December 7th and After - One Year of Wartime America
December 7th and After - One Year of Wartime America Louis Adamic Suggests A New Propaganda Use - Our 'Foreign' Stock A LL-OUT global war calls for total mobilization of all resources ·* *nd the...
...Indeed, that is what they will tell their so-called illustrjous ancestors at their multitudinous shrines, on this first anniversary of their war against us...
...Maybe we can win thfe war in the long rur without doing so, but it will be a long, long run...
...This state of affairs may not, however, prevent same latter-day eonverts to manifest destiny from trying to do their stuff...
...The important task today is to reassess basic convictions in the light of recent events...
...What do we find in our balance sheet ? Nothing like this...
...Is the reactionary notion of Manifest Destiny going to be resurrected as a counterpart to the "dangerous" People's War idea...
...Future bistorians may well reccJgnize this fact as of enormous importance to America's future...
...So far as we are concerned, the year has been characterized by blunders...
...And the conservatives have method in their madness...
...Our output spiraled...
...The only question now is whether the Japanese dominate the regions they now hold or whether the peoples of China, India, and the other Far Eastern lands achieve a substantial degree of emancipation...
...Japan's position in Asia also requires us to defeat German* first, for unless and until Germany is defeated we cannot hope that Russia will make its- Siberian bases available for operations against the Japanese...
...TOWARD the end of this year of war...
...Until many months passed, it was entirely to their disadvantage...
...Vast guerrilla armies can and must be bottt up in all those areas...
...Secretary Hull's visions of a free trade world and even seme of Vice-President Wallace's dreams of increased international trade look more remote every day...
...The People "AMERICA !" it's been written, "half-brother of the world...
...They see it as a miniature of the world wherein a great diversity of peoples live together in relative harmony and without war...
...to" follow...
...You will notice that there is a direct mObat> highway through India, through upper DaViMV through China (remember the oW ???» fteOH and how useful it was to out aide...
...We are thinking of fighting back against the Japs by island-hopping, advancing along the route the Japs took against us...
...Perhaps a few reflections on the events of the past year by one who called himself a non-interventionist, even an isolationist, right up to Pearl Harbor may suggest that those of us who stand somewhere to the left of center still have more in common with each other than we have with anyone else...
...was understandable...
...If there had been half the will to tight, the Jap* could never have even matte a landing Beel 7·*, 1941...
...And we have to stop resenting the demands of the future...
...The choice today is no longer a choice between isolationism and interna* tionalism...
...From the time we left our airplanes standing row by row, waiting out in the open foi a bombing on Dec...
...How can we more effectively tie people to people in democratic fraternity...
...THE "foreigners" integration with America already shows heavily 1 in the rosters of our armed forces...
...When the" talents are recognized, valued, solicited and ill ill IUI most of the potentially dangerous strain and conflict Will dissolve, releasing an upsurge of positive energy which will help immensely in prosecuting the war...
...and one that should have bean tackled immediately...
...The Government, and many private institutions and part of the Press, have over the last decade encouraged a realistic comprehension of the immigrant's integral place in American life...
...For if the German people follow the leadership of the Nazis and fight to the finish, no power on earth can save them...
...The most significant factor about this balance sheet for the year is that it has remained almost stationary for more than six months...
...Asia also offen far better commercial opportunities than Europe to private American capital—if any...
...It is worth books full «f ??ids...
...II...
...If only we had sent the Chinese one shipload of airplanes, one shipload more of military supplies, and one contingent of our pilots, what a phenomenal difference it would have made...
...The recent relaxation of regulations applywg to Italian Americans, and Wen to Italians resident her.e, indicates that we are not losing °or heads...
...We made an attempt at an offensive in the Solomons, but that was held up for months by appal-ing setbacks, and our failure to free ourselves of the old curse of "too little and too late," just a little bit more could have weighed so mightily on the scales...
...With something good and bad of every land...
...And if I may try to look a little into the future, it would seear logical to foresee the world entering a period in which the small nation will count for far less than it did after the last war...
...Much depends, too...
...There were several occasions within the last year when we might have lost it...
...There, her control extends only along thin lines of railroad track along the coast, so much so that no Jap can leave the railway zones and main cities and_not be-killed, unless he takes along a strong guard, or troops...
