On this day in history, the United States took actions that symbolize the contradictions of the Pacific War, at home and abroad. On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which effected the internment of ethnic Japanese (Issei) and Japanese-Americans (Nisei) living in the western United States. Three years later, in 1945, forces of the 4th Assault Corps put two divisions on the black sands of Iwo Jima. In a sense, these linked days were, in their own particular way, indicative of the beginning and the end of the Pacific War. The internments–perhaps the most shameful act of Roosevelt’s Presidency–highlight the confusion, fear, and chaos of the immediate months after Pearl Harbor. Iwo Jima, at the other end, demonstrated the bloody grinding that the war had become by 1945.
Internment
The attack on Pearl Harbor had thrown the United States into war with Japan. It also reinforced suspicions that many Americans had about the Issei and Nisei living in the west. “Fifth column” activity had been a constant worry in the U.S. since the war in Europe started and suspicious individuals in the east had been questioned by the FBI for their connection to Germany or Italy. What was different in the American west, however, was the rapid shift–driven largely by racism–from the suspicion of individuals to the suspicion of the entire group. The panic that overtook the West Coast after Pearl Harbor soon focused–at least in part–on supposed Japanese fifth columnnists active in California, Oregon, and Washington. The Attorney General of California, Earl Warren, issued a study claiming that Japanese-Americans lived in greater numbers near sensitive military targets. This, Warren thought, meant that they were concentrating themselves and waiting for an opportunity at sabotage. General John L. DeWitt, the head of the Western Defense Command, echoed Warren’s assessment. The result, in mid-February, was Executive Order 9066, which laid the groundwork for the exclusion of individuals from sensitive “military areas.” General DeWitt quickly issued orders to exclude all ethnic Japanese from “Military Area 1,” essentially the West Coast, and to set up processing centers and internment camps in the inland west to which the Nisei and Issei would be relocated.
The inherent silliness of the military justification for this is revealed most acutely by three things. First, the ethnic Japanese population of Hawaii was not included in the internment, despite their massive numbers and proximity to critical American bases. Second, it was impervious to any counter-argument. When told that there had been no acts of sabotage on the West Coast, General DeWitt responded that such a lack was “disturbing” because it indicated that the Japanese were waiting for the Americans to let their guard down. Third, many of the Nisei volunteered or were drafted for the military and served either in the European theater or (as linguists) in the Pacific.
The relocation of so many thousands of people created horrendous difficulties for the Japanese-Americans. Many were forced to sell their homes and possessions at fire-sale prices. Some destroyed their belongings rather than let them go for insultingly low prices. Nine Nisei soldiers were given furloughs from their units to return home and help their families with the move. In a defiant statement about their patriotic service, some Issei veterans of World War I showed up to the assembly camps in their old uniforms.
The internment was in roughly-built camps surrounded by barbed wire in Montana and Wyoming and Utah. Treatment of the Nisei and Issei there ranged from malevolent to indifferent to kind, depending on the commander. As the war progressed, the internment became looser and looser. College-age Nisei were allowed to leave to go to school. Gardens outside the barbed wire were set up and the internees allowed to farm them. Visits to local towns occurred. Finally, Executive Order 9066 was revoked in February 1945, and the camp inhabitants were given $25 and a train ticket home by the government. They were not, however, compensated for their confinement or for the property that many had lost.
Iwo Jima
In military terms, Iwo Jima is perhaps most notable not for the style of the American assault, but the method of the Japanese defense. American amphibious landings had become routinized in their execution (though not, obviously, in the experiences of those mounting the assault). The focus was on getting the Marines and soldiers ashore with a minimum of casualties. To that end, massive firepower was rained down on the beach from carrier airplanes, the big guns of American battleships, cruisers, and destroyers, and purpose-built ships such as rocket-firing landing craft. Once the beach had been pulverized, assault forces would go ashore in landing craft and tracked vehicles and fight their way inshore.
