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£ComebackTheCenturyBy FRANK MACOMBERMilitary Aerospace Writer Copley News ServiceNearly 31 years ago Adolf Hitler’s tanks rumbled across the Polish border to push the world into history’s greatest war For the next six tormented years the earth shook withbattle.There were years of outrage, anguish, desperation, gloom, heartbreak and defeat. They were years of turning tides and hope and of ultimate victory for Allied forces in 1945. first in Europe, then in Asia.BLOODY BATTLEFIELDSNever in history had such a panoply of events, some at the diplomats’ conference tables, others on the bloody battlefields and oceans, been played out from continent to continent to affect so many millions of people in so many ways.The story of the great war began officially with Germany’s first blitzkrieg that crushed Poland in early September, 1939. though it was being spawned years before in the minds of Hitler and his Nazi henchmen.World War II ended officially Sept. 2, 1945, with Japan'ssigning of unconditional surrender documents on the broad foredeck of the American battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay. But a stunned and battered Japanese empire, awed by the terrible destructive power of the atomic bomb, hadcapitulated two weeks earlier, Aug. 14 on orders of Emperor Hirohito.COSTLY CONFLICTOn that day 25 years ago people throughout the worldalready were celebrating the end to the most costly conflict in history in terms of lives and treasure.The history of a global conflict which for the second time failed to end war has all the ingredients of high drama, with long lists of heroes and villains, of triumphs and defeats, of places where battles were lost and won.It was a time of giants at the helms of governments, whether their decisions were right or wrong. It was a time of treachery and deceit on the one side and of unparalled unity of purpose on the other.There were few if any gray areas to divide Americans at home or to divert Allied governments and commanders. In thestrictest military tradition it was conquer or be conquered.TWISTED GENIUSWhat other era of history could boast that it produced both Hitler, the mad and twisted genius of war, and the American President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British PrimeMinister Winston Churchill?Or. for that matter what other chapter in history came up with names like American Ge-.erals of the Army Dwight D. E'senbower, George C. Marsh a 11. Douglas MacArthur, Omar N. Bradley, British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, U. S. Admirals Ernest J. King and Chester W. Nimitz and British Lord Louis Mount-batten?And this same conflict produced such arch villains as Italy’s Premier Benito Mussolini and Japan’s Gen. Hideki Tojo.These and the hundreds of other names which flash across the screen of histor; in those tempestuous six years are etched in the memories of Americans in that generation.MEMORIES REKINDLEDTo a modern generation they doubtless are names to be learned from history books or their memories rekindled in televised documentaries of the great war.So it is, too. with places and events in history, like Dunkirk, Normandy, Omaha Beach, B a s t o g n e . Pearl Harbor. Bataan. Coral Sea, Saipan, Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Hiroshima and a hundred more.Thirteen weeks before victory signaled world peace for the first time in six years, war ended in Europe with the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany. On that fateful day, Gen. Eisenhower, as supreme Allied commander, with stark simplicity telegraphed his superiors that “the mission of this Allied force was fulfilled at 3 a.m., local time, May 7,1Q4t ”NOT TO BEHitler’s Fortress Europe had fallen. It was time to speed an end to the Allied offensive against Japan, now that the other two members of the Axis — Germany and Italy — had been vanquished. A massive Allied invasion of the Japanesehomeland seemed inevitable in May of that year.But it was not to be. On Aug. 6. a lone American B-29 — theEnola Gay — flew from the Marianas and dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, bringing a city and a nation to their knees with one awesome, crushing blow.While the first A-bomb burned and leveled a city at a cost of some 70.000 lives, its impact and that of a second nuclear blast at Nagasaki three days later may have saved the lives of a million American and other Allied fighting men.TORN TO SHREDSThat was the Allied casualty estimate in documents drafted b y American commanders already planning the invasion of the Jaoanese home islands laterathat year. The Japanese, while their imperial navy had been torn to shreds and left virtually helnless by Allied sea and air forces, had more than two million men at arms ready to defend their homeland. Millions more were in reserve.Thus an Allied invasion