w--mmm TWO THE MICHIGAN DAILY Brief History 23,000,000 Casualties In" W rldsGreatest War BY CARL C. CRAMER Associated Press Foreign Staff The second great world war of the century has ended with the utter de- feat' of Japan, last of the Axis powers which conspired to divide the world into three vast spheres of cruelty and barbarism. Peace has come after 14 years of alnost continuous war in Manchuria, thiopia, China, Europe, Africa, Asia aid the Islands of the Pacific. The chief instigators of this enormous conflict in which close to 23,- 000,00 were killed or wounded in combat - not counting the millions killed by starvation; air raids and othex ,;auses * have been Japan's mili- tary clique, choosing to lead the people. into what amounted to national 'icidle. It has now been smashed. fih 'legend of the divinity of her clouds of smoke covered the harbor. emperor, cornerstone of Japan's In the blazing inferno eight bat- "ifique culture, may have been swept tliships - almnost half the U. S. 4 y inthe first major defeat of .Navy's backbone - and 10 other r -2,605 years of recorded or myth ships were sunk or damaged and lcal' history. more than 3,000 men killed or miss- "Hitler has disappeared in the veri- ii'g table Goetterdaemmerung that ex- for the next six months the news tihguish'ed Germany as a unified nart Was like a bad dream. .t61.' Mussolini, living by violence, Striking simultaneously at the died that way. Phiflippines, Singapore, Hong Kong, " The boast of Admiral Osoroku that the Dutch East Indies and the islands he would dictate terms in the White in the Paiflc, the warriors of Nip- House, the Greater East Asia Co- pen seemed swarming everywhere at 'Prosperity Sphere, the Reich of a once. Awmed with their leend of thousand years and the New Order, irnvincibility, schooled in jungle war- MVfudolini's 8,000,000 bayonets and fare and seemingly directed by fault- the new Roman empire, stand today less precision, the Japanese stretched as emnpty vainglories. their empire thousands of miles in 'he chain of aggression, beginning a:scant three months. in Manchuria Sept. 18, 1931, reached Hawaii lay under the dread of in- its zenith in 1942, when Japan's vasion, Alaska was in danger. Jap- realm reached 5,000 miles either way, anase submarines prowled the Pa- inom the Aleutians to Java, from cific coast and. California had the 'Mianchuria and Burma to mid-Pa- jitters and once was actually shelled. cifc, and embraced an enslaved pop- ulation of nearly 500,000,000.' Bataan ''Japah's militarists,-dreaming of eb Ursts more faitastis than But new epics of American heroism 'righis Khan's, stood on the were being written. tihresheld of dominion over 1,000, 'the Death March of Bataan - the ,0,00people. saga from the thirst-parched lips of Rickenbacker and others like him Pearl Harbor adrift for days and weeks on the of Allies ar In Pacific ing four aircraft carriers sent to thes bottom and three battleships dam- I rea Australia s } 'J r. L t . With bated breath the whole world aged, It was Japan's most crippling waited for the battle for Australia. loss in her naval history up to that On March 17, MacArthur arrived in time. At least 275 of her planes were Australia by plane after slipping 'out lost. of Corregidor on a bouncing PT boat American losses were the carrier that eluded Japanese over hundreds Yorktown and a destroyer. of South Sea miles.IThis was the end of retreat in the "I came through and I will return," Pacific, and the Allies were near he declared, as he assumed command their low point in the war. Three in Southeast, Asia. days later, on June 9, Hitler loosed But the English-speaking democ- his drive from Kharkov for Stalin- racy in the litle continent in the grad, and 15 d-fys later, on June 21, Antipodes was in a desperate plight. Rommel in Africa suddenly turned The Japanese had seized the Ad- the tables on the British, captured miralty Isles and 1l the important Tobruk and sped on to El Alamein bases in northern New Guinea. They within striking distance of Suez. were solidly settled in Rabaul in New Britain and were infiltrating Guawdlcanal into the Solomons. Australia was in danger of having its supply line to The time had now come 'to strike America cut. the first real counterblow. It came Washington and London were pre- Aug. 7, 1942, at Guadalcanal, the occupied with the German peril to first of the amphibious landings on Moscow and Suez. the way to Tokyo. But .,lowly MacArthur's American- Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Mar- Australian-Dutch-New Zealand forc- 'ies under Maj. Alexander A. Van- es gathered strength. Refugees from dergrift took the Japanese complete- hundreds of shipwrecks, the bombed Jy by surprise and at first scored a escape ports of the Indies. the scat- brilliant success, seizing the prized! tered guerilla battlers"of the Philip- Henderson airfield and the nearby pines filtered in. Australian veterans Tulagi anchorage. of Africa returned. U. S. troops en- But for months the outcome of route to Manila when the war