The American Military - A Narrative History

by Brad D. Lookingbill

  As the U.S. mobilized for war, the Roosevelt administration pursued an ingenious strategy for overwhelming the Axis Powers with superior assets rather than with more flesh. “We must not only provide munitions for our own fighting forces,” the commander-in-chief instructed his cabinet, “but vast quantities to be used against the enemy in every appropriate theater of war.” Wartime mobilization revitalized the industrial economy, while the federal government summoned individuals to do their part in defense of the nation. The arrangements between the central bureaucracies and the large corporations formed the foundation of the war machine that bolstered national prosperity for decades.

  The GI Way

  More than 16 million Americans served in uniform during World War II. Out of a U.S. population exceeding 130 million, more than 12 percent directly participated in the war effort. Known as the GIs, the initials probably derived from military slang for their “government issue” of standard clothing and accouterments. With a wide range of individuals assigned to outfits in a short space of time, a fascinating mixture of traits and attitudes formed the GI way.

  The average GI was 26 years old and physically impressive. Before entering the military, most service members completed one year of high school. Among the rank and file, a typical private received about $50 a month in pay. For each soldier in combat, at least three others stood behind him in a support capacity. In fact, about half of those who served in uniform never left the North American continent. According to some ratio-of-fire studies, no more than one out of every four infantrymen actually fired a weapon during combat. In hard-fought battles for contested ground, they shared a three to one munitions advantage over opponents. Whatever the case, GIs tended to pride themselves on a job well done.

  In the Army, one GI required 4.5 tons of material to deploy abroad and 1 ton a month to maintain operational readiness. Each dressed in ODs – olive drab cotton twill shirt with trousers. In cold weather, a field jacket was added to the “layering system.” Combat boots featured rubber soles and heels with leather cuffs. The M1 helmet with liner not only protected the head but also served as a stool, bucket, basin, bowl, or pillow. Basic gear included socks, underwear, packs, bags, mess kits, entrenching tools, ammunition carriers, shelter halves, sleeping gear, and web gear. In combat environments with surf and sand, most carried a special plastic bag for the M1 rifle to keep it functional. After American troops stepped onto the European continent, almost 63 tons of tobacco immediately followed them to the beach. Both friends and enemies of GIs envied the material wealth of the “rich Americans.”

  The GI was the best-fed soldier in the world, or so the Pentagon calculated. Mobile kitchens in the field prepared A-rations or B-rations with vast quantities of meat, fruit, and vegetables, though many griped about the powdered eggs. Composed chiefly of canned food, the C-ration provided over 3,400 calories per day to the GI. The emergency D-ration was a 4-ounce bar of fortified chocolate valued at 600 calories. Packed into boxes, the K-ration contained processed meat, biscuits, crackers, bouillon, dextrose tablets, fruit bar, chocolate bar, instant coffee, lemon juice crystals, sugar tablets, chewing gum, and a four-cigarette pack. All too often, the American military left a trail of cans, boxes, envelopes, and waste abroad.

  Wherever deployed around the world, military personnel tried to remain in contact with loved ones waiting nervously at home. Mail call and letter-writing represented vital activities to ease anxieties and to pass time. Despite censorship by military officials, the volume of correspondence with friends and family appeared staggering. By 1943, the average GI received 14 pieces of mail each week. Some avoided any reference to the war, which made an official telegram bearing the news of a sudden death all the more shocking for folks at home.

  In contrast to civilian etiquette back home, GI ways seemed vulgar. References to human anatomy and to excretory functions pervaded conversations around the barracks. A colloquial word was snafu, an acronym translated for stateside audiences as “situation normal, all fouled up.” Soldiers in the field commonly used a more graphic “F-word” in their parsing of it. When off duty, they became notorious for “blowing off steam” in brawls, barrooms, and brothels. While teasing “buddies,” jokes and pranks offered diversions from the seriousness of the war.

