Originally Marrakech, which was home to British prime minister Winston Churchill’s favorite hotel, the Mamounia, was to host the conference, but that city was deemed too dangerous. The Combined Chiefs settled on the Anfa Hotel, situated five miles outside of Casablanca on a ridge overlooking the ocean. The Anfa was shaded by stately palms, cooled by Atlantic breezes, and surrounded by comfortable villas with gardens of begonia and bougainvillea and orange groves. The picture could not have been more striking—the grand, ivory-white structure set against the red, sun-bleached soil.
Reminders of war were everywhere. General Dwight Eisenhower’s troops, together with British General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army, were locked in battle on the blazing desert against Rommel’s Afrika Korps. Axis agents swarmed the city. General George Patton’s 3rd Battalion strung barbed wire around the compound, and guards roamed the grounds twenty-four hours a day. Troops were stationed on rooftops. Patton also positioned antiaircraft batteries throughout the area. Still he was uneasy, and eager for the negotiators to get on with their business; Patton knew that the safeguards could not be maintained indefinitely. Although some of the men attending the conference might have been alarmed by the heightened sense of security, King was unfazed. He, too, was obsessed with security. Besides, he had not come to Casablanca to wander the hotel grounds and admire the scenery. He was a man driven by a mission.
Although he had come to Casablanca with only one purpose, unlike his U.S. Army counterpart, the austere General George Marshall, King was not known for his temperance. A heavy drinker, he undoubtedly found the Muslim stricture against public consumption of alcohol bothersome. He was also an inveterate womanizer and a self-proclaimed “son of a bitch.” One junior officer described him as “meaner than hell.” King’s admirers—which included President Roosevelt—appreciated his blunt honesty, loyalty, and unswerving determination. Even his detractors, who detested his self-assurance, admitted that he was a gifted leader with an energetic mind. Although he was fourth in his class at the Naval Academy, he was handsome and popular and widely recognized by students and the academy administration alike as the top cadet. Unlike MacArthur, he rarely got caught up in his own fame. Though he used a cigarette holder of carved ivory, he wore a drab gray uniform and distrusted the press and all undue publicity.
At Casablanca, King was convinced that most of his colleagues in the Hotel Anfa conference room did not understand Japan. The British, in particular, were so blinded by Hitler that they ignored the peril of Japanese aggression. King knew that despite the president’s personal views, he could be swayed by Prime Minister Churchill. King was suspicious of the British tactic of isolating Roosevelt from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Although he admired the prime minister’s intellect, he realized that Churchill was not to be entirely trusted. To get what he wanted, Churchill was willing to use his powers of persuasion ruthlessly. King believed that he himself was the only one clear-headed and firm enough to defy the prime minister. In his book Master of Sea Power, Thomas Buell says that “King’s biggest gripe was the President’s double-talk.” “Roosevelt was a little tricky,” King later said, “and in some ways the truth was not always in him.”
King irked the Brits. They found him tiresome, hot-tempered, and singularly absorbed with war against Japan. British General Alan Brooke, chief of the Imperial General Staff and the top military man in England, insisted that for King, “The European war was just a great nuisance that kept him from waging his Pacific war undisturbed.” Brooke also believed until the very end that King sent matériel and ships to the Pacific to the detriment of the war against Germany. Another British general said of King, “He was tough as nails and carried himself as stiffly as a poker. He was blunt and standoffish, almost to the point of rudeness.” From the British delegation’s perspective, Germany was clearly the more dangerous of the two enemies. Japan may have been bent on territorial expansion, but the German army was poised just twenty miles from the chalk cliffs of Dover across the narrowest part of the English Channel. The Luftwaffe had already demonstrated its ability to bomb British cities into rubble. What’s more, Churchill desperately needed the USSR’s support, and the only way to elicit that support was to show the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, that the Allies were wholly committed to defeating Germany. Nevertheless, King began diverting ships to the Pacific. “In the last analysis,” King predicted, “Russia will do nine-tenths of the job of defeating Germany.”
