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Both regular and associate members of the Institute may save by ordering book ® b^ksof
ment A discount of 20% or more is allowed on books of the Naval Institute and a £}scount of 10% on books other publishers (exception foreign and government publications, and on books on which publishers do n°t glve a discount) ilbw'reasonable timeSfor orders to be cleared and books to be delivered directly to you by publishers. Address, Secretary-Treasurer, U. S. Naval Institute, Annapolis, Maryland.
TYPHOON IN TOKYO. By Harry Emerson
Wildes. The Macmillan Company. New
York: 1954. 365 pages. $4.50.
Reviewed by Joseph W. Ballantine
{A longtime member of the American Foreign Service, Mr. Ballantine was onetime Chief of the Slate Department's Office of Far Eastern Affairs, and is the author of Formosa.)
The Allied Occupation of Japan, under American command and preponderantly American in composition, was a military operation unique in history in the wide scope of its political, social, and economic objectives and in the magnitude of the effort expended to achieve them. These objectives were set forth in the Potsdam Declaration, which contained the substantive terms for the Japanese surrender. Japan was to be placed under a military occupation, which would be withdrawn as soon as those objectives had been achieved, including the establishment of a peacefully inclined and responsible government based on the freely expressed will of the Japanese people. The Occupation lasted for six years and eight months, from the date of Japan’s surrender to the ratification of a peace treaty in April 1952. .
Typhoon in Tokyo is an account, containing a wealth of information and comment, of the non-military side of the Occupation s performance. The author brings to his task first-hand experience in Japanese affairs, including six years of duty with the Occupation and two years thereafter as Fulbright exchange professor at a university in Tokyo. His work gave him access to plentiful authoritative material and brought him into personal touch with American Occupation and Japanese leaders.
Dr. Wildes deals candidly and critically with such controversial subjects as the emperor institution, democratization, the “purge,” agrarian land reform, Japanese attitudes towards Occupation policies and toward Americans, attitudes of the American Occupation authorities toward Japan and the Japanese, and the strength and prospects of Japanese political forces. There is no mention, however, of other important matters, such as the trial, lasting two years, of major war criminals. Nor is there any discussion of the significant shift, which became pronounced in 1948, from objectives such as demilitarization to the necessity of making Japan self-supporting, which brought virtually to a halt programs initiated for dismantling economic plants besides those in primary war industries, a clean sweep of Japan’s economic organization in the name of decentralization, and reparation removals. Also wanting is a clear exposition of the chain for the transmission of policy from the international Far Eastern Commission, and the Department of State through the Joint
Chiefs of Staff to the Supreme Commander and thence to the Japanese Government. This would have clarified the distinction between responsibility for policy making and for its execution.
In explaining why the Occupation failed to achieve its political and social goals, Dr. W ildes points out, quite correctly, that no nation can gain freedom and democracy by fiat and proclamation or by the application of undemocratic methods. He gives merited praise to the American GI’s as “excellent ambassadors,” to the “devoted middle brass,” and to the “amazingly cooperative Japanese populace,” but General MacArthur and his principal subordinates are made the targets of harsh criticism as being dictatorial, intolerant of constructive criticism, and badly informed on Japanese conditions and needs. Yet, in the view of many competent observers, the Occupation as a military operation was superbly conducted, reflecting the genius of the Supreme Commander and the loyal and able support given him by his staff. It is doubtful also whether any other American military leaders had the qualities or character, personality, and intuitive understanding of the Japanese people to have equalled MacArthur’s success in dealing with them.
A balanced assessment of the performance of the Occupation has yet to be made. Such a task, however, would be beyond the competence of any one scholar, as it would require a pooling of knowledge and experience in many fields.
SHIPS, MACHINERY AND MOSS- BACKS. The Autobiography of a Naval Engineer. By Harold C. Bowen, Vice Admiral, U. S. Navy (Ret.). Princeton University Press, Princeton, N. J., 1954. 397 pages, including index. $6.00.
Reviewed by Commander Roy de S.
Horn, U. S. Navy (Ret.)
