The Allies

by Winston Groom

  On March 12, 1942, MacArthur’s entourage boarded one of four PT boats and roared off into who knew what. Extremely rough seas caused everyone to become seasick; MacArthur later compared the trip with “spending two days in a cement mixer.”5

  On March 26 MacArthur and his party arrived at Darwin, Australia—just in time for a Japanese air raid on the city. Luckily, they had left the airfield only ten minutes before Japanese dive-bombers obliterated it, including the plane they rode in on. MacArthur, known for his steely bravery under fire in World War I, remarked to his chief of staff Dick Sutherland: “It was close. But that’s the way it is in war. You win or lose, live or die—and the difference is just an eyelash.”6

  MacArthur continued to insist that he would not abandon the Philippines. “I came through,” he famously told reporters, “and I shall return.” MacArthur faced accusations of having abandoned his troops, but amid the tragedy of the Philippines and the infamous “Death March” atrocity that followed, his defiant promise resonated with the American people and many Filipinos as well. Roosevelt awarded MacArthur the Medal of Honor to head off suspicion, and thanks to MacArthur’s gift for self-promotion his catchphrase was soon stamped on matchbooks, provided by the general’s headquarters, and given to all troops in the Pacific theater. His words were heralded in newspaper headlines and radio broadcasts. They were engraved on cigarette lighters, glazed into pottery ashtrays, painted on walls, and, in many fraught cases, scrawled above public toilets. The phrase slipped easily into the American lexicon. MacArthur’s propaganda campaign worked: he became a legend in his own time and, to Franklin Roosevelt, a possible rival candidate for the U.S. presidency.

  But there was no great army in Australia for MacArthur to command, as Roosevelt had promised. What existed there were recently arrived parts of an American infantry division, an incomplete air force with old planes, and not much navy, most of it having been sunk at the Battle of the Java Sea.

  * * *

  THE CONFERENCE BETWEEN Roosevelt and Churchill that decided MacArthur’s fate was code-named Arcadia. The two leaders met in Washington, D.C., in late December 1941 through the early weeks of January to discuss a wide range of war issues. The meeting was secret for good reason. It turns out that a few weeks after Pearl Harbor, a large seven-ship convoy had in fact been assembling on the West Coast designed for the relief of MacArthur in the Philippines. It contained munitions, warplanes, tanks, guns, food, and a force of twenty-one thousand U.S. Army troops. But Roosevelt suggested to Churchill at a Christmas Eve dinner at the White House that he might reroute the convoy to Singapore, where the British were trying to stave off the Japanese. When confronted about this by members of the War Department, both Roosevelt and Churchill denied that the conversation had taken place, until a memo taken by a British officer who had attended the dinner surfaced. Secretary of War Stimson was so irate that he threatened to resign if such a breach of protocol reoccurred.7

  As these conversations continued through Christmas and into the new year, the intensity of war-related matters was beginning to tell on Roosevelt. His sunny disposition had all but disappeared; he had what Time magazine called “war nerves.” It was horridly frustrating to sit by, unable to strike back, with the fleet destroyed at Pearl Harbor, Wake Island, and Guam lost, and the Philippines in its death agony. German submarines were obliterating dozens of convoy ships a month, while other Nazi U-boats were torpedoing scores of oil tankers coming north from the fields of Texas and Oklahoma. Russia was on the verge of defeat and possibly considering a deal with Hitler.

  It was maddening and strength-sapping, but the war must go on, and Roosevelt somehow summoned the inner courage to face whatever each day brought—if not with a sunny smile, then at least with a determined eye.

  One of the bright moments in the Arcadia conference had been a spontaneous idea of Roosevelt’s to create a document, similar to the Atlantic Charter, that would set out not only war aims but postwar goals. It would be a sort of new world order for all the countries opposed to Nazism, fascism, and Japanese imperialism. He and Churchill began counting the probables and possibles until they had about two dozen countries listed. When the question arose of what to call the new organization, the two men decided to sleep on it and retired.

