Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942

by Ian W. Toll

  Even as they mulled over the high points of their strategy, the chiefs were forced to reckon with the bad news coming out of the Pacific and East Asia. Japanese sea-air-land forces were threatening to overrun American, British, Dutch, and Australian positions in a theater that spanned Burma to western New Guinea on an east-west axis and the Philippines through Australia on a north-south axis. On December 24, the day of their first meeting, the world learned of the fall of both Hong Kong and Wake Island. There was more bad news from Malaya, where defenses on the mid-peninsula were caving in and British troops were fleeing toward Singapore. The Japanese seemed likely to seize control of the oil fields of Borneo and Sumatra. In Europe, by contrast, there was reassuring news from Africa, where British forces had pushed General Erwin Rommel back from Tobruk, and from Russia, where German forces had been stopped at the gates of Moscow and had suffered heavy losses just as the Russian winter was settling in. The situation in Europe, for the moment, was at least stable; that in the Pacific, not at all.

  Admiral King’s mind was clear. The entire Allied strategy in the Pacific depended on two cardinal points: Hawaii must not fall, and Australia must not fall. To those ends, King (upon assuming command as COMINCH) ordered the new Pacific Fleet chief, Admiral Nimitz, to secure the seaways between Midway, Hawaii, and the North American mainland. That was to be his first priority. His second priority, in only a “small degree less important,” was to protect the lifeline between North America and Australia, chiefly by “covering, securing, and holding the Hawaii-Samoa line, which should be extended to include Fiji at the earliest practicable date.” Farther south (where Nimitz’s command did not yet extend), it would include several more “strong points” in New Caledonia, New Hebrides, and the Tonga Islands. That long supply line must safely accommodate a large and growing volume of shipping. By those means the Allied war machine would be built up in “Australasia” (which King defined to include New Zealand), and from which a counteroffensive would eventually drive northwest through the Solomons, the Bismarck archipelago, New Guinea, Borneo, and the Philippines.

  Every other concern was to be ruthlessly subordinated to what King called those “two vital Pacific tasks.” Though it had not yet been acknowledged in Washington, the Philippines would fall. Though it had not yet been acknowledged in London, Malaya and Singapore would fall. Burma would fall; the Dutch East Indies would fall; the remaining British, Dutch, and American forces in the southeast Pacific would disintegrate. The U.S. Asiatic Fleet—a ramshackle array of old cruisers and destroyers—would probably be annihilated by the enemy’s ships and planes. Its main contribution to the war effort would be to slow the rate of the Japanese advance and buy a few precious weeks to secure the seaways linking San Francisco, San Diego, and Panama to Brisbane, Auckland, and Sydney.

  At this early phase of the war, it was thought that the Japanese would try to take advantage of the Allies’ temporary weaknesses to sever the American-Australian lifeline. The Allies could only guess at Japanese intentions, and every new development might be a prelude to a new eastward thrust. Shelling by Japanese submarines in the Samoa area seemed to presage an amphibious attack (which never came). The shipping route linking North America to Australia passed dangerously near the Gilbert Island group, which the Japanese had seized and were developing into formidable air bases, and from which they had already launched airstrikes. Makin, in the Gilberts, was just 960 miles away from Canton Island, which had a 5,000-foot airstrip but no Allied aircraft. It might easily be occupied and Japanese planes flown in, giving the enemy eyes over the shipping lanes and the ready means to slaughter Allied convoys from the air.

  Those were urgent problems: the threatened islands needed to be garrisoned immediately. A new fueling station was set up at Bora Bora, in the Society Islands, for shipping westbound from the Panama Canal. King asked President Roosevelt that scarce Allied resources be thrown into an emergency policy of “hold and build”—involving base construction, airfield construction, marine defense battalions, army garrisons, aircraft and supporting facilities, ports and refueling equipment—on Samoa, New Caledonia, Suva (Fiji), Tongatapu (Tonga Islands), Efate (New Hebrides), and Funafuti (Ellice Islands).

  But King did not have in mind a purely defensive posture. He often spoke of the merits of a “defensive-offensive” posture, which he defined colloquially (in a memorandum to Navy Secretary Knox) as a policy of “hold what you’ve got and hit them when you can.” Digging in and waiting for the enemy might be a prudent tactic on land, but in naval warfare the advantage more often than not lay with the attacker. Even if the Americans were starved of offensive hitting power, what little they had should be used to strike the enemy, to make him consider the cost of leaving any part of his outer perimeter exposed. An effective defense would have to include carrier airstrikes on the Japanese island bases and a submarine campaign against Japan’s interior seaborne supply lines. “No fighter ever won by covering up—by merely fending off the other fellow’s blows,” said the COMINCH, by way of analogy. “The winner hits and keeps on hitting even though he has to take some stiff blows in order to be able to keep on hitting.”