broke this struggle in the insect-infested out were diverted to Australia, and jungles remained in doubt. Not more arrived. Militia drilled. until Feb. 9, 1943, was the island He had not long to prepare before finally secured. the Japanese launched a full scale 'The "Tokyo Express"- fast taks effort down the Solomon Sea cor- forces of destroyers and other ships ridor through the Louisiades. -ran supplies and reinforcements I z a 1 L 1 S S S and three American cruisers were sunk. There followed the naval engage - ments of the eastern Solomons, the Battle of Cape Esperance and the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands in which the Americans. lost the veteran carirer Hornet and a de- stroyer. In October the Japanese succeed- ed in landing reinforcements and in preparing to drive the Americans into the sea. But American Army re- inforcenents also arrived at the crii- sis. Adm. William F. (Bull) Halsey .took command of naval forces in the area. On the other side of the world, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower's great expedition was sailing from England and America for North Africa. On Nov. 13, 14 and 15 the decisive battle, known as the Batle of Guad- alcanal, took place at sea. It was the greatest surface action since the Battle of Jutland in the First World War. The Japanese sent three forces of warships and transports, with a spearhead of at least two -battle- ships and 16 cruisers and destroyers in one column. This vanguard was almost destroyed at night by a cruis- er task force lead by Rear Adm. Dan- iel J. Callaghan. Callaghan, match- ing his cruiser San Francisco against one of the battleships, boldly thrust his Title column in the midst of the Japanese. Callaghan lost his life, but the Japanese were routed in the confusion. Either unaware of the disaster that had overtaken their vanguard or unable to arrest their battle plans, the other two Japanese forces came on the next day and night and ran into a similar massacre. This time U. S. batleships participated. The final count was at .least 28 Japanese ships sunk, including one and possibly two battleships and 12 transports loaded with troops. Two American cruisers and six destroy- ers were sunk. In a last desperate effort the Jap- (Continued on Page 3) zI i I f , Pearl Harbor, "the date that will' live in infamy," wrecked that dream. On that day, Dec. 7, 1941, there was 'ast into the scales the vast flood from the arsenal of America, the high courage of her soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen. "Smnall but elite air forces, submar- ine men, soldiers, a crippled navy- the expendables -.arrested Japan's progress. Then the mightiest fleet the world had ever known, the earth's greatest air force and one of its most powerful armies-the armed power of an aroused American democracy -beat their way across the widest ocean to the homeland of the Mik- ado. Allies from Britgin and the 'British dominions, from China and others of the United Nations shared in the mighty enterprises. Japan was overwhelmed by new weapons and methods of global strat- egy - the movable strategic air' force of a hundred aircraft carriers. The super-bomber, the incredible ar- madas of supply ships, floating docks and' maintenance vessels known 'a the "fleet train," the more 'than 60 types of landing craft and crawling monsters, the stupendous array of 'e'quipment and talent of the more than 60 amphibious "island hopping" operations, the seabee and the bull- dozer that turned tiny islands into formidable bases, the jellied gaso- line bomb that 'turned Japan into a land of burned out cities. The United States was tested by the most humiliating defeats of her. history, but she also won 'some of her greatest victories. Fighting two great wars simultan- 'eously, she won them both, and now emerges upon a new stage of world power, her armies of occupation spanning two oceans. But the cost is in huge American cemeteries that dot the world map, news names - Bataan, Faid Pass, Corregidor, Salerno, Guadalcanal, Anzio, Coral Sea, Cassino, Midway, Tarawa, St. Lo, Saipan, Aachen, Iwo Jima, the Rhine, Okinawa, the Ar- dennes and many others --have been burned into American memory forever. Pearl Harbor was foreshadowed by the tri-partite pact of Germany, Italy and Japan on Sept. 27, 1940, but Americans were astounded in the midst of a quiet Sunday afternoon by the White House announcement that Japanese planes were attacking that proud stronghold in mid-Paci- fic. Even as the Japanese bombers were roaring over Diamond Head, Tokyo's two envoys called at the State Department in their "peace negotiations." Never were treacherous negotia- tions carried to such farcical ex- treme. Senator Burton K. Wheeler, a lead- er of the isolationists, fervently ex- pressed the white hot indignation: "The only thing now is to do our best to lick hell out of them.". The Japanese had done what everything before could not do--unify the American people for war against ag- gression. In Honolulu that morning Ameri- cans