Convinced that the proper course was to invade Sardinia and Corsica in the Mediterranean, the Brits squashed General Marshall’s plans to launch a cross-Channel invasion in 1943. They then made their priorities clear: a midsummer invasion of Sicily (for which King promised to deliver the necessary ships), strategic bombing raids against Germany, continued aid to Russia, and elimination of the German U-boat threat. They had come to Casablanca fully prepared to argue and support their cause—the Mediterranean offensive—and were receptive to little else. Marshall was upset that Roosevelt was moving away from cross-Channel invasion to the British view of a Mediterranean invasion. Deeply disappointed, Marshall suggested that if his men were not going to be used against Hitler, they should be used against Hirohito.
On January 30, 1943, King arrived back in Washington in time to witness the tail end of the city’s worst-ever winter storm. Branches snapped under the weight of an inch of ice, and large trees fell across roadways. Wires and utility poles collapsed, cutting off electricity and telephone service. Nothing, though, could dampen King’s spirits. He had made headway in Casablanca. Through sheer Scots doggedness, he had won a small but significant commitment from the intransigent Brits.
King’s frequent trips to see Nimitz underscored his mistrust of the admiral. In King’s mind, Nimitz sometimes took bad advice. “If only I could keep him tight on what he’s supposed to do,” King once said. “Somebody gets ahold of him and I have to straighten him out.”
Several weeks after returning from California, King wrote a letter to Roosevelt from his dusty office on the third floor of the Navy Department building on Constitution Avenue. The Main Navy, as it was known, was an enormous, dreary building, which was never intended to be the Navy’s home. In 1918 it was built as a temporary structure. Despite its size, war planners, officers, and a huge administrative staff packed its halls and dingy rooms. For the head of what was arguably the world’s greatest navy, King’s office was, for some, disturbingly nondescript. One colleague called it the “most disreputable” he had ever seen. King wrote from an unassuming flat-topped desk. Papers spilled out of his inbox, and King often had to clear a space to write. The office, though, was his inner sanctum, and few, including Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, summoned the courage to enter. King, however, descended each morning to the secretary’s office on the second deck for an 0830 conference. It was King’s outward and visible sign of subordination to civilian control of the Navy.
In August 1943, five months after Trident, the Combined Chiefs assembled again for the year’s third major conference—Quadrant—held in Quebec. The meeting place was the Chateau Frontenac, a grand and graceful hotel overlooking the swirling currents of the mighty St. Lawrence River. Royal Canadian Mounted Police provided security, but in contrast to Casablanca, the mood was relaxed. The American contingent, in particular, was happy to escape the stifling heat of a Washington summer. When not in meetings, King strolled the boardwalk along the river. In the afternoon, many of the British and American participants took drives through the scenic countryside and visited historic sites and battlegrounds. During the off hours, comity reigned. One weekend all gathered aboard a steamer for a trip down the river. But in the conference rooms, the tone was boisterous and confrontational. The British had come to do battle with their old adversary, accusing King of disregarding the advice of British military planners and unilaterally developing plans for war against Japan.
Thomas Buell writes that “King’s burning desire to become involved at Guadalcanal was a calculated risk.… King was
undeservedly lucky when Rear Admiral Mikawa decided to retire from Guadalcanal after winning the Battle of the Savo Islands. The Japanese admiral could have destroyed every American transport at Guadalcanal, still filled with food, ammunition, and supplies for the Marines ashore. Had they been sunk, King’s hopes for Guadalcanal would have been doomed.”
According to Buell, King later said of MacArthur, “He could not understand that he was not to manage everything.” General Marshall was also a strong advocate of a unified command. He wanted MacArthur in charge of the entire Pacific. Public sentiment was also on MacArthur’s side. But King had no intention of letting the general assume power. He believed that MacArthur knew nothing about sea power. The Navy had been preparing for the showdown for over two decades, and he was not about to let a general dictate strategy. King considered it “heresy” for the Navy to subordinate to MacArthur and the Army. King believed that Marshall “Would do anything rather than disagree with MacArthur,” who had been a prewar chief of staff of the Army, while Marshall was still a colonel.