  Popular culture accentuated the positive imagery of happy warriors, who represented icons of the “good war.” To boost morale and recruiting, sports legends such as boxer Joe Lewis appeared on wartime posters. When Yank magazine began publication in 1942, it contained an original cartoon by Corporal Dave Breger titled “GI Joe.” Comic books, which were more popular with American troops than glossy periodicals, spawned simple stories about superheroes fighting evildoers. Hollywood films delivered a winning combination of entertainment and patriotism to service members, but nothing on the screen surpassed the compelling propaganda of Frank Capra's Why We Fight series. Roosevelt encouraged civilian volunteers to organize the United Service Organizations, or USO, a non-profit group that provided a “home away from home” to military personnel. In an age of broadcast radio and camp shows, the Andrews Sisters topped the charts with upbeat songs such as “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.” Scores swooned to Bing Crosby's version of “I'll Be Home for Christmas.” At the forefront of America's greatest generation, the GIs contrasted themselves to other belligerents.

  Few Americans rendered the GIs more distinctly than Sergeant Bill Mauldin, who served in the 180th Infantry Regiment of the 45th Division. His comic strip characters Willie and Joe appeared regularly on the pages of Stars and Stripes. One even graced the cover of Time magazine in 1944. Unshaven, dirty, and fatigued, Mauldin's characters faced the war with a sense of humor.

  Thanks to the demands of the war, the armed forces expanded opportunities for racial and ethnic minorities in uniform. At least a million African Americans served their country, though usually in segregated units. Officer candidate schools began to integrate during the early 1940s. The Army Air Forces included 600 pilots dubbed the “Tuskegee Airmen,” who distinguished themselves in aerial combat. After members of the 332nd Fighter Group painted parts of their P-47 Thunderbolts and P-51 Mustangs, they became known as “Red Tails.”

  In combat zones, American Indians defied enemy code breakers with radio transmissions using their native languages. The Marine Corps assigned over 400 Navajo signalmen to use their Athabaskan language from Bougainville to Iwo Jima. In addition, Hopi, Lakota, Sauk and Fox, Oneida, Ojibwe, and Comanche “code talkers” operated in the European and the Pacific theaters.

  To increase the manpower for military operations, the armed forces included uniformed branches for women's auxiliary service. Nearly 200,000 women served in the Women's Army Corps, or WAC. The Navy organized the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, or WAVES. In smaller numbers, women also served in the Marine Corps and the Coast Guard. Though an important step in advancing equal opportunity in the U.S., senior military officers maintained a division of labor based upon gendered assumptions. In other words, female service skills appeared essential but remained secondary to male combat missions.

  The Women's Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs, included female aviators known as “flygirls.” In 1942, the Army Air Forces called upon Jacqueline Cochran, a world-famous aviatrix, to help women earn their wings. Another renowned pilot, Nancy Harkness Love, suggested the formation of a small squadron of trained ferry pilots. The next year, the brass merged the training programs under Cochran's leadership. Although General Arnold ordered the WASPs to disband after the war, Congress eventually awarded veteran status to the pilots.

  Prodded by the American Legion, Congress passed a law to help GIs transition back into civilian life after the war. Officially named the Servicemen's Readjustment Act, Roosevelt signed the GI Bill of Rights into law on June 22, 1944. Accordingly, it made the Veterans Administration into “an essential war agency,” subordinate only to the War and Navy Departments in regard to military affairs. The first title of the law expanded feder
al support for hospital facilities and medical care. Other provisions promised low-interest loans for veterans buying homes and starting businesses or farms. One clause enabled veterans to receive $20 a week for 52 weeks while seeking employment. Because they “make greater economic sacrifice and every other kind of sacrifice than the rest of us,” the president insisted that service members were “entitled to definite action to help take care of their special problems.” Thus, the federal government planned to regulate the flow of returning GIs into the labor market.

  The shrillest opposition to the GI Bill came from critics of Title II, which offered higher education benefits to veterans. For instance, elite academicians sneered that the benefits threatened to turn campuses into “educational hobo jungles.” Their carping lacked merit, because future students attended the nation's colleges and universities with great enthusiasm. Returning soldiers often demanded a vocational curriculum, which continued a wartime trend away from the liberal arts tradition at American institutions. The language of the statute made no explicit references to race, although local administrators of federal programs tended to discriminate against people of color. Over the course of the next decade, more than 7 million World War II veterans benefited from the educational opportunities afforded to them.