praised the Lord and passed the ammunition. They had need to place their trust in providence that Sab- Pacific - the cockiness of Chen- nfault's AVG, the Flying Tigers-Doo- l ttle's unheard-of stunt, flying two- m tored bombers off the Hornet over Tokyo . . . the resourcefulness of Bulkeley's PT crews . . . fortitude in the malarial jungles of New Guinea and the leech-infested mud of Bur- ma . . . a war under savage condi- tions against savage men. Associated Press dispatches from Bataan gave the first inkling of how the modern American soldier was facing up"to this. He was cocky, slangy, humorous, ingenious and brave. To Tojo's great surprise, Americans had not grown soft. Thailand, a supposedly indepen- dent buffer for 'British Singapore,. vas the first to fall. Bangkok, weak- ened by Japanese political infiltra- te n, capitulated on the second day 6the wan. Guam, the U. S. island whose fortifications had only been talked about, fell on the fourth day. For the first time since 1812 a con- queror's flag waved over Ameri- can soil! Wake was next after an epic 14- day defense by fewer than 400 mar- ines. Hong Kong, the British crown col- ony, was attacked from the Chinese mainland. The teeming Asiatic city fell on Christmas day. Some of its handful of Canadian and British de- fenders' were bayoneted after being 'taken prisoner. Aepeating their success of Pearl Harbor, Japanese air strikes caught lines of parked American planes on airfields around Manila, and the in- vasion of the Philippines started on Dec. 10 with a landing at Aparri at the northern tip of Luzon. Other landings followed in the Legaspi area southeast of Manila and Lin- gayen Gulf, north of the capital.' With Filipino troops loyally rally-. ing about him, Gen. Douglas Mac- Arthur began his delaying battle. Manila was declared an open city the day after Christmas, but the Jap- anese bombed it unmercifully. Manila, where Dewey wrote history in another generation, was occupied by the Japanese on January 2, and MacArthur gathered his little army of 35,000 Americans and Filipinos into the tight jungle-girt peninsula of Bataan. The Americans dug in among the banyan roots and began writing the epic of Bataan. A few patched up planes were their only air force, sub- marines slipping in at night their only supply, horsemeat their fare. They repelled many a bloody charge. Capt. Arthur Wermuth be- HALSEY IS EXPECTED TO came the first "one man army" of the war. But on April 11 Bataan sur- rendered.. Lt. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright took over on Corregidor for nearly a month of blood and suffering, af- ter MacArthur was ordered to pre- pare the defense' of Australia and for a counter-offensive the Japanese pounded the bare little rock with bombers and artillery, then landed, and Corregidor gave up on May 6. The survivors joined the death march to prison camps. Jap's Spread Out By then the Japanese had spread over all Malaya, the Dutch East In- dies and virtually all of Burma. The loss of Singapore was the greatest blow to British prestige since Dunkerque two years before. The Japanese piled off their wooden landing boats onto the scarcely de- fended marshy coast of Malaya at Kota Bharu on Dec. 8, the date the war began in the Far bast. Two days later they struck their second great blow at Allied naval power when their bombers pounced on two of Britain's proudest battle- ships, the Prince of Wales and the Repulse, and sank them off the Ma- laya coast. Having robbed Singapore of its naval shield, the Japanese leap- frogged down the coast and infiltra- ted British lines in the jungle at night, to the amazement of British generals who never had believed an attack on Singapore from the land- ward side was possible. AustraliansuBritish and Indians were brave but outclassed in this type of warfare. The Japanese beat them back onto Singapore's island on Jan. 12, and after a short seige they plunged across the strait into the mangrove swamps in a night attack. Singanore fell on Feb. 15 amid lurid fires, its giant guns still pointing toward the sea - the wrong way. The British lost an army of 100,000 men, control of the ap- proaches to Burma, India, the Dutch East Indies, communica- tions between Australia and the Middle East. The Japanese already had landed on Borneo on Dec. 16 and on the Celebes and worked down Makassar Strait despite the blows of flying fortresses and U. S. destroyer forces which got in their first licks of the war. So far as the East Indies were con- cerned, the decisive battle was fought in the Java Sea - a disaster for the Allies. Setting their invasion fleet in motion, the Japanese trapped a United Nations fleet commanded by Dutch Vice Admiral C. E. L. Hel- frich in the Java Sea. In the en- TAKE HIROHITO'S PLACE gagement, Feb. 27-28, the Allies lost 15 American, British, Australian and Dutch warships before they could withdraw under punishing air and submarine attacks. The Japanese landed. on Java .March 1 and six days later had oc- cupied Batavia, the capital, and