Chapter 16
In This Chapter
● Heading toward war
● Contributing to the war effort
● Fighting overseas and at sea
● Using the first atomic bomb
Very few Americans had any use for the dictators of Europe and Asia, but even fewer had any interest in fighting them. World War I had left a bad taste in the mouths of many, and the lingering effects of the Depression were still being felt. The United States didn’t need a foreign headache.
But as this chapter shows, sometimes a fight just can’t be avoided, particularly when it seems half the world is being run by monsters. Faced with the most widespread and horrific war in human history, Americans respond magnificently. They also develop and unleash a weapon that will forever change the future of mankind.
Trying to Avoid War — Again
Despite the hangover from World War I and America’s refusal to join the League of Nations, the country didn’t exactly become a hermit in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1922, U.S. government and private interests helped feed more than 10 million starving Russians. The country also provided more than $100 million in aid to Turkey, Greece, and other Mediterranean countries in the 1920s and forgave or reduced World War I debts.
On the diplomatic front, the United States, Great Britain, Japan, France, and Italy agreed in 1922 to limit their warship building. And in 1928, French foreign minister Aristide Briand and U.S. Secretary of State Frank Kellogg convinced themselves and 15 other countries to formally agree not to go to war with each other. As completely unrealistic as the agreement may have been, so eager for peace was the U.S. Senate that it ratified the Kellogg-Briand Pact on an 85-to-1 vote.
The great stone faces
John Robinson had this idea for a sculpture. A big sculpture. Robinson was the state historian of South Dakota in the 1920s, and he thought it would be cool to turn a cliff in the state's Black Hills into a tribute to figures from the Old West, such as Buffalo Bill Cody. So he and other supporters of the idea hunted up an Idaho sculptor named John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum. Borglum liked the concept, but not the subject.
In 1927, with the blessing of South Dakota — and eventually about $1 million from Congress — Borglum began using dynamite to blast away granite from the side of a mountain
named (for some reason) after a New York lawyer named Charles Rushmore. Instead of Old West figures, however, Borglum carved the heads of four American presidents: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and Theodore Roosevelt. The job wasn't finished until October 1941, when Mt. Rushmore National Memorial opened to the public. Borglum didn't live to see it. He died in March 1941. But his son (somewhat appropriately named Lincoln) carried on his work, and more than 2.7 million visitors view the mammoth effort every year. Very few ask, "Where's Buffalo Bill?"
Playing the role of a good neighbor
Closer to home, the administrations of presidents Harding and Coolidge were not at all shy about interfering in Latin American countries’ internal affairs if it suited the interests of U.S. businesses. Starting with President Hoover, however, and continuing under Roosevelt, America began a “good neighbor” policy toward Central and South America. The policy basically pledged that we would maintain pleasant relations and generally mind our own business.
America tried to keep to that policy elsewhere in the world as well. In Asia, Japan was becoming more and more hostile toward its neighbors, and U.S. diplomats made periodic attempts to convince the Japanese to slow down. But Japan had been insulted in 1924 when the United States closed its doors to Japanese immigration and wasn’t in much of a mood to listen. And Americans weren’t interested in a fight, even after Japan invaded China, nor even after Japanese planes “accidentally” sank a U.S. gunboat in a Chinese river in 1937.
In Europe, Italy, run by a buffoonish thug named Benito Mussolini, invaded Ethiopia in 1936 with not much more than a whimper from the United States. When Germany, under an evil madman named Adolf Hitler, took Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938, President Roosevelt did send letters to both Hitler and Mussolini, asking them not to conquer any more countries. They laughed at him.
No bloodshed, I promise
"And while I am talking to you mothers and fathers, I give you one more assurance. I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars."
— Franklin Roosevelt, a few days before being elected to a third term as president, November 1940.
Roosevelt was not being timid as much as he was being a practical politician. America was still reeling from the effects of the Great Depression, and most Americans were more interested in figuring out how to pay next month’s rent than in who ran Austria. A 1937 survey found that 94 percent thought U.S. policy should be directed at keeping out of foreign wars rather than trying to stop them.
An “isolationist” movement, whose most popular leader was aviator hero Charles Lindbergh, gained strength and held rallies around the country, exhorting Roosevelt and Congress to keep the United States sheltered from the growing storm clouds in Asia and Europe. Congress and FDR agreed, approving laws in 1935 and again in 1937 that prohibited the sale of American weapons to any warring nation.