  In light of this rapidly developing situation, King pushed hard for a larger near-term allocation of scarce military resources to the Pacific theater. He argued as he always did—forcefully and without tact, not troubling to disguise his contempt for those who opposed him. The British, mistakenly assuming that an officer who had risen to the top of the U.S. Navy must be more charming when dealing with his fellow countrymen, marked King as a hard-bitten Anglophobe. But there is no evidence that King was innately prejudiced against the British, nor that he wanted to sabotage the Europe-first principle. Rather, it seems that he deliberately chose to assume the role of special advocate for the Pacific, because he perceived that for various reasons none of the other military service chiefs, American or British, was giving enough thought to the needs of that theater.

  Outside the small circle of the military chiefs, there were many others who shared King’s point of view. No less a figure than Eisenhower, who would later act as supreme Allied commander in the liberation of Europe, was concerned that the chiefs were neglecting the need to stem the Japanese tide. “I’ve been insisting that the Far East is critical,” Eisenhower noted on his desk memorandum pad on January 1, 1942. He was concerned that “no sideshows should be undertaken until air and ground there are in satisfactory state. Instead we are taking on magnet [U.S. forces to Northern Ireland], gymnast [invasion of North Africa], etc.” There was the wrenching question of the fate of the Philippines: General MacArthur, who had already been hailed as a superstar in the American press, had demanded relief for his beleaguered American and Filipino forces, and in a public proclamation Roosevelt had reflexively promised it: “I renew my solemn pledge to you that your freedom will be redeemed and your independence established and protected.” The president wrote Secretary Stimson, on December 30, “I wish that War Plans would explore every possible means of relieving the Philippines. I realize great risks are involved but the objective is important.” The Allied nations of Asia and the Pacific Rim had kept faith with their American and British allies, and expected to be shielded against the onslaught. Australia and New Zealand, having dispatched many of their best troops to fight the Germans half a world away, were understandably frantic to protect their homes and hearths. Australian prime minister John Curtin wrote, in a Melbourne newspaper, “Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom. We know the dangers of dispersal of strength, but we know, too, that Australia can go and Britain can still hold on. We are, therefore, determined that Australia shall not go.”

  Moreover, it was feared that a total collapse of Allied defenses in the Pacific would prompt a Japanese invasion of Siberia, which might in turn knock Russia out of the war. Powerful figures in the Japanese army were known to be eager to attack Russia, and
it was assumed Hitler must be pressuring his Japanese allies for such a move. Lieutenant General Stanley Dunbar Embick told the army War Plans Division, in late January, that a “greater degree of immediate aid” to the Pacific would act as a “deterrent to a Japanese attack on Siberia,” and a planning document published in March 1942 argued that the “most valuable assistance which can be rendered to Russia is to contain Japanese forces . . . in the South Pacific and the sooner our action clearly indicates to Russia that we shall do this the greater the advantage she can gain from that assistance.”

  In the ninth meeting of the chiefs, on January 11, 1942, King demanded that a strong force be dispatched to garrison the French colonial islands of New Caledonia, which lay astride the route of communications between Hawaii and Australia, and were the site of productive nickel mines that the Japanese were believed to covet. Should New Caledonia be seized by the enemy, American convoys would have to be rerouted south of New Zealand. King insisted that the islands be taken immediately, by a garrison force of 10,000 troops, even at the cost of diverting forces bound for Europe. That brought the competing demands of the two theaters down from the empyrean realm of high theory to the status of immediate decision.

  It appeared that King’s plan could be carried out only by diverting troops scheduled to be sent to Iceland and Northern Ireland, and the British stiffly resisted such a change. Nor did King receive much support from the other American service chiefs. General Arnold remarked, somewhat unhelpfully, that his army bombers could simply fly over the islands, drawing King’s well-aimed retort that ships were needed to build up forces in the South Pacific, and ships could not fly. The army instinctively resisted placing troops in a theater dominated by the navy. Eisenhower, when he learned of the proposal, noted acerbically, “The Navy wants to take all the islands in the Pacific—have them held by Army troops, to become bases for Army pursuit and bombers. Then the Navy will have a safe place to sail its vessels.” (King has been charged with carrying water for the navy, but were the leaders of the other services any less blinkered?)

  Churchill had himself asked the president for “three or four” American infantry divisions to be sent to Northern Ireland, both to relieve British troops stationed there and because of the political effect such a development would have in Irish politics. It would be, Churchill wrote, an “assertion of the United States’ resolve to intervene directly in Europe.” Confronted with King’s reasoning, the prime minister seemed willing to accept a delay in the delivery of troops to Northern Ireland. Some 8,000 troops that had been slated for Iceland would be reduced to 2,500; and 16,000 that were slated for Northern Ireland would be reduced to 4,000. But the needed troops could not be sent to the Pacific unless ships could be found to carry them, and ships were scarce. Could a convoy be diverted from Russian Lend-Lease shipments to the northern Russian port of Archangel? King said that he believed that the port of Archangel was already closed for the winter, or that even if it was not, the Russian port facilities would not be able to handle the offloading of those ships. Roosevelt contradicted him, saying that the Russians had said the port was open and had demanded the supplies. The president, clearly hoping to duck an awkward decision, asked whether it would be difficult to reconquer New Caledonia after a Japanese invasion of the islands. King replied that it would be very difficult.

