GUARDING

THE UNITED STATES

AND ITS OUTPOSTS

by

Stetson Conn
Rose C. Engelman
Byron Fairchild

CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY

UNITED STATES ARMY

WASHINGTON, D.C., 2000

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 62-60067

First Printed 1964-CMH Pub 4-2

For Sale by the  Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Washington D.C. 20402

UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II

Stetson Conn, General Editor

Advisory Committee
(As of 25 May 1962)

Oron J. Hale
University of Virginia

Lt. Gen. Louis W. Truman
U.S. Continental Army Command

William R. Emerson
Yale University

Maj. Gen. James B. Quill
Industrial College of the Armed Forces

Earl Pomeroy
University of Oregon

Brig. Gen. Harry L. Hillyard
U.S. Army War College

Theodore Ropp
Duke University

Brig. Gen. Harry J. Lemley, Jr.
U.S. Army Command and General Staff College

Bell I. Wiley
Emory University

Col. Vincent J. Esposito
United States Military Academy

C. Vann Woodward
Yale University

Office of the Chief of Military History

Brig. Gen. William H. Harris, Chief of Military History

Chief Historian | Stetson Conn
Chief, Histories Division | Col. Louis G. Mendez, Jr.
Chief, Editorial and Graphics Division | Lt. Col. James R. Hillard
Editor in Chief | Joseph R. Friedman

iii

...to Those Who Served

Foreword

This is the second and final volume in The Western Hemisphere subseries of UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II. The area covered is vast, and so are the topics. The reader will embark upon a long journey and become involved in a complex series of events, ranging from guarding inland waterways to fighting the Japanese, from rounding up one forlorn German on the coast of Greenland to battling German submarines, from conducting staff conferences with the Navy to negotiating with His Britannic Majesty's ministers, from withstanding the cold of the arctic or the heat of the tropics to overcoming the ever-present ennui of soldiers who wait for the stress of battle that never comes.

Guarding the United States and Its Outposts is instructive. Dealing often with the twilight between peace and war, it focuses upon problems of immediate relevance to the Army and the nation today. Then as now the nation found itself in a revolution in doctrine, weapons, and methods of defense. The way in which men caught in this revolution faced the situation can be a guide to those meeting similar circumstances today and in the future. This book highlights problems in unified command and contains excellent examples of military diplomacy, of how to get along, or fail to get along, with other armed forces of the United States and with our Allies. It contains authoritative accounts of several highly controversial events, especially the Pearl Harbor attack and the evacuation of the United States citizens of Japanese descent from the west coast of continental United States

Washington, D. C.
25 May 1961

WILLIAM H. HARRIS
Brig. Gen., U. S. A.
Chief of Military History

vii

The Authors

Stetson Conn, Chief Historian of the Department of the Army since 1958, holds the Ph.D. degree in history from Yale University and has taught history at Yale, Amherst College, and The George Washington University. After joining the Office of the Chief of Military History in 1946, he served as senior editor, as Acting Chief Historian, as Chief of the Western Hemisphere Section, and as Deputy Chief Historian before taking over his present post. He is coauthor of The Framework of Hemisphere Defense, the first volume of this subseries, and his previous publications include Gibraltar in British Diplomacy in the Eighteenth Century, a volume in the Yale Historical Series, and a ch in Command Decisions, published in 1959.

Rose C. Engelman received her Ph.D. degree in history from Cornell University and taught at Hunter College before joining the Office of the Chief of Military History in 1949. Until 1953 she was a member of the Western Hemisphere Section, OCMH. She is now the historian of the U.S. Army Mobility Command in Detroit.

Byron Fairchild, a member of the OCMH staff from 1949 to 1960, received his Ph.D. degree in history from Princeton University and has taught at the University of Maine, Amherst College, and the Munson Institute of Maritime History. He is the author of Messrs. William Pepperrell, which in 1954 received the Carnegie Revolving Fund Award of the American Historical Association for the outstanding manuscript in any field of history. Dr. Fairchild is coauthor of The Framework of Hemisphere Defense, and The Army and Industrial Manpower in this series, and wrote a ch in the official version of Command Decisions. He is at present a historian in the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

viii

Preface

This is the second of two volumes on the plans made and measures taken by the Army to protect the United States and the rest of the Western Hemisphere against military attack by the Axis Powers during World War II. The global character of American participation in the war, described in the many volumes of this series, tends to obscure the primary and basic concern of the United States Government, and consequently of the Army, for the safety of the continental United States. The security of the Panama Canal and of the island of Oahu as the principal outposts of continental defense was of almost equal concern in the decades between World Wars I and II. When in the late 193o's the action of aggressor nations in the Eastern Hemisphere foreshadowed a new world war that would inevitably involve the security of the United States, Army and Navy planning officers concluded that the continental United States could not be threatened seriously by either air or surface attack unless a hostile power first obtained a lodgment elsewhere within the Western Hemisphere. To prevent that from happening, the United States adopted a new national policy of hemisphere defense.

