Ep. 7: John McManus on the U.S Army in the Pacific During WWII

John McManus is the Curators' Distinguished Professor of U.S. military history at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. McManus completed his doctorate in military history at the University of Tennessee and is the author of more than a dozen books. His latest, Island Infernos: The US Army's Pacific War Odyssey, 1944, is the second installment of a trilogy detailing the U.S. Army's role in the Pacific theater during World War II.
Times
• 01:12 - Introduction
• 03:38 - Misperceptions of the Army and Marines in Guadalcanal
• 08:44 - The Army's role in the Pacific
• 12:46 - Geography of the Pacific and dividing the theater between General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz
• 18:30 - Island hopping and the turning point in the Pacific theater
• 22:26 - The infantry's experience in combat
• 23:52 - The Pearl Harbor Conference and the endgame of war in the Pacific
• 31:55 - General Joseph Stilwell and China
• 38:39 - Prisoners of War in Japan
• 41:32 - The legacy of the War in the Pacific
Recorded November 23, 2021
#ww2 #history #podcast

[@gagamba9198]

With the dislike of MacArthur's many character flaws, it's easy to think all his decisions were flawed as well. Yes, he had his share, but I think he was correct about avoiding Formosa. It had been part of the Japanese Empire since 1895 and the Japanese there were not disliked. (I lived in Taiwan in '89 and '90 and never heard the same comments I heard in China and S. Korea.) The US didn't know the lay of the land and had no local allies. If you look at the terrain of the island, the east is quite mountainous and the west flat and narrows considerably to the north, but even at its widest in the south it's about 120km (75 miles). And a lot of sugarcane and rice paddies to trudge through. About the only place to land is the southwest coast, but that puts the USN in the narrow Strait of Taiwan. Good hunting ground for IJA aircraft operating from mainland China and Indochina as well as submarines because there's little area for ships to manoeuvre. In the Philippines the US knew the country, had the tremendous assistance of tens of thousands of combat-experienced guerrillas, and millions of eyes observing the Japanese and reporting on their composition, location, and movement. The US had its pick of landing sites. Further, in 1934 the US agreed to the country's independence, a national election was held in '35, a constitution written, etc. Independence was a decade away, so they were already on that path before the Japanese invaded. Japanese claims of liberation there didn't resonate in the same way they did in Indonesia.
If you look at the logistics tail to Chinese forces in Kunming, it was major undertaking for the US and UK. Yes, oil could be obtained from Abadan refinery in Iran, but the priority was North Africa and the USSR. War materials coming from either America's west or east coast had a long route of more than 15,000 nautical miles _to get to Calcutta_ because ships would have had to sail south of Australia or around the Cape of Good Hope. That's one way. With the Mediterranean secured it was shorter route, but that's late '43 at the earliest. Then it was rail north to the airfields and a flight over the hump. I read the Allies consumed 26 gallons of fuel to deliver one gallon by air to Kunming. Even though the USAAF B-29s in China were the first to strike the Japanese home islands (Kyushu), sending the fuel, lubricants, spare parts, ammo, bombs, and all the life sustainment material needed by air and ground crews wasn't viable for the mass operations needed to strike Japan regularly. And the B-29 mission was higher priority than fighting IJA forces in China in '44 and '45. The Soviets didn't have the same logistical constraint to deliver arms. Weapons from disarmed IJA plus Red Army equipment, especially heavy equipment, were transferred to Mao. Though the Nationalists also picked up IJA weapons, the IJA didn't use heavy weapons in the scale other WWII combatants did, and certainly nowhere near the Red Army. To counter this the US would have needed to flood Chinese ports with weapons for the Nationalist army after Japan's surrender. Instead the US suspended arms shipments to China on 29 July 1946 until May 1947. State Department documents state: 'Following the lifting of the arms embargo in May of 1947, the Chinese Government did not avail itself of the opportunity to place large _commercial orders_ for arms and ammunition in the United States.' (Italics mine.) Commercial orders are not the supply of aid from the US government. A State Department memorandum dated 27 June 1947 for briefing Truman states: 'We have withdrawn objection to the issuance of export permits for the shipment of military supplies to China.'
It continues:
_'Further military assistance to Chinese armies raises very grave issues. Quite apart from the reaction of the Chinese Communists to such assistance there is known to be a large and articulate body of Chinese opinion opposed to American military support for the present Chinese Government. The reaction of the USSR to American military assistance to the Chinese Government is also a critical question. There is the additional question of whether, in view of the demonstrated incompetence of the Chinese National army command, military assistance from us will in fact enable the Chinese armies to defeat the Chinese Communists or even to maintain an effective defense.'_
_'American military assistance which would enable the National armies to defeat the Chinese Communist armies would have to be on a very large scale and would lead to our direct participation in the civil war. We would probably have to take over direction of Chinese military operations and administration and remain in China for an indefinite period, thereby undertaking a strategic commitment in China inconsistent with JCS 1769/1, which examines the problem of United States assistance to other countries from the standpoint of “urgency of need and importance to the national security of the United States” and places “China very low on the list of countries which should be given such assistance”.'_
Note: JCS 1769/1: United Stales Assistance to Other Countries from the Standpoint of National Security April 29, 1947.
I think American reluctance was due to the Red Army occupying Manchuria. A US-armed and -supported Nationalist army would have pushed the communists in the north to the east and into Manchuria, potentially drawing the Soviets into the conflict. The Nationalists were keen to place the border provinces of Inner Mongolia and Manchuria of what had been Manchu's Qing dynasty under (Han) Chinese rule. They had earlier invaded the East Turkestan Republic (Xinjiang) that declared independence in 1933. Further, Chiang still raised objections to an independent Mongolia that was a Soviet client state, which is a key reason, but not the only one, why the Soviets didn't sign the Potsdam declaration.