Pearls of Wisdom:Shelley at BurningBird asked for a followup to my brief Pearl Harbor post. Here goes. In 1941 the U.S. had imposed an oil embargo on Japan in retaliation for its occupation of Indochina (Vietnam.) The Japanese decided on a bold move: they would destroy the U.S. fleet in Hawaii, seize the Malay Peninsula, the Phillipines, and the oil fields of the Netherlands East Indies. With the fleet out of commission, the U.S. would be unable to enforce a blockade on Japan or interfere with its new possessions. The Japanese gambled that by the time the U.S. got its fleet rebuilt, it would accept the new balance of power in the Pacific as a fait accompli. They were badly wrong, of course. But Japan never had the slightest intention of invading the United States. They wanted to be the dominant power in Asia, and had no interest in North America.
In his original post that started all this, Eric said:
After all, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, not the other way around. Everything we did from then on was self-defense, including Hiroshima.
Nonsense. Retaliation, yes. Revenge, yes. And a whole lot of people in Asia, arguably including the Japanese people themselves, may have been better off because we did so. But in no way was it self-defense.
What, then, would have been an appropriate response on the part of the U.S? The textbook answer, of course, is “Apply a deterrent sufficient to deter”, but then a problem arises very similar to one that arises in the theory of the criminal law: what’s the appropriate punishment for, say, a murderer when the chances are virtually nil that he’ll ever commit another murder. As a practical matter, had we done absolutely nothing after Pearl Harbor and let Japan run the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere as they saw fit, chances are very high that they would never have had occasion to attack a U.S. military facility again. We would have been the ones who had learned our lesson.
I don’t know what official U.S. military policy is on these matters, but in popular consciousness our policy is “hit them so hard they’ll never try anything like that again.” A great many Americans are proud of this, which IMHO is a national disgrace; it means we tend towards massively disproportionate military responses that have given us, in the eyes of many people in the world, the reputation of international bullies who are willing to lay waste to large parts of the globe to protect the safety and comfort of any of our citizens. The War in the Pacific was a case in point, and the disproportionateness of our response extends not merely to any particular tactics that we used, but to our basic war aim: the demand for unconditional surrender. On that subject, I’d like to quote at some length from Michael Walzer’s classic contemporary restatement of the just war tradition, Just and Unjust Wars(discussing the decision to bomb Hiroshima):
The continuation of the struggle was not something forced upon us. It had to do with our war aims. The military estimate of casualties was based not only on the belief that the Japanese would fight almost to the last man, but also on the assumption that the Americans would accept nothing less than unconditional surrender. The war aims of the American government required either an invasion of the main islands, with enormous losses of American and Japanese soldiers and of Japanese civilians trapped in the war zones, or the use of the atomic bomb. Given that choice, one might well reconsider those aims. Even if we assume that unconditional surrender was morally desirable because of the character of Japanese militarism, it might be morally undesirable because of the human costs it entailed. But I would suggest a stronger argument than this. The Japanese case is sufficiently different from the German so that unconditional surrender should never have been asked. Japan’s rulers were engaged in a more ordinary sort of military expansion, and all that was required was that they be defeated, not that they be conquered and totally overthrown. Some restraint upon their war-making power might be justified, but their domestic authority was a matter of concern only to the Japanese people. In any case, if killing millions (or many thousands) of men and women was militarily necessary for their conquest and overthrow, then it was morally necessary — in order not to kill those people — to settle for something less. . . . In the summer of 1945, the victorious Americans owed the Japanese people an experiment in negotiation. To use the atomic bomb, to kill and terrorize civilians, without even attempting such an experiment, was a double crime.(pp.267-8)
Enough on that subject. I see that Eric has a new post up on the Japan/Islam comparison, which is probably a good reason to break off here and post this.
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08/08/2002 Entry: “Pearls of Wisdom”
Replies: 10 comments
Following up on this post and my earlier comment — if I understand you, the morality of the War in the Pacific is to be judged by thinking about the morality of reshaping Japanese culture and society. But in this post, you are pointing out that it was something else which motivated us in the war against Japan. This something else is twofold: a) redressing the balance of power and b) revenge. Both of these are very different from reshaping Japanese culture at its core.
Posted by Owen Goldin @ 08/08/2002 10:32 PM CST
Actually, Owen, no — but I can see why you’re confused. There are two distinct threads in the discussion here, but the distinction is probably clear only in my own mind. One thread concerns a claim that Eric Olsen made recently that a decisive military defeat of Iraq would have the same effect on the Islamic world that the Japanese defeat did on the Japanese psyche. I and several other people took issue with that. Eric’s original piece is here, and you can follow the whole thing through the blogosphere if you feel so inclined.