In the opening chs of the first volume of this subseries, The Framework of Hemisphere Defense, the authors have described the evolution of the policy of hemisphere defense from 1938 to December 1941, in relation to contemporary American military means and the sequence of world events. These chs were designed to introduce the story told in the present volume as well as the description of the new military relationships of the United States with the other American nations that completes the first volume. Consequently, the authors have chosen to use a shortened version of the concluding ch of the first volume as an introductory ch to this one.

After the introductory ch this volume describes first the organization of Army forces for the protection of the continental United States before and during the war, the steps toward improving continental harbor and air defenses, the Army's role in civilian defense and in guarding nonmilitary installations, and the measures for continental security and threats to it

ix

after the Pearl Harbor attack. Because of the controversial character of the action, the authors have next included a rather detailed account of the evacuation of persons of Japanese ancestry from the west coast, and in ch VIII a briefer account of the similar action planned for Hawaii. This ch is the last of three that summarize the Army's preparations for defending Oahu and its great naval base, the reaction of the Army's Hawaiian Department to the threat and then to the reality of war, and the measures taken by the Army after the Japanese attack to secure the Hawaiian Islands against invasion. In accordance with the chronology of enemy action, the narrative turns from Hawaii to Alaska and the Aleutian campaign, the only major ground operation to occur within the western Hemisphere during the war. Then it shifts far southeastward to describe the system of Army defenses for the protection of the Panama Canal and the Caribbean area against enemy intrusion, erected within the framework of military cooperation with the Latin American nations described in detail in the first volume to this subseries. Because of the nature of the destroyer-base agreement of y4o and the Army's focus toward South America, the account of the extension of the continental outpost line along the North Atlantic front is closely related at the outset to similar activity in the Caribbean area. In due course this extension became more intimately related to the preservation of the North Atlantic lifeline to Great Britain, and American participation in the defense of Iceland in 1941 was a prelude to action in Europe as well as a culmination of the defensive measures undertaken by the land and air forces of the United States before it became a full participant in world War II.

The events recorded in this volume occurred under circumstances and technological conditions that differed greatly from those of the present day. On the eve of World War II the concept of collective security, of hemisphere defense, had not yet been translated into firm international undertakings. The underlying threat was relatively clear-cut. Only if a hostile power acquired military bases within the Western Hemisphere could the United States be seriously threatened. Today the United States is an active member of the United Nations and the military ally of many nations in both hemispheres. The range of aircraft has transcended oceanic limitations, the intercontinental missile is a reality, and the potency of weapons has undergone a truly awful change. Nevertheless, the changes and complexities of the nuclear age have not eliminated, they have only added to and underscored, the basic threat and the old problems of national defense. The fundamental and necessary concern of the United States for its own

x

security remains, and this concern will continue to shape some of the general characteristics of its military defenses and of its military relationships with other American nations.

This is a work of joint authorship and endeavor. The introductory ch and the chs which follow on the continental United States and Hawaii are primarily the handiwork of Conn, the first two Alaska chs, of Engelman, and the remaining chs, of Fairchild. Much of the research for the whole volume was undertaken as a common enterprise. In preparing this volume the authors have profited immensely from participation in a large collaborative history program, in which almost every aspect of the Army's activity before and during the war has been under scrutiny. Without the free interchange of information and criticism that such a program makes possible, the research and writing for this volume would have been much more difficult and we would have presented our story with much less confidence.

