The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 12 (2001)

Discrepancies between Rhetoric and Realities:
U. S. Commitments to Its Major Wars During
the Last Hundred Years
Yoshikatsu HAYASHII.

INTRODUCTION

I’ve never forgotten what I saw there [in Vietnam] and the bravery of somany young Americans. The price of freedom is sometimes high, but I’ve
never believed that America should turn inward. . . .
In the last century, this nation more than any other freed the world from
fascism and communism.

This quotation is taken from the acceptance speech Vice-President Al
Gore made at the Democratic Convention on August 17, 2000 in Los
Angeles. Speaking from his experience, he referred to the Vietnam War,and insisted that “We must always have the will to defend our enduring
interests, from Europe, to the Middle East, to Japan and Korea” witharmed forces that are “to be the best equipped, best trained, and best led
in the entire world.”1
It seems to me that Gore was claiming that the United States hadearned the status of a superpower by defeating Axis fascism and Soviet
communism, and that he was determined to accept “the price of freedom”
once again in the future in order to maintain this status. However, I
Copyright © 2001 Yoshikatsu Hayashi. All rights reserved. This work may be
used, with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes. No copies of thiswork may be distributed, electronically or otherwise, in whole or in part, without
permission from the author.
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YOSHIKATSU HAYASHI

wonder what he meant by “the price of freedom.” Was he speciﬁcallytalking about the sacriﬁce paid by “the bravery of so many young Americans” who were sent to Vietnam? If so, what did he think about the many
people that died and lost their homes and families in Vietnam during that
destructive war? When he insisted that the United States had “freed theworld from fascism and communism” in the last hundred years, did hethink about how the United States had carried out that mission? What
did the United States government advocate in order to “free the worldfrom fascism and communism”? How did American soldiers ﬁght on
battleﬁelds to fulﬁll their obligations?
In the twentieth-century, the United States has been involved in aseries of major wars, from the Spanish-Cuban-Filipino-American War(1898–1902)2 through the Gulf War in 1991 and including the Vietnam
War that Gore mentioned in his speech to the Democratic Convention.
Gore’s statement about America’s intention to maintain its status as asuperpower in the twenty-ﬁrst century seemed to be accepted at facevalue by many Americans. I ﬁnd it necessary for the United States tolook back on its history and reconsider her policy towards foreign peoples and nations sincerely and seriously before she claims to be a world
leader. Actually, some historians have criticized American foreign
policy in the past from different historical perspectives. For example,
George F. Kennan in American Diplomacy described the moralisticlegalistic approach to the conduct of American foreign policy from theend of the nineteenth century. William A. Williams analyzed the driving
force of American foreign policy with its emphasis on economic interests and characterized it as Open-Door Imperialism in The Tragedyof American Diplomacy.3 Both of these scholars were interested in thedecision-makers of American foreign policies who created and put theminto practice. On the other hand, Michael H. Hunt analyzed the self-righteous, ethnocentric aspect of ideology in American foreign policy that hefelt was deeply rooted in the history of the United States.4
In this paper, however, I would like to analyze the rhetoric employedby each administration in justiﬁcation of America’s wars, and the realities of how American soldiers fought these wars, and to reveal discrepancies between the two. In so doing, I will examine the racial aspect of
the Spanish-Cuban-Filipino-American War, the two World Wars, andthe Vietnam War, because this was an indispensable element in the
U. S. commitments to all of these wars.

DISCREPANCIES BETWEEN RHETORIC AND REALITIES

II.

17

THE SPANISH- CUBAN-FILIPINO-AMERICAN WAR

Cuban insurgents began their armed struggle against the Spanish in
1895. They made an effort to arouse sympathy among Americans and to
spread propaganda for their cause of independence. In response to therebellion, the Spanish government dispatched General Valeriano “Butcher”
Weyler, who instituted a harsh concentration camp policy designed toprevent the activities of the Cuban guerrillas. Consequently, thousandsof Cubans including women and children died of hunger and disease in
the camps.5 Such atrocities in Cuba, which were sensationally reportedby the yellow press in the United States, stimulated Americans to support their cause, “Cuba Libre.”6 Under these circumstances, in March
1897 when William McKinley was inaugurated president of the UnitedStates, he implicitly referred to America’s attitude toward the armed hostility in Cuba. He proclaimed, “We want no wars of conquest; we must
avoid the temptation of territorial aggression.”7 The president did not appear to be giving serious consideration to U. S. intervention at this time.
However, McKinley changed his mind, and sent a war message toCongress on April 11, 1898. The historian Robert L. Beisner states thatthe president “did want what only war could provide—an end to violencein Cuba” for several reasons. The president mainly aimed to restore
America’s economic interests on the island and to ease domestic tension
in the 1890s by leading the country into the war.8 However, in justifying a war against Spain, the president proclaimed that “the war in Cuba
must stop” “[i]n the name of humanity, in the name of civilization, inbehalf of endangered American interests which give us the right and the
duty to speak and to act.”9 In response to his request, Congress passed ajoint resolution, without recognizing the rebels’ belligerency, that declared Cuban independence and authorized military intervention by theUnited States. The resolution, however, added an amendment proposed
by Senator Henry M. Teller denying America’s intention to “exercise
sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control” over Cuba.10 The McKinley administration emphasized humanitarian rhetoric in the war with Spain, but at
the same time it showed its intention to secure American interests on theisland.
John Hay, the secretary of state, termed America’s war with Spain a“splendid little war,” without serious casualties on the American side.
On May 1, Admiral George Dewey crushed the Spanish ﬂeet at the Bayof Manila, and the president immediately afterwards ordered American

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YOSHIKATSU HAYASHI

troops to embark in preparation for occupation of the Philippines. Taking
advantage of the news of the naval victory in the Far East, McKinley
proposed that Congress annex Hawaii as a necessary stepping stone enroute to Manila and China to protect the U. S. interest in Asian markets.11
Some of the opponents of the Hawaiian annexation emphasized the racial
diversity of the population including Japanese and Chinese that were
believed to be inferior to Anglo-Saxon. However, the McKinley administration reminded Congress that Hawaii had been governed by a small
group of American ancestry to the exclusion of the Asian population
since the Republic of Hawaii was founded in 1894. The joint resolution
passed in June.12
The government for the Territory of Hawaii extended Chinese Exclusion to the islands, and limited U. S. citizenship mainly to white people who used to be citizens in the Republic of Hawaii. Consequently,
Asiatic immigrants were excluded from the franchise by the deﬁnitionof citizenship. Besides, property qualiﬁcations were imposed for votersand candidates for the Congress of Hawaii. A Southern legislator characterized these restrictions in Hawaii as “very like ours” that disenfranchised freed African Americans in the South in the latter part of thenineteenth century.13
As for the treatment of Cuba, the McKinley administration neither
consulted with the Cubans, who had been comrades-in-arms during thewar, in the peacemaking negotiations with Spain, nor made public how
it would deal with the island itself.14 One Cuban general was furious
about the exclusion of the Cubans from the process, insisting, “I will
never accept that our country be considered as conquered territory.”15 In
the annual message of December 1898, McKinley declared that theUnited States would help the Cubans to build a “free and independent
government,” but he also warned that American military rule would persist until “complete tranquillity” and a “stable government” was established on the island.16 Elihu Root, the secretary of war, led the way
toward the creation of a United States protectorate over Cuba. His policy was based on the understanding that “backward peoples” were notqualiﬁed for autonomy, and therefore they should be taught “how to
become self-governing citizens of a free state.”17 General Leonard Wood
was appointed the military governor of the island in 1899 to implement
this objective. Wood also believed from his experiences in the war that
the Cubans were not ready to govern themselves. He reported that the
Cuban army was “made up very considerably of black people, only par-