(A graduate of the U. S. Naval Academy in 1915 Commander Horn served in both World Wars, his duties ranging from radio and torpedo officer and watch and division officer on cruisers and battleships, to instructor in English, History, and Government at the Naval Academy. An editor and publisher in civil life, he is also the author of numerous historical articles and fiction stories.)
men who fight them. But the people whose business is war know that there is another type of story, too, without which there could be nothing to fight with. This other history is that of the engineers and naval constructors and scientists and inventors—the men who create uie weapons with which a man fights. One of those engineers, Admiral Bowen, here tells some of that side of war.
Entering the Navy at a time when midshipmen still made their cruises in square- riggers, Admiral Bowen first became embroiled with steam via one of the early—and cranky destroyers. Next step was graduation in the first class at the Navy’s new Post Graduate School. As one of the Navy’s first EDOs (Officers for Engineering Duty Only) he worked up through engineering posts afloat and ashore to Production Manager at Puget Sound Navy Yard. There he poked his nose into his first fight—a propensity that was responsible for most of the rugged experiences covered in his book.
That first fight was an effort to put the Navy Yard on a sound budgeting, work-per-man- per-dollar-per-minute, basis—something
quite different from the casual but comfortable hit-and-miss system that had been in effect for years. By the time the dust had cleared, the Production Manager—and winner was headed on a course leading eventually to the top at the Bureau of Engineering, at first as Assistant Chief and then as Chief of Bureau. And immediately he found himself in another fight, this time the famous “High-Pressure, High-Temperature” battle.
Prior to 1933, ships got their energy and speed from low pressure boilers and engines 300 lbs. gage pressure, with no superheat. The only way to jump ships’ speeds to 20, 25, 30 knots and more was to increase both pressure and temperature. Civilian industry was already using steam pressures of 600 lbs. and more, superheated to 850° F. Why, argued Admiral Bowen and his engineers, couldn’t the Navy do the same?
The reason, in Admiral Bowen’s opinion, was the “Big Three”—the ship-building companies that practically held a monopoly on the building of all ships for the U. S. Navy. The “Big Three” built not only the Navy’s hulls, but also their propulsion machinery—built and installed it as they
Naval histories, by and large, deal almost entirely with battles and campaigns, and the
went along. Their facilities and “know how” didn’t extend to turbines operating at 600 lbs. and 850° F., such as Westinghouse, General Electric, and other big straight industry concerns were turning out.
“Then,” suggested Admiral Bowen, “you build the hulls and let straight industry build the high efficiency engines, and we’ll assemble the parts into faster, more efficient ships.”
The “Big Three” objected vigorously to losing part of their trade. And quite a few admirals didn’t see the new idea, either. Straight seafaring men were dubious about steam so dry a jet of it would set fire to a rag, and so hot that a man could burn his arm off in a lethal spurt from a broken pipe before he even could see it. The racking and rolling of a ship in a seaway is not kind to pipes and fittings.
But the engineers won their fight, and the payoff came in World War II in that really invincible armada of carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, the Fast Carrier Task Force.
As an EDO Admiral Bowen didn’t get into the shooting part of that conflict—except as “trouble shooter” on the home front. In 1941, ’42, and ’43, despite the fact that neighborhood boys were being drafted to get shot at and even killed, certain labor unions figured that it was an ideal time to strike to get certain special conditions they wanted. Strikes broke out in defense industries as well as in plain civilian industry. So the President, using his war powers, sent Admiral Bowen to take over the struck plants and run them for the Navy. The Admiral promptly put the squeeze on both industry and labor—no bossing by management, no granting of strikers’ demands—in fact no strikes, or else. Hardboiled industrialists and union bosses found an even tougher party in the admiral’s uniform. Strikers went back to work, production went up and up, and the Admiral went on the the next plant. Only in a few West Coast plants did he have to wield the big stick—the power to cancel a workman’s draft exemption and have him inducted into the Armed Forces. That worked, despite the union’s effort to stop him by injunction.
When the Admiral retired in 1947, he had
put in exactly 46 years in the Navy, lacking 7 days. It is the record of those 46 rugged years that makes this such an informative book.
