Yeah, he impressed a lot of people, especially those who took his war time press dispatches at face value.
Rubbish!
MacArthur would sometimes by-pass Japanese garrisons in the New Guinea campaign, leaving them to “wither on the vine”, but this was not something he invented. It was first suggested by Navy planners on Nimitz’s staff, and first implemented in the Central Pacific offensive.
In the Philippines, MacArthur, in defiance of direct orders from the JCS, conducted more than a dozen major amphibious assaults on non-essential islands because he wanted to “liberate” all of the Philippine islands. These assaults caused thousands of needless American casualties and contributed nothing to the defeat of Japan. Had the Japanese garrisons been left alone, they would simply have sat out the rest of the war and surrendered, as so many others did, in August and September, 1945.
Exactly the same thing was done in the Central Pacific; only the most essential central Pacific islands were invaded; the others were by-passed and the garrisons left in a starving condition. Mac made plenty of mistakes in his Cartwheel campaign, that cost US and Australian casualties. Nimitz made some mistakes too, his worst being the invasion of Peleliu which was probably not required. Neither command had any monopoly on error-free planning.
But Mac didn’t care, most of the “tied up” troops were Australian, and he didn’t want them messing up his personal PR campaign by copping some of the favorable headlines in important advances.
He was able to use the tactics he did not because he was wiser, but because the geography and tactical situations were different. Mac seldom faced the kind of small, heavily fortified islands that forced Nimitz forces to make the only possible kind of frontal assault that produced heavy casualties for a relatively short period of time.
MacArthur constantly trumpeted his “lower casualty rates” during the war to justify his demand to be named overall commander in the Pacific. But historian Richard Frank, who studied casualty rates of all the Pacific theaters for his book “Downfall”, found that Mac’s casualty rates were no better, and in some cases worse, than were Nimitz’s. Overall, in the Pacific War just as many Americans were killed and wounded under Mac as were under Nimitz. Moreover, it was found that Mac’s troops were usually less well trained and had poorer leaders, and this was found to be a contributing factor in Mac’s casualty rates. This was something that a better commander would have corrected; Mac never did.
Maybe Blamey was rather restrained in this respect.
I just watched a WWII documentary which referred to Patton sending a force deep into enemy territory to rescue his son in law from a German prison camp, which was not something I had ever heard of before.
Well, aside from airfields, that is probably correct. No major sea ports, manufacturing centers, or even vital raw materials extraction operations, just miles and miles of…miles and miles!
Which would mean that had the Japanese captured Port Moresby and developed an offensive airbase, it would have resulted in an attritional air war against Allied air bases in north Australia. And that would have been a war the Japanese would have lost as the Allies built up their air forces in 1943
I definitely concur with this assessment.
But I have seen some relatively well-informed people argue two related points; the first being that the more territory the Japanese were able to seize, the better their bargaining position, if peace negotiations could be opened with the Americans. The second argument is that the Japanese military had no alternative but to stay on the offensive because neither the IJA nor the IJN had enough aircraft or ships to adequately defend even a minimal defensive perimeter sufficient to hold onto the NEI, which was the whole object of the war.
My personal opinion is that this is simply illogical. After Pearl Harbor, no one in the US was willing to even suggest negotiations with the Japanese, and the US Navy, which, through Admiral King on the JCS, was largely driving Pacific war strategy, had always advocated total war against Japan. The prospect of a negotiated end to the war was dead the second the first bomb fell on Pearl Harbor.
As for a continual offensive, Japan simply did not have the material resources to pursue such a strategy. Sooner or later, as their resources were stretched thinner and thinner, they would stumble and fail, giving the US an opening to seize the initiative. Midway, of course, was the inevitable outcome of a policy of the continuous offensive.
Agreed.
Considering that Japan had been unable to successfully conclude a four-year war with a much less powerful nation, the nonchalant attitude of the Japanese leadership toward war with America has always baffled me.
Japanese perceptions of a “gutless, effeminate, pacifistic America”, and a “nation of shop-keepers”, are, of course, well known, but the very subjectivity and imprecision of such attitudes should have set alarm bells ringing in the more sophisticated circles of the leadership. I find it ironic that the two men who, among the Japanese leaders, knew more about Americans than any others, Matsuoka and Yamamoto, forced such terrible blunders as the signing of the Tripartite Pact and the Pearl Harbor attack.