At Iwo Jima, however, the Japanese commander, Tadamichi Kuribayashi, took a different tack. Rather than concentrating his defenses on the shoreline and thus prey to American firepower, Kuribayashi pulled them back inland and built a series of defensive lines across the island. The American forces would be pincered between looming presence of Mt. Suribachi in the south and a series of lines in the broken terrain of the north. He conceded the landing to save his forces and focused on preventing the Americans from breaking out of the beachhead. The result was when American marines of the 4th and 5th Divisions went ashore on 19 February 1945 in Operation Detachment, they found the beaches largely undefended. Only as they began to push inshore did they trip into the intricate networks of tunnels, trenches, foxholes, and bunkers that the Japanese had set up. The fight, which started off slowly, quickly achieved a horrendous intensity. Iwo Jima was technically considered part of the Japanese Home Islands and the defenders fought fiercely.
The Marines pushed deeper onto the island, using flamethrowers and hand grenades to clear the bunkers and caves of defenders. When these failed, Nisei linguists sometimes managed to convince Japanese soldiers to surrender, but most preferred suicide or death in combat. The island was only finally declared secured on March 25, after five weeks of intensive fighting, and even then several thousand Japanese remained at liberty. The final Japanese holdouts would not surrender until several years after the war was over.
There were 27 Medals of Honor awarded for Iwo Jima (23 Marine and 4 Navy). The 23 Marine awards constituted about 30% of the Medals given to Marines during the entire war. American casualties were roughly 28,000 (with over 6,000 dead). Japanese casualties were over 21,000, almost all of whom were killed. After Iwo Jima, the American staff officers turned planning the invasions of Okinawa and Japan itself.
Memory
The memory of both has lasted, though in different ways. Iwo Jima has become perhaps the iconic land campaign of the Pacific War, symbolized by the famous photo of the the flag-raising on Suribachi. The Marine Corps Memorial in Washington, DC specifically reproduces the flag-raising and more movies have been made about Iwo Jima than about any other Pacific battle. The movies themselves have ranged widely, from the uncomplicated patriotic remembrance of John Wayne’s Sands of Iwo Jima to the complex dual projects of Clint Eastwood, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. In many ways, Pearl Harbor and Iwo Jima are the bookend battles of the Pacific War in American culture, one defeat and one victory.
The memories of the internment have been more contested. Though never forgotten, the American memory of World War II as “The Good War” tended to slide into the background things that did not fit. The 1955 Hollywood movie “Bad Day at Black Rock” touched on the issue, but from the point of view of Spencer Tracy, not the murdered Japanese farmer or his dead son, neither of whom appear in the film. It was not until the 1980s that Congress, under pressure from the “Redress Movement” acted to apologize and compensate the internees, with a lump sum payment of $20,000 for all those sent to the camps. In 1996, Congress ordered the Pentagon to research all Asian-American recipients of the Distinguished Service Cross to see if they should be “upgraded to the Medal of Honor.” The result, in 2000, was the award of 22 Medals of Honor to Asian-American veterans of World War II. Even now, however, the issue is controversial. Similar fears of an American “fifth column” post-9/11 have lead to the appearance of an internment-denialist literature, which argues that 9066 was justified.
But as both these events indicate, World War II’s status as “The Good War” of the “Greatest Generation” is always complicated and ambiguous. The individual heroism of Private First Class William R. Caddy, who jumped on a Japanese grenade and saved the lives of two fellow soldiers on March 2, 1945 at Iwo Jima sits uneasily with the groups of Japanese-Americans being sent from their homes to inland internment. Both are part of the war; neither are its whole meaning.
37 comments
February 19, 2009 at 11:35 am
Matt McKeon
Good essay.
February 19, 2009 at 11:36 am
Vance
Montana and Wyoming and Utah
And California (Manzanar), Arizona (Poston), and … ? (I’ve been reading about the latter for something I should be posting here, any month now.)
February 19, 2009 at 11:53 am
Anderson
Good post. I would carp that, having addressed the sheer stupidity of the internments, perhaps the sheer stupidity of taking Iwo Jima should also have been addressed. Did we need the damn island in the first place?
