12

Lessons from the Pacific

THE PRESIDENT DOESN’T KNOW me and besides, I’m no New Dealer,” Captain John McCrea had protested his appointment to be Mr. Roosevelt’s new naval aide. The secretary of the navy, Frank Knox, had laughed, telling McCrea that “FDR needs some of our kind”—Republicans—“to give him support!”¹

The President’s ability to draw people into his orbit was legendary—and effective. “Most cordial—offered me a cigarette and remarked: ‘Up in Dutchess County I have a friend by the name of John McCrea Livingstone. By any chance are you related to him?’”

McCrea was “astounded that the Pres. of the U.S. has time to look up my name in register. Flattered a bit too,” the captain confessed. “Invites me to his birthday party. I am completely charmed by him.”²

The Commander in Chief appeared relaxed and confident, despite the worrying reports McCrea brought him each morning at breakfast—his coffee served in a “very large” cup that “must hold as much as four ordinary cups.” He seemed to know “more naval officers by their nicknames,” from his earlier days as assistant secretary of the navy and later as president, than McCrea knew as a serving officer.³

McCrea was also stunned by how astute the President was, behind his mask of easy affability. “Had luncheon with President at his desk,” he recorded—“cream spinach soup, veal on toast, mushrooms, potatoes, asparagus tips, double ice cream and fresh raspberries. Told me some remarkable things about MacArthur—I feel flattered at the confidence!”⁴

Roosevelt’s huge, handsome head seemed to McCrea to be like an intelligence-gathering machine—putting people at ease, then encouraging them to be frank with him. One example was the way he asked to see the recently fired Admiral Tommy Hart, MacArthur’s former naval counterpart in the Philippines, on his return from Batavia, following his brief but tragic stint as Allied naval commander in chief in the Southwest Pacific, serving under the supreme commander, General Sir Archibald Wavell.

At Wavell’s request, Hart had been relieved of his command on the grounds he was “a defeatist”—a view with which Hart had not demurred. “They don’t like to hear anything which is not optimistic,” Hart had noted in his diary. “I think their idea is that frank statements which openly express something which is unpalatable smacks too much of defeatism—and in that they may well be much nearer right than I.”⁵ His “blunt fashion” realism⁶ had, however, proved all too accurate—his successor, the senior Dutch officer, Admiral Conrad Helfrich, subsequently lost virtually the entire Allied fleet in the South Pacific.⁷

On March 10, 1942, the “defeatist” was “convoyed” at the President’s request into the Oval Office by Captain McCrea, accompanied by Navy Secretary Knox and Admiral Ernest King, commander in chief of the U.S. Navy. As Hart wrote in his diary that night, “F.D.R. greeted me as ‘Tommy,’ turned on all his charm, etc. He asked some searching questions, particularly as regards MacArthur’s affairs and therein indicated that he was not sold on Douglas’ ‘masterful defense’ to the extent the public is.”⁸

“In the public eye,” Hart jocularly noted, “MacA[rthur] now stands as the best soldier, say, since Napoleon!!” but at the White House, Roosevelt was having none of it—in fact, the President “simply astounded me by saying that Gen. Marshall had assured him”—thanks to MacArthur’s overoptimistic signals from Manila to the War Department—“that the Army was ready in the Philippines on 1 Dec [1941]!! That otherwise he, F.D.R. could have held the Japs off, say, another three months” by spinning out negotiations. Hart was incredulous. “That is difficult to swallow,” he noted, “but the President is the man who said it.”⁹

In part the President was trying to console the admiral. Yet what most interested the Commander in Chief now, as he talked to Hart, were the lessons to be learned about the war in the Far East.

It was in this respect that the difference between Roosevelt and Churchill—indeed between Roosevelt and Hitler—was revealing, as the President listened to the admiral’s analysis of the war in the East thus far.

 

Hart’s report from the Pacific was sobering. The admiral had spent the several weeks it had taken him to return by sea and air to the United States pondering and analyzing recent military events.

