The World at War (30 page)

ISAMU NOGUCHI

Japanese–American artist and landscape architect

In America there are so many people from different parts of the world and to hate people, as apparently war requires, involved the possibility of hating your own people, the question of who you were going to select to hate the most. In the First World War the Germans were hated thoroughly and there was a great deal of discrimination and harassment of the Germans. In the Second World War there were three nationalities, the Italians, the Germans and the Japanese, and so a Foreign Committee was formed of the United States Senate to investigate what should be done about the people of these nationalities in this country. They went to the West Coast among their investigations and made enquiries among the Germans, the Italians and the Japanese, supposedly. I went to some of their meetings and was very struck by the strong representation of the Germans and the Italians. The Japanese were a convenient sort of symbol of the enemy and for those of Japanese extraction in this country to be suddenly recognised as being something to do with the enemy made them terribly anxious and of course they were harassed because they were the most convenient scapegoat around.

JOHN McCLOY

There was no question there was hardship and I took part, as others did, in trying to get compensation for them for the losses they'd suffered and there was a substantial appropriation for their distress and the inconvenience they suffered. But there was no misery, no brutality. Administration of those camps were under the supervision of a man who was a very fine liberal, humanitarian individual and who was very sensitive to their needs.

EDISON UNO

Japanese–American teenager

Amazingly there was very little bitterness because in 1942 most
Japanese–Americans felt it was an act of patriotism to cooperate with the government, therefore they did everything possible to minimise the bitterness or the hardship that we might run into. The authorities treated us with some kindness and consideration but more important was our cooperation with the United States government. We felt that it was an act of civil obedience and loyalty to prove to our country that our incarceration was truly a mistake, a mistake that some day they would admit had been done against their own citizens.

LIEUTENANT COLONEL JIMMY DOOLITTLE

USAAF pilot who led the raid on Japan that bears his name on 18 April 1942
The idea of taking off a land plane with the tail down was somewhat foreign to the Air Force types. It was a Navy technique we had to learn and during training one chap stalled off and crashed. He was not hurt. We had only one real worry and that would have been a dead calm. The carrier would have been able to make perhaps thirty knots; under those conditions taking off from the carrier deck would have been, at best, precarious. In the event there was a thirty-knot wind, the carrier was able to make twenty knots into this wind so we had an effective wind of fifty knots across the deck.

RICHARD TREGASKIS

War correspondent

The
Doolittle raid was terribly important towards psychological effect. It was a big surprise to the Japanese – the last thing they expected was to have American bombers appearing over Tokyo, even if it was such a small force. Surprise is such a great weapon in any military operation, but I think the psychological effect was the main thing about it and of course you have to give those Doolittle flyers an awful lot of credit. They were almost suicidal in their net dedication because it was a very risky kind of thing.

MARQUIS KOICHI KIDO

Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal

I don't think any particular measures were taken but it was a great shock to the Japanese people when American planes had bombed Japanese soil.

TOSHIKAZU KASE

Principal Secretary to the Foreign Minister

When the Doolittle raid was conducted that produced a consternation because the military repeatedly assured the public that the Japanese sky was impenetrable. When this alleged impenetrability failed it naturally produced a reaction of discrediting the capability of the military command.

LIEUTENANT COLONEL DOOLITTLE

The actual damage done was minimal. We were sixteen aeroplanes each with one ton of bombs. In later stages of the war the Twentieth Air Force under LeMay was sending out five hundred aeroplanes, each of them with ten tons of bombs. However, it did have some advantages. We had had nothing but bad news at home so it was the first good news our folks got. It caused the Japanese to question their warlords who had informed them that Japan would never be attacked. Most important of all, it caused the retention of aircraft for the protection of the home islands that would have been much more effective had they been able to go south, where the fighting was going on.

MARQUIS KIDO

The Emperor had no alternative but to approve the execution of the captured Doolittle pilots because the Army had conducted a trial and decided on the execution. I can only guess that those who played a major role were executed and the others spared.

JOHN McCLOY

I think that generally public opinion had the feeling, as we say in baseball, that the big league was in Europe and in the United Kingdom, where the chief menace was, where the chief enemy had to be met and opposed, and there's where our chief energies were applied. There was some sentiment on the West Coast towards the other concept, the Pacific emphasis, but I think that was not too pronounced. Moreover I think that our military had this idea pretty far advanced in their thinking. There were elements in the Navy that were thinking in terms of Pacific war – most of their training had been taking place in the Pacific, the big naval bases had been moved from the Atlantic to the Pacific and it was natural that they should be thinking in terms of their effort in that part of the world – and, as well, General MacArthur was out there. But in spite of all that I think the general body of opinion supported Mr Roosevelt's feeling, which didn't mean that we should go to sleep in the Pacific. Relatively shortly after that we were involved there in the
Battle of Midway, one the great battles of history.

REAR ADMIRAL LORD LOUIS MOUNTBATTEN

Roosevelt said, 'Only one thing, the battle of Midway's just taken place. The bounds of naval power begin to be redressed and I think we can do an operation based on Australia with the American marines, American aircraft carriers and so forth. Ask Winston if he can let me have a couple of British carriers and the destroyer screen to go with them.' I said I certainly would.

DR GALBRAITH

Nothing in Pearl Harbor caused the people to dislike Roosevelt or to love him more. One of his great enemies before Pearl Harbor was
Thomas Girdler, who was head of the Republic Steel Corporation. He was the most venomous of Roosevelt's enemies. After Pearl Harbor, maybe even before, when there was need for steel expansion, he was one of the pragmatic types who came down, made his peace with the New Dealers and showed how Republic could expand its steel plant – at the public's expense, let me say. But I remember Tom Girdler saying, 'I'm prepared to do this and I'm prepared to do it where you won't get similar action from the stuffed shirts' – he meant the US Steel Corporation, which was much larger. But, he said, 'This doesn't mean I love you. This doesn't mean I've changed my mind about Franklin Roosevelt.'

