The U.S. Army and World War II’s Pacific Theater with John McManus | BRI Scholar Talks

0:00 you’re seeing you know just just uh sort of operations at a at a scale that would have been unimaginable even in world war one uh so this is a a kind of citizen soldier army that i like to say uh has enough professional soldiers to become really good and reasonably well led but not so many that it’s just

0:21 destroyed by corruption and careerism [Music] hi this is tony williams senior fellow at the bill of rights institute and we are pleased to bring you another episode of bri scholar talks for this episode we’re really honored to have scholar john mcmanus who is going to discuss his new book island infernos

0:42 the us army specific war odyssey in 1944 which is the second volume of of a great trilogy he’s writing on the us army in the pacific theater during world war ii and the first volume was the excellent fire and fortitude which covered the 1941-1943 period

1:03 and the guiding question for this episode is what was the contribution of the us army to the american victory against japan and the pacific war during world war ii now dr john c mcmanus is curator’s distinguished professor of us military history at the missouri university of science and technology and he’s the

1:23 author of more than a dozen excellent books on military history and world war ii including the americans at d-day the american experience of the normandy invasion and alamo in the art ends uh the untold story of the american soldiers who made the defense of bastogne possible his website is john c

1:46 mcmanus.com john i want to thank you very much for joining me thanks for having me tony yeah you have a great bookshelf of books on world war ii in military history i read most of them uh really excited to talk with you and you know your your trilogy is is really really

2:06 important really giving us you know we we focus so much on the us marine corps uh in the pacific and they deserve a lot of attention of course uh it’s just an amazing uh story of perseverance fighting the pacific war and yet in in a lot of ways the us army uh has been sort of been overshadowed a bit uh maybe overlooked a bit so uh your

2:28 trilogy i uh has some some really great books of highly readable great narratives i really appreciate it yeah you know i mean to me as a you know military historian and one who studied world war ii in great depth and especially like the u.s in world war ii because i’m also an american historian um

2:48 you know it just seemed to me there was this enormous gap in our our kind of popular memory of the pacific war um that it seemed as though there was a sense that the marines had fought the war on the ground against japan and then the army focused on europe and actually yes the army did focus on europe but also the pacific too so that in in the pacific

3:08 you’ve got an army of 1.8 million soldiers ground soldiers who serve in the pacific or on the asian continent throughout world war ii that’s the third largest ground army this country’s ever sent overseas to fight a war um so you know it was relatively anonymous and i felt like maybe this was some sort of kind of new way we could look at world war ii and and gain a lot

3:29 of lessons too great great and i’d like to dial in on that a little bit if i may uh you know the typical story of the pacific war seems to be that the the u.s marine corps did sort of the the heavy lift of fighting aggressively against the japanese uh you know they were the ones storming the pill boxes with their satchel charges and grenades and

3:49 meanwhile sort of the us army depended upon fire power and got slogged down a lot and sort of lacked that same fighting spirit that the marines had uh did correcting this view maybe help and help you inspire you to to write the book as well on the u.s absolutely absolutely because i you know i’ve been

4:09 studying american combat soldiers for for decades and of course that included soldiers and marines in the pacific and one of the things i i found in in studying the combat soldier and then also in this trilogy soldiers and marines fought in a very similar fashion i think there’s been a bit too much historical fixation on the idea that the marines were sort of gung-ho and went straight at the

4:30 japanese and you know took the bunkers like you said and all that that the army was more deliberate and all that and you know and of course the army its doctrine was shaped on the idea of continental littoral warfare and having more artillery and obviously the army dealt with logistics whereas the marines didn’t deal with that as much um so of course there was some level of deliberation in in the army way of

4:52 fighting that that maybe is there more so than the marines but really when you look at what actually happened in combat they fought so similarly and there was enormous respect yeah so in writing this this trilogy my purpose was really not to denigrate the marine corps in fact i think you come away with an even greater respect because you realize contextually how few marines there really were

5:14 um you know the marines did 15 amphibious invasions in the course of the war uh general robert eichelberger’s eighth army in the philippines and spring 1945 alone does 35. um you know so uh it really it shows you that kind of wider lens uh that you have a relatively small marine corps fighting

5:34 alongside larger army forces sometimes in tandem with them perhaps um and and so i think really they forged quite an effective partnership with some tension at times primarily because of quarrels of senior officers more so than than the average guy and uh so i i think you know that’s to me one of the great takeaways of this is

5:55 the the marines in the in the army both extremely well and i think quite similarly more so than we popularly supposed i think right excellent and and you know what i also love about the trilogy is is you give us kind of a meta view of the pacific war as well you give us the the larger view and you really