DISCREPANCIES BETWEEN RHETORIC AND REALITIES

19

tially civilized, in whom the old spirit of savagery has been more or lessaroused by years of warfare.”18
The idea of a protectorate was applied to Cuba in the form of the Platt
Amendment. The amendment authorized the United States to intervene
in domestic affairs and to secure coaling or naval stations in Cuba. Wood
successfully forced the Cubans to accept the Platt Amendment as an appendix to their constitution by threatening to continue the military occupation. There was little the Cubans could do to oppose the U.S. policy
toward them.19 Consequently, the McKinley administration was able to
avoid a risky second colonial war in Cuba, at a time when it was concerned about news of America’s atrocities in the Philippines that had
begun in early 1899.20 In addition, the government justiﬁed the Cuban
protectorate policy to ensure American interests on the grounds that the
Cubans were racially inferior, and therefore were not civilized enoughto adopt self-government.
The comments issued by the McKinley government leaders were common in American society in their association of darkness of skin color
with racial inferiority, even after African Americans were freed fromslavery as a result of the Civil War in the mid-nineteenth-century. The
nativism aroused by new immigrants prevailed in the North, as the discriminatory Jim Crow system did in the South at the turn of the century.21 According to the historian Michael H. Hunt, Americans ranked
other peoples from a racially hierarchical point of view. They put white
Americans of Anglo-Saxon heritage on the top of the ranking, and placed
African Americans and Native Americans at the bottom. In addition, they
located other races such as Lations and Asians in between. Consequently,
white Americans felt destined to educate racial “inferiors,” in correspondence with their concept of racial hierarchy. This concept of a racialhierarchy “powerfully shaped the way the nation [the United States]
deals with other peoples” and it constituted an essential part of America’s
justiﬁcation for and practice of its tutelage of racial “inferiors.”22
While the McKinley administration had started the war with Spain in
the name of civilization and humanity, it also evoked the same rhetoric
to acquire all of the Philippines. The president explained that “there wasnothing left for us [the United States] to do but take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and Christianize them,” through a programof benevolent assimilation, because the Filipinos were “unﬁt for selfgovernment.”23 Therefore, he was determined to impose the principles
and rules of American style government “for the sake of their liberty and20

YOSHIKATSU HAYASHI

happiness, however much they may conﬂict with the customs or laws ofprocedure with which they are familiar.”24 Senator Orville H. Plattstrongly endorsed the president’s position by asking, “[D]oes not the ﬁnger of God unmistakably point to the civilization and uplifting of the
Orient, to the development of its people, to the spread of liberty, education, social order, and Christianity there through the agency of Americaninﬂuence?”25
Why did McKinley decide to acquire all of the Philippines? There
were several reasons for his decision, including his perception that theFilipinos could not run their own country. For instance, the historianThomas A. McCormick interprets the acquisition in the context ofprotecting American interests in Asia, where European powers werecompeting with each other to secure their own interests.26 Nevertheless,
McKinley tried to justify his decision in the name of humanitarianrhetoric with an emphasis on America’s sense of itself as a nation witha destiny granted by God. It is small wonder that “imperialism” did notconstitute the “paramount issue” in the presidential election in 1900
despite the robust movement of anti-imperialists against the addition ofoverseas territory.27
In the Philippine Islands, on the other hand, Emilio Aguinaldo, who
had led the Filipino resistance movement against Spain, announced the
independence of the Republic of the Philippines, and decreed the establishment of a provisional government in 1899. Resolutions protesting theannexation of the Philippines to the United States were passed in various regions throughout the islands. Aguinaldo, the president of the government, tried to persuade the McKinley government to recognize theindependence of his country, but his attempt ended in failure. Consequently, the American-Philippine War broke out in February 1899.28
When he heard the news, a Chinese diplomat criticized the U. S. government by saying that “a truly civilized nation should respect the rights
of other societies, and refrain from stealing other men’s property, or
imposing upon others unwelcome beliefs.” But his voice did not reacheither the administration or the public that believed that western values
were the most preferable, and must prevail.29
Although the McKinley administration proclaimed a lofty rhetoric ofcivilization, it ﬂatly imposed violent policies on the insurgents in thePhilippines. The United States government dispatched 120,000 soldiers
in total during the three-year armed conﬂict with the Filipinos. Most of
the regiments were from the western states, “where memories of Indian

DISCREPANCIES BETWEEN RHETORIC AND REALITIES

21

wars were strongest.” Twenty-six out of the thirty generals who servedon the islands had experience with Native Americans after the Civil
War.30 The following letter exempliﬁed how American soldiers fought
against Filipino guerrillas. “We continually found their [Philippine] barracks and hidden food in the most unexpected and remote hiding places.
We burned hundreds of small barracks and shelters as fast as they could
construct them. We destroyed their clothing and supplies and pursued
them so persistently that they ﬁnally ceased to stay more than twentyfour hours in one place.”31
Nevertheless, Root was able to insist that the American soldier “is theadvance guard of liberty and justice, of law and order, and peace andhappiness.”32 Root also believed that those who possessed the ability to
govern must rule the “inferiors,” and categorized the Filipinos as such.33
This is probably because he had been immersed in a racially hierarchical society, and he justiﬁed the paciﬁcation of the Filipino independence
movement from the standpoint of America’s duty to extend civilization
to “inferiors.”
American soldiers exhibited severe racial contempt and prejudice
towards Filipinos and called them “goo goo” or “darkey.” One American
lieutenant was heard to swear that he would like “to kill every Goddam
goo goo in town.”34 They were also insensitive to barbarities toward theFilipinos. A letter written by a soldier describes an atrocious method ofﬁghting against Aguinaldo’s troops: “We shot at every human being thatcame within range—paying no attention to white ﬂags.”35 Another lieutenant wrote: “It is great fun for the men to go on ‘nigger hunts.’ The air
would be delightful were it not for the odor from dead niggers whichhave been left unburied.”36 Moreover, it was revealed that American soldiers tortured Filipino insurgents to get information with the “water
cure,” in which they forced them to drink an excessive amount of watertill they became informants, or unconscious, or, worst of all, dead.37
These were the realities of the war on the battlegrounds for “uplifting”
the Philippines.
The atrocities of the American-Philippine War had already been carried out against Native Americans in the past. Living in the Great Plains
and Rocky Mountains, Native Americans tenaciously made attempts toprotect their land against the invasion of white settlers, railroad builders,and miners after the Civil War, but their efforts ended in failure. They
repeatedly lost bloody wars with the U. S. Army, including the infamous
Massacres of Sand Creek and the Wounded Knee Creek, and were forced

