The Charlotte News

Saturday, December 27, 1941

FOUR EDITORIALS

So much for the tenderness ascribed after the war to the Emperor who, according to those in attendance, had expressed to the wave leaders at Pearl Harbor both his concern and affirmation that only military targets had been hit in Hawaii. Whether that exchange actually occurred is doubtful; there is only the dubious and self-serving record of the Pearl Harbor marauders themselves and the Emperor's aides-de-camp to back it up.

After the declaration, MacArthur had moved his forces, consisting of 20,500 Americans and 68,000 poorly equipped Filipinos, south onto the island of Corregidor at the mouth of Manila Bay and to Bataan. The Navy retreated to the East Indies and the remaining 14 Flying Fortresses of the 35 which had been shipped there via Hawaii were flown to Australia. MacArthur was forced in February to evacuate to Australia, now a key ally along with the Dutch in the Pacific.

In just 20 days since the attack on Pearl Harbor, Guam had fallen on December 10, Wake Island had fallen on December 23 with a task force from Pearl Harbor on its way to provide relief to the embattled 380 Marines there, the British holding Hong Kong had surrendered on Christmas Day after a week of fighting, forces were moving on the key to the Malay Peninsula and the Burma Road, Singapore, to fall February 8, Borneo was being attacked and, along with Java, would fall in March, and Luzon and Manila were now virtually under Japanese control. By early June, both Corregidor and Bataan would be in Japanese hands along with some 80,000 American and Filipino war prisoners, set for their long, cruel forced march. Burma would be overrun in January and the British would retreat to India by May.

It was to be a long, hard road back for the Allies. The Japanese strategy by mid-1942 appeared to have worked as planned. Even the Doolittle Tokyo raid in April, while a morale booster for Americans, did little to dampen the resolve of the Japanese.

Only Midway had managed to stand in all of the Pacific between Hawaii and Japan, and it only because Japan didn't want it, shelled it and moved on.

This strange year of 1941, one of the cruelest in history to the world at large, was fast drawing to a close. The dead had piled up so fast that no one could take an accurate count. The figures in Russia alone were astronomical on both sides. The Allies could take solace only in the fact that Hitler had not yet succeeded there in grasping the rich oil and bread basket and that the strategy of seeking this ill-fated putsch had provided time for Britain to gain a breathing spell from the relentless nine months of bombing between September, 1940 and mid-May, 1941, indeed to launch an RAF counter-offensive on Germany. That and the success of American Lend-Lease aid to Britain provided the only sources of optimism.

But something had indeed changed, something with which the Axis foolishly had not properly reckoned: America was now fully engaged in the war and mad as hell about the method by which it had been dragged into it. That which was an ancillary goal of Hitler and Tojo in planning the attack on Pearl Harbor had failed: America was not swept to the peace table to broker a peace between Russia, Britain and Germany. There would be no more Munichs. Hitler's hand had finally been called and he was left to dismiss his generals, assume command himself, and retreat to Berchtesgaden for a long winter's rest. And, though he had found an unexpectedly powerful new ally to the East in Japan to occupy the Allies anew in the Far East theater, he had also engaged another unexpectedly powerful new foe, former ally, to the East in Russia to occupy and stay his own hand elsewhere in the Atlantic and European theaters. And, now America was no longer a divided land between isolationists and interventionists; there was no more Fifth Column movement to be seen in the United States, no more crumbling from within from the Nazi-sympathizing voices of Lindbergh and Coughlin and their fellow isolationists in Congress, Borah, Reynolds, Wheeler, and the rest, no more America First rallies to suggest casually that Hitler's mold for mankind was the Wave of the Future in Europe, one which could be made beneficial to the United States. That was gone.

It would yet be a long, hard way back for the Allies to undo what had been done during the previous 28 months. The world looked a pretty sorry sight by December 27, 1941. That Churchill could raise the V-sign to Congress the previous day and provide the familiar relaxed grin of confidence after his grave, indelible tones echoed through the chamber to give both his native countrymen and those of his now uncompromising ally sheltering nurture, was a testament to the fortitude built up in the man and his nation during the previous two years in which survival itself had been daily threatened. Now, he had his bully ally at his side in America and the V-sign could be lifted with the understated assurance that it would be fully realized in time.

Though the Philippines--believed key to maintaining a foothold at all in the Pacific, held since the aftermath of the Spanish-American War of 1898, in which had fought as one of Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders now Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox--, was plainly bloodied, staggering on the ropes and soon to fall, still there was determination to get up off the mat and fight. The Filipinos themselves eschewed any unity with Japan and fought to stay out of their orbit of dominion, knowing full well that Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere meant only slavery for them. And fight they would.

For it was for all of the Allies, in the final analysis, kill or be killed. There was in truth no longer any luxury of choice in the matter. And by this point, unlike just a month earlier, virtually everyone finally had come to realize it.