26.

  24. Francis Trevelyan Miller (ed.), The Complete History of World War II, p. 314.

  Chapter Four

  1. Richard R. Lingeman, Don’t You Know There’s a War On?, p. 18.

  2. Cabell Phillips, The 1940s: Decade of Triumph and Trouble, p. 104.

  3. Ibid., pp. 3–15; Lingeman, Don’t You Know There’s a War On?, pp. 13–24.

  4. John Toland, The Rising Sun, p. 66.

  5. Ogden Nash, The Face Is Familiar, pp. 233–34; Robert J. C. Butow, Tojo and the Coming of the War, p. 41.

  6. Gordon Prange, At Dawn We Slept, p. 22.

  7. Samuel Eliot Morison, The Rising Sun in the Pacific, p. 85; Toland, The Rising Sun, p. 180.

  8. Prange, At Dawn We Slept, p. 27.

  9. Robert B. Stinnett, Days of Deceit, pp. 84–97.

  10. Prange, At Dawn We Slept, pp. 73–75; 254–55; Toland, The Rising Sun, pp. 174–77; 190–93.

  11. David Kahn, The Code Breakers, pp. 7–8.

  12. Prange, At Dawn We Slept, p. 440.

  13. Toland, The Rising Sun, pp. 153–55.

  14. Ibid., pp. 220–24.

  15. Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, p. 427.

  16. Butow, Tojo and the Coming of the War, p. 374.

  17. Prange, At Dawn We Slept, p. 494.

  Chapter Five

  1. Gordon Prange, At Dawn We Slept, p. 487; Mitsuo Fuchida and Masatake Okumiya, Midway, p. 49; Walter Lord, Da
y of Infamy, pp. 19–20.

  2. Lord, Day of Infamy, p. 37.

  3. Ibid., p. 59.

  4. Prange, At Dawn We Slept, p. 500.

  5. Samuel Eliot Morison, The Two-Ocean War, p. 63.

  6. Lord, Day of Infamy, p. 67.

  7. Prange, At Dawn We Slept, p. 507.

  8. Lord, Day of Infamy, p. 73.

  9. Ibid., p. 93.

  10. Prange, At Dawn We Slept, p. 516.

  11. Ibid., p. 515.

  12. Ibid., p. 526.

  13. Lord, Day of Infamy, p. 165.

  14. John Toland, The Rising Sun, p. 209.

  15. Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, p. 431.

  16. Toland, The Rising Sun, p. 257.

  17. Ibid., p. 262.

  18. Fuchida and Okumiya, Midway, pp. 56–60.

  Chapter Six

  1. Roy Hoopes, Americans Remember the Home Front, pp. 18–28.

  2. Reporting World War II, pp. 94–98.

  3. Walter Lord, Day of Infamy, p. 183.

  4. Roberta Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor, p. 130.

  5. Ibid., p. 369.

  6. Ibid., p. 13.

  7. Gordon Prange, At Dawn We Slept, p. 96.

  8. Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor, p. 258.