But much of the rest of the world continued to rush toward conflict. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Great Britain and France had signed a pact pledging to come to Poland’s defense and declared war on Germany. World War II had begun. France was badly prepared for war and collapsed quickly under the German “Blitzkrieg,” or “lightning war.” By mid-1940, England stood alone against Hitler and his allies, which for the time being included the Soviet Union, led by its own evil madman, Josef Stalin.
Sensing impending doom
Roosevelt, like most Americans, was still not eager for war. But unlike the ardent isolationists, he also figured it was inevitable and began to take steps to get ready for it in 1940 and 1941. They included
● Authorizing the doubling of the size of the U.S. Navy.
● Pledging to come to the aid of any North, Central, or South American country that was attacked.
The Andrews Sisters
They didn't have great voices and they weren't especially beautiful, but they sure struck a chord with Americans in the 1940s. LaVerne (1911-1967), Maxene (1916-1995) and Patti (1918-) Andrews were born in Minneapolis, and were performing three-part harmonies in vaudeville by the time they were in their teens.
Their first big hit, a Yiddish tune called "Bei Mir Bist Du Schon," came out in 1937 and sold 350,000 copies in a month. Other hit records included "Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar," "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy," "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree," "Rum and Coca Cola," and "Don't Fence Me In." They sold more than 70 million records, sang with virtually every big star of the day — from Glenn Miller to Bing Crosby — and appeared in 17 films where they usually played themselves.
But the sisters (who often quarreled and sometimes didn't speak to each other except on stage) were best known as "America's Wartime Sweethearts" because of their tireless travels to entertain U.S. troops, both in the United States and overseas. "We never got tired of trying to bring a little smile and a little music to the boys," Maxene later recalled. "They didn't have much else to smile about."
● Pushing Congress to approve the first peacetime military draft in U.S. history. The draft required the registration of all men between the ages of 21 and 35 (about 16 million men). About 1.2 million were drafted for a year’s service, and 800,000 reservists were called to active duty. (In October 1941, just before the 18-month period expired, Congress fortuitously voted to extend the draft. But it was a very close vote: 203 to 202.)
● Trading 50 old U.S. Navy destroyers to England in return for leases on military bases on English possessions in the Caribbean.
● Pushing the Lend-Lease Act through Congress, which authorized FDR to sell, trade, lease, or just plain give military hardware to any country he thought would use it to further the security of the United States.
● Ordering the Navy to attack on sight German submarines that had been preying on ships off the East Coast.
Despite all the preparations, many Americans still refused to believe war was inevitable. Then, on a sleepy Sunday morning less than three weeks before Christmas, 1941, a Japanese naval and air force launched a surprise attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. More than 2,400 U.S. military men were killed, 150 planes were destroyed, and eight battleships were sunk or badly damaged.
December 7, in Roosevelt’s words, had become “a day that shall live in infamy.”
Gearing Up for War
Despite all the warnings, the United States wasn’t completely prepared when war broke out. The Depression had rubbed out many of the country’s machine and tool industries, the military was woefully under-supplied, and many soldiers found themselves drilling with toy guns and wooden tanks. In a way, however, the Depression was a good preparation for what was to come: Americans had learned to scrimp and persevere. And having been pushed into a fight, they were eager to oblige.
Getting industry and the economy in shape for World War II
Gearing up of the industry needed to wage a global war on two fronts was handicapped by a lack of manpower. More than 15 million Americans eventually served in the military. Training and supplying them was a staggering challenge. It took more than 6,000 people to provide food, equipment, medical services, and transportation to 8,000 soldiers. In addition, many raw materials, such as rubber, manila fiber, and oil, were in short supply. And to top it off, President Roosevelt was a great leader, but not a great administrator.
Nevertheless, Americans rose to the occasion. When FDR called for the production of 50,000 planes in a year, it was thought to be ridiculous. By 1944, the country was producing 96,000 a year. Technology blossomed. When metals became scarce, plastics were developed to take their place. Copper was taken out of pennies and replaced with steel; nickel was removed from nickels. War-inspired pragmatism even affected fashions: To save material, men’s suits lost their pant cuffs and vests, and women painted their legs to take the place of nylons.
Other sacrifices were made as well. Gasoline and tires were rationed, as were coffee, sugar, canned goods, butter, and shoes. But the war proved to be more of an economic inconvenience than a real trial for most people.