...Doolittle's ait raid on Japan...
...Nearly all isolationists honestly favor a vigorous prosecution of the war...
...While extremists on both sides did their utmost to cripple our capacity for defense, our liberals in the middle gave themselves shots in the arm with verbal injections...
...They had to abandon the bomb-Japan bases near the Chinese coast which they captured at such great cost...
...Unpleasantries did not exist because we refused to mention them...
...Our side has not lost India, and neither has it lost Siberia...
...and keeps too many new Americans on the defensive and in their immi-grant*groups...
...7-8—after the news that the Japs were attacking us already had circled the globes—to the time we left three cruisers wait patiently at night for the Japs to come up and sink them with a few surprise salvoes, we have been making blunder after blunder...
...not,.with the Vast majority in all groups, a question of "divided loyalties" but of resentment, suspicion and skepticism over the quality of welcome America extends to them...
...II...
...nd desire to exclude, and partly concrete military exigency...
...And so slow a process, so agonisingly stow an advance...
...A year ago most Americans, who today know all the military details about Port Moresby, Guadalcanal, the Coral Sea, Midway, and Kiska...
...F The Ocean IT is almost as if the Pacific were in the process of being re-discovered...
...The Japs are not at Dutch Harbor, although they made a fairly complete mess of that base in their bombing of it...
...That is something, too...
...In like manner, many interventionists who supported Roosevelt's foreign policy are now making* common cause with ex-isolationists on such matters as the 40-hour week and poll-tax reform...
...was too late to inculcate that Will...
...If our large industrial and financial interests come out of this war with any power left, they may try to commit us to an utterly hopeless a_djfenture in empire...
...This is not to say that we should scrap our policy of beating Germany first and concentrate instead on Japan.' The Nazis are on the run, it's true...
...7-8, such a Formosa and the Marshall Islands...
...Japan had been preparing openly for this war from at least 1931...
...The Land fXS three continents the course of the war has taken its turns — in Europe, in Africa, in Asia...
...That's some Jap balance sheet...
...That, too, was understandable for a people who had _been...
...AT one period during the year China seemed about to be knocked out of the war...
...Much depends on how seriously we take Roosevelt s four freedome" and Wallace's "century of the common man...
...Their evacuation inland was partly old-time fear...
...But far from justifying a reversion to isolationism, this tendency makes a new internationalism more imperative than ever...
...Their power to fuse the best of their old-world and new-world experiences is hampered, and their natural resentful rebellion shows in unproductive and divisive ways...
...We Were living in a dream-world until Dec...
...for swift and punitive punish ment of the war-maddened Japs...
...That is thinking in prewar conceptions...
...Not all these developments took all of us by surprise, bat few indeed ere those who correctly called every turn...
...At one time one of America's leading labor writers, Adamic has become the most prominent spokesmen for racial tolerance and international brotherhood among all peoples...
...Why cannot French Americans tell Frenchmen °°r purposes, and Yugoslav Americans inspire Yugoslavs to continued resistance...
...Poland, perhaps Czecho-Slcvakia, possibly even some of Germany...
...Thak alternative is to use the enormous Hank that con tinental Asia provides us—principally India ant China...
...I have mentioned the three main surprises of the year and 1 think I speak for others beside myself when I say that tbe biggest' surprise and perhaps the most important development was the conquest of East Asia and the Far Pacific The events of the past year in the Far East not only reveal the Japanese as potentially -more powerful than the Germans...
...Louis Adamic has dedicated himself to solving these problems...
...What political factors, national and world-wide, will be brought into play as the war deepens and widens...
...But the longer the war lasts, the more the .rest of the world will need the United States in the period of relief, reconstruction, and rehabilitation that must follow...
...The past year has provided us with an a watering and a turning point—and a choice whether we win the war the hard way—and fhe stulnmrit wn* that refuses to learn from past errors, and which may reap us only a temporary and false victory— oj- to win it boldly by striking along these two natural routes...
...We made other blunders during that year, besides our early neglect of the Pacific war areas...
...The important task today is eat to revive old controversies...
...on how rapidly «he country .ami particularly WaahmgMh, realises the special equipment, the unique and heretofore negteetOd human resources that exist in immigrant gsous...
...Guadalcanal should teach us a great lesson...