6:15 discuss the nature of the war in the pacific between the americans and japanese as well so i just thinking and can you give us a sense of maybe their their relative advantages maybe the sources of the racial antipathy on both sides really a lot of that and and just cultural differences in in fighting the war yeah there’s major cultural and

6:36 racial differences of course that shape the war um one of things i try to provide in uh in the trilogy is the japanese perspective and especially of the average soldier which also i think tends to get lost at least in western mines and um you know you see uh you know beyond the kind of fanaticism or whatever that that is sort of still prevalent in popular memory for

6:58 good reason um you see the mindset of the average japanese soldier thinking of himself often as a liberator uh that this is a war of liberation uh to dismantle white colonial empires in asia and the pacific and many of them are absolutely stunned especially in the philippines when they’re not welcomed when they are hated

7:18 when they they end up battling insurgents and all this when they’re shocked that the filipinos tend to be pro-american and you see it in the south pacific you see it in many places um you also see through japanese diaries that were captured by u.s soldiers you see also the same fear and terror and antipathy and hunger and all the the

7:40 things you’d see on the american side what is i think a little disquieting from an american perspective is when you look at average soldier accounts from the time contemporary you know as they were then you really do see a lot more racial antipathy uh in american letters and american accounts than you do in japanese accounts to be sure you see it in both

8:00 but it’s really much more prevalent in u.s accounts and there are pejorative terms that we would think it was very racist today that were sort of part and parcel that everyone used from fdr on down you know so yeah but but the the fundamental tragedy of it i think is in the end you know from my perspective the historian looking at these average soldiers

8:21 and they’re the young men and they’re not all that different in many ways and i came up with a really profound sense of tragedy that this that this conflict ever happened right right yeah it was terrible brutal war um and something you’ve written a lot about you’ve written entire books about this subject uh but my next question is you know what was the

8:41 experience of the average american gi fighting on the ground in the pacific i mean they were storing beaches and pill boxes fighting under just the most difficult circumstances terrible jungle conditions weather disease uh maybe fighting the elements as as much as this sort of brutal war uh down on the ground in this hand-to-hand

9:02 combat frequently so can you just give us a little sense of sort of a drama it’s just so enervating in part because of the conditions um there’s so much jungle combat in the pacific in in the south pacific especially where it’s just a challenge just to exist exists in jungle where you can’t see three feet

9:24 in front of you and where you’re dealing with you know places rife with disease i mean you know at one point in the new guinea campaign 1943 um you know macarthur’s army it has four or five guys down with malaria for every one loss of the japanese in combat you know so you’re dealing with that and extreme weather conditions of like monsoon rains

9:45 and the heat and all that and of course the when when the combat does happen the ferocity is uh i think on par with anything the worst that you’d see in world war ii because there’s generally no quarter aster given on either side um and you are and in most cases if you’re attacking the japanese you know they’re gonna fight to the death and uh

10:05 all of that is very true and the japanese i i argue were much better on defense than offense on offense they didn’t have a good grasp of combined arms and and staff planning they didn’t have the logistics i don’t think that the americans really could do so well uh and so that meant they were moving straight into your firepower quite often and so they’re really playing into your

10:26 hands though it’s terrifying as a u.s soldier to deal with a bonsai assault or whatever um when you’re when you are attacking them and they’re hunkered down in any kind of prepared position this is a really formidable enemy and so you’re talking about a lot of combat casualties too and sometimes in close in fighting so that’s why the thompson submachine gun is such a powerful weapon

10:47 in the pacific because it’s very deadly inside of 50 yards so that of course flame throwers eventually as you get going um satchel charges grenades good combined arms um work um you know like we tend to think of tanks and associate them with europe and of course it’s true you have armor divisions in europe but there’s tanks

11:07 involved in the pacific or all the way through uh and as you the pattern is as the war moves further north it tends to then focus not as much on jungle fighting but cave fighting and that really i would argue is even more traumatic and and more difficult especially of course once you get to like okinawa and portions of the philippines where

11:28 you’re just seeing like cave to cave struggle biac is another example in june 1944. um so yeah this is not for the faint of heart you know to fight this war right i mean your descriptions are so compelling and and so moving and i i just we just you know sitting in the comforts of our offices our homes i just

11:48 can’t imagine uh fighting in in these kinds of conditions it’s horrible horrible it is yep so uh now uh so that’s a great view of the gi’s on the ground uh let’s talk maybe a little bit about the generals and some of their personalities like you know we of course have douglas macarthur uh sort of overshadowing everyone but

12:10 also maybe lesser known figures in in the popular imagination or taught in classrooms figures like robert eichelberger walter krueger other compelling figures what were maybe some of the tensions in the us army high command that maybe we don’t normally talk about and and you know maybe talk a little bit about their different leadership styles and