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YOSHIKATSU HAYASHI

into reservations toward the end of the nineteenth century. The Dawes
Act of 1887, which imposed individual ownership of the land on Native
Americans, represented the ﬁnal victory of the United States government.38
As the policy of recruiting generals familiar with Indian wars for dutyin the American-Philippine War suggested, the McKinley administration intended to deal with the Filipinos as the previous administrations
had dealt with Native Americans. It is small wonder that responding toa charge of atrocities by United States troops in the Philippines,39
Theodore Roosevelt admitted that such incidents “happened hundredsof times in our warfare against the Indians.” Moreover, he saw theAmerican position there as being exactly parallel with its expansion on
the North American continent, and asserted that if whites were “morally bound to abandon the Philippines, we were also morally bound toabandon Arizona to the Apaches.”40 Roosevelt’s statement explicitly
demonstrated the close relationship between U. S. government policy
toward Native Americans in the nineteenth century and the paciﬁcationof the Filipino ﬁghting for their independence. He justiﬁed atrocities
abroad by comparing them with those of the Indian wars at home, andMcKinley and Roosevelt won the presidential election in 1900 while thewar in the Philippines was still in progress.
III.

THE TWO WORLD WARSIn 1914 when World War I began in Europe, Woodrow Wilson proclaimed to the public America’s neutrality “in thought as well as inaction.”41 But as severe battles continued in Europe, Wilson made public his plans to mediate a just peace by pleading for “peace without victory” in January, 1917. His proposal was not accepted by the warring
powers.
In April 1917, Wilson asked Congress for a war declaration based ongrievous violation of the neutral rights of the United States. Especially,
Wilson characterized the German government’s unrestricted submarine
warfare against commerce as “a warfare against mankind.” At the sametime, Wilson interpreted World War I as “the culminating and ﬁnal war
for human liberty,” expecting it to establish “the principle of justice toall peoples and nationalities,” and to secure “their right to live on equalterms of liberty and safety with one another, whether they be strong or

DISCREPANCIES BETWEEN RHETORIC AND REALITIES

23

weak.”42 The principles advocated in this speech constituted the rhetoricof U. S. intervention in World War I, and also set the basis for the
Fourteen Points designed for the post-war world order.
Wilson announced in January 1918 the Fourteen Points in order tocounter the revolution in Russia and European imperialism and to propose a post-war world order. The program included references to open
diplomacy as opposed to secret treaties and alliances, disarmament, anda new league of nations to ensure peace in the future. The historian Akira
Iriye pointed out that although these ideas had been already advocated,
Wilson’s contribution lay in putting them together in a comprehensive
agenda for peace.43 Especially, Wilson regarded the creation of the
League of Nations as the “keystone” of the Fourteen Points to make theworld safe for democracy.44 This was also Wilson’s proposal of “American national interest in liberal-internationalist terms.”45
However, Wilson was forced to compromise with the Allied powers
in order to save the peace conference and obtain their agreement to establish the League of Nations. The principle of national self-determination
was not strictly applied for the readjustment of national boundaries in
Europe because the territorial provisions were in reality crucial to thewarring governments.46 Despite the clause of respect for colonial peoples in the program, neither was the idea of self-determination practiced
in relation to European colonies overseas. The victorious great powers
decided to take over German colonies abroad under the pretext of a mandate by the League of Nations. In addition, Wilson chose to accept
Japan’s insistence that it should stay in Shantung, a former German
sphere of inﬂuence in China, in disregard of Chinese sovereignty.47
These examples illustrate how Wilson’s democratic principles wererefused by the great powers. His rhetoric of democracy for the world ran
counter to global political realities.
At the same time, Wilson could not persuade Congress and theAmerican people to accept his proposal for establishing the League of
Nations. Especially, Article Ten in the Covenant was a major target for
opponents, as it seemed to bind the United States into acting with theimperial European countries regardless of its own interests. It also
seemed to violate the power of Congress to declare war under the pretext of collective security.48 In other words, Wilson could not convince
Congress and the American people of his vision that the internationalorganization would function as the “keystone” for making the world

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YOSHIKATSU HAYASHI

safe for democracy. His rhetoric of “defense of democracy” failed in
the United States because of the lack of national consensus among
Americans.
There was another response to the Covenant of the League of Nations.
The Japanese delegate at the conference proposed an amendment to theCovenant of the League declaring equality of every race, that is, “justtreatment in every aspect, making no distinction, either in law or in fact,on account of . . . race or nationality.”49 A Japanese newspaper in Tokyo
appealed to Wilson, as one who preached the principle of equality ofnations and peoples. The paper argued that “If the discrimination wall is
to remain standing, President Wilson will have spoken of peace, justice,and humanity in vain, and he would have proved after all only a hypocrite.”50 Given the fact that Japan had presented the Chinese government with the Twenty-one Demands in 1915, which would virtually haveviolated Chinese sovereignty, the proposal of racial equality was nottaken seriously by the great powers. In political cooperation with them,
Wilson, who was chairperson of the conference, declared the unanimity of the attendees against admitting the clause, and prevented Japan’s
proposal from being inserted in the covenant.51 It might be possible tosay that his decision at the conference reﬂected his racial prejudiceagainst minorities in the United States. For example, the movie “The
Birth of a Nation” with its strong racism against African Americans, wasﬁrst run in 1915. Madison Grant’s book entitled The Passing of the GreatRace was published in 1916 and became popular. In this, Grant admired
Anglo-Saxon stock and criticized the new immigrants whose bloodstream would debase Americans of the main stream.52 The restriction of
immigrants was established by a literacy test during the war. In an
American society of this mood, Wilson favored the idea of restricting
Japanese immigrants when it appeared in California in 1912, saying:“Their lower standard of living as laborers will crowd out the white agriculturalist and is, in other ﬁelds, a most serious industrial menace.”53
Wilson also regarded African Americans as backward, and he did nothing to change Princeton’s hostility toward black students while he was
the president there from 1902 to 1910. After he was elected president of
the United States, he gradually introduced wholesale segregation into
federal departments without ofﬁcial orders.54
As for the rhetoric of equality of peoples and nations, Wilson took initiatives to refuse the Japanese proposal, but no great opposition wasaroused to his attitude in the United States where a racial hierarchy of