If criticism is to be made, it might be concerning the author’s fondness for what a columnist once called “the vertical pronoun.” Maybe the Admiral was like John Hancock, though; he is never hesitant to identify the opposition by name, initial, and chapter, and he wants to be sure that he takes the full responsibility for every statement he makes.
A MILITARY HISTORY OF THE WESTERN WORLD. By Major General j. F. C. Fuller. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. 1954. 602 pages. $6.00.
Reviewed by William H. Hessler
(Mr. Hessler is the Foreign Editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer and a three-time winner of the Naval Institute s Prize Essay Contest.)
In the realm of military writing, Major General Fuller has an enviable reputation for ripe scholarship and also for vigor and originality in putting forward quite unorthodox ideas about military matters. His 30 books, more or less, published over a period of 40 years, represent a major contribution to the military literature of the 20th century.
Many of those books—the most notable of them, probably,—are in good part quarrels with long-accepted, stereotyped ideas of military men around the world. For Gen. Fuller has made it his business to needle and prod, to cajole military men into re-examining their familiar doctrines and assumptions. The present work, however, is a change of pace. It is a conventional history of the civilizations that have stemmed from the Middle East and Mediterranean, written in terms of military operations.
The first of three scheduled volumes, this covers the long period from the dawn of history to the Naval Battle of Lepanto in 1571. When published in full, the three- volume work will be a major addition to the literature of warfare and doubtless also will be the crowning work of General buffer’s career. However it is likely that in the military profession for some decades to come Gen. Fuller will be remembered more for
his provocative and unconventional books, which did so much to stimulate fresh and productive thinking about weapons and their employment.
The present work is not a history of the art of war. It is not a history of the development of weapons and strategies. Nor is it in any large part a history of the great figures of warfare. On the contrary, it is a general history of those epochs, told through the armed conflicts which were fairly continuous. It is not therefore a “military book” in the narrow sense, but rather a general work of history which fixes on wars as the main thread of continuity, as the key to history as a whole.
The book embraces 20 chapters. Some are devoted to single battles or campaigns of great importance—Salamis, Actium, Tours, Hastings, Crecy, Constantinople, Lepanto. Others fill in the larger picture, tracing the rise of Roman imperialism, or the struggle for supremacy in the Roman empire, or the rise and expansion of Islam, or the counterattack of Christendom against Islam. Discerningly the author has apportioned his space to give exhaustive accounts of the great pendulum swings of military history, and still maintain a continuous narrative by noting compactly the secondary conflicts and trends.
The greatest value of this ambitious, full- scale work is the author’s successful integration of military and general history. He has examined the campaigns of these centuries, not for their “military significance,” but for their bearing on the whole course of history. For him, in other words, a battle or a war is not an end in itself. Neither is victory in a major war. Either is simply an expression, in military terms, of a political enterprise, a course of national or imperial policy, or a prolonged historical movement.
Battles, then, are punctuation marks in the main stream of history, even though some of them have massive historical effects. This is General Fuller’s way of underscoring the all-too-easily-forgotten principle that war at bottom is simply the continuation of policy by the employment of force. History affords a good many examples to show that it sometimes is wise to break off a campaign short of clear-cut victory when a greater objective than military triumph is to be had. General Fuller does not fail to highlight such decisions.
A Military History of the Western World is lucidly written, with many diagrams and maps. Although unduly detailed for the general reader, it will be absorbing for the student of military history. It reflects patient and thorough scholarship and is fully documented. The product of many years of research, this definitive work is certain to find an enduring place in every proper library of military history.
THE UNTOLD STORY OF DOUGLAS
MacARTHUR. By Frazier Hunt. New
York: The Devin-Adair Company, 533
pp. $5.00.
Reviewed by Clarke H. Kawakami
(Mr. Kawakami was on the editorial staff of the G-2 Historical Section in MacArthur’s Tokyo Headquarters from 1947 to 1950 and subsequently performed historical research in Japanese World War II naval operations for the U. S. Naval War College. He is presently engaged in free-lance writing.)