February 19, 2009 at 12:00 pm
ekogan
You wrote a post about moral failings of the American war effort in WWII without mentioning Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
February 19, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Jason B.
War tends to breed stupidity. No wonder conservatives get off on it.
February 19, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Anderson
War tends to breed stupidity.
I think people are no more stupid in war than at other times; it’s just that the consequences can be so much more conspicuous. One can argue the effects and merits of the New Deal; it’s more difficult to argue that invading Russia was a good idea for Hitler or Napoleon.
February 19, 2009 at 12:30 pm
eric
As late as 1938, Russia was still not fully proof against invasion from the West.
February 19, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Jason B.
. . . it’s more difficult to argue that invading Russia was a good idea for Hitler or Napoleon.
You have a point there.
February 19, 2009 at 12:37 pm
TF Smith
Couple of points:
The corps headquarters for Detachment was the V Amphibious Corps (M. Gen. Harry Schmidt); see:
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USMC/USMC-M-IwoJima/USMC-M-IwoJima-V.html
There never was a “IV (or 4th) Assault Corps” in the US OOB in WW II; the Army’s IV Corps was in the ETO.
As for why the Bonins were assaulted, the rationale was that they provided sites for airbases to supplement the strategic air campaign against the Japanese home islands, specifically in support of the Army Air Forces’ heavy bombers (B-29s) based in the Marianas (see p. 19-20 of the above.)
Specifically:
“…the Joint War Planning Committee completed a plan for the seizure of the Bonins and submitted it to the Joint Staff Planners on 12 August 1944. This stated that seizure of the Bonins could be conducted as a highly desirable “operation of opportunity” for:
1. Providing fighter cover for application of our air effort against Japan.7
2. Denying these strategic outposts to the enemy.
3. Furnishing air defense bases for our positions in the Marianas.
4. Providing fields for staging heavy bombers against Japan.
Iwo Jima, planners contended, was the only practical objective in the group. It was the only island that could support a large number of fighter aircraft, and its topography appeared to render it unusually susceptible to preliminary softening by aerial and surface bombardment with full benefit of advance aerial and submarine reconnaissance.”
Bartley’s Conclusion (p. 210, and written in 1954) suggests that the loss of 6800+ lives in the assault should be weighed against the roughly 25,000 AAF personnel aboard the 2200+ B-29s that were able to land on the island, because of damage, mechanical failure, weather, etc, between D+13 and VJ Day, as opposed having to ditch and/or try and make it to Guam, Saipan, Tinian, etc.
As far as the internment goes, it was both an immoral act and, from the pragmatic point of view, sheer folly because of the resources diverted…
But war, as someone who saw it close up once said, is all hell…folly is to be expected.
Semper Fi
February 19, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Anderson
As late as 1938, Russia was still not fully proof against invasion from the West.
Nor is the Tar Baby full proof against assault.
February 19, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Anderson
fullY, dammit
February 19, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Matt McKeon
Japanese resistance on Iwo Jima is usually considered part of the rationale for dropping the atom bombs on Japan.
As far as stupidity is concerned, I agree with eric(or Anderson) that the results of any wartime decision is much more immediately lethal.
The only good about the internment camps is at least we never made that particular mistake again. Yet.
February 19, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Buster
Oh, Silbey, you had me at “tdih.”
Random bibliographic notes/reading recommendations:
1. Linda Gordon’s book on Dorothea Lange’s recently-discovered internment photographs, Impounded is great. The photo reproduction quality leaves something to be desired, but the photos are still stark and amazing. And the book is affordable and, hence, teachable. (I assume that the quality and price have some relationship.)
2. I strongly recommend John Okada’s novel No-No Boy. A good read and lots of material for meditation on how the internment affected Japanese American politics, society and culture for (at least) a generation.
3. Lastly, not directly related, but a wonderful “graphic novel” (to use the term anachronistically) is Taro Yashima’s The New Sun (1943). In the book, the author dramatizes the repression of left-wing activists in imperial Japan, chronicling his experiences of imprisonment in the 1930s, while asking an American audience to see the complexities of Japanese society. The ironies are manifold and bitter.