  9. Robert Leckie, Helmet for My Pillow, p. 2.

  10. Samuel Eliot Morison, The Rising Sun in the Pacific, p. 256.

  Chapter Seven

  1. J. C. Beaglehole, The Exploration of the Pacific, p. 54.

  2. Samuel Eliot Morison, The Rising Sun in the Pacific, pp. 224–25.

  3. Brigadier General James P. S. Devereux, The Story of Wake Island, pp. 1–17.

  4. Ibid., p. 12.

  5. Morison, The Rising Sun in the Pacific, p. 230.

  6. Devereux, The Story of Wake Island, p. 34.

  7. Ibid., p. 51.

  8. Ibid., pp. 53–79; Morison, The Rising Sun in the Pacific, pp. 231–35.

  9. Devereux, The Story of Wake Island, p. 116.

  10. Morison, The Rising Sun in the Pacific, pp. 151–52.

  11. Devereux, The Story of Wake Island, pp. 130–32.

  Chanter Eight

  1. John Toland, The Rising Sun, pp. 188–89; 263–64.

  2. Samuel Eliot Morison, The Rising Sun in the Pacific, p. 157.

  3. Toland, The Rising Sun, p. 266.

  4. Lionel Wigmore, The Japanese Thrust, p. 144.

  5. Reporting World War II, pp. 109–14.

  6. Wigmore, The Japanese Thrust, p. 144.

  7. Toland, The Rising Sun, p. 277; John Costello, The Pacific War, p. 159.

  8. Winston Churchill, The Second World War, p. 522.

  9. Douglas L. Oliver, The Pacific Islands, p. 335; Costello, The Pacific War, p. 143.

  10. Basil Collier, The War in the Far East, pp. 148–55; John Toland, But Not in Shame, pp. 130–32.

  11. Roy Jenkins, Churchill, pp. 668–70.

  12. Ibid., p. 678.

  13. Costello, The Pacific War, p. 129.

  14. Ibid., pp. 192, 198.

  15. Jenkins, Churchill, p. 677.

  16. Toland, The Rising Sun, p. 133.

  17. Costello, The Pacific War, p. 201.

  Chapter Nine

  1. William Manchester, American Caesar, p. 229.

  2. Ibid., p. 236.

  3. General Jonathan M. Wainwright, General Wainwright’s Story, pp. 19–20.

  4. Lewis H. Brereton, The Brereton Diaries, pp. 38–47; Louis Morton, The Fall of the Philippines, p. 86.

  5. Brereton, The Brereton Diaries, p. 50.

  6. Samuel Eliot Morison, The Rising Sun in the Pacific, p. 171; Brereton, The Brereton Diaries, p. 55.

  7. Brereton, The Brereton Diaries, p. 55.

  8. Morton, The Fall of the Philippines, p. 64.

  9. Colonel Carlos P. Romulo, I Saw the Fall of the Philippines, p. 81.

  10. Ibid., pp. 78–79.

  11. Morton, The Fall of the Philippines, p. 116; Manchester, American Caesar, p. 240.

  12. Wainwright, General Wainwright’s Story, pp. 29–30.

  13. Major General Courtney Whitney, MacArthur, p. 21.

  14. Colonel E. B. Miller, Bataan Uncensored, pp. 73–74.

  15. Manchester, American Caesar, pp. 239–43.

  16. Whitney, MacArthur, p. 19; Manchester, American Caesar, p. 244.

  17. James H. Belote and William M. Belote, Corregidor, p. 50.

  18. Manchester, American Caesar, p. 245.

  19. Wainwright, General Wainwright’s Story, pp. 37–40.

  20. Belote and Belote, Corregidor, p. 53.

  21. Morton, The Fall of the Philippines, p. 234; John Toland, But Not in Shame, p. 137–39.

  22. Morton, The Fall of the Philippines, pp. 245–47.

  23. Ibid., p. 268.

  24. Wainwright, General Wainwright’s Story, p. 43; Morton, The Fall of the Philippines, pp. 268–69.

  25. Morton, The Fall of the Philippines, p. 270.

  26. Wainwright, General Wainwright’s Story, p. 45; Morton, The Fall of the Philippines, p. 258.

  27. Brigadier General Steve Mellnik, Philippine Diary, p. 97.

  28. Morton, The Fall of the Philippines, pp. 394–97.

  29. Romulo, I Saw the Fall of the Philippines, pp. 118–27.

  30. Ibid., p. 129; Wainwright, General Wainwright’s Story, pp. 48–49.

  31. Wainwright, General Wainwright’s Story, p. 48.

  32. Toland, The Rising Sun, pp. 336–37.

  33. Whitney, MacArthur, p. 51.

  34. Wainwright, General Wainwright’s Story, p. 5–6.

  35. Nigel Fountain (ed.), World War II: The People’s Story, pp. 132–33.

  Chapter Ten

  1. David Lowman, Magic, p. 19.

  2. Reporting World War II, p. 146.

  3. Ibid., p. 148.

  4. Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn, p. 39.