  However divided by race, class, gender, and ethnicity at home, GIs stood for American values around the globe. In combat, they learned to control fear, to think clearly, and to show initiative while exerting physical strength. They battled enemies in jungles, deserts, valleys, and mountains and overcame adversity from one theater of operations to another. Many crossed the oceans and saw the world, eventually returning home after winning the war the GI way.

  Empire of the Sun

  Americans and the Allies were stunned by the scale and the scope of Japanese aggression in the Pacific. Seemingly unstoppable, Japan aimed to establish the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere through conquest and occupation. The home government promised to unite Asians in a grand cultural and spiritual system free from the taint of outsiders. Tokyo signified militarist ambitions for an empire with the Rising Sun flag, which displayed multiple rays of light emanating from a red circle.

  With an imperial strategy to “go south” in 1941, the Japanese armed forces conducted a six-month campaign that brought them to the gates of India. They seized Hong Kong, Guam, New Britain Island, the northern Solomon Islands, the Gilbert Islands, Wake Island, Thailand, Malaya, Burma, and the Dutch East Indies. “I shall run wild for the first six months or a year,” Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Japanese Combined Fleet, once predicted, “but I have utterly no confidence for the second or third year.”

  Beginning on December 22, 1941, Japanese forces invaded the Philippines. General Douglas MacArthur commanded 100,000 Filipinos and 30,000 Americans in the archipelago, but they were easily overrun by the Japanese. Afterward, MacArthur ordered a general withdrawal into the mountainous Bataan peninsula. He hoped to hold the position until help arrived. Disease and starvation decimated his troops, who ate monkeys and insects to survive.

  At the behest of Roosevelt, MacArthur escaped to Australia but vowed to the American press: “I shall return.” General Jonathan Wainwright remained with his command. On April 9, 1942, the Japanese captured approximately 80,000 American and Filipino troops during the Battle of Bataan. After capitulating, thousands died on an 80-mile march from Bataan to Luzon. On Corregidor Island in Manila Bay, Wainwright endured a barrage of shells but surrendered the last of his forces nearly a month later.

  Meanwhile, the worrisome prospect of an impending Japanese attack on the continental U.S. disturbed Americans living along the West Coast. General John L. DeWitt, the chief of the Army's Western Defense Command, warned that Japanese spies posed a security risk. On February 19, 1942, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 to begin the internment of around 110,000 persons of Japanese ancestry – two-thirds of them U.S. citizens called Nisei. He created the War Relocation Authority to oversee their evacuation to camps. Two years later, the Supreme Court called the commander-in-chief's decision a “military necessity.” Despite the injustice of Japanese American internment, approximately 30,000 Nisei agreed to serve in the American military.

  Reeling from the Japanese blows in the Pacific, the American military attempted to strike back. On April 18, the U.S.S. Hornet launched heavy B-25 bombers into action, although they were not designed for flight from a carrier deck. Led by Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle, the pilots conducted a hit-and-run raid on Tokyo and a handful of other Japanese cities. Since none fell to air defenses, the raid demonstrated to Japanese military leaders the vulnerability of their home islands. At the limit of the flying range, the American bombers crash-landed in China.

  While the Japanese advance in 1942 continued, Roosevelt dispatched General Joseph Stilwell to command U.S. forces in China, Burma, and India. His command incorporated American volunteer aviators known as the “Flying Tigers,” who were organized by a retired Army colonel, Claire Chennault. Once British and Chinese lines collapsed, Stilwell helped the Allies to execute a 140-mile retreat through rugged mountains to India. The Japanese victory closed the Burma Road, a path that ran from the Irrawaddy River north of Rangoon eastward into China's Yunan Province. Afterward, all American supplies for China were airlifted from India over a series of towering Himalayan ranges known as “the Hump.”