If I recall correctly, John Prados mentions that IJA codes were never broken precisely because they were never extensively used in the Pacific areas where they were likely to be intercepted and provide material that would allow cryptographers to unravel the codes. The Japanese naval codes, the use of which would have been mandatory in any invasion of Australia, however, had been broken and were being assiduously read and scrutinized throughout most of 1942 for any hint of an operation aimed directly at Australia; no such hint ever surfaced. After Midway, Allied intelligence realized that, regardless of Japanese intentions, Japanese capabilities precluded any serious invasion of Australia.
Not according to what I have read. Most American intelligence in the Pacific area during WW II was conducted by the US Navy. The British had operated a sigint operation out of Singapore prior to the loss of that location and had cooperated with the Americans. The Dutch also had their own intelligence operations and these also cooperated with the Americans and British. The Australians had their own (independent of the British) sigint operations in the western Pacific.
After Singapore and Corregidor had fallen, the remnants of the British “Far East Combined Bureau” (FECB), and the US Navy’s CAST Station (formerly on Corregidor) were combined with the RAN cryptography unit headed by CMDR Eric Nave, to form “Fleet Radio Unit Melbourne” (FRUMEL). MacArthur continued to operate the Army Central Bureau sigint operation independently of FRUMEL, but, as in the Philippines, there was an interchange of intel information. Interestingly enough, Mac’s Army Central Bureau maintained a “Purple” machine the output of which went only to MacArthur.
FRUMEL and FRUPAC (Nimitz’s intel operation in Hawaii) communicated intel information to each other and both Nimitz and MacArthur as well as the commander of the British Far Eastern Fleet, and both eventually became units of the Joint Intelligence Center/Pacific Ocean Area (JICPOA). FRUMEL and FRUPAC were both tied into Admiral King’s intel center in Washington, so, in theory, if it was known in Washington or London, it was also known in Hawaii and Melbourne. Of course, intel information was disseminated on a “need to know” basis which tended to limit the distribution of assessments, but both FRUPAC and FRUMEL interchanged all raw data between themselves and could make their own assessments.
It did not follow however, that just because Australian intelligence (a term used to encompass all intel agencies) knew of something that Australian military or political leaders also knew about it. Throughout the war, the same applied to the leaders of almost all countries as intelligence organizations were notoriously security minded and tried to limit dissemination of information as much as possible.
As an Allied Theater Commander, MacArthur was privy to most, but by no means all, high level intelligence data. More than most military leaders, Mac seemed inclined to be skeptical of sigint intelligence and tended to be dismissive of data which was contrary to his view of the situation. The complaint was often heard from CAST, and later FRUMEL, personnel that Mac and his staff didn’t know what to do with the intel data they were given, or that they simply disregarded it. This may have reflected Mac’s distrust of anything that originated within US Navy circles, or it may have simply been his nature.
Perhaps it’s a matter of interpretation, but I have never read of any anxiety on Mac’s part about being relieved of command during WW II, except possibly in the few weeks of the disastrous defense in the Philippines. Mac had a number followers among conservative newspaper editors in the US who dutifully published all the nonsense that Mac’s press office released about his brilliant, heroic, courageous, bla, bla, bla… Roosevelt’s many detractors in the US ate that up and made any action Roosevelt might want to take in regard to MacArthur political dynamite, particularly if it was contrary to Mac’s wishes.
Beyond that, the Republican Party, speculating on candidates for high political office, kept Mac’s name conspicuously on he list of potential presidential candidates. Roosevelt knew that Mac was popular among conservatives and had excellent relations with conservative newspaper editors, and thus felt he was potentially a serious political competitor. In any case, he didn’t want MacArthur in the US contesting his decisions at every turn. If Roosevelt wanted to relieve Mac, he would have had to find some other equally important post for the man, just to keep him out of domestic politics.
Mac actually was in the running and, initially, had enough party support to have a good shot at the nomination. But Mac really didn’t understand American political party dynamics and made a number of minor mistakes in the early running. What eventually ended his candidacy was a private letter he wrote which was highly critical of Roosevelt’s conduct of the war. Mac made a number of valid points in the letter, which unfortunately became public, but the Republicans felt that criticism of Roosevelt, during the course of the war, was unpatriotic, and that the letter from one of Roosevelt’s (nominal) subordinates would be viewed by many Americans as a “stab in the back” by MacArthur. The Republican Party thus called on Mac to end his candidacy and Mac, realizing his support was eroding, did so.
America could have done much better by Australia, too. MacArthur was in Australia, not because he was the best man for the job, but because it was convenient for Roosevelt to keep him out of the US.
After having been used by the British, and then essentially left to their own devices, the Australians fell into the clutches of another opportunistic character who used them to advance his own agenda. Granted, that the early campaigns directed by MacArthur were primarily for the defense of Australia, but MacArthur’s misuse and mistreatment of Australian troops after the Japanese drive on New Guinea was contained was just as bad, if not as consequential, as that of the British.