I mention these just in case other folks are scanning for readable, teachable, enjoyable sources to use in classes.
February 19, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Jason B.
The only good about the internment camps is at least we never made that particular mistake again. Yet.
I wouldn’t say “only.” Having just read Michael Shermer’s Why People Believe Weird Things*, and specifically his chapter on batshit-crazy Holocaust deniers, I’m also gratified that we never got around to gas chambers for “delousing” the interred.
*Right–no need to be redundant.
February 19, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Jason B.
Derrrr. That “*” belongs after “deniers,” not after “Things.” Derrr.
February 19, 2009 at 2:03 pm
ekogan
it’s more difficult to argue that invading Russia was a good idea for Hitler
Stalin intended to attack Hitler himself in 1941 or 1942, but got pre-empted by Germans
February 19, 2009 at 2:09 pm
silbey
Good comments, all. Forgive me if I don’t quote before replying.
Vance–Yep, I left those out by accident.
Matt–Thanks!
Anderson–there’s been some arguments about the need for the Iwo Jima invasion, most notably by Robert Burrell in the Journal of Military History:
Robert S. Burrell, Breaking the Cycle of Iwo Jima Mythology: A Strategic Study of Operation Detachment in The Journal of Military History, Vol. 68, No. 4 (Oct., 2004), pp. 1143-1186.
and
Brian Hanley and Robert S. Burrell, The Myth of Iwo Jima: A Rebuttal [And Response] The Journal of Military History, Vol. 69, No. 3 (Jul., 2005), pp. 801-809
and then Burrell’s book.
I haven’t been following the debate deeply enough to get a good sense of it.
Oh, and I agree about the stupidity thing.
ekogan–why, yes, yes I did. I think that the morality of the atomic bombings is more complicated than that of the internment camps. Plus, they didn’t happen on “this day in…”
As to Stalin, the difficulties of getting access to the Soviet archives remain legendary, and figuring out what the man’s mindset was always difficult. Having said that the scholarly consensus is pretty solidly that he certainly didn’t intend to attack in 1941 and probably not in 1942. The ‘preemption’ thesis is championed by Victor Suvovrov, and his books has not held up well. For a somewhat lengthy discussion of this see here. For even more discussions, see here.
Buster–Thanks! And I’ve ordered the Gordon book.
February 19, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Anderson
Captain Robert S. Burrell masterfully reconsiders the costs of taking Iwo Jima and its role in the war effort. His thought-provoking analysis also highlights the greater contribution of Iwo Jima’s valiant dead: They inspired a reverence for the Marine Corps that proved critical to its institutional survival and its embodiment of American national spirit
Good lord. What a rationalization for extinguishing thousands of young men. I’d trade the Corps for 6,000 lives (to say nothing of the Japanese lives) in a minute. We could find some other way of getting kids to volunteer for shock infantry, as my dad used to put it ….
February 19, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Jason B.
When I was in the Navy we used to tease the Marines–called them “human sandbags.” Stories like this almost make me regret those jokes.
Almost, because military teasing is naturally several orders more vicious, without any real hostility.
February 19, 2009 at 5:22 pm
PorJ
Great post. Makes me think how war creates its own irrational logic in which everything must intensify. What started at Pearl Harbor, in other words, had to end at Hiroshima. And once Tarawa happened (and that was the real shocker to the American people and the Marine Corps, in terms of sheer, unadulterated brutality and inhumanity) then Saipan, Tinian, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa were inevitable – regardless of their military/tactical or strategic value.
February 19, 2009 at 6:09 pm
silbey
Makes me think how war creates its own irrational logic in which everything must intensify.
WWII more than most wars (with interesting exceptions, like poison gas).
February 19, 2009 at 6:45 pm
Matt McKeon
Paul Fussell wrote in “Wartime” about the change from what he called “light duty” to “heavy duty.” A progression to heavier weapons and more indiscriminate destruction.
I should also note that the island hopping campaigns in the Pacific actually worked by avoiding combat, the islands slated to be invaded were supposed to be necessary to support the advance to Japan.