Ban- doeng, mountain stronghold. The British defended Sumatra and its rich oil wells until -March 19, and Dutch guerillas continued to hold out in some of the islands for months, but the campaign was virtually over. The white man's prestige in the Orient slumped to a new low in Burma, which the Japanese in- vaded , along almost impossible mountain trails from Thialand even before. they finished the cap- ture of Singapore. The enemy captured Moulmein, crossed the Sittang, and captured Rangoon, capital and chief port, on March 8 - again striking from the backdoor. Harrassed by unruly Bur- mese in their retreat up the Irra- waddy, the hard way out of Burma, the British surrendered Mandalay, heart of the Kipling country, on May 2. To many, the old British Empire seemed to be' coming apart at the seams. The Japanese, who at last had got the better of the heroic AVG, pushed on through Lashio, terminal of the Burma Road to China, and reached the Salween Gorge in Yunnan, Chi- na's southwestern province. China, fighting since July 7, 1937, seemed open to a knockout. On May 25, Gen. Joseph W. Still- well and Is little band of Americans' and Chinese straggled through the rugged mountains back into India. He summed up the whole sorry story of unpreparedness: "I claim we got a hell of a beat- ing. We got run out of Burma and it is ;hugiiliating as hell!" ' i ? The British had negnected to build the roads which would have made a defense in northern Burma possible. They had attempted to stay the Jap- anese advance with obsolete planes. Insufficient reinforcements had ar- rived in Singapore just in time to be captured. The Dutch had planned a defense with planes and guns that never arrived from America. The Japanese had won an empire of oil, tin, rubber at trifling cost. Coral Sea The Battle of the Coral Sea, May 4-8, was the first great modern sea battle fought without surface ships coming within gunrange of one an- other. In in the flattop, the giant airplane carrier, proved that hence- forth it was the queen of sea power. For four days the flaming battle spread over 400,000 square miles of tropic and coral reefs, with the two fleets standing 80 to 100 miles apart. Two American carriers were pitted against three of the Japanese. And when the smoke of battle cleared 15 Japanese ships, including. at least one carrier and perhaps a second, had gone down. At least 20 more, including another carrier, were dam- aged. The American losses were the gallant carrier Lexington, a destroy- er and a tanker. At least 32 other Japanese ships were sunk or damaged inprevious air strikes on shipping concentrations at Tulagi, Salamaua and Lae on March 10 and May 4. This was the beginning of the turning of the tide, but it did not halt the Japanese entirely. The little brown warriors were yet to make their landings at Buna in New Guinea on July 2 and begin their audacious thrust over the top of the"towering Owen Stanley range toward Port Moresby. They were yet to make their abortive attempt at Milne Bay on Sept. 25, highwater mark of the threat of Asiatic dom- ination of Australia. Then, almost exactly six months after Pearl Harbor, a Japanese in- Vasion armada of more than 80 ships was ambushed as the result of an accurate estimate that the balked enemy would now turn toward Ha- waii. Midway The Battle of Midway, June 3-6, was another vast engagement spread over a great panorama of the Pacific with Japanese landings in the midst of the Aleutians as a sideshow. This time submarines, flying fort- resses, Navy flying boats and Marine bombers and fighters got in their blows as well as the carrier planes. Never did outnumbered Americans display a more brilliant courage. Navy Torpedo Squadron 8 connected with the enemy fleet and not one plane of the 15 returned. A lone en- sign survived. But the Japanese battle fleet was forced to flee, crippled and burning under a hail of bombs and torpedoes. The final score was at least 20 Jap- anese ships sunk or damaged, includ- down at night. Their submarines prowled the waters, making them un- safe for Allied transports and war- ships to remain off the island. Their warships made night raids, ripping the beach and scattering death in the foxholes. Their bombers forced U. S. fighter squadrons on Guadal- canal into a battle of exhaustion. Naval engagement after naval en- gagament was fought while the Leathernecks held on grimly. On the night of Aug. 8 a Japanese cruiser force caught Allied naval forces off guard and in a spectacular night action off Savo Island one Australian 7 _1_ , '.=' ONCE AGAN TH E BELL OF LIBERTY TOLLS ;u4 : '7W IIiJ Spolished and pliant LL Illustration of how master shoe craftsmen work with calfskin so it's wonderfully compatible . with fall's feminine fashions. -k PA LTER!DELISo THE FLAG OF FREEDOM WAVES IN THIS IS BUT ONE of the friendly services this bank offers you. Place your deposit in an envelope and mail it. A receipt for the deposit will be mailed back to you. Drop in for a supply today. 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