Wizard, I don’t have time to respond to every part of your last post at the moment, so I’ll start with the easiest bit (which upon completion took a great deal longer than I anticipated).
America didn’t have any obligation to do well by Australia.
Despite all the propaganda for public consumption and morale about fraternal ties etc, America used us as a base for its operations in its own interests. If the positions were reversed, we would have done exactly the same as all nations, quite reasonably, act in their own interests.
As Australia did in WWII in a little-known example of Australia’s imperiousness when dealing with a less powerful neighbour, when to meet the Japanaese threat to Australia we sent troops into Timor against Portugal’s wishes.
I think that’s a bit harsh on the British.
At the start of WWII many Australians had a conception of themselves as British living in an outpost of the Empire. They were all British subjects at that time. Australian citizenship wasn’t invented until after WWII. http://www.citizenship.gov.au/_pdf/cit_chron_policy_law.pdf In my childhood in the 1950s and even after our government under Prime Minister Curtin had separated us from Britain during the war http://john.curtin.edu.au/education/nhchallenge2006.html , our school atlases still had a good part of the globe covered in the pink possessions of the British Empire and we were instructed in that proud (if rather sanitised) imperial history. One of the highlights of my early childhood was Empire Day in early June each year, when we celebrated the Empire (originally Queen Victoria’s birthday, despite her being a Hun) with a cracker night. http://www.nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/2008/may08/story-4.pdf Even now that holiday is celebrated as the Queen’s Birthday but, alas, without the crackers due to the fun police having removed all things which might be fun or even remotely connected to it. (We also had another cracker night on 5 November each year to commemorate Guy Fawkes’ attempt in 1605 to blow up the Houses of Parliament, which shows how committed we were to cracker fun before the fun police got control.) As a child I encountered occasional teachers and adults who, though their families had been here for some generations, referred to Britain as ‘Home’ and ‘the mother country’.
Those sentiments, being exactly the opposite of the independent citizens of the American Republic, were much stronger in my parents’ and grandparents’ generations before WWII. That is not to say that there were not strong elements which opposed this view and involvement in both world wars, at least as far as the European component was concerned. This opposition was primarily among the minority Irish Catholics and socialist / communist elements which, with considerable justification, saw the wars as British, European or capitalist wars of insufficient relevance to Australia to warrant sending our troops to fight in them.
Australians served Britain willingly in the war against Germany to 1941, and without being used by the British any more than they were willing to be used. This was at personal levels in the 2nd AIF, RAN, and RAF as well as at national levels of providing food and other resources to Britain (although Churchill complained that Australia was unfairly profiting from this), including military gifts such as 20,000 .303 Lee Enfields to replace losses in France and which gift when Japan attacked acquired greater significance as we tried to mobilise.
It was more complicated than that.
Australia, or at least its Prime Minister John Curtin, knew it was a minnow in the war between great powers; that it didn’t rate much in the dealings of the major Allies; and that it could be ignored or gobbled up in the strategies of the major Allies and left stranded in the face of Japan’s advance and apparent intention of invading, and undoubted intention of subjugating, Australia.
To the extent that we fell into MacArthur’s clutches, it was because we wanted to, and because we wanted America involved to protect us. Much as we did a couple of decades later when we encouraged America to get involved in Vietnam for our own protection in the age of the domino theory, which theory resonated with us more than anyone else because we were at the end of the line. Unless someone wanted New Zealand, which seems rather unlikely.
There is a good survey of the serious writings on Curtin and MacArthur’s relationships here http://john.curtin.edu.au/macarthur/assessment1.html Note that at the bottom right of the linked page you can click on Next to take you to the next page. I have read Horner’s and Day’s books mentioned in the link, and others of their works, and think that they are very well researched and reasoned accounts.
Leaving aside any Australian sentiments about national pride, the greatest and unforgiveable flaw in MacArthur’s use of Australian troops from 1944 onwards was simply that he failed to use a huge body of well trained and well equipped Australian troops, often led by battle hardened officers and NCOs and with battle hardened troops in their ranks. While there is modest justification for his purported concerns about the lack of commonality in equipment, munitions and so on between American and Australian troops, these were logistical issues which were no more difficult to resolve than supplying American units with, say, the different calibres of infantry ammunition routinely used by them.