For the grandiose MacArthur there was always only one route to Japan—his route, via the Philippines. In the autumn of 1942 the general had barreled headlong into the jungles of New Guinea, intent on making it back to the Philippines as quickly as possible. At Buna, his first battle on the island, the general pushed for an early victory and lost thousands of men from the 32nd Division to the Japanese and disease. To his credit, MacArthur learned from the bloodshed at Buna, carefully picking future battles and outsmarting the Japanese. Yet MacArthur still resented his time on New Guinea’s dimly lit stage, and yearned to return to the place he had fled in March 1942. For him it was a matter of personal redemption. MacArthur would have “blood on his soul” until he succeeded in liberating the Philippines.
Because the Pacific was an all-American venture, the Combined Chiefs of Staff devoted surprisingly little time to the details of that invasion.
The edict (contained in the Field Service Code, Senjinkun), which was issued by Hideki Tojo to soldiers going off to war, read, “In defense always retain the spirit of attack and always maintain the freedom of action; never give up a position but rather die.”
In July 1934, Keisuke Okada was named prime minister. He was one of the moderate voices against the increasing strength of the militarists like Tojo, and became a target for extremist forces pushing for a more totalitarian Japan. He narrowly escaped assassination in February 1936.
CHAPTER 18: BAPTISM BY FIRE
In August 1942, Congress approved the Tydings Amendment to the Selective Service Act, which permitted draft boards to defer agricultural workers “essential to the war effort.” Discontent over agricultural deferments remained until the end of the war. General Lewis B. Hershey, director of the Selective Service System, wanted to draft all farmers and their sons whose agricultural production did not “substantially exceed” family consumption or add to the nation’s food supply.
The amtrac was also called an LVT and an LCVP. Most Marines called them Alligators or amtracs. The first amtrac was a modified version of vehicles used by the inventor Donald Roebling to hunt in the Florida swamplands.
The First War Powers Act, approved just eleven days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, contained a broad range of executive freedoms for the prosecution of the war, including a provision for censorship. The day after it was passed, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8985, which established the Office of Censorship. Byron Price, the acting general manager of the Associated Press, was appointed as its director and remained in that office for the duration of the war. Price established a “Code of Wartime Practices” that forbade press subjects that contained information of possible value to the enemy. “Of possible value” was an ambiguous directive, but all the major news organizations and the 1,600 combat reporters and photographers voluntarily adopted the code, agreeing to police themselves. News about the war, however, also had to pass through the Office of War Information. The OWI coordinated the release of war news and worked to promote patriotism, restricting anything that it felt undermined the war effort.
Mrs. Graf had reason to be concerned. A photo in the September 20, 1943, issue of Life magazine reinforced her—and every other mother’s—worst nightmare. Would her son die far from home on some godforsaken island in the middle of the Pacific? The photograph, shot by George Strock, showed American soldiers lying in the sand in New Guinea. The caption read, “Three dead Americans lie on the beach at Buna.” In an adjacent full-page editorial, Life’s editors asked, “Why print this picture, anyway?” and then they explained their motivation. “Words,” they said, “are never enough.” The three dead soldiers were not named. Life’s editors implied that they would remain anonymous to honor the sacrifice made by American troops on battlefields across the globe.
The release of the photograph made history, sending shock waves across the country. For the first time in World War II, the U.S. public saw an image of dead American troops (other photos had appeared, but the bodies were always covered or in coffins). Many expressed outrage, accusing the press of “morbid sensationalism,” and wondered how a high-profile magazine like Life had been allowed to publish the photo.