  The next morning, Roosevelt’s engaging smile had returned, and he asked to be wheeled to Churchill’s quarters in the White House. While waiting in the living room, the story goes, Roosevelt was startled to behold Sir Winston emerge from his bath stark naked, joking that he “had nothing to hide from the President of the United States.”*58

  A delighted Roosevelt responded that he had during the night come up with the name for their new organization: the United Nations. Churchill not only liked the name but thought it was a stroke of genius and went around all day trying it out on people. Thus came a glimpse of sunshine amid the gloomy clouds of war. And so it went, day in and day out, in the place where wars and battles were conceived, and the big decisions were made.

  As the months passed, there were large, terrible, and complicated international questions that begged settling, including how to deal with Japanese designs on China, Burma, and India. Since before the war, when he was an American military attaché in China, General Joseph Stilwell had served as a U.S. commander in that theater; at the moment, he was heavily engaged by a large force of Japanese who were seeking to overtake Burma, possibly as a takeoff point to conquer India. Stilwell was suspicious of British intentions in the area, suggesting that they were more motivated by their efforts to keep their empire intact than in fighting the enemy.

  Roosevelt sympathized with Stilwell. The president had long ago developed an antipathy toward imperialism, and he unsuccessfully nudged Churchill to give India its independence, as was being pressed by Mahatma Gandhi and other Indian activists. Churchill resisted Roosevelt’s meddling, and privately he told friends he did not intend to be the prime minister who gave away the empire. Churchill had made representations to Gandhi about offering independence to India once the war was won. But the ascetic Indian leader didn’t believe him, comparing Churchill’s offer to “a postdated check.” The issue remained a point of friction between Roosevelt and Churchill throughout the war but neither man allowed it to come before the main object, which was defeating the Axis powers.

  * * *

  IN FEBRUARY 1942 the U.S. Navy suffered one of its worst sea disasters at the Battle of the Java Sea. The Navy’s small Asiatic fleet, built around the heavy cruiser USS Houston, had escaped destruction by Japanese planes in the Philippines. While steaming to the South Pacific, it linked up with a Dutch and British force consisting of nine cruisers and eleven destroyers. On February 27, this task force was confronted by a superior Japanese fleet; most of the Allied ships were sunk with a terrific loss of life, including the Houston, which went down with 622 hands. Afterward, Roosevelt cabled Churchill, “The Pacific situation is very grave.”

  Following this debacle, Roosevelt felt a change was needed at Navy headquarters. The chief of naval operations, Admiral Harold R. “Betty” Stark, whom the president liked personally, appeared unequal to the task of running the entire naval operation. So Stark was put in charge of the Atlantic Fleet. In his place as CNO, Roosevelt installed Admiral Ernest J. King, a gruff sailor of the old school of whom it was said, “Not only did he not suffer fools gladly, he didn’t suffer anybody gladly.”*6

  Roosevelt hoped that King would bring to the Navy, which was still reeling from Pearl Harbor and other defeats, a sense of control, purpose, and adherence to duty. King would achieve this, though not without many sparks and contentious episodes. Given the future importance of naval carrier warfare in the Pacific, it was also notable that King was the first aviator to attain leadership of the Navy.

  Another officer whose name began to surface around this time was the new brigadier general Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had appeared in General Marshall’s fabled “black book,” a list of
men Marshall regarded as highly capable leaders that dated from the mid-1930s, when Marshall commanded the U.S. Army’s Infantry School. Eisenhower had been moved from War Plans to the defense of the Philippines because he had served as an assistant to MacArthur there and knew the territory. After the Philippines fell Eisenhower would become the focus of much more important tasks.

  * * *

  IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE Pearl Harbor attack, Americans were both outraged and humiliated that they were forced to stand by while the Japanese octopus scuttled across the Pacific, gobbling up nations and island chains.