Of course, all that military hardware had a hefty price tag. The federal government spent about $350 billion during World War II — or twice as much as it had spent in total for the entire history of the U.S. government up to that point. About 40 percent of that came from taxes; the rest came through government borrowing, much of that through the sale of bonds.
The statistics of war supplies
Production boomed during the war, to the tune of the following figures:
● Aircraft: 296,429
● Naval ships: 87,620
● Artillery: 372,431
● Bullets: 41.59 million
● Tanks and self-propelled guns: 102,351
● Trucks: 2.46 million
All that money had to go someplace. A lot of it went to the West, especially California, where 10 percent of all the federal war spending took place. But the American economy rose just about everywhere else too. The civilian workforce grew 20 percent. The Gross National Product (the total of goods and services produced) more than doubled between 1939 and 1945. Wages and corporate profits went up, as did prices.
In October 1942, Congress gave the president the power to freeze agricultural prices, wages, salaries, and rents. The Roosevelt Administration created the Office of Price Administration (OPA) to oversee prices and wages. But the OPA proved generally ineffective, and the economy mostly ran itself.
Working with labor unions during war times
The serious labor shortage created by the war was a big boost to union membership. Early on, FDR got labor to agree to a “no strike” pledge and a 15 percent limit on wage increases.
Even so, there were thousands of work stoppages, especially as the war wore on. The government actually seized the nation’s coal mines in 1943 after a major strike and also seized the railroads in late 1943 to avert a strike. Congress eventually passed a law requiring unions to wait 30 days before striking.
Many perceived the strikes as slightly treasonous, and “there are no strikes in foxholes” became a popular response to labor stoppages. Still, as labor leaders pointed out, things were a lot better for a lot of working Americans: Average weekly wages went from $24 in 1939 to $46 in 1944.
"Da" for the working Yank
"To American production, without which this war would have been lost."
— toast by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, October 1943.
Employing Women for the War effort
Millions of women entered the workforce to take the place of the men who were off to the military. By 1943, 17 million women filled a third of civilian jobs, 5 million of them in war factories (see Figure 16-1). “If you’ve followed recipes exactly in making cakes, you can learn to load shells,” proclaimed billboards recruiting women to the workplace.
Some companies offered childcare or provided meals to take home as incentives to lure women into the workplace. But women were still given the short end of the stick when it came to wages: In 1944, women got an average of $31.21 a week for working in war-related factories, while men doing the same jobs were paid $54.65.
Figure 16-1: Woman working in a war plant.
Henry J. Kaiser
Henry Kaiser had never built a ship before, so he didn't know he was doing it "wrong." All he knew was that he was doing it fast — and helping to win the war. Kaiser was born in New York in 1882. He left school at the age of 13 to go to work and eventually ended up on the West Coast as an engineer. During the Depression, he helped to build major dams in the West, such as Boulder and Grand Coulee, and when the war started, he was asked to help provide ships.
He did it by using assembly line methods, building sections and then welding them together. Traditional shipbuilders were skeptical that it would work. But Kaiser's method streamlined the process of building a cargo vessel, called a liberty ship, from 245 days to 17. By 1943, Kaiser's shipyards were producing an average of two ships a day, helping to keep England fed, providing supplies for overseas troops, lowering enemy morale, and earning Kaiser the nickname "Sir Launch-a-lot."
Kaiser's interests were by no means limited to ships. He also built magnesium and aluminum plants to provide parts for planes and built the first steel-producing plant in the West. After the war, he made Jeeps and got into healthcare. He died in 1967, having proved that you can't stop a Kaiser when he's on a roll.
Making strides — African Americans achieve greater equality
Many African Americans had hoped their service in World War I would help bring them equality in post-war America. But they were wrong. So when World War II started, some black leaders were wary. “Our war is not against the Hitler in Europe,” editorialized one black newspaper, “but against the Hitlers in America.” Some black leaders demanded assurances that loyalty this time around would be rewarded with more decent treatment.
In response, Roosevelt established the Fair Employment Practices Commission and charged it with investigating cases where African Americans were discriminated against in war industries. The commission enjoyed some success. But the real economic boost for blacks came from the labor shortage, which fueled the movement of many from the South to industrial cities in the North and West.
About 700,000 African Americans also served in the military and some strides in equality were made. Blacks were admitted into the Air Force and Marines for the first time. The Air Force enlisted some 600 black pilots and the first African American general was appointed in the Army. Some military units were even integrated toward the end of the war, although it was more for practical reasons than to further civil rights.
