Turning of the Tide
O'NEILL, WILLIAM L.
Turning of the Tide The Eagle and the Rising Sun: The Japanese-American War 1941-1943 By Alan Schom Norton. 540 pp. $28.95. Reviewed by William L. O'Neill Professor of history,...
...Ships from San Francisco werebacked up there forweeks at atime, and sometimes months whenpressed into service as floating warehouses...
...American decision making in the war against Japan...
...Yet Schom goes so far as to blame the fall of the Philippines on MacArthur personally, while military historians agree that the archipelago was indefensible with the tiny forces at his disposal...
...A lesser being than MacArthur would have been relieved of command in 1942 for his appalling performance in the Philippines, but politics made that impossible—another key point that eludes Schom...
...The author hates Emperor Hirohito even more, putting him in good company, but he writes as ifHirohito were commander in chief of the Japanese Armed Forces, whereas his influence, admittedly great, was not quite that of supreme commander...
...If there had been only one operation, however, General MacArthur would have commanded it...
...Still, the fact is that MacArthur grew into his job, and learned how to combine the services to win countless battles in the Southwest Pacific with, as a rule, minimal casualties...
...The Eagle and the Rising Sun is not for the general public...
...Guadalcanal was incredibly difficult to supply...
...The author's highest regard is reserved for Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner, who commanded every important naval invasion in the Pacific...
...Readers should perhaps be cautioned, though, that they will not find this sort of speculation in The Eagle and the Rising Sun, where the focus is on personalities with scant attention to strategic issues...
...Similarly, the author loathes General MacArthur and rightly flays him for incompetent leadership in the Philippines and during the Buna-Gona campaign on New Guinea...
...New Guinea was critical to the defense of Australia and therefore more important than Guadalcanal...
...But that would have left the Navy with nothing much to do except support MacArthur, an unthinkable situation that would also have hurt the Navy's effort to build a huge fleet...
...A Japanese surface force sank three American cruisers and an Australian one off Savo Island...
...Reviewed by William L. O'Neill Professor of history, Rutgers...
...But, as is also his habit, he omits the big picture...
...An astute editor would have been helpful too...
...In an incident that falls beyond the book's scope, Turner ordered the Marines to land on Iwo Jima after only three days of naval bombardment, condemning many to needless deaths...
...MacArthur had a big following among Republicans at home, and the valor of his men on Bataan made him a national hero...
...A single campaign would have made more sense...
...As Ronald Spector observes in his superb history of the Pacific conflict, Eagle Against theSun(l%5), "this contest forresources...
...And the work ends in February 1943, so he only covers the first 14 months of a conflict that lasted nearly fouryears...
...Schom jumps back and forth in time, making his narrative hard to follow in places...
...Occasionally the writing is simply incomprehensible, as when he tries to explain General Douglas MacArthur's experience with the Rainbow Division in World War I. In addition, Schom passes strange judgments about leading figures in his story...
...No one questioned his ability, but Army and Marine generals hated him with a passion...
...He would not have been able to retain it, though, if he had failed to deliver...
...Its title notwithstanding, the author does not actually get to the attack on Hawaii until he is almost a third of the way through his text...
...This is an arbitrary choice...
...The first wrong turn was the decision of Vice Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher to sail his covering warships out of the Solomons only 3 6 hours after the troops began landing...
...Churchill called Marshall "the architect of victory," but Schom thinks he should have been fired after Pearl Harbor...
...But logistics and a lack of carriers made the fight for Guadalcanal long and painful all the same...
...He might have added Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid, commander of MacArthur's fleet, and a number of other talented officers...
...dominated...
...The high point of this volume is the fight for Guadalcanal, a story it tells with considerable verve...
...At a guess, that explains why the Navy launched its Solomons campaign at the earliest possible moment, instead of waiting until it could attack in strength...
...Several times he attempted to land troops on Guadalcanal in positions where they would have been destroyed...
...After his escape from the Philippines President Franklin D. Roosevelt had to give him a major command...
...One could as easily say that it turned as a result of Japan's shattering defeat at Midway in June 1942...
...In the entire South Pacific the closest Allied ports capable of handling the amount of supplies headed there were in New Zealand...