The second thread is easier to follow since I started it myself and, so far, you’re the only person who’s bitten. That’s the “morality of WWII in the Pacific” thread; I decided to try stirring up controversy by tossing out the Pearl-Harbor-is-irrelevant thesis. This post is part of that thread. I muddied the waters, though, by plucking examples from things other people had said in the other discussion to make my points.
Gee, why can’t I be this lucid the first time around?
Posted by Alan @ 08/08/2002 10:57 PM CST
Interesting argument, Alan.
But the Japanese were engaged in a near-genocidal war w/ the Chinese. Would THEY be justified in dropping the bomb? They were our allies, and had been so even before the attack on Pearl Harbor. As an ally, would we be justified in supplying them w/ the A-bomb?
Part of the problem is that the Pacific War was hardly a bilateral war, the US against Japan. Indeed, THAT war was but a subset of a larger war that had gone on longer (since 1931 between China and Japan) or even longer (since, say, 1905 between the Koreans and the Japanese).
The US decision to embargo oil, frex, was tied to a series of aggressive Japanese actions, including the decision to break agreements regarding China (from 1931 onwards), seizing Manchuria and establishing a puppet state, fortifying the Marianas (in contravention of treaty), etc.
Moreover, it’s very easy to argue that it was only necessary to “defeat” the Japanese. One wonders how this differentiated set of goals would have been achieved.
Posted by Dean @ 08/09/2002 02:22 AM CST
“But Japan never had the slightest intention of invading the United States.”
That’s a lightly misleading argument, isn’t it? There was no way the US could be one hundred percent sure of it. The US even ripped up the Constitution, locking up Nipponese-Americans because they were so worried about it.
Posted by David @ 08/09/2002 07:18 AM CST
Dean and David both raise very interesting issues. Would the Chinese have been justified in dropping the A-bomb on Japan? I could put on my moral philosopher hat and weigh the arguments on both sides, but at the gut reaction level I’d say they would have been much more justified than the U.S. was in doing so. Or, to use the language of the criminal law, even it wasn’t justifiable, it was excusable, because the victims of the rape of Nanking had undergone provocation many orders of magnitude greater than we had at Pearl Harbor.
Leaving aside the retaliation issue, I suppose it be argued that China had a legitimate interest in bringing about a more thoroughgoing change of regime in Japan than did the U.S., and thus Walzer’s argument doesn’t apply to them.
Would we have been justified in giving the A-bomb to the Chinese? I don’t think we would have, and this is a case where I think moral and prudential reasons largely coincide. In 1945 we didn’t have quite the same concerns about nuclear proliferation that we do today, but even then concerns about “Who has the bomb?”, “Who knows we have it?” and “Who else might be able to develop it, and how fast?” entered into deliberations about how to whether or not to use the bomb and other military decisions, as the historical record makes clear. I can’t imagine the U.S. revealing its most precious military and technological secret to a country split between a pair of madmen like Mao and Chiang.
David has a valid point, too. What I know on the subject comes from historians writing after the war who had access to Japanese military and diplomatic archives, etc. It seems to me very probable that astute geopolitical observers at the time knew what Japanese goals and intentions were, but no, that doesn’t amount to 100% confidence. As for the internment of Japanese-Americans, I think the concern there was spying, sabotage, industrial sabotage, etc., not that they were a fifth column for an impending invasion.
A related note: I just went and took a look at FDR’s 12/07/41 speech asking Congress to declare war on Japan. You can see it here. He calls the attack an “invasion” and says that “our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger.” I suggest that FDR misled the American people with those statements.
Posted by Alan @ 08/09/2002 07:04 PM CST
Alan,
Depending on WHICH Japanese sources got cited, there were all sorts of Japanese plans floating around out there. I’ve seen references (in Western sources) about Japanese interest in cleansing places like Singapore of ethnic Chinese (considered a dangerous and subversive bunch), and replacing them w/ the Shanghai Jews!
The argument that conditional surrender should have been contemplated leaves aside a coupla issues:
1. The “lessons” of WWI. One of which was that German revanchism was due to their not having been thoroughly defeated. (The Germans helped w/ their “stab in the back” business which the Nazis exploited to come to power.) Thus, the perception was that we needed to PROVE to the Japanese civilian population that they had been defeated.
2. The equation of Tojo (and Hirohito) w/ Hitler. Rightly or wrongly, the perception was that the Japanese war leadership was as bad as their German counterparts. Here’s a question for you: Would it have been okay to have left Hitler in power in a negotiated settlement that put Germany back at its borders of September 1, 1939? Imagine he makes that offer on June 10, 1944, after the Allies are ashore. Would’ve saved hundreds of thousands of (non-Jewish) lives. Wouldn’t that be worth it? [And if Hitler offered to only exterminate his OWN Jews, would that make it any better??]