12:31 maybe one which were the most effective and maybe effective in different ways yeah i mean macarthur being macarthur he kind of sucks the oxygen out of the room in a way you know he’s this sort of zeus-like figure and he thinks of him as such as certainly like the lead actor in the pacific theater but of course as we know i mean he’s not in control of the whole theater

12:51 he just has the southwest pacific area and he is he sees then admiral chester nimitz’s um pacific ocean area as a rival and all that business and you basically have this sort of true pronged assault to japan and so some of the army leaders are under nimitz’s auspices and and operating at like the core and division level and then obviously you have

13:11 macarthur and his folks who are operating at a theater level and armies and really the main thing that comes out of this is a kind of an intense rivalry between macarthur’s two key commanders ultimately his two army commanders walter krueger sixth army and robert eichelberger eighth army now i argue in this series that eichelberger is probably pound for pound the best u.s

13:32 ground commander in world war ii who is not well known you know and i’m talking like if they the army level uh he is an outstanding operational commander and and happily enough for historian he’s part historian too in documenting everything he did the letters he wrote home the diary he kept later latter year dictations about his

13:52 experiences any new command he wrote an incredible memoir called the road to tokyo our jungle road to tokyo kroger was more circumspect and brusque uh but but no less remarkable in many ways because uh he’s so self-made he joined the army as a 17 year old immigrant private from from prussia um you know teaches himself english uh

14:13 spoke hardly with an accent he spoke french and spanish he was a military scholar he didn’t even have a high school diploma and he becomes a four-star general you know so he’s one of only two foreign-born generals in the u.s army in world war ii the other being ben lear was born in canada i don’t know if that really counts you know in the same way so um why is there the rivalry between

14:34 kruger and eichelberger part because macarthur plays one off against the other um you know for the purpose of constantly driving and getting results which makes sense but in part because um their personalities just didn’t mesh um eichelberger was extraordinarily cordial and he had hardly any enemies he just

14:55 he’s just a very enjoyable person to be with he was polite he was solicitous he was inspirational he was sensitive probably overly sensitive at times krueger was certainly as thoughtful but he was brusque and he could be rude and he and uh and so the way he dealt with eichelberger was often very callous and eichel berger could not

15:17 forgive that and so what i saw in in sort of researching not just them but uh like all the people who work for them which is credible amount of source material is that the real rivalry in some ways was among the staff members who then who then took this sort of rivalry on and latter year tried to shape perception so i really had to be careful with that and and kind of figure

15:38 out who was saying what and why they were saying what they were saying but it really is an incredible uh kind of human story right right excellent and uh so so the second volume in in the trilogy uh is is 1944. that’s the focus and so why does 1944 witness sort of this

15:58 turning of the tide of the us army after some some initial very very tough struggles and battles and and and eventually turn the tide in in the pacific war you know of course the army like the us itself is you know unprepared for the war when it comes at the end of 1941 pays a terrible price in the philippines in 1942 of course

16:19 and i really go into that in great depth and in fire and fortitude the first volume uh but what you see over time is an army that’s getting more professional it’s getting to be better armed better supplied better commanders better planners just like the us itself it’s maturing and so all these sort of larger kind of trends that you see

16:40 playing out for the us home front and of course u.s naval power and all that you also see for the army and so by 1944 the the army is an incredibly formidable fighting machine and not just at like this combat soldier level but logistically and in terms of engineering know-how and all the things you need to fight this

17:00 war uh supplying yourself sustaining yourself in these kinds of environments lesson learning civil affairs because as you move further north you’re you’re coming to more populated areas especially when you come back to the philippines which is the last chapter on infernos is about the invasion of leyte which by the way in terms of the american the size of the american forces

17:21 uh is larger than the american contribution to the much more famous invasion of normandy uh earlier that year um you know so you’re seeing you know just just uh sort of operations at a at a scale that would have been unimaginable even in world war one uh so this is a kind of citizen soldier army that i like to say

17:42 uh has enough professional soldiers uh to become really good and reasonably well led but not so many that it’s just destroyed by corruption and careerism so it’s it’s a pretty interesting balance that you’re seeing there of course by 1945 which you’ll see in volume three i mean it’s just a at a completely different level

18:02 right john i i really wish we could talk all day uh your trilogy is really remarkable some great narrative history but but really thought provoking very scholarly as well uh scholarly insights and just a smoothly written narrative i mean it’s a remarkable achievement so so the book is island infernos

18:23 uh the american army in the pacific in 1944. so i will look forward to the third volume and i want to thank you very much for joining us uh yeah that was very insightful thanks tony i really appreciate it thanks uh and thank you all for joining us on this episode of scholar talks please check out our library of interviews on

18:44 world war ii and also the cold war especially our series the cold war and the presidency and check out our free online textbook life liberty and the pursuit of happiness for more resources on world war ii thank you very much for joining us