Objectivity definitely appears to be one of the rarer attributes of those who write about General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, and Frazier Hunt is unfortunately no exception to the established pattern. Indeed, his new biography of the General must be set down as one of the most biassed pieces of special pro-MacArthur pleading thus far put before the reading public.
The leitmotif of Hunt’s entire story is that MacArthur, almost from the beginning of his military career down to its dramatic termination in 1951, was constantly being conspired against, double-crossed, and thwarted by those who should have supported him. Personal animosity on the part of other high Army leaders, hostile Navy influence, and fear of the General as a political threat all emerge as elements in Hunt’s account of the never-ending opposition to MacArthur, but the author also sees an additional, more fundamental cause of MacArthur’s troubles in the gradual spread of un-American and pro-Communist influences under the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. For standing steadfastly against the emasculation of American national interests being wrought by these influences, MacArthur paid the price
1955] Book Reviews
of increasing isolation and, in the end, near-
martyrdom.
A great many of Hunt’s sweeping accusations seem to boil down, on close analysis, to mere surmises or insinuations which he fails to back up with any convincing factual evidence. The frequent resort to such equivocal forms as “may well have been” is indicative of this aspect of the book.
In exalting MacArthur, Hunt inevitably damns all those who, in his opinion, ever did anything inimical to the General’s interests or contrary to his views. A formidable host of villains parades through the author s pages, but the man who rates his severest and most frequent criticism is General George C. Marshall, pictured as the constant wheelhorse of the anti-MacArthur conspiracy. Hunt alleges that Marshall, as Chief of Staff throughout World War II, was largely responsible for decisions and policies which discriminated against the Southwest Pacific Area and denied MacArthur the predominant role he should have had in the war against Japan, just as later, when Marshall was Secretary of Defense, he again swung his influence against MacArthur in the Korean War controversy and thereby led to the General’s dismissal—an event termed by the author “the crime of the century.”
Although the charge itself of serious discrimination against MacArthur’s Southwest Pacific Command seems grossly exaggerated, it is in regard to Marshall’s motivation that Hunt is most unfair. Any fairminded student would recognize that valid considerations of over-all strategy and the need of harmonizing Army-Navy viewpoints were primary factors in shaping Marshall’s decisions relative to the Pacific War, but the author strongly implies that Marshall consistently opposed MacArthur out of personal rancor caused by the latter’s swifter advancement and the fact that MacArthur, as Chief of Staff, had failed to press for Marshall’s promotion to brigadier general.
Little needs to be said of Hunt’s treatment of MacArthur’s Pacific War campaigns, for
Ill
it conforms to the usual pattern of earlier pro-MacArthur works. There is the same emphasis on the theme that the General had to fight most of his campaigns either “on a shoestring” or with a bare minimum of resources due to the channelization of the main American effort into Europe and the fact that the Navy got the bulk of what resources remained for its Central Pacific operations. There are also the same allusions to the greater costliness of the Navy’s insular campaigns compared with MacArthur’s operations along the New Guinea-Philippines axis, the inference being that MacArthur’s strategy was the sounder and that, had he been given the unified Pacific command that he deemed essential, the war against Japan could have been fought more expeditiously and at much smaller cost. There is scant, if any, acknowledgment of the fact that the Navy's Solomons and Central Pacific thrusts diverted a major portion of Japanese strength away from MacArthur’s front and thus rendered his advance far less difficult and costly than it would otherwise have been.
As might be expected, Hunt reaches his crescendo of pro-MacArthur fury in dealing with the Korean War. The “blundering, Communist-influenced policies” of the Truman Administration, had, according to Hunt, resulted in China’s loss to the Reds and left South Korea an inviting prey to Red aggression. When this came, MacArthur was thrown into the breach only to find himself once more fighting a “two-front war against both the enemy in front and opposition behind his back from the elements in Washington and the U. N. favoring a timid policy of Red appeasement.
The author goes on in this vein to tell of the events leading up to the final explosion and MacArthur’s recall. Of this action he typically writes: “It was a great day for the Reds and Internationalists and the fainthearted American leaders. . . . Those who bent their knees to the Red Bear finally had seen their plots against this fearless soldier succeed.”
★