DISCREPANCIES BETWEEN RHETORIC AND REALITIES

25

white superiority was predominant in the progressive movement. Unlike
the case of Article Ten in the Covenant, Americans apparently agreed to
Wilson’s opposition to the insertion of the racial-equality clause in theCovenant, even though the United States did not join the League of
Nations.
The rhetoric of democracy was again employed by the Roosevelt
administration when the United States entered World War II. The war
aims stated in the “Atlantic Charter” of August 1941 represented the
Wilsonian principles. The Charter called for freedom of the seas, selfdetermination and support for democracy, international economic cooperation, free trade and equal access to resources, and “the abandonmentof the use of force” in favor of a “permanent system of general security.”55
The United States became involved in World War II with the Japanesesurprise attack on Pearl Harbor. The air raid convinced Americans thatJapan was a “lawless nation” that had betrayed the United States, which
had been negotiating in good faith.56 An admiral of the American navy
was so outraged about the attack that he rallied his men under such
slogans as “Kill japs, kill japs, kill more japs.” Moreover, the American
people remembered the air strike as the symbol of the treacherous
Japanese.57
This memory set the foundation for racial propaganda during the war
and lasted until the end of the war. For example, as the historian John
W. Dower has pointed out, racial slang like “Jap” was routinely used in
the daily press and major magazines. Besides, racial contempt ofJapanese was displayed by “nonhuman or subhuman representation”
such as animals, reptiles, or insects. They included “monkeys, baboons,
gorillas, dogs, mice and rats, vipers and rattlesnakes, cockroaches, vermin,” among which the most common caricature was the monkey or
ape.58 On the battleﬁelds, American soldiers treated Japanese counterparts as nonhuman. For instance, Charles A. Lindbergh, a well-known
isolationist before the war, who visited U.S. forces based in New Guinea,
noted down the atrocities he had heard about. He wrote in his dairy, “It
was freely admitted that some of our soldiers tortured Jap prisoners andwere as cruel and barbaric at times as the Japs themselves. Our men thinknothing of shooting a Japanese prisoner or a soldier attempting to surrender. They treat the Japs with less respect than they would give to an
animal, and these acts are condoned by almost everyone.”59 William
Manchester, a popular American writer, also recorded the same kind of

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outrageous acts that had taken place in Okinawa. The author put onrecord in his memoir that an American commander had “snatched up asubmachine gun and unforgivably massacred a line of unarmed Japanesesoldiers who had just surrendered.”60
Another massacre was conducted in August 1945, when the Truman
administration dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Although there are controversies among scholars concerning the reasonsfor the dropping of these bombs, racial prejudice against Japanese andreprisal for the sudden attack on Pearl Harbor are among them.61 Trumanwas concerned about the killing of children and women by the nuclear
bombs, and avoided using the bomb on Kyoto and Tokyo, but he believedthat “the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless, and fanatic.”62 Truman
also confessed that “When you have to deal with a beast you have to treat
him as a beast. It is most regrettable but nevertheless true.”63 He evenregarded the dropping of the atomic weapon as “the greatest thing in history.” His justiﬁcation for using the atomic bombs on the Japanese cities
was based on his concept of the Japanese being a “beast.” According to
the public opinion poll taken on August 8, 85 percent of Americans
approved Truman’s decision, in the hope of ending the war.64 Consequently, Americans remembered World War II as a “good war,” fought
to defend democracy from Axis fascism.65
These examples of barbarities on the battleground were far from therhetoric of democracy advanced by the Roosevelt administration when
it entered World War II. Besides, they were also reminiscent of atrocities that had been committed by American soldiers against the Filipinos
during the American-Filipino War. The practice of giving contemptuous
names to Asian enemies was also inherited from the previous war with
Asians in the Philippines. The sense of racial superiority held by
Americans appeared in the conduct of such outrages against Asians, andit also helped them to justify their atrocities during the war against what
they ranked as the inferior races.
In the meantime, another event took place that showed racial discrimination against those of the Japanese ancestry, including those holding U.S. citizenship. After the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Lieutenant
General John L. DeWitt of the Western Defense Command took the initiative in carrying out the mass removal of Japanese Americans living in
the coastal area, on the pretext of “military necessity.” Earl Warren, thenAttorney General of California, was a major advocate of their internment
and evacuation, saying that “the Japanese situation as it exists in this state

DISCREPANCIES BETWEEN RHETORIC AND REALITIES

27

today may well be the Achilles’ heel of the entire civilian defense
effort.”66 Roosevelt had received a report which concluded that they were
“90 to 98 percent loyal to the United States,” and that they would poseno threat to American security by sabotage or by espionage.67 Although
there were some ofﬁcials who were opposed to the internment, Roosevelt, who was himself motivated by racial bias, signed Executive Order9066 in response to the anti-Japanese chorus and war hysteria fears ofanother attack from Japanese troops.68 Germans and Italians on the west
coast were not subject to the relocation policy. The decision to intern
only the Japanese Americans reﬂected the history in which they “wereexcluded from trade unions, went to segregated schools, lived in segregated neighborhoods, and generally were barred from entry into nonJapanese communities.”69 In this sense, the practice of internment
showed the culmination of anti-Japanese feelings based on racial prejudice, and it lasted until the end of the war. Although some JapaneseAmericans brought the U. S. government to court for its violation of theconstitutional rights of citizenship, they were turned down by theSupreme Court of the United States.70
On the other hand, the Roosevelt administration conveniently decided in 1943 to repeal the Chinese exclusion legislation mainly in order tosecure their cooperation in waging war against Japan. Japanese propaganda since the start of the war had condemned the United States for its
discriminatory laws and mistreatment of the Chinese, and advocatedAsia for Asians under the leadership of Japan.71 When Madame ChiangKai-shek visited the United States, she gave a speech before Congressin which she emphasized that the abrogation of the laws would boost
Chinese morale and the Chinese war effort against Japanese forces. At
the same time, there was severe criticism among Asian Americans of“the contradiction between American racist practice at home and proclamations of principles abroad.” Under such political pressure, Roosevelt
sent a proposal to Congress for making the Chinese exclusion unlawful,
and insisted that “we can correct a historic mistake and silence the distorted Japanese propaganda.” Congress repealed the exclusion laws andprovided an annual quota for Chinese immigrants in 1943 just as European counterparts were admitted. But the number of the quota was only
105, and the naturalization procedure for U.S. citizenship was complicated.72 Consequently, the Roosevelt administration was able to“silence” critical opinion toward the government as a result of the abolition of the Chinese exclusion. He felt satisﬁed with his policy of cor-

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YOSHIKATSU HAYASHI

recting “a historical mistake,” and saw no need to “correct” the rhetoricof democracy to rally wartime efforts at home.
III.

THE VIETNAM WAR

After World War II, the United States had an opportunity to realize
the Wilsonian vision of the world order based on the liberal capitalistic
system described in the “Atlantic Charter.” Actually, Truman stressed
the indivisibility of peace, freedom and free trade in the postwar worldorder, and embarked upon the enterprise in pursuance of Roosevelt’svision. In the ﬁeld of international economy, the World Bank and theInternational Monetary Fund were established under the leadership of
the United States. In addition, the United Nations was also organized in
New York to keep the world safe and stable. However, the Soviet Union
refused to join these international institutions, except for the UN, in orderto maintain its socialist economy, and to keep eastern and central Europe
under its control for security reasons. Other conﬂicting elements also
contributed to the beginning of the Cold War.73
Under these circumstances, Truman announced in March 1947 a containment policy, which was to form the basis of American foreign policy in the post-war period. Truman insisted that two ways of life existed
in the world. One was “based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion,and freedom from political oppression.” The other one was “based upon
the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority,” and “relies
upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, ﬁxed elections,and the suppression of personal freedoms.” The president declared thatit must be the policy of the United States to assist “free peoples who areresisting attempted subjugation” by communist forces.74 This was a manifestation of the rhetoric of anti-communism, and a declaration of theCold War against communist forces in order to defend the freedom of
the people in the free world.
Truman fought against communism by promoting liberal democraticsociety in the world, both in Europe and in Asia. In June 1947 the UnitedStates began the Marshall Plan in order to help the impoverished European countries recover. In so doing, according to the historian Michael
J. Hogan, American leaders successfully “sought to recast Europe in theimage of American neocapitalism” based on free trade and a “corpo-