In particular we are indebted to Dr. John Miller, jr., Deputy Chief Historian of the Office of the Chief of Military History, who supervised the review of this volume and offered many helpful criticisms of it. The members o£ the review panel whom he assembled to discuss and criticize the volume were Lt. Col. Joseph Rockis, Chief of the Histories Division, and Dr. Leo J. Meyer, from within the office; and Professor Arthur A. Ekirch, Jr., of The American University, and Dr. Kent Roberts Greenfield, former Chief Historian. To all of them we owe acknowledgment for constructive criticism, and especially to Dr. Greenfield, under whose immediate supervision this work was launched and brought near to completion. Brig. Gen. Paul McD. Robinett, former Chief of the Special Studies Division, also reviewed the whole volume with his usual thoughtfulness, and we are deeply obliged to many outside the Office of the Chief of Military History who have given freely of their time and knowledge in reviewing parts of it. Especially helpful comments were obtained from Lt. Gen. John L. DeWitt on the west coast and Alaska chs, from Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid on the Attu and Kiska operations, and from. Maj. Gen. Charles H. Bonesteel and former Consul General B. Eric Kuniholm on Army activity in Iceland. For help of a different sort, we record our indebtedness to Dr. Herman Kahn, former Director of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library, and to members of his staff, for access to and friendly guidance into the President's papers; and to McGeorge Bundy, former professor at Harvard University, fox access to the diary of Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson.

We wish also to express our appreciation to those members of the Edi-

xi

torial Branch, headed by the late Miss Ruth Stout, who guided the manuscript through the last stage of preparation for the printer-especially to Mrs. Marion P. Grimes, whose copy editing was above and beyond the call of duty; to Mr. Billy C. Mossman, who prepared the maps; and to Miss Ruth Phillips, who selected the photographs. The index was compiled by William Gardner Bell.

These acknowledgments of assistance are in no way delegation of responsibility for the contents of the volume. The presentation and interpretation of events it contains are the authors' own, and we alone are responsible for faults of commission or omission.

Washington, D. C.
24 May 1962

STETSON CONN
ROSE C. ENGELMAN
BYRON FAIRCHILD

xii

Contents

Chapter | Page
I. THE FRAMEWORK OF HEMISPHERE DEFENSE | 3
II. THE COMMAND OF CONTINENTAL DEFENSE FORCES | 16
Peacetime and Planned Wartime Organization | 17
Reorganization, July 1940-December 1941 | 22
The Wartime Organization | 33
III. PREPARATIONS FOR CONTINENTAL DEFENSE | 45
Harbor Defenses | 45
Air Defense Preparations | 54
The Army and Civilian Defense | 64
Guarding Nonmilitary Installations | 73
IV. THE CONTINENTAL DEFENSE COMMANDS AFTER PEARL HARBOR | 80
Defense Measures on the West Coast, 1941-42 | 82
Defense Measures on the East and Gulf Coasts, 1941-42 | 94
Guarding the Sault Ste Marie Canal | 102
The Period of Reduction, 1942-45 | 105
V. JAPANESE EVACUATION FROM THE WEST COAST | 115
The Background of Evacuation Planning | 116
The Decision for Mass Evacuation | 127
The Evacuation of the Japanese | 137
VI. THE REINFORCEMENT OF OAHU | 150
The Hawaiian Department Before 1941 | 150
Defense Preparations During 1941 | 161
VII. THE PEARL HARBOR ATTACK | 174
The Approach to War | 175
The Plan and Launching of the Attack | 184
The Attack and the Response | 187
Investigation and Judgment | 194
VIII. THE HAWAIIAN DEFENSES AFTER PEARL HARBOR | 197
The Impact of War | 199
The Question of Japanese Evacuation | 206
Reinforcement | 214
Midway | 219
IX. THE GARRISONING OF ALASKA, 1939-41 | 223
Initial Army Plans and Preparations | 224
The Alaska Defense Command | 230
Making Ready To Defend the Navy's Bases | 232
The Air Defense Problems | 239
Airfields, Radar, and the Construction Program | 244
Reinforcing the Air Defenses | 247
On the Alert | 250
X. ALASKA IN THE WAR, 1942 | 253
Reinforcement | 255
The Attack on the Aleutians | 257
The Army's Reaction | 263
Command Problems | 266
Aid to the Soviet Union | 268
The Advance Westward | 270
XI. CLEARING THE ALEUTIANS | 277
Attu Retaken | 279
Kiska-Grand Anticlimax | 295
XII. FORGING THE DEFENSES OF THE CANAL | 301
The Prewar Defenses | 301
Emergency Measures, August 1939-January 1940 | 310
Reorganization and Expansion | 314
The Puerto Rican Outpost, 1939-40 | 322
The Alert of June 1944 | 327
XIII. OUT FROM THE CANAL ZONE | 328
Organizing the Caribbean Theater | 329
The Alert of July 1941 | 335
The Outposts in the Dutch West Indies | 337
Securing the Pacific Approaches | 339
Expansion in the Republic of Panama | 344
Strength and Readiness of the Defenses, 1941 | 348
Naval Factors in Area Defense | 351
XIV. THE NEW BASES ACQUIRED FOR OLD DESTROYERS | 354
The Local Setting | 355
Planning the Garrisons | 358
Negotiating the Base Agreement | 366
Launching the Construction Program | 375
XV. MANNING AND ORGANIZING THE NEW ATLANTIC BASES | 384
The Garrisons and Their Mission | 384
Problems of Organization and Command | 392
Early Administrative Problems | 397
XVI. THE CARIBBEAN IN WARTIME | 409
The First Effects of War | 409
Shafting the Local Commands | 416
The First Blow | 423
The Watch on the Canal | 424
The War Against the U-Boat | 429
Passing the Peak | 436
XVII. GREENLAND: ARCTIC OUTPOST | 442
Growth of American Interest in Greenland | 443
Greenland's Strategic Importance Reappraised | 447
Establishing the BLUIE Bases | 451
The Defense of Greenland | 455
XVIII PLANNING THE ICELAND OPERATION | 459
The Shifting Focus of American Interest | 461
The President's Decision and the War Department's Response | 466
Problems, Remote and Immediate | 468
INDIGO Planning, First Phase | 472
A New Decision: Reinforcement, Not Relief | 479
The First American Forces Land in Iceland | 481
INDIGO Planning, Second Phase | 484
A Backward Glance at the INDIGO Planning | 491
XIX ESTABLISHING THE ICELAND BASE COMMAND | 494
The Movement of the Second Echelon, Task Force 4 | 495
Problems of Defense: Ground and Air | 498
Problems of Administration and Human Relations | 507
The Question of Reinforcements and Relief | 520
A New Role | 527
Basic Considerations for Determining the Post-Pearl Harbor Course of Action | 530
XX THE NORTH ATLANTIC BASES IN WARTIME | 532
The Build-up | 533
The Command Problem | 539
Operations Against the Enemy | 548
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE | 555
GLOSSARY | 561