...The Willkie-Lnce-Daven-port Axis has entertained even stranger delusions and their curious combination of morality, ingenuousness, and ambition can lead them into almost any adventure...
...Nearly one-third of our population are first-, second- and third-generation Americans deriving from some 60 nations, races and religions...
...Quincy Howe, one of America's leading news commentators, offers an analysis of the strategies of international, total conflict...
...It*, at ? er It is a slow job...
...The Dutch authorities can do all the explaining that unlimited finances for publicity allows them, for example, but they never will be able to explain away satisfactorily the simply fact that a couple of hundred thousand Japs were able to conquer a vast erea inhabited by almost 100.000.000 people—stop a" mo moat and t hink of that total— ?0.000.000...
...7-8, and well they may...
...The lesson that Guadalcanal should teach us is that island-hopping is possible only at extraordf-nary expenditure in ships, military supplies, and men...
...In other words, the conquests fell to a Japanese blitzkrieg, which has been effectively stalled ever since Brig...
...Our side is out of Hong Kong, too, and Singapore, the Netherlands East Indies, IndoChina, Thailand, Burma—even some of the Aleutians...
...Jap occupation of the Dutch East Indies has been equally superficial...
...And, further ih the future, looms the question of reconstruction «nd the post-war world...
...wrote P. J. Bailey, "half-brother of the world...
...7-8 of 1941, military officers are inspecting balance sheets to see what they've accomplished in that time, and what their prospects are for the next year...
...In fact, there have been actual reversals for the Japs in the latter half of their first year of open war against the United States and Britain...
...Japan can become an imperial power of great importance in the Far East...
...Why not add to out arsenal an invaluable oamrt ami at the same time go one step farther toward ? better world...
...We have to our advantage the fact that Japan's conquests are as superficial as they were quick...
...If they really were in full control of this vast empire, in addition to Manchuria, occupied China, and their old conquests of Korea, Formosa, North Sakhalin, the Marshall and Caroline islands, and even some more, they would really be sitting pretty...
...But our blood relationship to much of the world has not yet gone into the bones of our general picture of the United States, nor have its huge and hopeful implications for the future...
...More and more people are beginning to live in the present and coming to see contemporary America as the work of many hands from many countries...
...On the anniversary of Pearl Harbor we find Japan s far more formidable enemy than most of us had anticipated...
...OUT there are still too many W stresses and strains in the immigrant groups, too many conflicts which may develop dangerously if not understood and relieved...
...The conservative elements in the land have buried the hatchet...
...Even out of the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal...
...What military perspectives are opening up for the U. S. forces after a year of war...
...in »MQTdance with the Administration's intelligent policy toward immigrants and their problems, which has done much to prevent the rise of hysteria over "foreigners...
...India is also sure to work out its own salvation—bat it would be well for British...
...With something good and bad of every land...
...To add up the rolling stock pf » nation, or the pounds per capita of butter consumption, or even the number of men in 1-A is comparatively simple...
...And they are beginning to see what a marvellous and unique training this gives the United States—training for tbe kind of post-war world indicated by the trends and pressures of historical events...
...Once Germany is out of the way, tbpnjb, the Russians in sheer self-interest would be inclined to cooperate with us against Japan...
...The whole tendency today is for a few large states to dominate large continental areas...
...We are nowise past the danger point...
...The recent revision upward in popular esteem of Poland, Greece and Yugoslavia had a very good effect on Polish, Greek and Yugoslav Americans...
...t is...
...That, too...
...The war has brought another difficulty, closely allied to 'the first...
...But we hare not even start ed seriously at that job yet...
...even a clock that has stopped is right once every twelve hours...
...Why could not German Americans broadcast our war »uns to Germanv...
...Battles have been raging from Alaska to India...
...Glance at the map...
...so pathetically peace-minded as ourselves...
...But Chinese stamina, plus a slight awakening by ourselves to this danger, retrieved that situation literally in the nick of time...
...But not Tier occupation of island bases...
...The old blueprint still lingers of America as structurally Anglo-Saxon with a few "foreign" additions here and there...
...And can we afford to neglect political warfare and the war of ideas because of pressure by shortsighted military realist* * These are some of the problems Mr...
