The Pacific War - William B. Hopkins

The Pacific War is concerned largely with the major policy and decision-makers in the United States during World War 2, both civilian and military. The various campaigns in the Pacific are discussed, but primarily in terms of how they did or did not fit into the larger American strategy for fighting Japan.

The U.S.’s overarching approach was detailed in what was called Plan Orange, and it recognized that Japan was intensely reliant on imported raw materials to fuel its military engine. To that end, the idea was to ultimately use naval might to cut off Japan’s shipping, so that they could eventually be starved into submission. In practice, this is where the island-hopping strategy they employed came in, as the U.S. focused more on establishing suitable airfields and anchorages than in fighting the Japanese Army. Establishing air superiority would enable the U.S. to protect its fleet, and the two forces together could then wipe out the Japanese navy and merchant shipping. At which point, Japan’s army would be largely irrelevant. Indeed, at the end of the war, much of Japan’s army was not dead or captured, but still in possession of various islands (and parts of China). But they had no way to get to someplace where they could make a difference in the outcome.

It’s not as pat as all that. There are setbacks, and a lot of butting heads between the various Joint Chiefs and their subordinates. Douglas MacArthur comes off poorly in particular, always complaining he’s not getting enough support, always undercutting the Navy’s progress to the media, at times, outright defying his superiors. But Hopkins points out how MacArthur’s popularity with the public, thanks to apparently his natural charisma and willingness to take credit for everything, made him relatively bulletproof. Any criticism of him would surely be leaked to the media as more evidence of the FDR administration not supporting the great war hero.

There isn’t a whole lot in here that was new to me, though I thought Hopkins did a fairly good job incorporating the home front aspect of things into the larger picture. At the end of the book, Hopkins has to address Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bombs. He seems to agree that it was unnecessary, that the U.S. had successfully carried off Plan Orange, that the B-29s were wiping out much of Japan’s industrial capability, and that the higher-ups in the Japanese administration and military were well aware they could not win. He does note, however, that there were certain elements that believed if they just refused to surrender, the United States would back down. And he observes that with Germany defeated, much of the public was ready for the war to be over. None of the soldiers who had survived up to that point wanted to be one of the last men killed, and their loved ones agreed. I have no idea how long Japan could have held out, but if things grew bad enough, would the U.S. have lost its nerve on the siege?

Beyond that, there were other elements who welcomed an invasion by the U.S., even though they expected to lose. They thought it would be grand for the whole country to essentially go up in flames in a final battle. There’s not telling if those people would have been able to muster any control, or if they could have gotten the citizenry to go along with them when push meets shove, but it seems like a factor worth considering. Then there’s the fact, that until the Japanese surrendered (or the U.S. gave up trying to make them surrender), the B-29s would have kept up their bombings raids. Some of the worst (or most successful depending on your perspective) had already killed more people than either A-bomb would. Curtis LeMay, who was in charge of the bomber squadron doing most of that work, had told his superiors he thought he’d run out of targets to bomb by the beginning of November. That would still be an additional three months of raining death on Japan. Does it matter if the heat that kills you is from an incendiary bomb or an atomic warhead? The difference seems academic to me, but the lingering radiation could tilt things, though it’s hardly relevant to the people who are already dead. Of course, maybe the siege works before then, but I can’t be sure of that. 

'A review of newspaper clippings during the first and last months of the Okinawa campaign would lead the average reader to believe that the U.S. Marines, rather than the U.S. Army, were in the majority, which in reality was not the case. Marine infantry did have one advantage over army troops. The marines had better close air support. The Tactical Air Control Party (TACP) unit on the ground had a marine aviator who knew best how to communicate with the pilots in the air so that close air support could be brought in much closer to advancing troops without fear of inflicting harm on your own men.'