Rose Monroe
It was a classic case of life imitates art imitates life. Early on in World War II, the government started propaganda campaigns to help get women involved in the war effort. One such campaign was built around a poster of an attractive (and well-muscled), bandana-wearing woman named "Rosie the Riveter." There was even a popular song to go along with it.
But Rosie was a fictional character — until actor Walter Pidgeon visited an aircraft plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan, to make a short film promoting war bonds. There he met a young widow named Rose Monroe, who was riveting planes to support her family. Pidgeon signed her up to be in the film, and she became an inspiration for millions of women entering the workforce for the first time.
Born in 1920 in Kentucky, Monroe went to work after her husband died in a car accident. After the war, Monroe drove a cab, owned a beauty shop, started a construction company, and earned a pilot's license. She died in 1997, still an inspiration to new generations of working women.
Even so, race relations remained mired in racism and distrust. Several cities had race riots, the worst of which was in Detroit in 1943, when 34 people died. Angry that the racism of Hitler was being fought against while the racism at home was largely ignored, many African Americans began taking a more active role in asserting their legal rights. The ranks of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) swelled from 50,000 before the war to more than 400,000 at war’s end.
Returning for Work after being kicked out — Latinos
In 1942, the U.S. and Mexican governments reached an agreement to allow Mexican workers — braceros — to enter the United States to help make up the manpower shortage. Thousands of Mexicans, some of whom had been thrown out of America during the Depression, entered the country, mostly to take agricultural jobs in the West.
The sudden influx sometimes caused friction, particularly in California. In Los Angeles, tensions between outlandishly garbed Latino youths and sailors led to the zoot suit riots of 1943. City officials actually passed a law prohibiting the wearing of zoot suits in public as a way to avoid further confrontations.
The "Battle of Los Angeles"
On February 2, 1942, less than two months after Pearl Harbor was attacked, U.S. Naval intelligence in Southern California issued a warning that a Japanese attack might occur that night.
Sure enough, in the wee hours of February 25, radar picked up unidentified blips about 120 miles off the coast of Los Angeles. Then planes were reported near Long Beach, and then four anti-aircraft batteries began firing at something over Santa Monica. Within minutes, other military guns opened fire. Confusion reigned over the next three hours as contradictory reports poured in.
By the dawn's early light, Los Angeles residents saw the results of the attack: no downed enemy planes, no bomb damage, a few traffic accidents, and one man dead from a heart attack.
Eventually it was decided that it had been a false alarm and the fuss had probably been caused by weather balloons (or UFOs, as some folks now insist). Whatever the cause, for a few hours the fighting had come uncomfortably close to the home front.
Treating the Japanese Americans poorly
By far the most shameful aspect of World War II on the home front was the treatment of Japanese residents. About 125,000 people of Japanese descent lived in the United States, 110,000 of them on the West Coast. Seventy thousand, called Nisei, were born here. The rest, called Issei, were born in Japan and emigrated.
In the wake of Pearl Harbor, many of both groups’ neighbors began to view them with suspicion and even hatred. “A Jap’s a Jap,” said Lt. Gen. John DeWitt, who was in command of the West’s defense. “It makes no difference whether he is an American or not.”
In February 1942, Roosevelt ordered the forced evacuation of all Japanese residents from the West Coast, supposedly to lessen the potential for them to engage in seditious or traitorous acts. They were moved to bleak concentration camps in remote areas. Many lost virtually everything they owned: homes, farms, businesses, and even personal possessions.
Despite their treatment, about 8,000 Nisei volunteered to serve in the military. One group, the “Fightin’ 442nd,” was one of the most decorated combat units of the war.
It wasn’t until the 1980s and 1990s that the Nisei were compensated for some of what they lost. In the meantime, Roosevelt’s action was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court as a justifiable hardship. “Hardships are a part of war,” said Justice Hugo Black, “and war is an aggregation of hardships.”
Winning cuisine
If an army travels on its stomach, the United States rode to victory in World War II on Spam. Yes, Spam, the ubiquitous canned meat product made from pork shoulder and ham.
Invented in 1937 by the Hormel Foods company, Spam hit its culinary stride when the war began, as a substitute for rationed beef. Because it didn't need refrigeration, it was ideal for feeding troops — and they ate more than 100 million pounds of it.