MacArthur’s ‘misuse’ of those troops was compounded by using them to release for his westward thrust some not terribly efficient American units from static positions facing neutered, semi-starved, and isolated Japanese forces whose primary concern was tending their vegetable gardens so they could subsist on those meagre rations. Australia’s aggressive attacks upon the Japanese in these situations created resentment in Australian forces and civilians about unnecessary Australian casualties to no purpose.
This contrasts with British ‘misuse’ of Australian troops which thrust them into action, and notably on the Western Front in WWI where Australian troops were at times employed as shock troops, and with some effect. By WWII this did not happen, in large part due to Blamey being resolute in trying to keep his formations intact in the face of British demands for units from those formations in the Middle East.
At least the British used Australian forces under their command as fighting troops, where MacArthur used them to bear the brunt in New Guinea when it suited him while building up his own forces and then sidelined the Australians while pursuing his personal American legend.
Britain made much more effective use of Australian troops than MacArthur. Perhaps this was because, even if there was some residual disdain towards colonial troops in some British quarters, Australian troops were never placed under a British commander who was so self-centred and so committed to pursuing his own legend as MacArthur that he couldn’t bear any contribution by Australian troops.
I think this may come down to a degree of indiscipline and tolerance of public self-promotion in American forces and government control of them which allowed MacArthur and Patton, and perhaps others of whom I am unaware, to present themselves favourably to the public and a potential electorate through their publicity machines.
I can’t think of a British equivalent to MacArthur or Patton so far as self-promotion is concerned, or at least one who was even remotely equivalent in creating such an image, even if the nature and office of all very senior commanders is that they are political animals and politically adept. That is not to say that some such as Montgomery were not political animals and politically adept, but just that they never managed to create the same unwarranted public persona that MacArthur and Patton managed to creat
Of course nations act in their own self interest; always have, always will. Presidents act in their own self interest, as well, doing their damndest to justify their acts in terms of what’s best for the nation. That doesn’t change the fact that the US had better men than MacArthur to help defend Australia and defeat the Japanese. And it doesn’t change the fact that MacArthur ended up in Australia because it was personally convenient for Roosevelt to keep the man as far away from the US as possible.
I don’t think it’s being harsh on the British at all.
Regardless of how willing the Australians were to let the British use them, the fact remains that’s exactly what the British did. The Australian feelings about being members of the British Empire with a strong sense of obligation to defend that empire were never without the understanding that the “Mother country” would also come to the aid of Australia should that ever be necessary. But it turned out that when the chips were down Britain was unable and unwilling to send aid to Australia.
I might add that I am well aware of Australia’s history and relationship with Britain, courtesy of my wife who, though she was born in the then British colony of Sarawak, later became an Australian citizen
Patton never came close to MacArthur in terms of self-promotion. In fact, I can think of no other American military figure in history who approached MacArthur’s penchant for self-aggrandizement, and very few individuals from any country who suffered from such an ego as his. Mac was indeed unique and should probably be considered a dysfunctional personality type. As a military commander, MacArthur was definitely over rated due almost entirely to uncritical acceptance of his own claims, most of which have turned out to be fraudulent.
The Japanese “Bushido” cogitation was strong but the Japanese force was impossible to won the american japanese war.
The united states has infinity supply and several soldier,advanced tanks,stronger navy.
The japanese attack was suprised the americans.
If we thinking about a war “Japan vs. United States” was a good joke,or total suicide no more.
By the time of Iwo Jima, the fleet assembled offshore was equal in size to all of the navies of all of the countries of the rest of the world, and this didn’t include any of the rest of the ships in the Pacific or the Atlantic or the Mediterranean.
The Atlantic fleet for most of the war didn’t make much use of cruisers and battleships - it was a war of corvettes, destroyers and sub-chasers for the most part until the invasion of North Africa, Sicily, Italy and later, Normandy.
In terms of overall resources, the US effort in the Pacific never exceeded 10% of the total American effort during WW2. The Japanese might reflect on the fact that they were beaten badly by an enemy who invested such a small amount of its national treasure in the effort.
Self delusion is the answer. They deluded themselves with their own propaganda saying they were superior (not unlike the Nazis.) And the ones at the top, at least some of them, believed it! They really thought an ‘indomitable spirit’ could defeat machineguns and bombs.
And don’t think this is the first, or last, time in history that has happened. Those that don’t study history tend to repeat it, and there are plenty of those who don’t even know what happened 100 years ago, much less one thousand!
