America’s struggle for the Pacific

Press, 5 March 1988, Page 23

America’s struggle for the Pacific

Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan. By Ronald H. Spector. Penguin, 19871 572 pp. 519.95. (Reviewed by Alan Conway) This is one of the best single-volume histories of the war in the Pacific yet to appear although, as rhe title suggests, the story is told primarily from an American point of view. It is told, however, quite dispassionately and it skilfully assesses the [triumphs and the tragedies of the extraordinary war of attrition that rangeld across thousands of kilometres of ocean from Hawaii ; to Hiroshima between 1941 and 1945. • j The author very wisely [does not advance remorselessly with his readers from beach-head to beachhead, which would leave them battlefatigued and exhausted with Retail. He breaks ! up 1 the narratiye with interesting chapters on China, India, Australia, and Burma, and [ the role which cryptanalysis and intelligence gathering played in the struggle.

Despite the fact that in the pre-war years, both the United States and Japan had prepared contingency plans in the event "of war breaking out between the two countries, the attack on Pearl Harbour was, to sayj the least, a little unexpected and initially created considerable panic. This was exemplified by a report sent back from: Honolulu to Washington that a dog on Dahu was barking in Morse code to a Japanese submarine offshore.: The: American conviction that thev were dealing with a treacherous enemy of the human rattlesnake variety was reinforced by the fall of the Philippines and the atrocities of the Bataan death-march. The United States rapidly discarded the Battle of Jutland big battleship scenario and concentratec on airpower and aircraft carriers combined with Marine and Army assault units. The . ultimate subjugation of the. Japanese was achieved by a twopronged attack- across the Pacific under the divided commands of

General MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz, which could have been a blueprint for disaster from interservice rivalry. • Spector accepts and indeed reinforces recent, reassessments of MacArthur as the egomaniac "Dugout Doug” who saw the Pacific war as a stage upon which to strut. Eventually, he would make his celebrated return to the Philippines, but the:cost would be high in military and civilian casualties occasioned in large part by MacArthur’s errors of judgment and refusal to face reality. The conditions under which Army, Marine and naval forces fought were unparalleled anywhere else in the world. Fighting in jungles that teemed with! disease bearing ' insects and malignant micro-organisms subjected all I combatants to dengue fever, bubonic plague, typhus and malaria. In New Guinea, for example, \ men fought and died in such primitive conditions that the "head” at the Finschafen naval base, which had mahogany seats, became a show-piece flyirig its'own special pennant. The author provides in addition to first-class accounts of the actual fighting some sparkling insights into other areas. In China, [ the much vaunted Chiang Kai Shek was more concerned with maintaining his position against the war-lords than with fighting the Japanese. "Vinegar Joel’ Stilwell, the American general charged with the task of beefing up the i combat efficiency, of Chinese Army units, complained acidly to Washington that he was so starved of supplies that it was like being asked to “manure a ten-acre field with sparrow shitl” [

India proved to be a strange: land for! American servicemen —■ “as suitable for rest and recreation as Brooklyn was for a ski-resort.” Millionaires in comparison with the poverty stricken Indians, Americans quickly adopted the attitudes of the British Raj, at this time under Lord Linlithgow, described here as “an amiable dinosaur.”

Australia was the country where American troops felt most at home, although Negro troops were not made too welcome. To the credit of the Australian Labour Party, however, the secretary demanded of MacArthur that he eliminate unjust discrimination against black troops by white G.l.s. MacArthur [ loftily assured the Australians : that there was no discrimination, despite the fact that near race riots between white and black Americans were occurring in Sydney. A chapter on cryptologists and photo-reconnaissance analysts working behind the; lines is a look at a neglected aspect of the war in the Pacific. Although hard to credit, Spector maintains that two New Zealand corvettes, Kiwi and Moa, were responsible for recovering invaluable code-books for cryptanalysis from a Japanese submarine 1 that they sank off Guadalcanal.

Finally, the author tackles the pros and cbns of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. His conclusions are that the attack on Pearl Harbour, atrocities in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps, kamikaze attacks, bloody, last-ditch resistance on Saipan, Okinawa, and Iwo Jima (summed up in the Japanese “Courageous Battle Vow” to kill ten of the enemy before dying),- the likelihood of a million casualties in an attack on Japan itself, all contributed to the certainty that the atom bomb would be used. In fact, it is likely that Truman would have been forever vilified if he had not used the bomb. This book demonstrates historical scholarship of high quality. It is a pity, therefore, that the author’s publishers have short-changed him by inserting a pathetic little map of the South Pacific that truncates Australia and entirely omits New Zealand. In a work of this magnitude at least half-a-dozen detailed maps are essential to keep up with the diverse military and naval operations, i All in all, however, this book represents good value for money.