“The man-in-the-street must have been tremendously surprised when the Japs attacked—probably could not possibly imagine that such a small and poor country would have the temerity to attack BIG US,” he’d reflected in his diary, “to say nothing of taking on all of our Allies in the same breath. Moreover I wonder if our Rulers, in general, had anything like a true estimate of the danger of a war with Japan.” For his part Hart had assumed that war with Japan “was entirely evident to responsible people in Washington. I wonder if it was? Well, what must not have been evident was that if said war did come, in the Pacific, we Allies would find ourselves in a war with a First Rate Power; 1st class in a military way, at least. I guess some of us realized that; we didn’t guess that, even with the enormous advantage which an all-out surprise attack gives, we should find Mr. Jap anywhere near as high grade as he has been thus far. We Americans in general may have realized the imminence of this war,” he’d summed up, “but thought that if it came it would be with a second or even third rate enemy.”¹⁰

Listening to Hart’s blunt American appraisal, given before Secretary Knox and Admiral King as well, the President could have taken offence—but he didn’t. It was clear Hart was a professional and a realist. The war in the East was currently being lost because Allied military leaders—and their commanders in the field—had been unable to match the professionalism of a “First Rate” enemy. And here, Hart’s analysis proved spellbinding to its witness.

“And now: lacking almost everything in the way of natural resources, hampered by so very many other disadvantages, after four years of an exhausting war in China, how is it that the Japs have set us so back on our heels in this theater of the war?” Hart had asked himself—“all in less than three months? The advantage of surprise of course but the fact remains that the Japs have done everything very well indeed and have repeatedly accomplished what we of the white race said it was impossible for them to do. How have they done it? Certain wise men have long been saying that the worth, strength and power of a country lies in the quality of its people. Well, in a military sense, the Japs are a strong people. Whatever the basis for it, the Jap’s patriotism is first class. No race excels them in willingness to get killed or mutilated in war. Moreover, during all the grind of training for war, they have not had to be hired by high pay, good feeding, ‘aids to morale,’ etc. They have gone on, in peace and war, with a minimum of everything that we have to have to make life endurable. And they come to the ‘push of pike’ full of fight, hardy, tough, enduring, almost fanatical in courage and, thus far at least, equipped with the material they need for the task, with sufficient skill in its use and—seemingly—under adequate leadership. Now it has happened!”

“This war, in the western Pacific: it is an offensive war,” the admiral reflected, “being the long talked about Southern Advance, or the solution of their national difficulties, which the Jap Navy has advocated for some years. It is the variety of war known as amphibious war—named thus I think by [the] British. My recent experience with the British Army didn’t indicate that their generals ever use the term very much or that they understand that kind of war, as much as one would expect. I know that in our own Army there has been no understanding of it, and I have known a general or two who had never heard the term used. One, even though it was immediately confronting him,” Hart added with sarcasm—a reference to General MacArthur in the first days of the Japanese invasion of Luzon.

“It is a risky variety—Amphibious War—but the advantage of surprise goes with it. And this war began as a surprise.”

Hart correctly assumed that the “Jap Navy is in Supreme Command of this war,” since it was “what nationalism would dictate—and the Southern Advance idea is theirs.” But this was no old-fashioned independent Japanese navy, he noted—it was the very acme of combined services operating in the field, not simply at a distant headquarters. And the Japanese combination of those services began with air.

“We know that the control of the air, over the war theater, has been gained and exercised by the Jap Navy air. And that control is what has defeated all the defensive power which the Allies could get into the fight. The Japs know the value of the Ships-Plus-Planes combination, handled under one controlling command and without any of all those restrictive limitations which ham-strung the British Navy and so badly hampered ours. Moreover the Japs were prepared for an Amphibious War to the Enth [degree] because they had available a large population habituated to sea-going on all kinds of vessels. And a considerable part of those people knew the waters of the ABDA [American, British, Dutch, Australian] area, including all the harbors and surroundings, because of earning their living therein, as fishermen, small traders, etc.” They had studied not only war, then, but the terrain and waters in which they would fight it. “Their expeditions could always be supplied with adequate pilots and guides, and their air service could always tell the Jap leaders what their enemies were doing.”