The big mistake of japan was thinking that destroyng perl harbour the US power was finish, if the defence listend YAMAMOTO he wante to hammer more the american navvy haway in that moment could be invaded by japan and the was could be finish in different way, off course USA it so big and strong economically but if jap0anese followed to hammer american flet Japan could be having anothe end, off course the atomic bom was one hammer in the japanese head as beat ine toddler by cassius clay off course in faithing any one use the power he have, japanese used kamikaze with successifull and american two atomic bomb , if they had niot the atomic i think wasd there combatting till now
Interesting discussion. It occurs to me that, even if Japan had adopted a “luring in” strategy, this would have amounted to an alternative means of engineering a “decisive battle”. “Decisive battle”, in this sense, was essentially a Western concept that had crystallised in the thinking of Clausewitz, and had been adopted by the Japanese wholesale. Hardly surprising; such experience as they had in foreign wars up to 1941 tended to confirm that this was the correct approach. As for the “luring on” option itself - I suppose a “Japanese Manstein” might have advocated such an idea, but there was no “Japanese Manstein”. In any event - like most “classic Manstein” plans - it would have been ultra-high risk. It seems to me that Japan’s hopes of victory lay in a delusion, a misinterpretation of the USA as a “soft”, decadent country that, faced with the certainty of a bloody and economically costly war, would tolerate Japanese rule/hegemony in the Western Pacific and Far East, even when this had been achieved by military means directed in part against US forces and territory. This was a disastrous error. I do not believe that, following an outrage like Pearl Harbour - however “successful” such an incident might have been in pure military terms - there is any way that the US would have held back from exacting full retribution from Japan, however great the cost might have been in blood and treasure. There are, of course, no absolute certainties - but I find it hard to see how Japan, really, had much hope of achieving the favourable, but necessarily partial, victory over the US that they seem to have desired. Best regards, JR.
It should be noted that the Pearl Harbor operation was essentially a mixed bag and was not completely successful as they missed the carriers, hit mostly obsolete battleships or ones nearing obsolescence…
A good point, Nick. Without wishing to trivialise, I am reminded of a scene in the Mel Brooks movie, “Blazing Saddles” in which a man-mountain called “Mongo” appears. “Don’t shoot him,” says the Sheriff, “it’ll only make him mad”. In a way, however successful it might have been, Pearl Harbour was a Japanese way of, so to speak, shooting Mongo … Best regards, JR.
I forgot to mention the biggest single failure of the Japanese airstrike was not hitting the fuel storage depots. Whether this would have made any difference in the grand scheme of the war I don’t know. But it would have set the U.S. Navy back several months at least IIRC…
It should be noted that the Pearl Harbor operation was essentially a mixed bag and was not completely successful as they missed the carriers, hit mostly obsolete battleships or ones nearing obsolescence…
Its’ irony , but this statement is one basic argment of revisionists.The japanese actually targeted what they’ve found in harbour.COuld it be possible the US navy command deliberately send out the modern aircraft carriers , leaving the obsolet battleships in harbour, expecting ( or provoking) the Japanese strike?
The us command havent sent out the moder carier , the US did not know and did not immagine, Hirohito did not listen the adveise of many admirals that suggested to get peral harbuor and made it as a base for bonb USA, so politic won again on soldiers
The Americans were clearly expecting hostilities. But the revisionist argument misses the fact that the aircraft carriers were ferrying aircraft to island bases where the Japanese hostilities were considered likely. I’ll have to check, but I believe one of the islands that received fighters was Midway…
They put a pretty good lick on us at Pearl Harbor and we still won the war. So the answer would be no. And even if events turned out that the Japanese failed at Pearl Harbor, there is no guarantee that the Navy would steam for the Japanese home islands. There were no Carrier strikes on Japan until late in the war, well after we had the strength to do it. Nor was any thought given to attacking the Japanese mainland until the central Pacific had been won.
Japan lost the war in large part because it lacked the shipping needed to sustain its advances and occupations in subsequent years, which is consistent with Japan’s often short term and flawed strategic thinking in conducting the Pacific War.
Japan was pretty much doomed before it fired the first shot when compared with the US resources which would be pitted against it in a long war, which was recognised by some of Japan’s own pre-war planners.
As for Pearl, America was lucky that significant ships weren’t in the harbour at the time of Japan’s attack, but it wouldn’t have altered the end result apart from timing. http://www.combinedfleet.com/economic.htm
Towards the end of the war the air strikes on Japan were coming from the islands captured by the combined naval and land assaults. Meanwhile , shipping close to Japan was reduced to a bit of a turkey shoot by the USN against hopelessly depleted IJN and Japanese merchant shipping.
You might like to look a the history of planning for invasion of the Japanese home islands, which was in train long before the end of the central Pacific advance. Start with Operation Olympic.
