The American Military

by Brad D. Lookingbill

  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 federal 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, warne
d 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.

  The Solomon archipelago, which encompassed a double string of islands stretching 600 miles from San Cristobal to Buka, represented one of the most embattled sectors. Codenamed Operation Watchtower, an American offensive began on August 7, 1942, when the 1st Marine Division landed on Guadalcanal and nearby islands. Japanese forces utilized interior lines from their bases at Rabaul and Truk to support attacks on the American dispositions. Over the next three months, intense fighting erupted on land, at sea, and in the air. The campaign included no less than six separate naval battles and three major clashes on Guadalcanal itself. Due to the number of sunken ships offshore, the waters became known as “Iron Bottom Sound.” U.S. forces concentrated upon securing Henderson Field on the island's north coast, which provided an important air base for an ever-widening range of sharp engagements in the jungles. Bloodied but unbowed, the Marines held the contested ground. During the prolonged, brutal campaign that participants labeled the Battle of Guadalcanal, Americans counted 1,768 fatalities and over 4,700 wounded. By February 9, 1943, U.S. commanders declared Guadalcanal secure.

  Bolstered by surges in manpower and supplies, U.S. forces advanced successfully along the New Guinea shore. Under MacArthur's command, they operated jointly with Australians in Operation Cartwheel. While taking advantage of intelligence gleaned from decoding Japanese radio communications, they avoided frontal attacks against strongly entrenched positions whenever possible. Accordingly, they bypassed enemy enclaves with no strategic significance. In the Battle of the Bismarck Sea on March 2–3, 1943, American bombers sank eight Japanese troopships and several warships carrying reinforcements. Many Japanese strongholds were left unsupported thereafter, which meant that some of their troops simply starved.

  By early 1943, Yamamoto decided to cut his losses in the South Pacific while awaiting a more favorable opportunity to fight a decisive b
attle elsewhere. Alerted by intercepted radio messages, American P-38 Lightnings ambushed his flight during an inspection tour. On April 18, he died when his flaming aircraft crashed into Bougainville's jungle. Though his sudden death represented a significant blow to the Japanese military, Rabaul remained in their hands until the end of the war.

  Nimitz's next objectives were the atolls in the Gilbert archipelago, which formed Japan's outmost defensive perimeter. Beginning on November 20, the 2nd Marine Division assaulted Tarawa, a 3-square-mile atoll encircled by a coral reef. At the cost of 1,000 American lives, the defenses fell to U.S. forces. Flamethrowers fired streams of burning napalm into caves, bunkers, tunnels, and pillboxes. The 27th Infantry Division seized Makin, an atoll at the northern edge of the Gilberts. From the new bases of operation, U.S. forces pushed into the Marshall and the Caroline Islands. The “frogmen” of the Navy's Underwater Demolition Teams blew holes in reefs to clear paths for landing vehicles. In a matter of weeks, the Japanese bastions of Majuro, Kwajelein, Eniwetok, and Truk were overrun. Outraged by the reversal of momentum, General Hideki Tojo, the Japanese premier, replaced naval leaders and assumed power over the Ministry of War himself.

  The drive against the Empire of Japan restored American confidence, although success came at a high price. By early 1944, the Allied operations benefited significantly from the protection of land-based air cover and the availability of carrier-based air support. As a result, Japanese forces reluctantly formed a new defensive perimeter along the Philippines and the Marianas. No longer backpedaling from the stunning aggression, the American military began to see the signs of a setting sun over their foes.

  A Second Front

  World War II exposed the glaring weakness of the Axis Powers – their inability to conduct mutually beneficial and jointly designed military operations. In contrast to the disharmony of their adversaries, the Allied countries planned to work together ceaselessly. On January 1, 1942, more than 26 governments signed the Declaration of United Nations in support of the war effort. Though eager to fight, most needed time to ready their armed forces for the European theater. On the Eastern Front, the Red Army of the Soviet Union battled the German juggernaut alone. Bearing the brunt of the war, the Russians pleaded with their counterparts to relieve the pressure by opening a “second front” of operations elsewhere.