...Those of us who opposed American intervention on the ground that we should find ourselves fighting either for the British Empire or for an empire of our own can stop worrying...
...What new political perspectives open up now for global strategy...
...Only Japan is now able to exploit the resources and peoples of the Far East...
...And that is what they will brag about to their "unbroken line" of imperial ancestors...
...When Hong Kong fell so miserably, the Hong Kong mind should have been eliminated with'Ifc^Hong Kong is important to us now mainly as a reminder of our outmoded past...
...You cannot study a map too intently...
...But that's the only truth he speaks...
...The addition'eff a •lative or two to the Dutch governing council Is only a gesture...
...We will -be im practical and short-sighted if we do not put to use the lrngmttM gifts and emotional and intellectual ties with the Old World af hundreds of thousands of able immigrants and their sons and daughters, who are completely devoted to the practices and principles of the American way of life...
...But there is another field in which their "foreign" derivation *ouJd be of great value...
...There is, of course, no upward revision toward Germany and Italy, whose post-ear fate is of deep concern to their American descendants who do »ot believe that "German" and "Italian" are always synonymous wiU "Nazi" and "Fascist...
...And Russia was too busy fighting the Germans to help effectively...
...thought of the Pacific with schoolday memories of Balboa, Cooke, and Magellan...
...Thousands of teachers, for- example, will be needed to replace those murdered by the Nazi "technique of ^Population" in the occupied countries...
...Over a third of the Army is »ade up of men with such names as Werkenheimer...
...National, racial, religious discrimination still sets up chasms and deprivations...
...The larger the economic units of the future, the more deadly future wars will be—and the more necessary some sort of world-wide understanding in the post-war period...
...hafe to be licked in Japan, and the shortest and Quickest way there will be the sooner we win...
...The Japs are not at Guadalcanal, and not at Port Moresby...
...We are out of the Philippines...
...indeed, oar attempt at empire proved so an happy that we tried to go beak to ? half-hearted isolationism after the last war...
...anguish of those who derive frort those countries is inevitable, but it might be ameliorat-edi or at least not aggravated, if they were sure their homelands received from the United States people the respect they merit...
...December 7th and After - One Year of Wartime America Louis Adamic Suggests A New Propaganda Use - Our 'Foreign' Stock A LL-OUT global war calls for total mobilization of all resources ·* *nd the Unlted States ha* been enumerating for over a year its man-power, its organic and inorganic materials, supplies and equipment and technical knowledge...
...Those Americans who warned us two and three years *y*> against the imminent possibility of a Hitler-dominatsal- world will do well to change their emphasis today...
...They fill employment lists in war industries and volunteer schedules on Civilian Defense...
...Balance sheets, like any row of statistics, conceal more than they tell, however, and this one is no exception...
...There is an alternative shoving rtsetf irrte» ?? faces, however, if we will but accept it...
...may not fight a successful people's war in the Far East, but that is the only kind of war we can even attempt to ftjght The British and the Dutch and our own country lost the imperialist war before it even started...
...Perhaps they were right at the time...
...But Japan's conquests_since 1931 have been as insecure as her domination in Manchuria...
...That was the direct result of our entry into the war...
...Through our neglect of the Pacific front, which is every bit as important as our Atlantic front in a global war, we very nearly allowed the exhausted Chinese to fade out, and if we had done so, we would have made Japan's position almost impregnable...
...Thus,- it is no accident—as the Marxists say—that we find the most powerful conservative interests in the country plugging tne war against Japan rather than the war against Germany...
...is essentially a matter of Gargantuan bookkeeping...
...A year or six months ago, Germany might have been able to use a breathing space of a year or two to fcon-solidate its gains and then resume the war...
...In the following article...
...Our Satisfaction must be a negative one, so far as the addition or subtraction of square miles of territory is concerned...
...This outworn concept has dwindled during the past 30 years, along with antiquated "Americanization" drives, the object of which was to force the immigrant into a rigid Anglo-Saxon mold, lopping off those pieces of his heredity which did not fit into the pattern...
...indeed...
...And if the people across-the way, who happen to be the cook's or gardener's grandparents and cousins, start a fight, the master in the drawingroom is apt to question the sympathies and loyalties of his staff...
...They nave made more sweeping conquests than any other people in the history of the world in so short a time, bar not even the Germans...
