The Origins of the Pacific War

• Although the US joined the war in 1941, the path to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor began much earlier

  • In 1931, a small explosion tore up railroad tracks controlled by the Japanese-owned South Manchuria Railway in the Chinese province of Manchuria

  • The explosion started a skirmish between the Chinese and Japanese which ended with all of Manchuria firmly under Japanese control

  • This incident (known to the Chinese as the September 18 Incident and to the Japanese as the Manchurian Incident) sparked a war that would last thirteen years and claim the lives of over thirty-five million people

• Chinese leaders Chiang Kai-shek and Zhang Xueliang asked the League of Nations for assistance against Japan

  • The United States supported the Chinese protest, proclaiming the Stimson Doctrine in January 1932, which refused to recognize any state established as a result of Japanese aggression

• Japan isolated itself from the world

  • Its diplomatic isolation empowered radical military leaders who could point to Japanese military success in Manchuria and compare it to the diplomatic failures of the civilian government

  • In the military’s eyes, the conquest of China would not only provide for Japan’s industrial needs, but it would also secure Japanese supremacy in East Asia

• The Japanese launched a full-scale invasion of China

  • Americans read about the brutal fighting in China, but the United States lacked both the will and the military power to oppose the Japanese invasion

  • After the gut-wrenching carnage of World War I, many Americans retreated toward isolationism by opposing any involvement in the conflagrations burning in Europe and Asia

• The war eventually mired in stalemate

The Origins of the European War

• Across the globe in Europe, the continent’s major powers were still struggling with the aftereffects of World War I when the global economic crisis spiraled much of the continent into chaos

  • Germany’s Weimar Republic collapsed with the economy, and out of the ashes emerged Adolf Hitler’s National Socialists—the Nazis

    • Championing German racial supremacy, fascist government, and military expansionism, Hitler rose to power and became chancellor in 1933 and the Nazis conquered German institutions

    • Hitler repudiated the punitive damages and strict military limitations of the Treaty of Versailles, rebuilt the German military and navy, and reoccupied regions lost during the war

• When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, Hitler and Benito Mussolini—the fascist Italian leader who had risen to power in the 1920s—intervened for the Spanish fascists, toppling the communist Spanish Republican Party

  • Britain and France stood by warily and began to rebuild their militaries, anxious in the face of a renewed Germany but still unwilling to draw Europe into another bloody war

• In 1938, Germany annexed Austria and set its sights on the Sudetenland, a large, ethnically German area of Czechoslovakia

  • Britain and France, alarmed but still anxious to avoid war, agreed (without Czechoslovakia’s input) that Germany could annex the region in return for a promise to stop all future German aggression

  • In March 1939, Hitler took the rest of Czechoslovakia and began to make demands on Poland

• Hitler signed a secret agreement — the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact — with the Soviet Union that coordinated the splitting of Poland between the two powers and promised nonaggression thereafter

• The European war began when the German Wehrmacht invaded Poland on September 1, 1939

• German doctrine emphasized the use of tanks, planes, and motorized infantry to concentrate forces, smash front lines, and wreak havoc behind the enemy’s defenses

  • It was called Blitzkrieg, or lightning war

• But in May 1940, Hitler launched his attack into Western Europe, with France not lasting much longer than Poland

• With France under heel, Hitler turned to Britain

  • Operation Sea Lion (the planned German invasion of the British Isles) required air superiority over the English Channel

  • The German Luftwaffe fought the Royal Air Force (RAF) for control of the skies

  • Despite having fewer planes, British pilots won the so-called Battle of Britain, saving the islands from immediate invasion

    • Afterward, Hitler began the Blitz, a bombing campaign against cities and civilians

• The Blitz ended in June 1941, when Hitler, confident that Britain was temporarily out of the fight, launched Operation Barbarossa and invaded the Soviet Union, breaking the 1939 nonaggression pact in the process

  • However, the plan to use the Blitzkrieg to break Russia before winter failed since Russia was too big and the Soviets were willing to sacrifice millions to stop the fascist advance

The United States and the European War

• While Hitler marched across Europe, the Japanese continued their war in the Pacific

• Japanese military planners, believing that American intervention was inevitable, planned a coordinated Pacific offensive to neutralize the United States and other European powers and provide time for Japan to complete its conquests and fortify its positions

  • On the morning of December 7, 1941, the Japanese launched a surprise attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

  • Japanese military planners hoped to destroy enough battleships and aircraft carriers to cripple American naval power for years

  • Twenty-four hundred Americans were killed in the attack

• American isolationism fell after Pearl Harbor

  • Within a week of Pearl Harbor, the United States had declared war on the entire Axis, turning two previously separate conflicts into an actual world war

• On the day the American army entered Rome as they invaded Italy, American, British and Canadian forces launched Operation Overlord, the long-awaited invasion of France

  • D-Day, as it became popularly known, was the largest amphibious assault in history

  • Although progress across France was much slower than hoped for, Paris was liberated roughly two months later