  5. Richard R. Lingeman, Don’t You Know There’s A War On?, p. 340.

  6. Reporting World War II, p. 216.

  7. John Hammond Moore, Wacko War, pp. 117–126; 149–61.

  8. Duane Schultz, The Doolittle Raid, p. 18.

  9. General James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle, I Could Never Be So Lucky Again, passim.

  10. Ibid., p. 245.

  11. Ibid., p. 249.

  12. Ibid., p. 232.

  Chapter Eleven

  1. Samuel Eliot Morison, The Rising Sun in the Pacific, pp. 368–70.

  2. Brigadier General Steve Mellnik, Philippine Diary, p. 99.

  3. Louis Morton, The Fall of the Philippines, p. 455.

  4. Mellnik, Philippine Diary, p. 101.

  5. Ibid., p. 103.

  6. General Jonathan M. Wainwright, General Wainwright’s Story, p. 68.

  7. R. W. Robson, The Pacific Island Handbook, p. 107.

  8. Donald Knox, Death March, p. 119.

  9. Ibid., p. 120.

  10. Abie Abraham, Oh God, Where Are You?, p. 49.

  11. Henry G. Lee, Nothing But Praise, p. 36.

  12. Donald Knox, Death March, p. 121.

  13. Wainwright, General Wainwright’s Story, p. 81; Knox, Death March, p. 139.

  14. Colonel E. B. Miller, Bataan Uncensored, p. 239; Knox, Death March, p. 151.

  15. Knox, Death March, p. 158.

  16. Ibid., p. 157.

  17. Ibid., p. 159.

  18. Alfred A. Weinstein, Barbed-Wire Surgeon, p. 72.

  19. Ibid., p. 74.

  20. John Toland, The Rising Sun, p. 337.

  21. Lee, Nothing But Praise, p. 46.

  22. General James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle, I Could Never Be So Lucky Again, pp. 273–74.

  23. Craig Nelson, The First Heroes, pp. 120–21.

  24. Doolittle, I Could Never Be So Lucky Again, p. 4; Nelson, The First Heroes, p. 130.

  25. Captain Ted W. Lawson, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, p. 55.

  26. Duane Schultz, The Doolittle Raid p. 186.

  27. Joseph C. Grew, Ten Years in Japan, p. 527.

  28. Schultz, The Doolittle Raid, p. 191.

>   29. Nelson, The First Heroes, pp. 69–70.

  30. Lawson, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, pp. 74–79.

  31. Doolittle, I Could Never Be So Lucky Again, pp. 10–11.

  32. Schultz, The Doolittle Raid, pp. 311–12; Nelson, The First Heroes, p. 297.

  33. Schultz, The Doolittle Raid, pp. 317–18.

  34. Ibid., pp. 282–85.

  35. Doolittle, I Could Never Be So Lucky Again, pp. 286–87.

  Chapter Twelve

  1. Francis Trevelyan Miller (ed.), The Complete History of World War II, pp. 372–73.

  2. Samuel Eliot Morison, Coral Sea, Midway, and Submarine Actions, p. 7.

  3. Ibid., pp. 32–40.

  4. John Costello, The Pacific War, p. 258.

  5. Edwin P. Hoyte, The Battle of the Coral Sea, p. 150.

  6. Morison, Coral Sea, Midway, and Submarine Actions, p. 57.

  7. Louis Morton, The Fall of the Philippines, p. 495.

  8. General Jonathan M. Wainwright, General Wainwright’s Story, p. 78.

  9. Morton, The Fall of the Philippines, p. 546.

  10. Ibid., pp. 547–50.

  11. James H. Belote and William M. Belote, Corregidor, pp. 169–71.

  12. Ibid., pp. 107–9.

  Chapter Thirteen

  1. David Kahn, The Code Breakers, p. 570.

  2. Thaddeus Tulega, Climax at Midway, pp. 62–64.

  3. Mitsuo Fuchida and Masatake Okumiya, Midway, pp. 147–48.

  4. John Toland, But Not in Shame, p. 416.

  5. Ibid., p. 406.

  6. Fuchida and Okumiya, Midway, pp. 183–84.

  7. Toland, But Not in Shame, p. 410.

  8. Samuel Eliot Morison, Coral Sea, Midway, and Submarine Actions, p. 110.

  9. Tuleja, Climax at Midway, p. 105.

  10. Fuchida and Okumiya, Midway, p. 196.

  11. Tuleja, Climax at Midway, p. 124.

  12. Fuchida and Okumiya, Midway, p. 208.