  As the Japanese Navy pushed to Guadalcanal and Tulagi in the Solomon Islands and seized Attu and Kiska in the Aleutian Islands, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, the commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, took action. From May 3 to May 8, 1942, the Battle of the Coral Sea stretched across hundreds of miles. For the first time in naval history, carrier-based aircraft conducted all the fighting in a clash of arms. In fact, the American and Japanese warships never directly fired salvos upon one another. Although Japanese forces withdrew after suffering significant losses, the U.S.S. Lexington was badly damaged and scuttled. The U.S.S. Yorktown sustained damage as well, but crews of workers and sailors repaired the carrier to fight again. Consequently, the battle provided Americans with their first victory against a relentless enemy.

  Figure 12.2 World War II in Asia

  The Japanese Navy planned a decisive battle in the Central Pacific, although American cryptologists began to decipher enemy communications. The collective effort to crack the Japanese codes became known as Magic, which interpreted roughly 10 to 15 percent of most intercepts. During the spring of 1942, intelligence officers determined that the Japanese planned to hit the U.S. Fleet at Midway Island next.

  Unbeknownst to Yamamoto, Nimitz expected their attack at Midway. From June 4 to June 7, 1942, he directed naval task forces to confront the Japanese threat. They included a mix of carriers, destroyers, cruisers, battleships, submarines, minesweepers, and support craft. To protect Midway, the garrison on the atoll possessed hundreds of planes and anti-aircraft guns. On board the repaired U.S.S. Yorktown, Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, commander of Task Force 17, coordinated the entire flotilla of U.S. ships in the surrounding waters. Rear Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, commander of Task Force 16, directed the launch of aircraft from the U.S.S. Enterprise and the U.S.S. Hornet. During a 5-minute aerial assault on the exposed Japanese carriers, American flyers in the skies described “a beautiful silver waterfall” of dive-bombers cascading down on a surprised enemy.

  Armed with intelligence about Japanese plans and capabilities, the U.S. Fleet defended Midway with great success. American fighters dispatched most of the attackers, even though the torpedo bombers could not match the capabilities of the Japanese Zeros. Spruance wisely refrained from pursuing the Japanese vessels in retreat to the west, where he would have collided with Yamamoto's battleships at nightfall on the final day of the clash. American fatalities overall numbered 362, but Japanese deaths reached a staggering 3,057. While the U.S. lost one aircraft carrier as a result of a submarine strike, four Japanese carriers became wrecks beyond saving or salvaging.


  Though not a decisive victory for the U.S., the Battle of Midway marked a turning point for the war in the Pacific. The Japanese lost the strategic initiative after the setback, while the Americans partially avenged the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. The former abandoned any illusion of a swift victory over the latter and turned instead to strengthening a defensive perimeter. With the mobility of their carrier striking forces curtailed, Japanese leaders braced themselves for a protracted war of attrition.

  While committed to halting the German blitzkrieg first, the Roosevelt administration permitted Admiral King and the Joint Chiefs to plan offensive operations against the Japanese dispositions. In fact, the great bulk of U.S. forces sent overseas during 1942 arrived in the Pacific theater of operations. A Marine division sailed for New Zealand in anticipation of fierce combat. Of the eight Army divisions departing the U.S. before August, five headed westward. Furthermore, over half of the Army aircraft sent overseas that year operated in the Pacific as well. A year later, the larger and faster carriers of the Essex class and the lighter carriers of the Independence class joined the formations of the Navy. Around them, the admirals built naval task forces tailored to the needs of each particular operation. The F6F Hellcat, a carrier-based fighter designed to outperform the Japanese Zero, soon established American supremacy in aerial combat. Both air and sea power enabled the ground forces to thrust forward.

  The thrust against Japan challenged the interoperability of the U.S. Army, Navy, and Marine Corps. From Australia, MacArthur commanded Allied forces in the Southwest Pacific theater in a campaign to neutralize the Japanese bastion of Rabaul. Outside of his command but geographically parallel, the South Pacific theater fell to Vice Admiral Robert L. Ghormley initially and to Vice Admiral William “Bull” Halsey eventually. Across the broad expanses of the ocean, a series of military actions targeted Japanese bases and shipping.