American History Revised (39 page)

Back in Japan, rising to the top of the naval establishment, Yamamoto strongly opposed the Japanese army’s signing the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy in
the summer of 1939, knowing this would eventually incur a war with Britain and the United States that the Japanese navy was ill-equipped to wage. Yamamoto became such a target for extremist attacks that the Navy Ministry had to barricade the building with tanks and machine guns, and the morbid joke in the ministry about the threats to Yamamoto’s life was for employees to warn each other, “Whatever you do, don’t accept a ride in the vice-minister’s car!” Eventually, to protect Yamamoto from assassination, the navy minister sent him out to sea as commander of the Combined Fleet.

Harvard graduate (young man on the left) with the U.S. Secretary of the Navy

Now, put yourself in Washington DC in late 1941, with the war drums pounding louder and louder. How would the precocious Yamamoto attack? Knowing the above, ask yourself if the following doesn’t make logical sense.

Unlike the home-grown Japanese warriors, Yamamoto had no appetite for wars of attrition, especially with a giant like the United States. He had enormous respect for the United States: it had plenty of oil reserves and manufacturing resources that would enable it eventually to overwhelm Japan. A campaign in Malaya and the Philippines yielding easy but life-costly and time-consuming victories would not be wise. The traditional Japanese naval strategy, to wait for the American fleet to arrive and ambush it in the central or south Pacific, would not work. To beat such a sleeping giant, it was necessary to
strike first. Nobody expected Pearl Harbor to be the target—it was too far from Japan for any possible surprise: an armada of ships would be sighted easily. As for planes, Japan had never carried out an air attack before. The logistics were staggering, the risks enormous.

But Yamamoto wasn’t a great poker player for nothing. Poker players are gamblers, and when they gamble they go for big stakes. Unlike traditional “battleship” admirals wedded to the old technology, Yamamoto liked the new technology of naval aviation and vowed to go after the U.S. Pacific Fleet with one “all-in-surprise big bet”: as in poker, blow the best player out of the game, good and early. Determined to attack Pearl Harbor, Yamamoto told his staff to keep working at the logistics, and be more imaginative and come up with an air attack plan that would work. The staff developed a plan calling for a massive air strike by four of the fleet’s six large carriers. Yamamoto told them to be more aggressive; he threw in all six carriers. When the naval general staff complained this was too risky, Yamamoto threatened to resign if he didn’t get his way.

It was a gamble, but it was a well-thought-out gamble by a man with a photographic memory for detail. The shame of the American joint chiefs was their lack of imagination in trying to figure out their opponent. They thought of him as a traditional Japanese who would do everything “by the book” (just as they did). They failed to consider that maybe, just maybe, Isoroku Yamamoto was more American than they were.

1942
Three days into the new year, a most unusual transfer was made. It was payment to an American general working for another nation, in charge of that country’s troops.

First, some history. On more than one occasion the United States hired foreign generals to lead its soldiers. The Marquis de Lafayette, vigorously courted by General George Washington, not only provided military leadership but ensured the invaluable support of France’s enormous navy. Several decades later, faced with another war against Great Britain, President James Madison tried in vain to rent Portugal’s entire naval fleet—ships, admirals, and sailors.

In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln got so desperate to find a general who was an aggressive warrior that he looked abroad. The world’s greatest freedom fighter—who happened to be available at the time—was Giuseppe Garibaldi, the hero of the Italian unification who had also fought against slavery in South America. Garibaldi, who had lived in New York during 1850–52, supporting himself as a candlemaker, was eager to lend his martial skills to help America. The two men met, but were unable to reach an agreement. Apparently, Garibaldi wanted a promise that American slaves would be freed. Lincoln
turned it down: there was no way at the time he could make this commitment and still preserve the Union.

Even American generals and admirals could be bought. John Paul Jones, in need of money after the American Revolution, went to work for the Russians and became a rear admiral, winning battles against the Turks. General Winfield Scott, victor in the Mexican War, was invited by a group of influential Mexicans to resign his commission and become interim president of Mexico and prepare the country for ultimate annexation to the United States, for which he would be paid $1.25 million (he turned it down). The most surprising example, however—one in the twentieth century—would be that great patriotic drumbeater of “Duty, God, Country,” General Douglas MacArthur. He retired from the Army in 1938 to take on a new job as field marshal of the Philippine army. The position not only offered a lavish salary, but also came with a custom-built air-conditioned penthouse atop Manila’s luxury hotel. In late 1941, Manuel Quezon, president of the Philippines, begged General MacArthur to evacuate him from the island of Corregidor. MacArthur refused. A month later, MacArthur changed his mind. Why?

On January 3, 1942, Quezon transferred $500,000 into MacArthur’s personal bank account.
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1943
The 2004 Abu Ghraib scandal of American soldiers forcing their Iraqi prisoners into compromising positions provoked international outrage, and appropriately so. But arrayed against this is the fact that Americans didn’t chop off their prisoners’ heads—as the Iraqis and al-Qaeda did.

This dichotomy is not new; it goes back to World War II, when American sailors picked up in the Pacific were questioned ruthlessly and then “disposed suitably.” Observes the historian Victor Davis Hanson:

Japanese treatment of POWs violated every tenet of the Geneva Convention. The death rate of POWs in the hands of the Japanese was a staggering 27 percent (in the hands of the Germans, it was 4 percent). When Japan transported some fifty
thousand POWs by ship from one region to another, it deliberately used unmarked vessels likely to invite attack by American airplanes and submarines; as a result, 10,800 POWs died. Whenever American troops were about to take over a Japanese island where POWs were being held, the Japanese practice was to kill the POWs before they could be rescued. In the Gilbert Islands, twenty-two prisoners were beheaded. At Ballale Island, ninety prisoners were bayoneted; at Wake Island, ninety-six were machine-gunned. At Palawan in the Philippines, 150 Americans were herded into an air-raid shelter, gasoline was poured on them, and they were set on fire.

This brutality influenced the American war policy. A major reason the United States resorted to the quick knockout blow of using the atom bomb, as opposed to the slow process of invading Japan, was to prevent the Japanese from killing the 31,617 POWs they held in their prisons. Says the historian Richard Frank, “Nearly to a man, Allied POWs believed the Japanese would kill them if the Homeland was invaded.”

The defining characteristic of a militarist society is that it refuses to admit guilt. After World War II, instead of apologizing for its barbaric treatment of combatants, Japan demanded that the real apology come from the Americans who bombed thousands of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The United States, which had dropped the atom bomb to destroy Japanese militarism once and for all, refused.

The people of Japan agreed. In a public opinion survey taken in 1947, asking who was to blame for the atom bomb horror, the Japanese public blamed not the Americans but the Japanese government.

1944
George S. Patton was probably the toughest American general who ever lived. When it came time to tell his troops how to win a battle, he got right to the point: “I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by getting the other poor dumb bastard to die for his country.” Probably the biggest battle Patton ever won was a battle he never fought in. How could this be?

Patton, whose army caused more German casualties and liberated more square miles of Europe than any other Allied army in World War II, had such a fearsome reputation among the Germans that they were watching his every move. His superiors decided to take advantage of this and use him as a decoy: they created a fictitious “First Army Group,” made him the commander, and sent him off into the woods at Calais to conduct diversionary activities and to appear frequently in public, giving speeches. In the meantime, Eisenhower made his preparations off the coast of Normandy. When the Allies launched their D-Day invasion of June 6, 1944, the Germans were caught
by surprise: How could the Allies not use their best general?

1945
Hollywood movies and the Medal of Honor herald our fearsome warriors who fought to the death, often saving the lives of their fellow soldiers. And so it should be.