Tables

No | | Page
1 | Recommended and Approved Strengths for Atlantic Bases, 1940-41 | 360
2 | Estimated Cost of Army and Air Bases, 1940 | 376
3 | Estimated Cost of Army and Air Bases, 1941 | 377
4 | Actual Cost of Army and Air Bases | 378
5 | Shipping Losses in the Caribbean Area, January 1942-July 1944 | 431

Chart

No | | Page
1 | Organization Approved 3 May 1941 | 332

Maps

No | | Page
I | Continental Defense Organization, 20 May 1942 | facing  39
II | Oahu Island | facing 151
III | The Capture of Attu, 7th Infantry Division, 11-30 May 1943 | facing 281
IV | Iceland | facing 499

Illustrations

Lt Gen Hugh A Drum | 19
Lt Gen John L DeWitt | 21
Six-Inch Gun Emplacement on Jasper Parapet | 53
Infantrymen on Beach Patrol | 100
Japanese Free Balloon | 112
Japanese Evacuees Arrive at the Colorado River Relocation Center | 142
Troop Maneuvers in Hawaii | 162
Wheeler Field After the Bombing | 190
Japanese Children Drilling | 213
View of Dutch Harbor | 233
Naval Base at Kodiak | 251
Construction on Adak | 271
Attu Landings | 286
Early Radar Installation | 313
Panama Airfields | 318
Antiaircraft Defenses of the Panama Canal | 347
US Army Installations in the Bermuda Islands | 380
The Edmund B Alexander | 386
First Troops in Trinidad | 398
Installations in Newfoundland | 399
Optical Height Finder Mounted on Old El Morro Fortress | 425
Torpedoed Vessel Being Towed Into San Juan Harbor | 432
Coast Guard Tug Aiding Freighter Off Greenland | 446
Abandoned German Equipment in Greenland | 450
Temporary Supply Dump in Reykjavik | 482
Maj Gen Charles H Bonesteel | 491
Gale in Iceland | 497
Army Posts in Iceland | 518
US Army Troops Arriving in Reykjavik, January 1942 | 525
Section of a Greenland Airfield, 1943 | 540
American Fighter Planes Over Camp Artun, Iceland | 550
German Prisoners Under Guard in Greenland | 551

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