Aspect by aspect, from advanced weaponry (“The Japs are copyists . . . they codify and simplify”) to war supplies, Hart had pondered the extraordinary way the Japanese had developed their war machine—and how they had applied it to the business of amphibious invasion. “It is to be noted that the Japs have landed expedition after expedition from ships directly on to open beaches and that these landings have included all the equipment, munitions and supplies needed to win campaigns in Luzon and Malaya at will,” as well as “to seize many other points well scattered over the ABDA area.” Once ashore, Japanese Army troops could count on naval supply and air support—but showed their own resourcefulness, too. “In the Malaya campaign the expedition fought southward over 400 miles of rough country, during the rainy season. From what I have seen of our own forces, I would estimate that expeditions having similar tasks would require loading in improved harbors—and need a vast amount of ‘Transport’ to maintain supply lines as they advanced. So why the difference?” he asked pointedly.

Hart’s answer was revealing. For one thing, the Japanese soldier was able and willing to fight with only minimal resources: “he goes out, into the field with his weapons and 5lbs of cooked rice, (he doesn’t worry about where the next meal after that is coming from—and no one worries for him), treks, and then fights bravely. He also fights skillfully, whereas we are to suppose that the troops which the Japs have been defeating were really poor troops.” For another, he was backed by applied air power of amazing efficiency. The Japanese, he noted, had “gained quite full control of the air, and have taken it by defeating some hundreds in all of British, American, and Dutch planes. Said defeat has been more or less in detail, with the Japs producing superiority of numbers at different points of contact but with all due allowances for everything—including the fact that the Allied Air has comprised no less than six different organizations—it must be regretfully admitted that the white airmen and their planes have not demonstrated superiority over the Japs. I repeat—most evidence indicates that it is mostly Jap Navy air which we have been contending against. The Jap observation, including photography, must have been very good. Many of us have seen that their bombing has been very high grade indeed; and their strafing has likewise been very good. As for fighters: the ‘Flying Fortresses’ and the ‘Catalina’ have done very well in carrying on in the presence of the Jap fighters. But the results gained by the British and American fighters—of which there must have been 200–300 in the area—have not demonstrated any superiority,” he recorded candidly, noting that “relatively few of the Jap pilots, or other airmen, are officers. Neither are they found to be of any particular education,” being pilots largely selected “from the enlisted ranks. So much for one specialty as regards skill”—and he duly noted exactly “the same in Japanese land and seagoing forces.”¹¹

Hart’s conclusion was thus uncompromisingly tart. The Allies had, as yet, “not defeated” or even turned the enemy back “at any point. At present,” he’d noted, “it does not promise that we can prevent the Japs from taking the rest of the N.E.I. [Netherlands East Indies] or relieve Corregidor in time. Current danger is that they will also take Rangoon and cut the communication to Free China. Yes we got into a war with an eastern Asiatic power that is First Class in a military sense. It has now in its control, (or nearly so), riches sufficient to make it enduringly first class in an economic way,” unless “interfered with and driven out from recent gains. That means a long war. Not a cheerful prospect but we must not forget that the enemy won’t look so good when he in his turn is surprised, loses the initiative, and gets set back on his heels.”¹²

Hart’s prediction had proven all too accurate—in fact the Japanese “liberated” Rangoon the very day he met with the President.

 

Listening to Tommy Hart, it was easy for Roosevelt to see why Wavell had asked for him to be relieved—Hart himself expecting he would be demoted from a four-star admiral to a two-star rear admiral for his alleged defeatism. Even Admiral Stark, the outgoing chief of naval operations, had told Hart on arrival in New York “that I was to go on up home and rest up,” which “fitted my desires perfectly as I’m decidedly travel-worn,” Hart had noted in his diary.