February 19, 2009 at 6:53 pm
PorJ
WWII more than most wars (with interesting exceptions, like poison gas).
Zyklon-B?
Also, I must admit that the phrase I use above has always kicked around in my head and I know I got it from somewhere. I googled around and found it. Paul Fussell writes of “the inexorable military axiom that with time and experience everything intensifies.”
February 19, 2009 at 7:14 pm
silbey
The reality we should keep in mind is that industrialized mass war is *always* horrendously bloody. The U.S. was spared this for the most part because we weren’t fighting the main forces of our most powerful enemy (Germany). That was left to the Russians. For comparisons, the casualties at Iwo Jima were what the Russians experienced every three days for the entire war.
Zyklon-B?
Which was never brought out onto the battlefield, interestingly enough, despite the liberal use of gas in WWI.
February 19, 2009 at 7:19 pm
Anderson
the islands slated to be invaded were supposed to be necessary to support the advance to Japan
Island-hopping, to the extent actually practiced, was largely in MacArthur’s theater in the western Pacific. Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa were in Nimitz’s domain, and one of the motives for their capture is thought to be an unhappy desire to secure glory, and hence resources, for the Navy’s end of the war. Their “necessity for the advance to Japan” was largely an artifact of looking at a map and drawing a line and going “see? see?”
Our dual-command structure would’ve hamstrung a less powerful nation, tho it didn’t hurt that the Japanese command was even worse.
(Re: island-hopping, MacArthur certainly forgot all about it when he got to the Philippines, if not earlier.)
/omniscience
February 20, 2009 at 4:43 am
silbey
Island-hopping, to the extent actually practiced, was largely in MacArthur’s theater in the western Pacific
I think that the Japanese defenders of Rabaul (in Nimitz’s command area during ’43), Truk (in Nimitz’s area), Guam (in Nimitz’s area), and Wake (in Nimitz’s area) would be surprised to find out that they hadn’t been ‘hopped.’
MacArthur’s campaign in the Philippines was remarkably low-casualty (for the Pacific War), partly an artifact of his knowledge of the islands and partly an artifact of it being one of the few places that one could actually maneuver.
February 20, 2009 at 7:21 am
Anderson
I think that the Japanese defenders of Rabaul (in Nimitz’s command area during ‘43)
I haven’t got a book to check, but Cartwheel was MacArthur’s grand plan, and this map shows Rabaul in MacArthur’s zone — during 1942, admittedly. If I’m not mistaken, the Navy favored moving up the Solomons, rather than an assault on Rabaul, precisely b/c Rabaul wasn’t in their zone. When in 1943 did Rabaul move into Nimitz’s bailiwick?
As for the Philippines, “remarkably low-casualty” was not how it felt to the casualties, many of whom didn’t need to become casualties at all. There was no good reason to attempt to clear the islands of Japanese altogether, and it took miserable fighting to try.
February 20, 2009 at 7:26 am
Anderson
Oh, and there’s the Battle of Guam. We did hop over Lt. Yokoi however.
Truk was an exception proving the rule — that an island base could be neutralized w/out killing a few thousand U.S. troops in the process.
February 20, 2009 at 8:07 am
silbey
During early 1943, operations in the Rabaul area were put under Halsey’s direct command, with MacArthur in ‘general direction.’ So who gets credit for skipping over the island? (The JCS, actually, who insisted over Mac’s objections)
I did forget about the Guam invasion. My apologies. I did leave out Formosa, however.
In any case, you’re changing your argument a bit. What you originally said was:
Island-hopping, to the extent actually practiced, was largely in MacArthur’s theater in the western Pacific. Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa were in Nimitz’s domain, and one of the motives for their capture is thought to be an unhappy desire to secure glory, and hence resources, for the Navy’s end of the war
MacArthur skipped Rabaul; Nimitz skipped Truk, Wake, and Formosa.
As for the Philippines, “remarkably low-casualty” was not how it felt to the casualties
Well, of course, it didn’t. It probably felt pretty good to those who *weren’t* casualties, though. MacArthur had roughly 62,000 casualties in a year-long campaign. Compare that to Iwo Jima or Okinawa, and I stand by the evaluation.
