The historian Richard B. Franks is noted for his exhaustive research centered on World War II in the Pacific – or as he emphasizes, the Asia-Pacific War. While the major combatants in the region were Japan vs. primarily the United States/Australia/New Zealand/Britain/Netherlands, Franks’ research reminds the reader that there was no nation in the Asia-Pacific region that was not impacted by Japanese occupation. In an early post, Civilian Deaths, we considered that between 1936-1945 the Empire of Japan was responsible for some 30 million civilian deaths. By and large these were not combat deaths, but were deaths by slave labor, starvation, deprivation and disease in places like Burma, Vietnam (then known as French Indochina), Korea, Indonesia, China and the Philippines. The point Franks is making is the effect of the narrow vision of the historical revisionists (in Frank’s mind) who argue that the use of atomic weapons could not be justified by an argument of saving American lives lost during an invasion of the home islands. Franks argues that ending the war as soon as any means was available was about ending massive Asian deaths in the Japanese-occupied/controlled areas of the Empire outside of the home islands. In the last 12 months of the war, 1 million people died in Vietnam due to starvation and disease.
Franks worries that history is being lost/ignored in academic circles of historians in the West and in Asia. At a recent meeting of historical scholars of the Asia Pacific region, in the sessions on World War II, there seemed to be a general unawareness of the widespread death among Asia people as the scholars only focused on allied inflicted casualties on the Japanese people of the home islands (blockade, bombing, fire bombing and ultimately the atomic bombs). While those are valid areas of historical research and consideration, it loses context of a larger war – one that the Empire of Japan started and prosecuted with a brutality to Asian people that was rooted in racism, ultranationalism, and a manifest destiny of greater Japan.
One often overlooked aspect of Catholic teaching on just-war theory is that it exists, in part, to protect the humanity of the war fighters. Much strategic war planning and just-war theorizing operates – as it should – on the “big picture.” But “big pictures” can be a composite of small pictures: the experience of battles, but also the discovery of what had come before the battle. All of this shapes and frames the picture of the next battle and the next strategy. It shapes the mindset of the war fighters as well as the war planners.
This week the posts have addressed the combat in Manila, Iwo Jima, the naval battle of Okinawa, civilian deaths and more. But I want to pause and return to the Philippines. US Army and Naval personnel had a long rich history and connection to the Philippines before the war – many having resided in the islands for 20 years or more. Their return to the Philippines in 1944 and 1945 was shocking. Before the 1944 landings at Leyte and 1945 landings at Luzon, the allies were receiving guerilla reports of deteriorating conditions in and around Manila, the treatment of POWs at Camp O’Donnell and Cabanatuan, the condition of American civilians interned at Santo Tomas College, the state of prisons and other detention facilities, and more. It was different to become an eye witness.
What was discovered had a profound emotional and psychological effect on American soldiers as well as the U.S. public when they learned about Japanese atrocities in the Philippines. The effect cannot be overstated. It had a direct impact on the ferocity of combat and the American public’s perception of the Pacific War.
American forces came face to face with evidence of years of brutal Japanese occupation. At the POW camps (Cabanatuan and Camp O’Donnell), thousands of U.S. and Filipino prisoners had died of starvation, disease, and abuse. Those liberated were emaciated, confirming the worst fears of the US authorities and their brothers in arms. At civilian internment camps such as Santo Tomás and Los Baños, internees (Americans, Europeans, and others) were found near starvation. The Los Baños raid in February 1945 was driven in part by intelligence that the Japanese planned to massacre the civilians. After the Battle of Manila, U.S. soldiers saw the aftermath of systematic atrocities — civilians bayoneted, burned, and shot, including women and children. About 100,000 civilians were killed in one month. The guerilla reports were no longer an abstraction.
In a letter home, one of the soldiers on the mission to liberate Santo Tomás wrote: “I thought I had seen suffering before, but when I walked through those gates and saw our own people, little children with their bones showing through their skin, I knew then why we were here.” It was a boost to morale knowing they were liberating their countrymen and Filipinos, reinforcing their sense of mission. The soldiers saw themselves not only as fighting an enemy but as rescuers.
A veteran of the Cabanatuan raid wrote of the liberated POWs: “They were skeletons in rags. It was like walking into a graveyard where the dead still breathed. Every man in our unit swore he’d never forget what the Japs had done to them.” Many soldiers described these experiences as creating a hatred of the Japanese after seeing what had been done to POWs and civilians. Some veterans admitted it hardened their reluctance to take prisoners in combat – as well as instilling a latent rage and desire for vengeance that needed to be addressed.
Among U.S. troops word spread quickly. Letters home, informal briefings, and direct eyewitness testimony circulated through units. Even soldiers who hadn’t seen the camps firsthand knew the stories” by mid-1945.
After the Battle of Manila, Time Magazine, March 12, 1945 wrote: “Manila is dead. Its people were butchered in their homes, its buildings reduced to ash. In Asia, as in Europe, atrocity is the enemy’s chosen weapon.” In his book Rampage, James A. Scott reaches the same conclusion, but makes the point that it did not begin at the battle of Manila. It began the day the Japanese reached the Philippines. And perhaps MacArthur and US leadership should have expected how this unfolded. It has been the same in China in 1937 with the “Rape of Nanjing.”
Across the U.S. press, editors made sure to highlight parallels between Japanese actions in Manila and Nazi crimes in Europe, reinforcing the idea that this was a war of civilization against barbarism. The point is being made that where in Europe the atrocities were committed by the elite German SS troops, in the Pacific it was the practice of the entire Japanese Imperial Army. In parallel, the Office of War Information (OWI) and Army public affairs highlighted these stories, both to inform the homefront but also to justify the sacrifices of the ongoing campaigns.
The reports fed a strong belief that the Japanese leadership (and by extension, the nation) bore collective guilt for barbarity. This made the American public more accepting of the war’s escalating violence, including strategic bombing of cities and, later, the atomic bombings.
Perhaps the most intrinsic purpose of Just War Theory is the protection of humanity, not just of society, but of the war fighters. Many of these Army units would be slated for the Nov 1945 invasion of the Japanese home islands. As Iwo Jima and Okinawa showed, resistance would be furious. As the naval battle off Okinawa demonstrated, the attacks would be maniacle and suicidal.
One of the dynamics of extended warfare is habituation. One begins to get used to civilians used as combat troops – it’s what “they do.” One begins to see the use of flame throwers and flame tanks as proven tactics to eradicate entrenched enemy positions because you know they won’t surrender. And they don’t. Soldiers carry the eye witness accounts of the enemy’s brutality and cruelty – and the grapevine carries the stories to the larger audience in theatre and at home. Some things can not be unseen.
1945 is a year of escalating violence increasingly seen as against an enemy who deserved no quarter. It is a year when the enemy will not surrender and yet there is a wider issue than just winning a war. It is stopping the crimes against humanity that have ravaged the Asia-Pacific nations since 1936.
One way or the other the war will end. As Major General Graves Erskin, USMC, said of Iwo Jima, “Victory was never in doubt. Its cost was. …What was in doubt, in all our minds, was whether there would be any of us left to dedicate our cemetery at the end.”
The war will end. Victory was not in doubt, only the cost to humanity and to human life. And not just the soldiers, sailors, and aviators of allied forces, but to people of countries of the 10 million square miles that was the Empire of Japan at its height in 1942.
Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archives.
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