• German counterattacks in the east failed to dislodge the Soviet advance, destroying any last chance Germany might have had to regain the initiative

  • The Soviet Union reached Germany in January 1945, and the Americans crossed the Rhine in March

• In late April American and Soviet troops met at the Elbe while the Soviets pushed relentlessly by Stalin to reach Berlin first and took the capital city in May, days after Hitler and his high command had died by suicide in a city bunker

• It was decided that Germany would be divided into pieces according to the current Allied occupation, with Berlin likewise divided, pending future elections

The United States and the Japanese War

• As Americans celebrated V-E (Victory in Europe) Day, they redirected their full attention to the still-raging Pacific War

• After Pearl Harbor, the American-controlled Philippine archipelago fell to Japan

  • After running out of ammunition and supplies, the garrison of American and Filipino soldiers surrendered

  • The prisoners were marched eighty miles to their prisoner-of-war camp without food, water, or rest

    • Ten thousand died on the Bataan Death March

• In the summer of 1942, American naval victories at the Battle of the Coral Sea and the aircraft carrier duel at the Battle of Midway crippled Japan’s Pacific naval operations

• To dislodge Japan’s hold over the Pacific, the U.S. military began island hopping: attacking island after island, bypassing the strongest but seizing those capable of holding airfields to continue pushing Japan out of the region

• Estimates vary, but given the tenacity of Japanese soldiers fighting on islands far from their homes, some officials estimated that an invasion of the Japanese mainland could cost half a million American casualties and perhaps millions of Japanese civilians

  • Government leaders and military officials would later cite these numbers to justify their use of atomic weapons

• Early in the war, fearing that the Germans might develop an atomic bomb, the U.S. government launched the Manhattan Project, a hugely expensive, ambitious program to harness nuclear energy and create a single weapon capable of leveling entire cities

  • Americans successfully exploded the world’s first nuclear device, Trinity, in New Mexico in July 1945

• Two more bombs (Fat Man and Little Boy) were built and detonated over two Japanese cities in August

• Hiroshima was hit on August 6th and Nagasaki followed on August 9th

• Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Japan on August 15

Soldiers Experiences

• Almost eighteen million men served in World War II

  • Volunteers rushed to join the military after Pearl Harbor, but the majority (over ten million) were drafted into service

  • Soldiers and Marines bore the brunt of on-the-ground combat

    • During World War II, the Air Force was still a branch of the U.S. Army, and soldiers served in the ground and air crews

    • World War II saw the institutionalization of massive bombing campaigns against cities and industrial production

On the ground, conditions varied:

• Soldiers in Europe endured freezing winters, impenetrable French hedgerows, Italian mountain ranges, and dense forests

  • Furthermore, Germans fought with a Western mentality familiar to Americans

• Soldiers in the Pacific endured heat and humidity, monsoons, jungles, and tropical diseases

  • The views of the Japanese differed from Americans

    • For example, Americans could understand surrender as prudent; many Japanese soldiers saw it as cowardice

  • Moreover, American soldiers and American military leadership brought their historical anti-Asian prejudices to bear against the Japanese

Wartime Economy

• The war converted American factories to wartime production, reawakened Americans’ economic might, armed Allied belligerents and the American armed forces, and effectively pulled America out of the Great Depression

• Roosevelt’s New Deal had eased the worst of the Depression, but the economy still limped its way forward into the 1930s

  • Then, Europe fell into war, and, despite its isolationism, Americans were glad to sell the Allies arms and supplies

• After Pearl Harbor, the United States drafted the economy into war service

  • Governmental entities such as the War Production Board and the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion managed economic production for the war effort and economic output exploded

  • The government’s massive intervention annihilated unemployment and propelled growth

  • However, military production came at the expense of the civilian consumer economy

• The Roosevelt administration urged citizens to save their earnings or buy war bonds to prevent inflation

• With the economy booming and twenty million American workers placed into military service, unemployment virtually disappeared

• With factory work proliferating across the country and agricultural labor experiencing severe labor shortages, the presidents of Mexico and the United States signed an agreement in July 1942 to bring the first group of legally contracted workers to California

  • The Bracero Program survived the war, enshrined in law until the 1960s when the United States liberalized its immigration laws

    • The program was a mixed blessing

Women and World War II

• President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his administration had encouraged all able-bodied American women to help the war effort

  • He considered the role of women in the war critical for an American victory, and the public expected women to assume various functions to free men for active military service

• World War II brought unprecedented labor opportunities for American women

  • Industrial labor, an occupational sphere dominated by men, shifted in part to women for the duration of wartime mobilization

  • The iconic illustrated image of Rosie the Riveter, a muscular woman dressed in coveralls with her hair in a kerchief and inscribed with the phrase We Can Do It!, came to stand for female factory labor during the war

• For women who elected not to work, many volunteer opportunities presented themselves

  • The American Red Cross, the largest charitable organization in the nation, encouraged women to volunteer with local city chapters