...author, "A Democracy at War: America's Fight at Home and Abroad in World War II" This BOOK should come with a warning label...
...The nominal strategic reason, that Japanese aircraft based on Guadalcanal would menace Allied shipping, seems less than overwhelming given Japan's numerous shortages in the area...
...He does this by attributing MacArthur's later successes to his best ground commander...
...The nearest deep-water harbor was in New Caledonia, 900 miles away...
...Eventually the 200 planes based on Henderson Field cost Japan control of the air...
...Since he subsequently won victory after victory, Schom has to explain the inconsistency away...
...Schom ought to know better, since he cites the most authoritative work on the subject, Herbert P. Bix' Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (2000...
...Orperhaps it turned in August 1942 when American Marines seized Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, the key to the entire Solomon Islands, among other possible dates...
...This action, for which Fletcher would be dismissed, forced Turner to pull his Amphibious Force South Pacific out of the islands on August 9, leaving the beleaguered Marines with only about half of their supplies...
...A further consideration, ignored by Schom, was that the Navy needed to go on the offensive before operations against Germany consumedmost of America's then limited military resources...
...In summing up the lessons of Guadalcanal Schom echoes Admiral Chester Nimitz: "Training, Training, and MORE TRAINING...
...The Joint Chiefs decided to occupy Guadalcanal in 1942 because the Japanese had begun to fortify the Solomons to cut off Australia from the United States...
...A brave and efficient officer, Turner was not the perfect leader Schom makes him out to be...
...Guadalcanal itself could unload only one ship at a time, owing to its small harbor, and that single freighter frequently came under air attack...
...But to readers with some knowledge of the period covered it offers interesting details that histories of the Pacific War generally omit for lack of space...
...Thus when the reinforced but only partly trained First Marine Division went ashore on August 7 it was strong enough to seize what it promptly named Henderson Field, but whether the Marines could hold their position would soon be in doubt...
...He is deeply prejudiced against General George C. Marshall, the American World War II military leader admired by practically all historians...
...A larger question, never adequately answered by historians, is why the Navy wanted Guadalcanal...
...Acknowledging the practical difficulties, Schom, as is his wont, tends to blame bad leadership...
...Schom's biographical sketches go into greater depth than is usual in surveys and can be illuminating, although even when one agrees with his characterizations they sometimes seem over the top...
...His scathing description of Admiral Ernest J. King, who led the U.S...
...Conditions improved when Admiral William "Bull" Halsey replaced the timid, and defeatist, Admiral Robert L. Ghormley as theater commander in September...
...Many historians regard Brereton as the worst leader in the United States Army Air Forces, a man who, it is speculated, would have been sacked had he not been an old friend of General Henry H. Arnold, chief of the USAAF...
...Turner had little choice, because the night before the Navy had suffered its worst defeat at sea since 1812...
...His evil temper made him known throughout the Pacific as "Terrible Turner...
...Beyond that, he was almost the only admiral who tried to control troop deployments and ground operations...
...The United States committed itself to simultaneous operations in the Solomons and on New Guinea when it lacked the means to strongly support one offensive...
...With the aid of two new, fast battleships, the Allies gained control of the sea as well, forcing Japan to withdraw from the island...
...Lieutenant General Robert L. Eichelberger, and to General George C. Kenney, who commanded MacArthur's air force...
...Alan Schom's rationale is that when Japan evacuated its surviving troops from Guadalcanal in February 1943 the tide of the War had finally turned...
...No one doubts that both the Navy's air and surface forces needed great improvements, unlike the Marines who adapted quickly to jungle combat...
...In short...
...Navy, is righteous indeed, but fails to appreciate that despite his disagreeable qualities—arrogance, a bad temper, rudeness, dictatorial tendencies—King was a brilliant administrator and a good strategist, where strategy did not conflict with the Navy's self-interest...
...Conversely, Schom is excessively kind to Major General Lewis H. Brereton, who lost half of all Mac Arthur's aircraft on the first day Japan attacked the Philippines...
...Many more men and ships would be lost during the numerous land and sea battles that followed, including two of the Navy's scarce carriers...
Vol. 86 • November 2003 • No. 6