which would have dwarfed any previous amphibious thrust in history was averted by President Harry S. Truman’s fateful decision to use the bomb.So victory came at last, some 45 months after the infamy at Pearl Harbor Dec. 7, 1941, a day which left the mainspring of the U. S. Pacific Fleet lying helpless in the water, a bombed-out collection of shattered hulls.After Pearl Harbor and the fall of the Philippines, there followed seemingly endless months of retreat in the Pacific-before a savage Japanese onslaught from air and sea until the crucial Battle of Midway in early June, 1942. Victory at Midway at last turned the war around and shifted Allied defense to a zigzag, island-hopping offensive westward back across the Pacific.FIGHT ON TWO FRONTSFor the first time in is comparatively brief history, the United States in World War II had to fight a war on two fronts. While Allied strategy concentrated first on defeating the European Axis partners, this nation’s leaders interpreted it as a two-edged sword.That permitted an offensive war against Japan as well as Germany in the 1943-45 period. Like the Army and Marine Corps, the U. S. Fleet began to expand rapidly after PearlHarbor. Eventually this most powerful sea force in history provided the sinew for a Pacificoffensive in which the U. S. Army devoted at least a third of its manpower to that theater of operations, even at the height of the war in Europe.The U. S. government’s ability to team up quickly with a defense industry and mobilize to wage offensives simultaneously on two sides of the world was more than a psychological blow to Japan. It was a development Japanese leaders had not anticipated when they sent waves of bombers over Pearl Harbor.LIMITED AIMSJapan entered World War II with limited aims and with the intention of fighting a limited war. Its prime objectives were to harness the resources of Southeast Asia and much of China under a Japanese umbrella.In 1895 and 1905 Japan had seized vital objectives without soundly defeating either China or Russia. In 1941 it was time to seek domination over east Asia in a similar move.Looking back, historians agree the Japanese strategy to trigger the Pacific war foredoomed their hopes of limiting it.Japanese planners thought it necessary to destroy or neutralize U. S. striking power in the Pacific — the U. S. Fleet at Pearl Harbor and the U. S. Far East Air Force in the Philippines — before moving south and east to occupy Malaya, the Netherlands Indies, the Philippines. Wake Island. Guam, the Gilbert Isalnds, Thailand and Burma.WILD DREAMOnce in control of these areas, the Japanese intended to establish a defensive perimeter stretching from the KurileIslands south through Wake, the Marianas, the Carolines, the Marshalls and the Gilbert Islands to Rabaul on New Britain.From Rabaul the perimeter would extend west and northwest to northwestern New Guinea and encompass the Indies,Malaya, Thailand and Burma.Japanese leaders mistakenly believed the Allies would wear themselves down on fruitless frontal assaults against theperimeter and eventually settle for a negotiated peace, leaving Japan holding on to most of her conquests.GIGANTIC GAMBLEHistory knows this gigantic gamble lost. Nevertheless the» THREE R’S -at the Rohwer World War II.Margaret Morriary instructs a first-grade classRelocation Center in McGehee, Ark., early in Japanese families were forced to leave theirWest Coast homes after Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.(Pacific Citizen Archives Photo)ARMED CAMP — Japanese-Americans, many native-born Nisei, enter the relocation camp at Tule Lake, Calif. Many Japanese-Americans, more than a quarter-century later, remember them as concentration camps although few openly are bitter because of their treatment. (Pacific Citizen Archives Photo)Japanese were successful in the early stages of their plan and by early 1942 had achieved their intended perimeter.However, they had miscalculated the impact of theirsurprise attack on Pearl Harbor. It unified a divided people and aroused the United States to wage a total rather than a limited war in the Pacific.In the long run, Japan lost any chance of waging a war on its own terms.The Allies, stung by their defeats, sought no negotiated peace, only a means to strike back swiftly.In February and March, 1942, small carrier task forces of the Pacific Fleet hit the Marshalls, Wake and Marcus. Bombers from Australia began to harass the Japanese base at Rebaul.In April, U. S. B-25 bombers flying off a naval carrier delivered a hit-and-run raid on Tokyo, led by then Col. James H. Doolittle. While it dealt the Japanese capital no telling blow, the sheer audacity of the raid helped to reinforce morale in the United States.