DISCREPANCIES BETWEEN RHETORIC AND REALITIES

29

ratism” approach to the market, meaning close cooperation between
labor, capitalists, and government. The plan set the stage for the security and recovery of Europe,75 and also helped the United States maintain the economic prosperity of its society which had resulted fromits wartime efforts made under the slogan of “arsenal for democracy.”
In addition, the Truman administration was able to create the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in hopes of promoting open and free
trade in the international community. Under the rhetoric of anticommunism, the United States was able to implement the vision inherited from Wilson. The justiﬁcation for the Cold War was accepted not
only by European countries but also by Americans at home.
In Asia, the situation after World War II was somewhat different fromthe one in Europe. After Japanese military forces were defeated in
Indochina, while the Viet Minh led by Ho Chi Minh founded the
Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the French returned to resume control
over their old colony and create the State of Vietnam. The Truman
administration regarded the French effort with distaste, but as the Cold
War intensiﬁed in Europe, it granted diplomatic recognition to the
French puppet government in hopes of blocking a communist victory in
Asia. In 1946, armed conﬂict between the two countries in Vietnam
broke out, and continued until 1954 when the French were defeated atDien Bien Phu.76
Dwight D. Eisenhower believed that “Indochina was the ﬁrst in a rowof dominoes,” and emphasized, “If it fell its neighbors would shortly
thereafter fall with it, and where [would] the process end?” Consequently, the United States established the Southeast Asia Treaty
Organization for regional collective security, in addition to giving military aid to South Vietnam in order to hold the line against communism
in Asia. Moreover, the president was eager to restore American “prestige in the Far East”77 as a champion of the free world. The Americancommitment in Vietnam obviously constituted a part of the Cold War ona global scale.78
John F. Kennedy who believed in the “domino theory” like his predecessor, formally made public the U.S. commitment to deterring thecommunist advance in Indochina.79 His administration not only provided $185 million to South Vietnam but had also dispatched by 1963 military advisers and 16,000 U.S. soldiers to counter revolutionary forces.80
In August, 1964 in response to alleged North Vietnamese naval attacks
on a U.S. warship, Lyndon B. Johnson asked Congress to allow the pres-30

YOSHIKATSU HAYASHI

ident to use military force to confront communist aggression. In the Gulfof Tonkin Resolution, Congress considered the security of the Southeast
Asia “vital” to U. S. “national interest,” and authorized the president “totake all necessary steps, including the use of armed force” in order toassist allies in the area “in defense of its freedom.”81 In response to thegovernment’s request, Congress gave the president almost unanimous
consent to the proposal, and the American people also favored it by agreat majority. The Johnson administration was able to obtain a blankcheck. It was a matter of time before it turned the armed conﬂict inVietnam into an American war. In the process of increasing intervention
in Vietnam, the United States employed the rhetoric of anti-communism
which was supposedly aimed at protecing democratic countries and thefreedom of their people. This stance of the U. S. government can betraced back to the Truman doctrine under the rhetoric of ﬁghting against
communism threatening democracy.
In February 1965, the Johnson administration began air strikes against
North Vietnam in retaliation for U.S. soldiers having been killed by communist guerrillas. In addition, it dispatched more than four thousand
ground troops to South Vietnam to engage themselves in battle against
the National Liberation Front and North Vietnamese forces. The number of American ground forces steadily increased, reaching 380,000 by
the end of 1966, and 450,000 by the end of 1967.82 The United States
totally committed itself to the war, and kept on ﬁghting a losing battle
until 1973 when the cease-ﬁre agreement was signed in Paris.
American leaders justiﬁed their policies toward Vietnam in the nameof helping “free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation” bycommunist forces, as stated in the Truman doctrine. Therefore, they
paid scant attention to the quality of the South Vietnamese government,
how democratic it was, how responsive it was to the people, or how
serious it was about promoting social and economic reforms in orderto make the country democratic and stable. Under the rhetoric of anticommunism, the U. S. government neglected to assess seriously these
aspects in the governance of the people by the South Vietnam government. On the contrary, it maneuvered the country by means of Vietnamese political and military leaders at the expense of the principle of selfdetermination.83
At the same time under the rhetoric of defending the freedom of thepeople, the result of the U. S. intervention was to bring extraordinary
misery to the Vietnamese. In referring to America’s commitment to theDISCREPANCIES BETWEEN RHETORIC AND REALITIES

31

Vietnam War, one should realize the damages that the long armed conﬂict imposed on the Vietnamese themselves and their society as a whole.
According to a dictionary of the war, nearly two million Vietnamese,
civilians and soldiers, were killed after the United States got involved
the war, and about 57,000 American soldiers died. The prolonged war
created several million refugees, which obviously tore apart the Vietnamese social structure. Between June 1965, when the United States
started air strikes, and August 1973, when the cease-ﬁre agreement was
signed in Paris, the U. S. air force dropped more than six million tons ofmunitions on enemy positions. This number amounted to almost threetimes the total tonnage of explosives dropped during World War II. In
addition, “Agent Orange” and other herbicides were used in order todefoliate the countryside on a wide scale. This caused not only a severe
ecological impact on forests but also birth defects and other serious
symptoms.84 These destructive operations were put into practice in thename of defending the people in their ﬁght for their freedom against communism.
How did American soldiers in Vietnam ﬁght against the National
Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam that Diem had labeled the Viet
Cong—the Vietnamese equivalent of “Commie” in American English?85
They also called the enemy “gook,” “dink,” or “slope,” derogatory terms
used historically toward Asians. This kind of disdain for the Vietnamese
was more than nominal. American soldiers in Vietnam did not treat theirenemies as human beings. General William C. Westmoreland, Commander of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, once said, “In thiswar we’re using screwdrivers to kill termites because it’s a guerrilla war
and we cannot use bigger weapons.”86 An ofﬁcer described them as “justlike animals,” and sent a letter to his mother in which he depicted someof them as treacherous, acting one way in the daytime, but becoming
Viet Cong at night like “dirty little rats.”87 Moreover, another Vietnam
veteran talked about his experience in the battleﬁeld after he returned to
the States: “I enjoyed the shooting and the killing. I was literally turnedon when I saw a gook get shot.” “A GI was real. American get [sic] killed,
it was a real loss. But if a gook get [sic] killed, it was like me going out
here and stepping on a roach.”88 Another ofﬁcer regarded his search anddestroy mission as “very successful” because the American soldiers“managed to kill a few probably innocent civilians, found a few caves
and burned a few houses, all in a driving rainstorm.”89
These atrocities were reminiscent of those that had been committed