February 20, 2009 at 11:01 am
Erik Lund
Pardon my playing with an idea, but the evacuation and internment might not necessarily have been stupid (as opposed to inhuman.) If the declared reason were a thinly veiled rationalisation, than we can seek the real motivations. And prejudice, while real enough, doesn’t cut it. As real Asian Exclusionists used to point out, if prejudice ran deep, people wouldn’t do business with Asians.
I’ll vault many intermediate steps of logic and get to the thesis. The peopling of North America by “Whites” was in large measure a process of ethnogenesis in which Native Americans elected to become White. This was true with greater and lesser intensity at different times and places, and one place where it was true with particular intensity was the Pacific Slope.
By presenting Native Americans with an alternate model of ethnogenesis, [socially successful by some as yet unspecified critera that saves the theory] Asian immigrants posed an existential threat to self-identifying White Westerners. Internment seemed to offer a solution.
February 20, 2009 at 11:43 am
Jonathan Dresner
By presenting Native Americans with an alternate model of ethnogenesis, [socially successful by some as yet unspecified critera that saves the theory] Asian immigrants posed an existential threat to self-identifying White Westerners. Internment seemed to offer a solution.
As my father says about data plots, you can draw any line you want through a single point.
February 20, 2009 at 12:03 pm
silbey
As real Asian Exclusionists used to point out, if prejudice ran deep, people wouldn’t do business with Asians.
Uh, why not? The historical record has lots of confirmed racists quite happily doing business with the objects of their prejudice.
February 21, 2009 at 10:32 am
Erik Lund
“Uh, why not? The historical record has lots of confirmed racists quite happily doing business with the objects of their prejudice.”
Indeed. Which suggests their motivations are, in general, other than the stated ones. There are plenty of people against whom social prejudice has been entirely effective in suppressing all public sign of their existence. (Homosexuals, criminals…). There are minority groups, notably the Kanaks, who just disappeared from the Pacific Slope over time. Asian Exclusion, on the other hand, survived for three generations without ever actually Excluding the Asians.
There’s something deeper going on here, and by “here” I mean the entire particular racialisation of North American society. I think I have a productive idea about what it might be, so I’m throwing it out there.
February 21, 2009 at 11:26 am
silbey
Which suggests their motivations are, in general, other than the stated ones.
Why? That some racisms define themselves as ‘no contact at all’ doesn’t mean that other racisms can’t define themselves in other ways.
There are plenty of people against whom social prejudice has been entirely effective in suppressing all public sign of their existence. (Homosexuals, criminals…).
Uh, no, they weren’t, at least not in many areas of North America.
by “here” I mean the entire particular racialisation of North American society. I think I have a productive idea about what it might be, so I’m throwing it out there.
The racialization of American society is surely baroque in the extreme, but the definition you’re implying of what “real” racism was or is seems to me to be extremely manichean.
February 21, 2009 at 12:01 pm
andrew
Bad Day at Black Rock
I was very surprised to find out what that film was about when I saw it last year on tv. The cable company’s description of it said only that it was about a one-armed man encountering hostility in a small town (or something like that).
February 21, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Jonathan Dresner
Which suggests their motivations are, in general, other than the stated ones.
No. Racism isn’t the same thing as exclusionism, and exclusionism was closer to segregation, only rarely about separtism.
February 22, 2009 at 10:01 am
Erik Lund
Exclusionism’s declared intent was not segregation –whatever that means in the real world of passing as opposed to the dream world of racial essentialism onto which we project it– but in “sending the Asians back to Asia.” We have seen that it can work on the Pacific Slope. An entire visible minority group –the Kanaks– just disappeared at the turn of the last century. Because, of course, they assimilated into other visible minority groups, but, still, from the Exclusionists’ point of view, a win is a win.
Racism is real enough. But it references a fiction (essentialism). It is, therefore, not out of line to consider it as an ideology in the Marxist sense and ask what realities it conceals.