‘DOWN UNDER’Meanwhile, the Allies began to develop and fortfy a line of communications across the South Pacific to Australia and to toughen the defenses of the“down under” continent.These new bases, along with Alaska, Hawaii and India, could become the launch sites for counteroffensives against the Japanese perimeter.Japanese war leaders saw the danger in this move and knew they lacked the means to defend and hold at all points. So they tr ggered a second-phase offensive to sever Allied communications lines to Australia and widen their Pacific perimeter.TURNING POINTIn the spring of 1942 the Japanese pushed southeast from Rabaul to Guadalcanal and Tulagi in the Solomons, seized Attu and Kiska in the Aleutian Islands. But they failed in their chief effort to capture Midway Island, northwest of Hawaii.In the fierce naval and air battles of the Coral Sea and Midway in May and June, the Japanese lost the bulk of their best naval pilots and planes.Indeed. Midway was the turning point in the Pacific war,the naval the Allies a for the firstfor it redressed balance and gavestrategic initiative time.The mobility of their carrier striking forces curtailed sharply, the Japanese junked plans to chop the Allied South Pacific lifeline and turned instead to reinforcing their defense perimeter. The new strategy was to wage a protracted war of attrition in the hope of achieving a negotiated peace.It never came off, of course, and after victory at Midway the U. S. Joint Chiefs of Staff turned to an all-out offensive — one with an unexpected twist.MAJOR MISSIONInstead of spearing directly across the Central Pacific from Hawaii toward the Philippines, the Joint Chiefs on July 2 directed Allied forces in the South and Southwest Pacific to initiate a series of operations aimed at the ultimate destruction of the Japanese stronghold at Rabaul on New Britain Island. The mission: to established Allied control of the Bismarck Archipelago.Thus what was to become known as island-hopping began to take shape. The Allied offensive lumped off Aug. 7, when the U.S. 1st Marine Division landed on Guadalcanal and nearby islands in the southern Solomons. It pushed on a crisscross pattern across the Pacific, marked by such historic Allied victories as the Battle of Leyte Gulf, Gen. MacArthur’s dramatic return to the Philippines and t h e recapture of Leyte and Luzon.The crucial battles with their ultimate victories in late 1944 and early 1945 clearly signaled the prologue to Japan’s fall.While U. S. forces in the Pacific, under unified direction of the U. S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, continued their spectacular advances, the Allied effort in Southeast Asia had logged down in a mire of conflicting national purposes.The American hope early in 1942 that Chinese manpower and bases would play an important role in the defeat of Japan never was fulflled. U. S. leaders had sought to achieve great aims on the Asiatic mainland at small cost. They looked to the British in India and the Chinese, with their vast reservoirs of manpower, to carry the chief burden of ground combat.Neither proved capable of living up to American expectations. The so-called China-Burma-India campaign was perhaps the most disappointing of the Pacific war.The mid-February, 1945, invasion of Iwo Jima and the April 1, landings on Okinawa — the final Japanese outposts guarding the home islands — brought costly victories to the Allies after stubborn enemy resistance. Marines required more than a month of savage fighting to seize Iwo Jima from its Japanese defenders. The Navy, Marines and Army teamed up for perhaps the most nightmarish battle of the Pacific — the capture of Okinawa, “gateway” to Tokyo. It required three bloody months to neutralize the island and other positions in the Ryukyus.Just as Iwo Jima had a few weeks earlier, Okinawa gave the Allies both air and naval bases within easy bombing distance of Japan.The time had come for Allied leaders to decide when and how to invade the Japanese home islands. Detailed plans had been under study for months in advance of the Okinawaoperation. The tentative timetable for the invasion first of Kyushu, southernmost of the Japanese islands, then Honshu to the west, was No. 1.NEW MEXICO TEST The assault of Japan never came off. The successful detonation of the first atomic device near Alamogordo, N. M., July 16, 1945, was followed by President Truman’s decision to use the bomb on Japanese cities in an attempt to force a swift surrender and thus avoid thefinal and probably most costly phase of the Pacific war — the invasion of Japan which both she and the Allies dreaded. While Truman was movingtoward one of the most important decisions in history, Allied forces had stepped up the pace of their air and naval attack against Japan. In June andJuly, carrier-based planes of thePacific Fleet ami Army Air Forces bombers from the Marianas, Iwo Jima and Okinawa struck the Japanese islands continuously, lighting up the sky with night raids.WE SOLD OUR REFRIGERATOR FOR $7, OUR PIANO FOR $8'/Chapter Of