...When the figures finally are revealed—probably after the waiw-of how fantastically little we supplied the Chinese, either in airplanes or anything else—our respect for the Chinese as stubborn fighters will rise even more than it has...
...They have been whipped on Guadalcanal...
...Katchadounan, Zelenjak, Piekarz...
...Nor are the war aims of Vice-President Wallace shared by all those who favored American intervention before Peart Harbor, while on the other side of the fence, many nea.interwsn--tionists now have no alternative but to support a people's waf for the century of the common man...
...In the long run, it would be worth more to Japan from a military standpoint to occupy China, and make it a Jap stronghold, than to hold any of the territories it did take—and a lot more to boot...
...It will take the highly intelligent ose of all our assets, tangible and intangible...
...On the other hand, the legend of German invincibility is seriously cracked...
...It is complicated because we each have to discover what it is we want...
...The peoples of th* Far East need net, perhaps, worry about the designs of any American imperialists who emenge from the presentam...
...In this article, Edward Hunter, a noted foreign correspondent who has worked for many years in the Far East, draws up a balance-sheet of the Pacific...
...condemn us to sterile isolationism or predatory imperialism...
...It was one thing for the United States to hold aloof from local or regional controversies, especially when those controversies had to do chiefly with European rivalries and European competition for the spoils of empire...
...when it overran Manchuria...
...Indians, and Americans, too, to remember that independence is always earned...
...Only if we made peace with Germany tomorrow—a most unlikely assumption—need we fear a German-dominated Europe...
...If western Europe is fortunate, the Latin nations, the Scandinavian nations, and the British Isles can begin to enjoy some of the real civilization that the smaller, less aggressive states of western Europe began to achieve even before the first World War when they renounced nationalism at home and empire abroad...
...It is merely another port along China's coast...
...By Quincy Howe War Undermines Nazi Powe r, My th s of ? m pi rˆ * ""THREE big surprises have occurred during America's first year * at war...
...One way or another...
...Germany's hopes of empire are doomed...
...Our survival through this year has enabled us to rouse ourselves from our lethargy and confusion—not completely, by any means, but enough to have halted the Jap blitzkrieg, and to start out in a very, very modest fashion on our own offensive...
...India—Burma—well, these examples of net blundering are too glaring to require ????????-tion...
...This choice must be put into affect promptly...
...Too many people named Mikolajczak, Harampo-poulos and Borovkova find themselves considered slightly inferior by people named Johnson, Smith,' Evans, McDonald...
...A host of small-way stations like Guam have gone by the board...
...In actuality, it has been preparing for this showdown since 1918, when it bamboozled us at Versailles to give them the enormously strategic Marshall and Caroline islands, popularly known nowadays as unsinkable airplane carriers...
...There is conflict and confusion over the fate of old countries engulfed by the Axis...
...One might lay that the livingroom, study and master bedrooms are old-stock American, while the kitchen and barn and workshop are new stock...
...The latter element, proportionately very small, is being capably dealt with by the FBI...
...One year of war has transformed vague romantic associations into a realistic appreciation of the ocean arena in international, total war...
...I am not referring to the bases Japan held and developed* before Dec...
...China had been fighting about five years by the thfiye we came in, and if there was some righteous indignation on the part of the Chinese, it should be understandable, for our workers and our manufacturers and our merchants were supplying the Japs with the tools of war...
...They hold less of the Aleutians than they did— and we have vastly strengthened ourselves there...
...Finally, the whole system of colonial empire in the Far East is now wrecked beyond restoration and repair...
...Names like Kazmarczyk, Schmidt, Petri, Atchue «Jorn honor rolls...
...We must bear down as hard as we can and as soon as we can on Germany if only because a longr drawn-out European war can lead to the total disappearance of European civilization...
...People defending their self respect from the subtle poison of being thought inferior cannot usually mobilize their energies into wholly productive channels...
...develop-* ments indicated that we were about ready to turn a corner and to do some important offensive work ourselves for a change...
...The only result of our entry into the war during those early months was that China lost its only remaining outlets to the world for supplies by land, and the Japs surrounded them everywhere except along the Russian frontier...
...Th*people of the United states, however, must be warned against the folly of repeating their errors of forty years' agt> in th* Far East...