The truth was that Life published the photo with the full cooperation of the Roosevelt administration. In the past, Elmer Davis, a much-respected former CBS reporter and commentator who headed up the watchful Office of War Information, had appealed to the president to lift the edict against the publication of battlefield photographs, arguing that Americans “had a right to be truthfully informed” and suggesting that perhaps disturbing battlefield images would motivate the country to redouble its war effort. Persuaded by Davis, and convinced that Americans had grown complacent about the war, Roosevelt suspended the ban on images depicting U.S. casualties. After Roosevelt lifted the injunction, photos of dead soldiers appeared in the press regularly, though publishers often shadowed the victims’ faces, name tags, and unit insignia.
In the 1930s the 1st Marine Brigade, based at Quantico, Virginia, staged landing exercises on Caribbean beaches. They also practiced amphibious assaults at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where they took to calling themselves “Raggedy-Ass Marines.”
Quantico, Virginia, the training and strategic planning facility, disseminated the doctrine. General Alexander Vandegrift, the Marine Corps commandant, went so far as to say that the Marine Corps’ greatest contribution to victory was “doctrinal,” adding, “The basic amphibious doctrines which carried Allied troops over every beachhead of World War II had been largely shaped—often in the face of uninterested or doubting military orthodoxy—by U.S. Marines.”
According to Gordon Rottman in The U.S. Mechanized Infantryman in the First Gulf War, in many ways the transformation of the Marines resembles the transformation of the Army after Vietnam. The end of the Vietnam War left the U.S. Army a spent force. Plagued by low morale, drug and race issues, and terrible public relations, the Army faced an uphill climb in the effort to rebuild itself. The story of this reconstruction is mirrored in the rise of the mechanized infantryman. Deciding that the key to future conflict lay in highly trained and mobile warriors who could be delivered quickly to battle, the army adopted the mechanized infantryman as its frontline troops. This new, all-volunteer force was given the best training and equipment that money could buy.
At the time of the Tarawa invasion, the U.S. Navy was the largest and most powerful in the world. Still, as late as August 1943, Nimitz considered the offensive far from a fait accompli. For months Admirals King and Spruance, General Holland Smith, and Admiral Kelly Turner, head of the Amphibious Task Force, debated the scope and targets of the invasion, with King arguing against the recommendations of Spruance, Smith, and Turner, and Nimitz in the middle, calmly assessing the evidence and his options. King advocated for an attack on Nauru in order to “broaden the front” and give the attack “suitable breadth.” Using his endorsement of the two-front approach to the war in the Pacific, King adopted a two-axis
approach to the Gilberts, and saw Nauru as the fulfillment of that vision. King also believed that an attack on Nauru would confuse and divide the Japanese air and naval forces defending the islands.
Aligned against him were Smith, Spruance, and Turner. Nauru, they said, was useless and too far (400 miles) from the main point of attack—the Tarawa atoll. Smith added that he did not have enough troops, or the transports to move them, to execute an attack hundreds of miles to the west. In a letter to Spruance, which the admiral then forwarded to Nimitz, who in turn passed it on to King, Smith and Turner made a case for Makin: it was in the same direction as the Marshalls, the next objective; it was large enough to accommodate an airfield; and, most important, it was closer to Tarawa, giving Spruance’s fleet the ability to cover both assaults. By the end of the summer, Nimitz sided with Spruance, Turner, and Smith, and eventually King did, too, recommending to the Joint Chiefs of Staff that Nimitz be allowed to replace Nauru with the new target, Makin. Some planners wanted to jump the Gilberts and go directly into the Marshalls. Nimitz listened and finally settled on the southern route into the Central Pacific, taking the Gilberts first, as the ardent Spruance advised. Nimitz and King might have gone directly to the Marshalls, but Spruance, the strategist, argued for the Gilberts. The Gilberts, Spruance pointed out, were pivotal because they lay north and west of islands held by the Americans and south and east of the major bases held by the Japanese in the Marshalls and Carolines. He also argued that going straight into the Marshalls would be difficult, since the Americans knew little about them. The Japanese had held them since just after World War I. The Gilberts, on the other hand, were a British possession until 1941. If taken, the Gilberts would provide bases for reconnaissance of the Marshalls. Reconnaissance of the Marshalls needed to take place from a nearer base.
The Color of War Page 46