  No one was more outraged than Franklin Roosevelt, who had asked permission from his newfound ally Joseph Stalin to conduct an American heavy bomber raid on Japan from the Russian city Vladivostok. He was rebuffed with a stern nyet. Uncle Joe had his hands full fighting the Germans and didn’t want to provoke Japan too.

  Since then, Roosevelt had been pressing the chiefs of the armed services to find a quick way to retaliate against the Japanese homeland. So far everyone had drawn a blank. Regular carrier aircraft were too small to do any significant damage and didn’t have the fuel range; bombers were thought to be too large to take off and land from a carrier. Then one cold January day, someone got the idea that the B-25 Mitchell, a relatively new twin-engine medium bomber, might just be able to take off from a flattop deck. It couldn’t re-land, but after bombing Japan it had just enough range to make friendly fields in China.

  Army Air Corps commander Hap Arnold sent for Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, already one of the most famous aviators in the world, whom he knew to be brilliant and “absolutely fearless.” Doolittle found his raiders among the only major organization with pilots qualified to fly a B-25 in combat: the 17th Bombardment Group stationed at Fort Pendleton, Oregon. He had the word passed among the men of the 17th that volunteers would be needed “for a very hazardous mission.” Anyone who wanted out could do so, “and nothing would ever be said about it.” Nobody dropped out.9

  Three months later a full Navy task force, including the aircraft carriers Hornet and Enterprise, would steam westward into harm’s way, carrying the B-25s lashed to the flight deck. If the Japanese got wind of it, the expedition would be headed into a terrible trap, which would mean nearly the end of America’s remaining naval power in the Pacific. The mission was so secret that at first even President Roosevelt wasn’t told of it.

  On April 2, 1942, the carriers slipped out of San Francisco. That afternoon, when it was safely at sea, the Navy task force commander sent a signal to all ships: “This force is bound for Tokyo.”

  The Army pilots and crews studied maps, gambled, watched movies, ate ice cream, and contemplated their fate. Two weeks later, as they approached enemy territory, the weather began to deteriorate and the seas grew tall as three-story buildings.

  The original plan had called for planes to be launched about three hundred miles from Japan—but they had not realized that the Japanese had a second picket line seven hundred miles offshore. The extra four hundred miles would become a major factor because of fuel.

  After a brief discussion with naval commanders, Doolittle got the okay to proceed anyway. The klaxon sounded immediately and the captain of the USS Hornet gave the order: “Army pilots, man your planes!” Doolittle himself had given the odds of the squadron returning alive as less than fifty-fifty.

  The ship was rolling and pitching wildly as Doolittle became the first to take off. The flight officer was timing the rise and fall of the carrier’s bow so that the pilots would have the benefit of a rising deck from which to fly off. “It was like riding a seesaw,” Doolittle said.

  Just as the carrier lifted up on a wave, Doolittle became airborne with only yards to spare. Five hours later, flying low, he and his squadron reached the coast of Japan. Fishermen and farmers looked up and waved to them. The weather had cleared.

  Doolittle spotted a large munitions factory that was his target and pulled up to 1,200 feet, which was his bombing altitude. The bombardier dropped four incendiaries that set the factory afire. Another pilot headed across Tokyo for a large naval base in Yokohama. As the bomb bay doors opened, the plane was jolted by bursts from flak guns. But the bombardier pulled the lever and after a few seconds shouted jubilantly, “We got an aircraft carrier!”

  Everyone half expected a cloud of Japanese Zeros to descend on them, but the unit was in and out so quickly that it didn’t happen. It was the same in the other cities that were attacked: flak but only a few enemy fighters. The squadron reassembled over the Sea of Japan and flew into the setting sun. None of the B-25s had been shot down, but one had engine trouble and was forced to land in Russia.*7 Now all they had to do was make the preprepared landing fields in friendly Chinese territory.

  The Enterprise and Hornet, now speeding home, were picking up signals from Radio Tokyo telling of the raid. Great cheering broke out among the thousands of sailors aboard. They had done it, America had struck back!