32

YOSHIKATSU HAYASHI

by American soldiers during the American-Philippine War and in the
Paciﬁc theater of World War II. Their outrageous activities were conducted based on a sense of racial superiority over the Asians involved.
Besides, there was a historical continuation between World War II andthe Vietnam War in the sense that American soldiers treated the Asian
enemies as subhuman like “the Japs” and “gook” and committed atrocities almost without feeling any guilt.90
Some veterans admitted to cutting off the ears from dead bodies forsouvenirs or proofs of the killing. A veteran described it a “trophy,”pointing out that “If a guy would have a necklace of ears, he was a goodkiller, a good trooper.”91 A soldier mentioned his own experience of cutting ears from dead enemies. He said, “I was enjoying the ﬁreﬁghts andenjoying killing, and at one time I displayed as many as thirteen ears on
this chain that I had hanging off my gear.”92 The mutilating of bodies
was also practiced during World War II, and this represents another historical continuity of the racial hatred against Asians.
The most notorious massacre in Vietnam by American troops took
place in My Lai in March 1968. An American company under the command of Lieutenant William Calley murdered more than four hundred
villagers that did not ﬁght back, including women and children. In the
court martial conducted afterward, Calley was found guilty of murder,
but the rest of the soldiers involved were either acquitted or dismissed.
This was not an isolated event, but “commonplace to the way America
fought the war” in Vietnam.93 The same situation had been seen in Indianwars with the U. S. Army in the West. Several well-known massacres
took place in the history of the conquest of Native Americans, and as thehistorian Richard Drinnon pointed out, there was a historical continuity
between the Vietnam War and the Indian wars in the sense that both ofthem were racial wars.
In the meantime, in the domestic arena, the Johnson administration
was eager to reform American society, by eliminating poverty and racial
injustice in the 1960s while it was waging the Vietnam War. Students
began to have doubts about the authority of universities and the establishment, and the movement for women’s liberation became more active. Moreover, African Americans became militant because of the
deep-seated discrimination of white America against them, and many
ghetto riots broke out in the period.
Support for the Vietnam War rose considerably during the last half of1965 when the United States started waging a full-scale war, and this

DISCREPANCIES BETWEEN RHETORIC AND REALITIES

33

trend continued into 1966. But dissenting voices began to emerge athome as the political confusion in South Vietnam remained unchanged
and the number of U. S. casualties increased.94 As a result of the Tet
Offensive in the beginning of 1968, Americans were divided equally
between supporters of the U. S. government and dissenters. The confrontation between them became serious as the military and politicalsituation in South Vietnam grew increasingly worse. The Democratic
Convention for the presidential nomination held in August was a vivid
example of the lack of national consensus toward the Vietnam War being
waged under the rhetoric of anti-communism.
In addition, the civil rights leader Martin Luthur King, Jr., despite his
support for liberal reform policies of the Johnson administration at home,criticized the Vietnam War against the backdrop of race riots in American cities. He pointed out the connection between growing violence athome and abroad. The African American leader claimed, “Now it should
be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present [Vietnam] war.”95
As the historian Richard Polenberg notes, it was reported that morethan half of the African American soldiers stationed in Vietnam were
opposed to the war because “it is a race war pitting whites against nonwhites,” or “they ﬂatly don’t want to ﬁght against dark skin [sic] people.”96 As a result of ghetto riots and the ongoing Vietnam War, theimpulse toward black nationalism became stronger. In other words, theconcept of racial assimilation which had been promoted by liberals was
being replaced by the idea of separatism between blacks and whites.
Despite the rhetoric of freedom as opposed to communism, the Vietnam
War conversely increased racial tension in American society.
V.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

I have described how the United States committed itself to its major
wars and how American combat soldiers fought its enemies on the battleﬁelds during the last hundred years. In so doing, I focused on therhetoric employed by the U. S. government ofﬁcials. The McKinley
administration advocated the extension of civilization to racially “inferior” peoples under the leadership of the United States. In waging thetwo World Wars, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed the rhetoric of defense and diffusion of peace and prosperity ina democratic world. During the Vietnam War, the United States empha-

34

YOSHIKATSU HAYASHI

sized the rhetoric of anti-communism to defend the freedom of the people in order to remain committed to the war. The American people aswell as the government leaders supported such lofty rhetoric in order tojustify America’s commitment to its respective wars.
However, what did the United States actually do in the shadow of
its rhetorical justiﬁcation for its wars? The McKinley administration
imposed a protectorate on the Cubans and acquired the Philippines by
suppressing the independence movement. It rationalized these suppressive policies on the ground that local peoples were unprepared for selfgovernment because they were racial “inferiors.” When the United States
became involved in World War II, the Roosevelt administration, despite
its slogan of defense of democracy, interned citizens of Japanese ancestry against the backdrop of anti-Japanese feelings that had been historically rooted in American society. The justiﬁcation for this measure wasmilitary necessity. As the Cold War began in Europe, the U. S. government gradually became involved in Vietnam under the rhetoric of anticommunism. However, the very same rhetoric allowed the United States
to do a great deal of damage to the Vietnamese and their society with air
strikes, herbicides, and ground battles.
In addition, American soldiers committed atrocities toward the Asians
involved in the respective wars under the concept of racial hierarchy,
with white Americans at the top. In the war with Filipinos, American
soldiers called them “goo,” and killed and tortured them in addition toburning villages. They also called Japanese “Japs,” and Vietnamese“gooks” in racially derogatory terms, and committed atrocities toward
them without concern.
Why was it possible for American soldiers to commit such barbarities? The method of subjugating the enemies was inherited from the conquest policy toward Native Americans. In other words, the atrocities
during the last hundred years toward Asians represented a historical consistency and continuity with the violent conquest policy of the past. In
retrospect, the American people rationalized the atrocities in Asian countries by referring to them as something happened to Native Americans
at home.
Strong racial prejudice against the peoples that Americans regarded
as “inferior” characterized the discrepancies between the rhetoric of
America’s justiﬁcation for the wars and the realities of the wars on thebattlegrounds. Whenever it came to justifying wars and atrocities during wars involving Asians, white Americans were able to rationalize