Niseis And RelocationBv PAIL COHCOKANCopley News ServiceLOS ANGELES - The Niseicitizens of America —Japanese-Americans born in this country — have every right to call the United States thetr heme and have earned their right by energy, ingenuity, education arid respect forAmerica.But 28 years ago, tens ofthousands of Japanese-Americans—some of them still alive today and again prospering—endured indignities that the United States seldom in its history has inflicted or. friend or foe.EMOTIONAL REACTIONThe occasion was the beginning of World War II, with the emotional and military reaction to the possibility Japanese in America would collaborate withthe Land of the Rising Sun inan attack on the mainland of the United States.In the weeks following theDec. 7 attack on Pearl Harbor,many Americans in and out of government turned on the Nisei and even those Japanese who were full citizens, much as did the midwesterners attack the German-American citizens of W orld War I.The difference was that in 1942, the potential hazard of air and submarine attack on the West Coast of America was regarded as so serious that no one with Japanese blood — even those born in the United States — could be fully trusted in the eyes of U.S. authorities.BARBED WIRESThousands of Nisei and naturalized Japanese-Americancitizens were moved inland to relocation camps. Army soldiers stood guard from sentry towers and barracks were surrounded by barbed wires and fences. Guards were not cruel, but they were always visible.The fact is, however, thatdespite the loss of belongings, and face, the Nisei of the 1970s show no grudges against America,Many showed their patriotism in World War II by serving the 100th Infantry, later the 4W2nd Infantry Regiment, in Europe.One, honored for bravery in Italy, was William Kajikawa, who would become the first Nisei chosen as a head basketball coach at an American college or university. He remains a coach and athletic scout at Arizona State University atTempe.What was it like in those December and January days after the Japanese attacked I'earl Harbor?HARDSHIPSMrs, Mary Diltz, then Mary Kitano, remembers the year she spent as a child at one such desert camp — and the hardships her family suffered.“There was always an Army watch, with men at towers on the four corners of the camp,” she said, “and there were searchlights, There were no air conditioners, but the adults hung burlap awnings over the windows in the summer and wet them down with water.” The temperature in the spring, summer and early fall often exceeded 100 degrees.For native-born Japanese-Americans with a deep loyalty to this country, there was afrustrating relationship with the more bitter natives of Japan, as Saburo Kido, former president of the Japanese American Citizens League, recalls.QUITE A CHANGEKido, still practicing law at the age of 68 in Los Angeles, was assigned to Poston, one of the largest relocation camp complexes located on the desert near Parker, Ariz.“There were about 20,000 people in all, 10,000 in a single camp area,” the attorney said. “We were free to move within the camp, but there were military guards on the highways. The apartments were 10 by 20 feet. For a family of five used to an eight-room house in San Francisco, it was quite a change,”Because of his stature as a leader of the Nisei, pro-Americans, Kido had a difficult time. He was attacked by seven persons in his camp apartment and spent one month in the hospital. “In February of 1943, we were permitted to go to Salt Lake City,” he recalled.There are approximately 350,000 Nisei in America today, most of them having returned to the West Coast where some still are trying to recover millions of dollars for cash and property seized by the U.S. government.CRIME RATE LOWMany have prospered. The crime rate is low among Japanese-Americans, whose children have no idea of the bitter feelings of World War II.Mrs. Diltz, a successful news-woman, remembers the desperate few days her family had before being transferred toa relocation camp. “We sold our refrigerator for $7 and our piano for $8,” she remembers.Atty, Kido says there is “quite a bit of interest” among the post-World War II Nisei about the days of World War II, when, in February, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order authorizing the evacuation of more than 100,000 Japanesefrom Washington, Oregon, California and the southern tliird of Arizona.TOUGH TIMESOne Japanese, a successfulelectrical contractor in SanFrancisco, recalls that “we were hustled off to the camps without an explanation. We all knew things were going to be tough and we took things with what we call ‘shikatagonai’ — realistic resignation.”
Newspaper Details
Big Spring Daily Herald
Big Spring, Texas, US
Wed, Aug 12, 1970
Page 4
Full Page
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USA 03 Apr 2019
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