• Military service was another option for women who wanted to join the war effort

  • Over 350,000 women served in several all-female units of the military branches

• Jim Crow segregation in both the civilian and military sectors remained a problem for Black women who wanted to join the war effort

  • Even after President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802 in 1941, supervisors who hired Black women still often relegated them to the most menial tasks on factory floors

• And for all of the postwar celebration of Rosie the Riveter, after the war ended the men returned and most women voluntarily left the workforce or lost their jobs

  • Meanwhile, former military women faced a litany of obstacles in obtaining veteran’s benefits during their transition to civilian life

Race and World War II

• World War II affected nearly every aspect of life in the United States, and America’s racial relationships were not immune

  • African Americans, Mexicans and Mexican Americans, Jews, and Japanese Americans were profoundly impacted

• In early 1941, months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the most prominent Black trade union in the nation, made headlines by threatening President Roosevelt with a march on Washington, D.C.

  • In exchange for Randolph calling off the march, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, the Fair Employment Practice in Defense Industries Act, banning racial and religious discrimination in defense industries and establishing the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) to monitor defense industry hiring practices

  • While the armed forces remained segregated throughout the war, and the FEPC had limited influence, the order showed that the federal government could stand against discrimination

• While Black Americans served in the armed forces (though they were segregated), on the home front they became riveters and welders, rationed food and gasoline, and bought victory bonds

• The Double V campaign called on African Americans to fight two wars: the war against Nazism and fascism abroad and the war against racial inequality at home

Japanese Internment

• Many Americans had to navigate American prejudice, and America’s entry into the war left foreign nationals from the belligerent nations in a precarious position

  • The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) targeted many on suspicions of disloyalty for detainment, hearings, and possible internment under the Alien Enemy Act

  • On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the removal of any persons from designated “exclusion zones” — which ultimately covered nearly a third of the country — at the discretion of military commanders

    • People of Japanese descent, both immigrants and American citizens, were detained and placed under the custody of the War Relocation Authority, the city agency that supervised their relocation to internment

      • Over ten thousand German nationals and a smaller number of Italian nationals were interned at various times in the United States during World War II, but American policies disproportionately targeted Japanese-descended populations

US Response to the Holocaust

• Initially, American officials expressed little official concern for Nazi persecution

  • At the first signs of trouble in the 1930s, the State Department and most U.S. embassies did relatively little to aid European Jews

    • The United States turned away countless Jewish refugees who requested asylum in the United States

• Anti-Semitism still permeated the United States

  • Even if Roosevelt wanted to do more, he judged the political price of increasing immigration quotas as too high

  • In 1938 and 1939, the U.S. Congress debated the Wagner-Rogers Bill, an act to allow twenty thousand German-Jewish children into the United States

    • First lady Eleanor Roosevelt endorsed the measure, but the president remained publicly silent

    • The bill was opposed by roughly two-thirds of the American public and was defeated

• Knowledge of the full extent of the Holocaust was slow in coming

  • When the war began, American officials, including Roosevelt, doubted initial reports of industrial death camps

  • But even when they conceded their existence, officials pointed to their genuinely limited options

    • The most plausible response for the U.S. military was to bomb either the camps or the railroads leading to them, but those options were rejected by those who argued that it would do little to stop the deportations, would distract from the war effort, and could cause casualties among concentration camp prisoners

• Late in the war, secretary of the treasury Henry Morgenthau pushed through major changes in American policy

  • In 1944, he formed the War Refugees Board (WRB) and became a passionate advocate for Jewish refugees

    • The WRB saved perhaps two hundred thousand Jews and twenty thousand others

Toward a Postwar World

• At home and abroad, the United States looked to create a postwar order that would guarantee global peace and domestic prosperity

  • Although the alliance of convenience with Stalin’s Soviet Union would collapse, Americans nevertheless looked for the means to ensure postwar stability and economic security for returning veterans

• The inability of the League of Nations to stop German, Italian, and Japanese aggressions caused many to question whether any global organization or agreement could ever ensure world peace

  • In 1941, Roosevelt believed that postwar security could be maintained by an informal agreement between what he termed the Four Policemen—the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, and China—instead of a rejuvenated League of Nations

    • But others wanted Roosevelt to push for a new global organization

  • In January 1941, Roosevelt announced his Four Freedoms — freedom of speech, worship, from want, and from fear — that all of the world’s citizens should enjoy

    • That same year he signed the Atlantic Charter with Churchill, which reinforced those ideas and added the right of self-determination, and promised some sort of postwar economic and political cooperation

  • Thus, the United Nations was born

• Anticipating victory in World War II, leaders not only looked to the postwar global order, but they also looked to the fate of returning American servicemen

  • The 1944 G.I. Bill was a multifaceted, multibillion-dollar entitlement program that rewarded honorably discharged veterans with numerous benefits

  • The Veterans Administration (VA) paid the lion’s share of educational expenses, including tuition, fees, supplies, and even stipends for living expenses