DISCREPANCIES BETWEEN RHETORIC AND REALITIES

35

them on the basis of the very same racial prejudice they showed toward
all groups whom they considered “inferiors.” They shared the common
concept of racial hierarchy. The sense of this self-righteous ethnocentrism, which has been prevalent in American society, served to disguisethe discrepancies between the rhetoric and the realities of the respectivewars.
In the mid-1990s, Robert S. McNamara, the secretary of defense under
Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, published In Retrospect, and mentioned eleven lessons that he suggested the United States should learn
from the Vietnam War to avoid another “tragedy.” His major concern
was to reﬂect how the leaders of the United States were dragged into thequagmire of the war. Consciously or unconsciously, McNamara did nottake racial elements into consideration when he discussed the lessons
from the war.97 When Gore referred to the Vietnam War in the speech I
quoted at the beginning of the paper, he did not say a word about theVietnamese who had suffered most from the war.
How will Americans reconcile the rhetoric of war with the reality ofunderlying racism? In the twenty-ﬁrst century, this will be a crucial topic
not only for the understanding of American history but also for
Americans themselves.
NOTES
1
Al Gore, “The Speech: Gore Says Prosperity Must Be Shared with All,” The New
York Times on the Web, August 18, 2000, <www.nytimes.com/library/camp/081800
gore-text.html>
2
Recently, some historians changed the name of the Spanish-American War in 1898
to the War of 1898 or the Spanish-American-Cuban-Filipino War. Akira Takahashi, Amerika
Teikokushugi Seiritsushi no Kenkyu (A Study of the Formation of Aemrican Imperialism) (Nagoya: Nagoya University Press, 1999), 15–53; John L.Offner, “SpanishAmerican-Cuban-Filipino War, 1898,” in Bruce W. Jentleson & Thomas G. Paterson
eds., Encyclopedia of U. S. Foreign Relations (New York: Oxford University Press,
1997), IV: 110–114; Louis A. Pérez, Jr., The War of 1898: The United States and Cubain History and Historiography (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press,
1998), xii.
3
George F. Kennan, American Diplomacy, 1900–1950 (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1951); William A. Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (NewYork: The World Publishing Co.,1958). For other analyses of American foreign policy
from a historical perspective, see, for instance, Robert Dallek, The American Style ofForeign Policy: Cultural Politics and Foreign Affairs (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,1983); Thomas J. McCormick, America’s Half-Century: United States Foreign Policyin the Cold War (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989).
4
Michael H. Hunt, Ideology and U. S. Foreign Policy (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1987).

36

YOSHIKATSU HAYASHI

5
John L. Offner, An Unwanted War: The Diplomacy of the United States and Spainover Cuba, 1895–1898 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 13.
6
Ernest R. May, Imperial Democracy: The Emergence of America as a Great Power(New York: Harcourt, 1961), 71.
7James D. Richardson, ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the
Presidents (Washington D.C.: Bureau of National Literature and Art, 1910), IX, 6241.
8
Robert L. Beisner, From the Old Diplomacy to the New (2nd ed. Wheeling: Harlan
Davidson, 1986), 122–129. See also the following works. Alexander DeConde, Presidential Machismo: Executive Authority, Military Intervention, and Foreign Relations(Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2000), 84–85; Walter LaFeber, “Liberty andPower: U.S. Diplomatic History, 1750–1945,” in Eric Foner ed., The New American
History (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997), 387.
9
Richardson, ed., Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 6292.
10
Walter LaFeber, The American Search for Opportunity, 1865–1913 (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1993), 143–144.
11
Thomas J. Osborne, Annexation Hawaii (Waimanalo, Hawaii: Island Style Press,
1998), 109–137.
12
Rubin F. Weston, Racism in U. S. Imperialism: The Inﬂuence of Racial Assumptions
on American Foreign Policy, 1893–1946 (Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 1972), 56–73; Gavan Daws, Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1968), 285–290.
13
Matthew Frye Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign
Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876–1917 (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000), 236; Daws,
Shoal of Time, 293–295.
14
Offner, An Unwanted War, 194–224.
15
Quoted in Pérez, Jr., The War of 1898, 98.
16
Richardson ed., Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 6322–6323.
17David Healy, US Expansionism: The Imperialist Urge in the 1890s (Madison: The
University of Wisconsin Press, 1970), 150–151; John Offner, “The United States andFrance: Ending the Spanish-American War,” Diplomatic History 7, No. 1 (Winter 1983):
14.
18
Gerald F. Linderman, The Mirror of War: American Society and the SpanishAmerican War (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1974), 138–140.
19
Lewis L. Gould, The Spanish-American War and President McKinley (Lawrence:
The University Press of Kansas, 1982), 127–129.
20David Healy, Drive to Hegemony: The United States in the Caribbean, 1898–1917(Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1988), 51.
21
For racial discrimination in the 1890s in American society, see, for example, John
Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925 (New
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1955), and idem, Send These To Me: Jews andOther Immigrants in Urban America (New York: Atheneum, 1975); C.Vann Woodward,
The Stranger Career of Jim Crow (3rd rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press,
1974).
22
Michael H. Hunt, Ideology and U. S. Foreign Policy, 46–91. The citation is on p.
52.
23
The quotation is cited in Alexander DeConde, A History of American Foreign Policy(2nd ed. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971), 351. See also, Ephraim K. Smith,“William McKinley’s Enduring Legacy: The Historiographical Debate on the Takingof the Philippines Islands,” in James C. Bradford, ed., Crucible of Empire: The SpanishAmerican War & Its Aftermath (Annapolis: U.S. Naval Institute, 1993), 205–249.

DISCREPANCIES BETWEEN RHETORIC AND REALITIES

37

24
Elihu Root, The Military and Colonial Policy of the United States: Addresses andReports (rpt: New York: AMS Press, 1916), 291.
25
Healy, US Expansionism, 131.
26
Ephraim K. Smith, “‘A Question from Which We Could Not Escape’: William
McKinley and the Decision to Acquire the Philippine Islands,” Diplomatic History 9,
No. 4 (Fall 1985); Thomas J. McCormick, China Market: America’s Quest for Informal
Empire, 1893–1901 (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1967), 168–187.
27
Rober L. Beisner, Twelve Against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists 1898–1900 (NewYork: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1968), 122–132.
28
Joseph Smith, The Spanish-American War: Conﬂict in the Caribbean and the Paciﬁc
1895–1902 (New York: Longman, 1994), 179; Glenn A. May, “Filipino Resistance toAmerican Occupation: Bantangas, 1899–1902,” Paciﬁc Historical Review 48, No. 4(November 1979): 531–556.
29
Healy, US Expansionism, 141.
30
Walter L. Williams, “United States Indian Policy and the Debate over Philippine
Annexation: Implications for the Origins of American Imperialism,” Journal of
American History 66, No. 4 (March 1980): 827–828.
31
Sara Bunnett, ed., Manila Envelope: Oregon Volunteer Lt. Georege F. Telfer’s
Spanish-American Letters (Portland: The Oregon Historical Society, 1987), 154.
32
Root, Military and Colonial Policy, 12.
33
Healy, US Expansionism, 147–148.
34
Stuart C. Miller, “Benevolent Assimilation”: The American Conquest of thePhilippines, 1899–1903 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 226.
35
Bunnett, ed., Manila Envelope, 154.
36
Ibid., 151.
37
Russell Roth, Muddy Glory: America’s ‘Indian Wars’ in the Philippines, 1899–1935(W. Hanover, Mass: The Christopher Publishing House, 1981), 86–87, 91.
38
See, for example, Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (New York: Pocket
Books, 1981), 85–91, 417–419.
39
See for instance, Richard E. Welch, Jr., “American Atrocities in the Philippines: The
Indictment and the Response,” Paciﬁc Historical Review 43, No. 2 (May 1974): 233–253.
40
Quoted in William, “United States Indian Policy,” 825.
41
The New York Times, August 19, 1914, quoted in Arthur S. Link, The Struggle for
Neutrality, 1914–1915 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), 66.
42“An Address to a Joint session of Congress, 8 Jan. 1918,” Arthur S. Link, ed., The
Papers of Woodrow Wilson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 45:534–539.
43
For the full text of the Fourteen points, see, for example, Ray Stannard Baker &William E. Dodd, eds, Presidential Messages, Addresses, and Public Papers by
Woodrow Wilson, War and Peace, I, 155–162; Akira Iriye, The Globalizing of America,
1913–1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 46.
44
Quoted in George W. Egerton, Great Britain and the Creation of the League of
Nations: Strategy, Politics, and International Organization, 1914–1919 (Chapel Hill:
The University of North Carolina Press, 1978), 111; Michael H. Hunt, Crises in U. S.
Foreign Policy: An International History Reader (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1996), 21–22.
45
N. Gordon Levin Jr., Woodrow Wilson and World Politics: America’s Response to
War and Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 2.
46
Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century (New York: Vintage
Books, 1981), 135.