  Harry Hopkins spoke up. By his calculations, only seven ships were needed to fill the shortfall in the promised deliveries to Russia. That put the question in a different light. Even in the face of a severe shipping shortage, the government of the United States should be able to lay its hands on seven additional ships. Hopkins offered to find them himself. That broke the logjam. (Hopkins’s contribution was characteristic: he often managed to shed light on a subject with a well-timed insight, or steer a debate toward a practical solution. Churchill bestowed a nickname on the gaunt consigliere: “Lord Root of the Matter.”) It was agreed that 21,800 American troops would embark upon ships from the east coast, pass through the Panama Canal, and reach the South Pacific in mid-February. A portion would be sent to New Caledonia, along with Australian troops—altogether the Allied garrison would amount to about one division. Furthermore, in response to King’s urgent entreaties, it was agreed that 20 cargo ships would carry 250 fighters, 143 bombers, 220 tons of cargo, and 4.5 million gallons of gasoline to the South Pacific in the early months of 1942.

  CHURCHILL CLAIMED TO HAVE KNOWN even in those first weeks of the war that a “cataract of ruin” would fall upon the Allies in Asia. In his memoir, the prime minister made the point with photorealistic flair: “Even while I spoke in confident tones I could feel in anticipation the lashes which were soon to score our naked flesh. Fearful forfeits had to be paid not only by Britain and Holland but by the United States, in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and in all the Asiatic lands and islands they lap with their waves. An indefinite period of military disaster lay certainly before us. Many dark and weary months of defeat and loss must be endured before the light would come again.”

  The unremitting flow of bad news shined a spotlight on the problem of the Allies’ fragmented command. The Japanese were encountering feeble, uncoordinated, and chaotic opposition by the ground, air, and naval forces of five different countries: Britain, the United States, the Dutch-in-exile, Australia, and New Zealand. Each of the Allies had its own goals, interests, and constraints. Shipping was a critical bottleneck, but there was little or no coordination of shipping resources. General Marshall believed the situation called for a single Allied commander, with authority over all forces in the theater. He brought the issue up at the second meeting of the chiefs, on Christmas morning, 1941. “I am convinced that there must be one man in command of the entire theater—air, ground, and ships,” he said. “We can not manage by cooperation. Human frailties are such that there would be emphatic unwillingness to place portions of troops under another service. If we make a plan for unified command now, it will solve nine-tenths of our troubles.” He spoke of his experiences in the First World War, experience that all of the men at that table had shared. “There are difficulties in arriving at a single command, but they are much less than the hazards that must be faced if we do not achieve this. We never think alike—there are the opinions of those on this side of the table and of the people on the other side; but as for myself, I am willing to go the limit to accomplish this.”

  In facing up to the knotty problem so early in the conflict, Marshall began to reveal why he would prove the one really indispensable American military leader of the Second World War. Command unity was a challenging and sensitive subject, cutting to the heart of the Anglo-American alliance while also laying bare the interservice rivalries on both sides. As much as Marshall might have liked to depict command unity as a purely military problem, it raised thorny issues of diplomacy and politics—and those issues would have to be confronted by the civilian leaders of all the Allied nations. Marshall seemed to understand that if the issue of command unity was not dealt with at the very outset of the conflict, it might never be dealt with at all.

  The proposal came as a bombshell: Marshall had not forewarned King or the other American or British service chiefs that it was coming. At first, it met with strong resistance. The British, having been at war for nearly two and a half years, were loath to place their troops under a nation that had just entered the conflict and seemed to have much to learn. The RAF chief, Charles Portal, argued that the Allies should first decide on overall deployment of forces to the theater before confronting the question of a unified command. King was cautious at first. One of the other officers at the meeting regarded him as “lukewarm.” He knew that the rank and file of the American navy would blanch at the prospect of placing ships under the command either of American generals or foreign admirals. King’s assistant chief of staff, Admiral Richmond Turner, vehemently opposed placing U.S. Navy units outside the navy command hierarchy, and was not afraid to say so to King or to anyone else. But over the next two days King was broug
ht along by Marshall’s reasoning, and in subsequent meetings declared that he supported the proposal. Stark, Turner, and the other admirals fell reluctantly into line. It was a surprising and fortunate development. It cemented the partnership between Marshall and King, and signaled that service coordination and coalition warfare were going to be embraced by the U.S. Navy.

  British opposition was more adamant. When the subject was raised in a White House meeting on December 26, Churchill spoke out against it. He seems to have been warned by his chiefs, and prepared his arguments with care. He acknowledged that unity of command had been an important principle in the First World War, but in that conflict there had been a “continuous line of battle” along a long front. In Asia, there was a large and far-flung theater, with islands and landmasses separated by sea, encompassing forces of many different nations, fighting on their own soil or on colonial soil that they had controlled. In such a case, he said, a unified command would only confuse the picture. The greatest problem, he said, was to ensure that adequate military assets were being sent to the theater. The war could be carried on more effectively with the forces of each nation fighting under their own officers, but accountable directly to the chiefs of staff in Washington or London. During these deliberations, Lord Beaverbrook, the British production chief, passed a note to Hopkins: “You should work on Churchill. He is being advised. He is open-minded and needs discussion.”