Spam was also fodder for G.I. humor: "meatloaf without basic training," "the ham that didn't pass its physical," "the reason war is hell." But Spam was a lifesaver for countries whose food supplies had been pinched by the war. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev once stated that without Spam, the Russian army would have starved. And it fries up so much better than caviar.
Dealing with the War in Europe
Shortly after Pearl Harbor, FDR met with English Prime Minister Winston Churchill to decide what the forces of the Allies should do against the Axis powers — Germany, Italy, and Japan. The most pressing threat, they decided, was Hitler’s Germany. The German army seemed to be on the brink of defeating the Soviet army, its one-time ally. If the Russians fell, Germany could turn its full attention to Britain.
Soviet dictator Josef Stalin wanted the Allies to launch an invasion of German-held Europe as soon as possible, because Russia was being mauled by the Germans. But Churchill wanted to nibble at the edges of the German empire while bombing Germany from the air, and FDR went along with the Brits.
Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin managed to put their sharp differences aside and generally cooperate. That proved to be a key ingredient in the Allies’ ultimate success. The trio met several times during the war to plot strategy and negotiate about what the world would be like after the war.
Meeting at Yalta
The most important of the meetings of FDR, Churchill, and Stalin actually came toward the end of the war at Yalta, a former palace on the Black Sea in the Soviet Union.
Roosevelt came to Yalta hoping to establish the groundwork for a practical and powerful United Nations, to be formed after the war, and also to convince the Russians to enter the war against Japan and help speed up the end of the war.
Stalin eventually agreed, but at a price. In return, the Soviet dictator got the other two to agree to give the Soviets control over broad areas of Europe and a promise that each of the major nations on the UN Security Council would have veto power over council decisions. As it turned out, the price Roosevelt paid was far too high for what he got in return.
Winning one step at a time
One of the most immediate problems was dealing with the menace posed by German submarines, or U-boats, in the Atlantic. Traveling in packs, the subs sank three million tons of Allied shipping in the first half of 1942 alone. But the Allies worked out a system of convoys and developed better anti-sub tactics. Most importantly, they built far more cargo ships than the Germans could possibly sink.
In the summer of 1942, Allied planes began bombing targets inside Germany. Eventually, the bombing would take a terrible toll. In 1943, 60,000 people were killed in the city of Hamburg, and the city of Dresden was all but destroyed.
In the fall of 1942, Allied armies, under a relatively obscure American commander named Dwight D. Eisenhower, launched an attack in North Africa against Hitler’s best general, Erwin Rommel. The green American troops were whipped soundly at the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia. But in a return match — while Rommel was in Germany — a combined U.S. and British force defeated the Germans at El Alamein and drove them out of Egypt.
From Africa, the Allies invaded Sicily, and then advanced into the Italian mainland. Mussolini was overthrown and eventually executed by his own people. But the German army poured troops into the country and it took until the end of 1944 for Italy to be completely controlled.
On the Eastern Front, meanwhile, the Russian army gradually had turned the tables on the invading Germans and begun pushing them back, despite staggering civilian and military losses. And in England, the Allies, under the leadership of Eisenhower, were preparing the greatest invasion force the world had ever seen.
Making the final push — and revealing the war's greatest crime
On June 6, 1944 — “D-Day” — the Allied forces swept ashore on the beaches of Normandy in France. It was a staggering logistical feat. Some 175,000 men were landed on the first day, a number that swelled to 325,000 in the first week and eventually to 2.5 million. They were delivered by 5,300 ships and supported by 50,000 vehicles and 11,000 planes.
Nazi nitwits
Adolf Hitler had an itch to bring the war to America. So in mid-June, 1942, German subs landed four men on Long Island, New York, and four more on a Florida beach. They also landed cases of explosives. All the men had lived in America before and spoke fluent English. Their mission was to sabotage U.S. factories, incite terror, and disrupt the economy.
But they turned out to be an octet of oafs. Several of them went on shopping sprees. Several blabbed about their mission to relatives — and two of them blabbed to federal agents.
Within two weeks of their arrival, all of them had been arrested by the FBI. After a military trial, all eight were convicted of espionage. Six of the Germans were executed, while the two who confessed were imprisoned for the rest of the war and then deported.
Hitler's itch was never scratched. Not a single case of enemy-directed sabotage was ever verified during the war.
By August, the U.S. 3rd Army, under the brash, belligerent, and brilliant Gen. George S. Patton, pushed deep into France and to the edge of Germany itself. A little more than a week before Christmas, 1944, however, the Germans launched a desperate counterattack. Known as the Battle of the Bulge, the surprise attack succeeded at first, costing the United States 77,000 casualties. But the Germans were low on men and supplies and could not sustain the attack. By late January 1945, the Allies were again on the offensive.