...But there is this difference between the eras of Rooseuelt I and Roosevelt II...
...A victorious China, for example, can become the chief power in eastern Asia...
...Out of a host of places in the South and Southeast Pacific...
...Whether Vice-President Wallace likes it or not, we shall presently find ourselves able to produce all our own rubber in this hemisphere, and the-longer the war lasts, the more self-sufficient we shall have to become...
...Then we came into the war, or rather we were forced in by a Jap attack, and naturally the Chinese expected that this would be to their advantage...
...Nor is it a question of "fifth column" leanings...
...What military advantages have the United Nations gained...
...neglected to take advantage of a vast native population that would have made us impregnable in Asia, if we had treated those people halfway decently...
...It wffl take completely up-to-date and realistic* determination to win the war in such a way as to preclude another world-wide explosion in another generation...
...There is a goad deal of t&lkuig and thinking about these thin** Why hesitate...
...But the trend toward hemispheric solidarity and self-sufficiency need not...
...By the same token, those who held that anti-Fascism sometimes seemed more like a neurosis than a political conviction must admit that non-intervention makes no sense' in the world of 1942...
...The only people who have been isolated as a group are the Japanese and Japanese Americans on the Pacific Coast...
...Can the liberals, progressives, radicals, and Socialists of America bury the hatchet as successfully as the conservatives...
...Study the map, and see how China adjoins the Jap mainland, and you will understand why China's defeat would have been such a terrifying disaster fo us...
...without which victory cannot be won...
...7-8, 1941...
...To what extent is America mobilizing the resources of imagination and the human spirit for the democratic cause...
...what comforts and prejudices we will do without to get it-what freedoms we will yield in order to gain a greater freedom' We have to think beyond the moment and see beyond our immediate environment, too often veiled by outworn preconceptions...
...We muffed our greatest opportunity then...
...The Japs have more to brag about than the United States, but they have more to worry about concerning the future, too...
...This is a propaganda war as well as everything else...
...That's something...
...Japan dll...
...It is more complicated for a Mtion to mobilize its resources of imagination and the human spirit...
...So is our promise to China thaa we will end the vicious ex trail ty system Which even during wartime ha* cotinuoed to rluaslfi our Cninese allies as inferior to out Japanese enemies...
...it's now a choice as to what kind of internationalism we ? h...
...Free China is much theesame size as it was a year ago...
...it never eomes as a gift...
...Today, America — with almost one-third of the population deriving from some 60 nations, races and religions — is marking its first year in "a war which has embroiled almost all the peoples of the globe...
...In war, the balance sheet is added up—or subtracted—by territory won or lost...
...the events of the pest year make all discussion of restoring the British or any other Empire purely academic...
...That prospect looks much less likely now...
...The Japs will gloat about it, too, this Dec...
...thftftofh Korea and Manchuria—all the way to Japan-There is another direct highway, up our now Alcan road, through Alaska and the Aleutians-^ and through Siberia, too—directly to Japan Those are the highways which nature and toil have provided us...
...We have not lost Pearl Harbor...
...From the cold standpoint of the balance sheet, they have been victorious during the past year...
...How has the war gone in the Pacific...
...By Edward Hunter Only Aid of Coloniol Peoples Can Turn Pacific Tide Against Japan DOTH at Washington and at Tokyo, one year U after the Dec...
...Goebbels for once speaks the truth when he says that this war will,, decide whether or not Germany goes on existing...
...DL'T this war is emancipating Asia and is creating a few large and increasingly self-sufficient areas...
...The United States has not yet mobilized one very important asset...
...There can be no argument over which side hoiMs the advantage there...
...Russian influence seems certain to extend over many parts of eastern Europe—the Baltic states, the Balkans...
...This war may end noi Ollty in the extermination of the Germans but in the extermination of most of the rest of Europe, too...
...As for the United States, here, too, the trend will be toward collectivism and self-sufficiency...
...Why not tram Polish Americans to teach in Poland and, for a different but obvious rea-«0?, German Americans for Germany, to pinch-hit until native teachers can be trained...
...Ai the time of Roosevelt I. the Itnited States might have pursued a continental policy with some rhenee of success...
...Howe considers in his illuminating survey of the world situation...
Vol. 25 • December 1942 • No. 49