CHAPTER 12
FALL OF MALAYA AND RETREAT FROM BURMA

The planned defence of Malaya and Singapore relied on 355 front-line aircraft and a strong fleet to defeat any invasion before it could establish itself on land. In December 1941 there were only 158 second-rate aircraft, as well as the new battleship,
Prince of Wales,
and the old battlecruiser
Repulse,
which sailed without air cover on 8 December and were sunk on the 10th. The Army totalled approximately 140,000 men but was a heterogeneous assembly of two Indian Army divisions and late-arriving reinforcements from Australia and the 18th Division from Britain, none of whom was trained or equipped for jungle fighting. With only 55,000 men Lieutenant General Yamashita repeatedly outflanked British positions the length of the Malayan peninsula and assaulted across the Johore Strait to land on Singapore Island on 9 February. Although he was desperately overextended he now controlled Singapore's water supply and the morale of the British troops had been eroded, as had the will to resist of their commander, Lieutenant General Percival, who surrendered unconditionally on 15 February. Along with a string of other defeats. the fall of Singapore struck an irreversible blow to European prestige in the Far Fast. Perhaps 25,000 Indian Army soldiers joined the Indian National Army and fought alongside the Japanese against their previous comrades-in-arms in Burma. Even before the capture of Singapore, Japanese forces attacked into Burma from Thailand and forced the Salween river line on 31 January. The 17th Indian Division was constantly outflanked and after the premature demolition of the bridge over the Sittang
river on 22 February lost most of its equipment, organised defence of Burma was effectively over. The British destroyed the port and oil terminal in Rangoon but were harried out of the country and were only able to make a stand along the mountain ranges that mark the India–Burma border.

LIEUTENANT COLONEL ICHII SUGITA

Battalion Commander, Japanese Army

I did not know what the abilities of British soldiers in the jungle, but I believed from the history of the First World War that your officers and the men are tough enough to fight against enemies.

MAJOR GENERAL JOHN SMYTH, VC

Commander 17th Indian Division

The fundamental reason why we failed in
Malaya was that we were stretched to the limit at that time in our war with Germany and Italy and there simply were not the trained men, air forces and ships that we should have supplied to meet the Japanese attack. The plan for the defence of Malaya was based entirely on the Air Force and there were to be some 355 first-class aircraft with the Army protecting their bases and their aerodromes. The idea was that they should attack the Japanese while they were at sea and destroy them or damage them before the campaign started. The priority of arms and equipment for Malaya, at that time, was very low. They were only number four after Great Britain, the Middle East and Russia. Also with regard to men, the first priority for India – and India supplied most of the men – was the Middle East and Malaya only came second, and that was the same with the Australians. Some of the Australians that arrived in Malaya had never even fired a rifle, so we did feel very much a second eleven against the very highly trained and strongly supported Japanese. The Chiefs of Staff at home thought that Singapore Island was quite indefensible against an enemy that had complete command of the air and the sea, and that is why the defence had to be well forward, on the mainland of Malaya. And from the start, of course, we were thrown on to the defensive. One of the reasons, of course, was that the Japanese employed three hundred tanks – we hadn't any tanks at all – but it was really the employment of the hook around our defensive positions, which was their main method of operating by sea or by land, which made it so difficult for our ill-equipped forces.

CAPTAIN TERUO OKADA

Intelligence Officer, Japanese Army

In Japanese infantry training most of the training, apart from riflemanship and digging trenches, is on bayonet fighting and night fighting, all the time. I think this night-fighting training was most useful in the jungle where conditions are fairly similar. We got this experience in China where the Chinese Army could press us during the day, but we knew that at night as soon as we withdrew all the bullets from the guns and went into the night fighting with cold steel we could drive them back, always. We had the confidence and I think this came from training, training, training on the night fighting and the bayonet fighting.

PRIVATE WILLIAM CRUICKSHANK

Prisoner of the Japanese

My particular lot, the 18th Division, we left England known as a crack division in the British Army at the time. We weren't actually meant for Singapore or that area at all; we were meant for the Middle East. We were trained for the Middle East, and when we were thrown into the jungle without the proper equipment, without the proper arms as well, that came as a shock. But when we found that we were absolutely cut off, there was no method of fighting back at the end, there was no method of evacuation; it was a terrible shock. I, personally, when we were told to lay our arms down, I just cried like a baby, I think more with temper than anything else, to think there was nothing we could do.

DAVID MARSHALL

Malayan member of the Straits Settlement Volunteer Corps

Somebody picked up this diary that had been thrown away. It turned out to be the diary of a young British soldier who had come from England by ship via Cape Town and it was peppered right through with remarks like, 'Had lecture today on dangers of snake bites in jungle. Browned off. Lecture this afternoon on drinking water from streams and rivers, danger to kidneys and liver. Had lectures on insects and mosquitoes and malaria in jungle, danger of jungle animals in tropics. Browned off I can't remember all of it but it was a fairly extensive diary kept up almost every day, and when I finished it I realised that poor boy must have been frozen stiff with fear and had really lost the battle psychologically before it began, because going into that jungle he was afraid of all the unseen terrors and only too glad to get away. It made me believe what may have been a completely false story that the Japanese commander would sneeringly tell us when we were in the camp, that they didn't have to fight the British troops with bullets. All they had to do was hang fire-crackers on the rubber trees and set them off at night, and you'd see the British troops scurrying like rabbits. Of course we told them we didn't believe it, but frankly after reading that diary I don't think it improbable.