As Allied troops moved deeper into the heart of German-held territory, they began to make stomach-churning, heart-wrenching discoveries: concentration camps holding what was left of millions of Jews and other “undesirables” that German leaders had ordered to be murdered as a “final solution” to “cleansing” Germany of all but the “Aryan Race.”
Hitler’s “final solution” became known to the civilized world as the Holocaust, and resulted in the murders of 6 million Jews and 4 million non-Jews, including gays, Gypsies, and the mentally and physically handicapped. The Holocaust had not been a complete secret to the Allies, but finding a way to stop it had not been as big a priority as winning the war. And the enormity of the crime was not fully understood until the camps were discovered and their stories told by survivors.
Ending the war in Europe, and the end of FDR
In April, the U.S. and Russian armies joined up at the Elbe River and advanced on Berlin. Hitler committed suicide, and on May 7 — “V-E,” or “Victory in Europe” Day — Germany surrendered.
That's a Negative
"Nuts."
— Reply of U.S. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe to a German demand for surrender at Bastogne, France, during the Battle of the Bulge. McAuliffe's troops held on until relieved.
Roosevelt did not live to see the victory. The president had won a fourth term in 1944, despite rumors about his failing health. But on April 12, 1945, while vacationing at Warm Springs, Georgia, FDR died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage. The nation was staggered at the loss of the man who had led them through the Depression and the war. One New York housewife was asked if she heard the radio bulletins of FDR’s death and replied “For what do I need a radio? It’s on everybody’s face.”
The new president, a former hat salesman from Missouri named Harry S. Truman, was as stunned as anyone. “Being president is like riding a tiger,” Truman later wrote. “I never felt that I could let go for a single moment.”
Dealing with the War in the Pacific
Less than 12 hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese attacked U.S. air bases in the Philippines, destroying scores of U.S. planes. Within a few months, they conquered Guam, Wake Island, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, Burma, and the Philippines. Drunk with victories, Japanese forces continued to expand their dominance in the Pacific during the first few months of the war.
About the only good news for the Allies came on April 18, 1942, when a squadron of B-25 bombers launched from an aircraft carrier and led by Col. James Doolittle managed to bomb Tokyo. The planes did little damage and none of the planes made it back, with most of the crews having to ditch them in China. Still, Doolittle’s raid was a huge shot in the arm for sagging American morale.
Fighting back
U.S. strategists decided to strike back on two fronts. The first, under Gen. Douglas MacArthur, would move north from Australia, through New Guinea, and then back to the Philippines. The second, under Adm. Chester Nimitz, would move west from Hawaii and then hopscotch from island to island toward Japan itself.
Another "useless" war product
The Japanese conquests in Southeast Asia cut off many of America's rubber supplies. So the United States turned to synthetic rubber and went looking for an alternative that would be even cheaper.
In 1943, a General Electric (GE) scientist named James Wright mixed boric acid and silicone oil and formed a gooey substance that bounced, stretched, and even picked up impressions from newsprint and comic books.
Trouble was, no one could find a practical use for it. In 1949, however, a Connecticut man named Paul Hodgson borrowed $147, bought the rights to the stuff from GE, and began marketing it in little plastic eggs in time for Easter.
"Silly Putty" was a smash hit with kids, and Hodgson left a tidy $140 million estate when he died in 1976, proving that it is possible to make gold from goo.
But first the Japanese offense had to be stopped. The initial halt came in early May 1942, at the Battle of the Coral Sea, northwest of Australia. It was the first naval fight in history where the fighting ships never actually saw each other: All the combat was done by planes from each side’s aircraft carriers. The battle was pretty much a draw, but the Japanese fleet carrying invasion troops to New Guinea had to turn back, marking the first time the Japanese had not won outright.
Turning the tides
The real turning point, however, came between June 3 and June 6, in a fierce naval battle near the U.S.-held Midway Island. Tipped to Japanese plans by intercepting their messages and breaking their codes, U.S. forces managed to sink four Japanese aircraft carriers, losing only one. The victory returned control of the central Pacific to the Allies.
A few months after the Battle of Midway, the United States took the offensive in the Solomon Islands, winning battles at Gavutu, Tulagi, and Guadalcanal. It took six grueling months to take Guadalcanal, but by mid-1943, the Japanese forces were either retreating or on defense nearly everywhere.
