Reply #32: Unimportant, Ma'am

[The Magistrate]

Soldiers have a charming delusion that war is not political, but military only. That is quite wrong: war is a political exercise, in which military means are employed to achieve political effects as well as ends.

MacArthur was a purely political general, and would have said anything to discredit Democratic politicians. If he had any real objection stated at the time, it would have been rooted in being deprived of the glory of conquering Japan himself by an infantry invasion, and distaste for the decision in the matter being credited to the Air Corps.

There was a feeling among military commanders, which the methodical Gen. Eisenhower seems to have shared, that Japan should not be conquered too quickly. the plan was not just for invasion of the home islands, but engagement of the sizeable and active Japanese forces in China, by U.S. forces and newly established and trained Chinese nationalist forces, striking north from the south and west. By this means it was intended to check-mate the growing power of the Communists in northern China, and balk Soviet moves into Manchuria. The sudden end of the war prevented this, and threw the whole situation in mainland China, and in the former Dutch and French possessions as well, into a tremendously confused turmoil, in which in many locales Japanese garrisons became allied subordinates with Nationalist Chinese and U.S. detatchmenyts against the Communists in China, and were deputized as the allied occupation forces against Indonesian nationalists. It must never be ignored that a great underlyig thrust of the Pacific War was the restoration of colonial imperiums, and the thwarting of the Communist Revolution in China. Military figures commenting on how the war was ended should be understood in this light, to be correctly evaluated.