  The Doolittle raid set into motion a number of consequences in Japan far beyond its modest intention of dropping bombs on an enemy city. Like the Americans after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese were furious and humiliated. The Imperial government had always promised that the Home Islands were immune from enemy attacks.

  So agitated and confused was the reaction during and immediately following the raid that large numbers of Japanese warships in the area broke radio silence and began communicating with one another. These signals were, in turn, snatched from the airwaves by U.S. radio listening posts from the Aleutian Islands to Australia and sent to Commander Joseph Rochefort’s code-breaking operation in Hawaii. Where before, because of the paucity of samples, Rochefort’s wizards were able to decode and read only a small portion of Japan’s top secret naval code, they were soon reading most of it—and later still, they were reading almost all of it. This would have tremendous repercussions in the naval battles to come.10

  The raid so embarrassed Admiral Yamamoto, the commander of the Imperial Navy, that he took steps to ensure such attacks would not be successful in the future. The first was to recall a significant number of Japanese fighter interceptors back to the Home Islands from the southern area, where they had been instrumental in Japanese victories. In this way, Doolittle’s raid had at least slowed the pace of enemy conquests.

  A far more critical reaction was Yamamoto’s decision to expand the defensive perimeter around the Home Islands from 700 to 1,200 miles into the Pacific. This would necessitate the invasion and occupation of Midway Island, an important U.S. observation and listening post. There, Yamamoto decided, he would bring about the destruction of the remainder of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. The plan was to lure the ships from Hawaii and deceive them into thinking the Midway operation was a run-of-the-mill Japanese advance on the scale of Wake Island or Guam. Instead, Yamamoto would be waiting with the most powerful force the Imperial Navy had ever assembled, including six aircraft carriers and the giant battleship Yamato. It was a trap that had been the dream of Japanese naval planners since the 1920s.*8

  * * *

  IN LATE APRIL 1942, a task force set out from the Japanese Home Islands, bound for Port Moresby on the southern coast of New Guinea. Consisting of two heavy aircraft carriers, one light one, and other warships escorting fourteen troopships, it was a formidable lineup. The strategy was that the light carrier would cover the invasion’s landing, while the two heavy carriers would ambush and sink the relief force that was sure to come.

  What the Japanese didn’t know was that the Americans were reading their mail and, also, that an American aircraft carrier, the Yorktown, was already operating in the Coral Sea to support the Australians. By late April 1942 U.S. Pacific Fleet headquarters at Pearl Harbor was able to piece together a picture of a major southward movement by the Japanese.

  Two American carriers, the Enterprise and the Hornet, were returning from the Doolittle mission in the northwest Pacific; the Saratoga wa
s laid up in a West Coast shipyard after being torpedoed the previous month. That left the Lexington, back at Pearl, to race south to join the Yorktown and intercept the Japanese force.

  The loss of the Lexington and ensuing defeat sustained by the Americans at the Battle of the Coral Sea had repercussions far beyond the sinking of ships. First, it caused the Japanese to withdraw their task force with all its troopships bound for Port Moresby, which, if they had not been opposed, would undoubtedly have successfully established a base in southern New Guinea from which to invade Australia. Subsequent events caused the Japanese to give up the idea entirely. Second, the two Japanese carriers that returned to the Home Islands were so badly damaged they would be unable to join the Midway battle force. Admiral Yamamoto’s fleet, now with four carriers instead of six, steamed from the Inland Sea toward its mid-ocean rendezvous with destiny.

  When the Yorktown returned to Pearl Harbor, engineers and marine surveyors forecast it would take up to three months for repairs. Admiral Chester Nimitz, in one of his most critical decisions of the war, ordered that every available workman be immediately sent to the Yorktown’s berth. He decreed that the repairs must be done in three days; with three thousand men working around the clock it was accomplished.

  In retrospect, these events would have an immense bearing on the course of the Pacific war.