It was Hart’s wife, Caroline, who had disagreed. “Not at all,” she had declared. “She says the world then will think that I’m sick and senile. That whatever I’ve brought back with me is hot right now and that I should get to Washington with it forthwith”—in fact, the next day. “She shows me that I can well give head to the subject—and I shall,” Hart had written.¹³ Scenting a story, the Washington Post published a headline: “Let Hart Speak!” and there arose some concern in the administration that Hart, a die-hard anti–New Dealer and Republican with strong opinions on America’s march to war, would prove an embarrassment to the President.

The reverse proved, however, to be the case. Roosevelt’s insistence on hearing Hart’s side of the story at the White House, unadorned and in person, became a turning point in Roosevelt’s conception of the war. The President’s natural charm, his use of Hart’s first name, Tommy, and his penetrating questions about the Pacific and about MacArthur in particular, not only won over Hart—who became one of the President’s most loyal Republican supporters—but gave the President what he most needed at a critical juncture of the war: the truth.

Following this interview, the President ordered that Admiral Hart keep his four stars; arranged that the admiral appear the next day at the President’s own press conference; and insisted Secretary Knox use the admiral to crisscross America, speaking to newspapers and professional organizations, in order to tell the American people the unvarnished verity.¹⁴ It was not enough, the President recognized, for the United States simply to ramp up its output as the arsenal of democracy. Just as Hart had predicted in his diary, Rangoon had fallen, as would the Netherlands East Indies—Hart’s successor, the bombastic Dutch naval commander Admiral Helfrich, wholly unable to compete with Japanese naval control of the air and Japan’s seagoing skills.

Lack of cohesion between the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Navy, and the U.S. Army, as well as the inevitable problems of inter-Allied coalition warfare, suggested that Hart was not only right about a long war in the Pacific, but that America must address the issues that the admiral had raised; issues that went to the core of modern warfare itself. The U.S. high command would have to examine, study, and learn the lessons of modern war against an indoctrinated, cohesive, professional, and skilled opponent. Those advocating that the U.S. Air Force be split apart from the U.S. Army, as had been the case with the RAF and the British Army, must be stopped, at least during the war, the President was adamant—for it was vital that growing potential U.S. air power be used to support U.S. ground forces effectively. Naval ones, too. And with better planes.

Admiral Harold Stark, the President had already decided the day before, would be sent to London to concert inter-Allied naval relations there, and would not be replaced as chief of naval operations, or CNO. Instead Admiral King would now take over Stark’s responsibilities, as well as remaining commander in chief of the U.S. Navy. After lunch with the navy secretary, Hart gave a talk to a “jam-packed” meeting of the General Board of the U.S. Navy in New York—including Admirals King and Stark, and “all Bureau Chiefs and an Asst. Sec. or two. I talked about fifteen minutes along narrative lines and then twice as long on what I called the lessons which I had learned. In that I pulled no punches, was plenty critical and, as I said in the body of it, I set forth some quite revolutionary ideas”—ideas that would back the “general changes which King and his entourage would like to make, and may in general have helped toward some realism in certain respects wherein we have long been much too theoretical.”

With Stark removed from the helm, it would be up to King’s legendary “blowtorch” leadership, the President had decided, to kick the U.S. Navy into the mid-twentieth century. For the first time in American history, the head of the U.S. Navy would be answerable directly and only to his commander in chief, the President. He would be urged not only to ramp up naval aviation and order better interservice cooperation with U.S. Army and U.S. Army Air Forces, but to expand, develop, and employ the U.S. Marine Corps, a division of the U.S. Navy, in the same way as the Japanese were doing: as the spearhead of modern amphibious invasion forces.

It was not for nothing that the President had spent six years as assistant secretary of the navy—however much Hitler, who had been a messenger in the trenches of the Western Front in World War I, derided him. With Admiral King at his side, the President was determined as U.S. commander in chief to refashion the U.S. Navy into a force the Japanese would learn to fear.