Now it was our turn. In February 1944, forces under Nimitz won victories in the Marshall Islands, and in the fall, allied forces reopened supply lines in Southeast Asia into China. In mid-1944, a U.S. armada struck the Marianas Islands of Tinian, Guam, and Saipan, and on October 20, 1944, MacArthur made good on an earlier promise and returned to the Philippines.
Audie Murphy
He was a pint-sized Texas orphan who joined the Army as a buck private at the age of 16. When he came home, he weighed a lot more — mostly because of the medals on his chest.
Murphy was born in 1926 to poor share cropper parents. After joining the Army, Murphy saw action in nine major campaigns in North Africa, Italy, and France, single-handedly killing more than 200 enemy soldiers while rising to the rank of second lieutenant. On Jan. 26, 1945, in France, Murphy took on an attack by six German tanks and supporting infantry.
Despite being wounded, he fought until he ran out of ammunition, which was long enough to direct artillery fire and beat back the German attack.
His heroism won Murphy more than 30 citations, including the Congressional Medal of Honor and the French Croix de Guerre. After the war, America's most decorated soldier became a movie actor, making 44 films. One of them, To Hell and Back, was based on his own best-selling autobiography. Murphy died in a plane crash in 1971, at the age of 45.
As the Germans did at the Battle of the Bulge, the Japanese threw everything they had into a counteroffensive. And, like the Germans, they lost. The Battle of Leyte Gulf cost Japan four more carriers and all but ended its ability to mount an offensive. Next came the battle for the island of Okinawa, just 370 miles south of Japan itself. The Japanese sent suicide planes called kamikazes (“divine wind”) on one-way trips into U.S. ships, and while they were horrifyingly effective, they weren’t enough. After 50,000 Allied and 100,000 Japanese were killed or wounded, Okinawa fell in late June 1945.
U.S. submarines were taking a huge toll on Japanese supply lines, sinking more than half of all the enemy’s cargo ships by the end of the war. American planes, meanwhile, had been softening up the Japanese mainland. In May 1945, they dropped napalm on Tokyo, killing 80,000 people. The bombings were designed to make the eventual invasion of Japan easier. Even so, U.S. strategists figured it would take more than a year of fighting and more than 1 million American soldiers would be killed or wounded before the Japanese homeland would fall.
What the strategists did not count on was a terrible new weapon that had been conceived in New York and Tennessee and spawned on the deserts of New Mexico.
Dropping the Bomb
Even before the war began, scientists fleeing from Nazi Germany had warned U.S. officials the Germans were working on developing a huge new bomb that would be triggered through an atomic reaction. The U.S. government then began pouring what would amount to more than $2 billion into what would be called the “Manhattan Project,” because it started in New York.
Work continued at top-secret bases in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Los Alamos, New Mexico, under the direction of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. The project was so hush-hush that Vice President Harry Truman wasn’t told of it until he assumed the presidency after FDR’s death. On July 16, 1945, the world’s first atomic bomb was detonated at a testing ground in New Mexico.
On July 26, 1945, Allied leaders delivered a surrender ultimatum to Japan, but it was rejected by that country’s military leaders. Then on August 6, 1945, a single B-29 bomber nicknamed “Enola Gay” dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. The bomb killed 75,000 people and injured another 100,000 in the city of 340,000. Thousands more eventually died from the radiation.
Debate has raged ever since as to whether Japan would have surrendered if the bomb had not been dropped. But at the time, there was little hesitation about its use on the part of the man who made the decision, President Truman. “I regarded the bomb as a military weapon,” he said later, “and never had any doubt that it should be used.”
Japan was stunned by the destruction of the Hiroshima bomb, but its leaders hesitated in surrendering. Three days later, another A-bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. The next day, Japan surrendered. The final ceremony took place on September 2, aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
World War II, the bloodiest and most devastating war in human history, was over.
About 30 million civilians and military personnel around the world had been killed. American losses, compared to the other major combatant countries, had been light: About 300,000 were killed and another 750,000 were injured or wounded.
But while the war was over, a new age that included the threat of even more horrible wars was just beginning.
A witness to doom
"It worked."
— J. Robert Oppenheimer, after witnessing the first atomic bomb explosion.
Oppenheimer later said he was thinking of an ancient Indian poem: "I am become Death, the Shatterer of Worlds."