3. Post-hoc rationalizations don’t always cut it, but there can be little doubt, since you presume that American leaders had some idea of Japan’s strategic aims and calculations, what American ALLIED situations were. The Japanese were killing AT LEAST 1000 Chinese civilians EVERY WEEK. (Actual estimates are closer to 3500 a week, or 500 a day.) Japanese atrocities in Korea, Vietnam, Burma, and the Malay peninsula were on the same order. For every week the war is prolonged (say, through negotiations, or through blockade), the body count rises. Is there a point when ending the war more quickly is worthwhile?
At the end of the day, I’ve never been very happy w/ Walzer’s arguments on differentiating just and unjust wars, just as I’ve never been very happy w/ poli-sci in general. I think it comes from trying to find over-arching principles to apply to what are, most often, individual events.
Just a thought….
Posted by Dean @ 08/13/2002 02:44 PM CST
Alan, wasn’t the Phillipines an American dependency at that time? I believe that the reason MacArthur’s troops were stationed there at all was that we had a “special relationship” with the Phillipines. And definitely, the Japanese planned, and did, invade the Phillipines after the Pearl Harbor bombing. So I don’t think FDR was misleading the American people about Japanese intentions. You could say he was exaggerating them, and that for the sake of peace we could have countenanced the invasion of the insignificant Phillipines. But I’m not sure this is how the theory of the just war works.
Posted by roger @ 08/15/2002 11:43 AM CST
Oops. Make that Philippines.
Posted by Roger @ 08/15/2002 11:44 AM CST
Roger,
Good point.
The Philippines, at that point, were a commonwealth, similar to Puerto Rico today. They had been guaranteed their freedom/independence, based on a 1935 referendum (iirc) for 1945 (I believe it was to be 10 years or so from the referendum). In the meantime, foreign and defense policy were the responsibility of the US, while the domestic affairs of the Philippines were resolved in the Filipino legislature (and, yes, there was one).
This fairly generous treatment (for its time) was one reason why the Filipinos, unlike every other colony in the area, fought in larger numbers against the Japanese, and many many risked their own lives on behalf of Americans, both POWs, troops who had not surrendered, downed aircrew, etc.
It is worth keeping in mind that no small reason for the massive American anger towards the Japanese, beyond Pearl Harbor, was the Bataan Death March. And, yes, it WAS an extraordinary, continuous atrocity. Subsequent Japanese treatment of American (and British, Australian, Dutch, etc.) POWs and civilians further lent credence to the idea that the Japanese were closer to savages than civilized opponents. [For further information, you might try “Ghost Soldiers” by Hampton Sides, which provides a pretty good glimpse into what Japanese versions of concentration camps looked like.]
Posted by Dean @ 08/15/2002 02:21 PM CST
On the unconditional surrender issue, I recently ran across this factlet:
When in the later stages of World War II the Joint Chiefs of Staff discussed the prospect of an invasion of Kyushu, the southernmost of the major Japanese home islands, Admiral William Leahy projected 268,000 Americans would be killed or wounded out of an invasion force of 766,000.8 The invasion of the chief island of Honshu, tentatively planned for the spring of 1946, would have been significantly worse. While projected casualty figures like these led a number of American officials to argue for modification of the unconditional surrender formula, Secretary of State James M. Byrnes told Truman that he would be “crucified” if he retreated from this formula — one that received a standing ovation when Truman repeated it to Congress in his first address as president. Truman agreed — wisely. His efforts to wage limited war in Korea cost him re-election in 1952.
Evidence that dropping the demand for unconditional surrender was talked about in American military circles.
The point about WWI is interesting. It could be argued that the lesson of WWI should have been about not imposing punitive reparations on a defeated enemy, or maybe about carefully monitoring the activities of a defeated enemy to make sure they’re not engaged in a supposedly forbidden rearmament. I see your point, though, that a U.S.-sponsored regime change was by far the most effective way of making sure the Japanese didn’t rearm for offensive war. So effectively that now we can’t get them to pick up a gun when we want them to.
Dean’s next point touches upon the subject of the historians’ debate that took place in Germany in the 80s: was the Third Reich really uniquely evil in human history, or was it simply one more chapter in humankind’s long history of tyranny and mass slaughter? Walzer inclines strongly to the former view, which is why he distinguishes so sharply between the German and Japanese cases. I don’t know myself; Nazism was unique in post-Enlightenment, industrial civilization, which was quite enough.
The more I write, the more I realize that these are subjects for posts of their own, so I think it’s time to start on one. I’ll close with a couple of bits of pedantry that makes not the slightest difference to the discussion we’ve been having: As of July 1944, Hideki Tojo was a private Japanese citizen, having resigned as Prime Minister. And, while looking up this date, I found Tojo’s prison diaryon the Web. Interesting reading.
atomic bomb
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