38

YOSHIKATSU HAYASHI

47
Thomas J. Knock, To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New
World Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 250; Robert H. Ferrell,
Woodrow Wilson and World War I, 1917–1921 (New York: Harper & Row, 1985),
149–150.
48
Lloyd Gardner, Safe for Democracy: The Anglo-American Response to Revolution,
1913–1923 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 258–260.
49
Quoted in Ferrell, Woodrow Wilson, p.150. Walter LaFeber put the issue in the context of Japanese-American relations in the following book. LaFeber, The Clash: U. S.Japanese Relations throughout History (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1997), 123–
124.
50
Quoted in Paul Gordon Lauren, “Human Rights in History: Diplomacy and Racial
Equality at the Paris Peace Conference,” Diplomatic History 2, No. 3 (Summer 1978):261.
51
Jan Willem Schulte Nordholt (translated by Herbert H. Rowen), Woodrow Wilson:
A Life for World Peace (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 350–352.
52
Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America: A Social History of American Movies (NewYork: Random House, 1976), 58–60; Donald Takaki, A Different Mirror: A History ofMulticultural America (Boston: Little Brown Co., 1993), 307.
53
Arthur S. Link, Wilson: The New Freedom (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1956), 289–290.
54
Morton Sosna, “The South in the Saddle: Racial Politics during the Wilson Years,”
Wisconsin Magazine of History 54, No. 1 (Autumn 1970): 30–49. See also, John M.
Cooper, Jr., The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt(Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1983), 210–211; Kathleen
L. Wolgemuth, “Woodrow Wilson’s Appointment Policy and the Negro,” Journal ofSouthern History 24, No. 4 (November 1958): 457–471.
55
For the full text of the charter, see, for example, Richard Hofstadter & Beatrice K.
Hofstadter eds., Great Issues in American History, III, From Reconstruction to thePresent Day, 1864–1981 (rev. ed., New York: Vintage Books, 1982), 399–401.
56
Akira Iriye, Power and Culture: The Japanese-American War 1941–1945 (Harvard
University Press, 1981), 36–37.
57
John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Paciﬁc War (Boston:Faber and Faber, 1986), 36–37.
58
Ibid., p. 81; Studs Terkel, “The Good War”: An Oral History of World War Two(New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 5.
59
Charles A. Lindbergh, The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh (New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970), 875.
60
William Manchester, Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Paciﬁc War (London:
Michael Joseph, 1981), 381.
61
J. Samuel Walker, “The Decision to Use the Bomb: A Historiographical Update,”in Michael J. Hogan, ed., Hiroshima in History and Memory (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1996), 11–37; idem., Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and theUse of Atomic Bombs Against Japan (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina
Press, 1997).
62
Quoted in Robert H. Ferrell, Harry S. Truman and the Modern American Presidency(Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1983), 55.
63
Samuel McCrea Cavert to Harry S. Truman August 9, 1945 in Dennis Merrill, ed.,Documentary History of the Truman Presidency, I, Decision to Drop the Atomic Bombon Japan (Bethesda, Md.: University Publications of America, 1995), 213.
64
Ronald R. McCoy, The Presidency of Harry S. Truman (Lawrence: University PressDISCREPANCIES BETWEEN RHETORIC AND REALITIES

39

of Kansas, 1984), 39.
65
Terkel, “The Good War”.
66
Quoted in G. Edward White, Earl Warren: A Public Life (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1982), 69.
67
Sandra C. Taylor, Jewel of the Desert: Japanese American Internment at Topaz(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 46.
68
Takaki, A Different Mirror, 384; Michi Nishiura Weglyn, Years of Infamy: The
Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps (rev. ed. Seattle: University ofWashington Press, 1991), 67–75.
69
Jacobus tenBroek, Edward N. Barnhart, & Floyd W. Matson, Prejudice, War andthe Constitution: Causes and Consequences of the Evacuation of the JapaneseAmericans in World War II (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 111–116.
70
Peter Irons, Justice at War: The Story of the Japanese American Internment Cases(New York: Oxford University Press, 1983); Richard Polenberg, One Nation Divisible:
Class, Race, and Ethnicity in the United States since 1938 (New York: Penguin Books,
1981), 84–85; Masako Iino, Mohitotsu no Nichibei Kankeishi (Another Aspect ofJapanese-American Relations) (Tokyo: Yuhikaku, 2000), 87–107.
71
Chritopher Thorne, The Issue of War: States, Societies, and the Far Eastern Conﬂict
of 1941–1945 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1985), 144–176.
72
Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans(New York: Penguin Books, 1989), 376–378. For in-depth analysis about the issue, see
the following. Ma Xiaohua, Maboroshi no Shinchitsujo to Ajia Taiheiyo (Illusionary
New Orders and the Asian-Paciﬁc: The Chinese-American Alliance in the War against
Japan, 1941–1945 (Tokyo: Sairyusha, 2000).
73
For example, see Melvyn P. Lefﬂer, A Preponderance of Power: National Security,
the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1992).
74
For the full text, see, Harry S. Truman, “Address of the President of the United States
Delivered before a Joint Session of the Senate and the House of Representatives,
Recommending Assistance to Greece and Turkey,” March 12, 1947, in Merrill, ed.,Documentary History, VIII, The Truman Doctrine and the Beginning of the Cold War,
1947–1949, 99–103.
75
Michael J. Hogan, “American Marshall Planners and the Search for a European
Neocapitalism,” American Historical Review 90, No. 1 (February 1985): 44–72. For afull analysis of the Marshall Plan, see idem., The Marshall Plan: America, Britain, andthe Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947–1952 (New York: Oxford University Press,
1987).
76
See, for example, Geroge C. Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States
and Vietnam, 1950–1975 (New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1996), 1–42. For a comprehensive study, see, Lloyd C. Gardner, Approaching Vietnam: From World War II
Through Dienbienphu (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1988).
77
Quoted in Chester J. Pach, Jr. & Elmo Richardson, The Presidency of Dwight D.
Eisenhower (rev. ed. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991), 95, 97; Stephen
Ambrose, Eisenhower: The President (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), 179–180.
78
See, for instance, William J. Duiker, U. S. Containment Policy and the Conﬂict inIndochina (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994).
79
DeConde, Presidential Machismo, 181. For comprehensive analysis about
Kennedy’s commitment to South Vietnam, see, for example, Hiroshi Matsuoka, 1961
Kenedei no Senso (1961 Kennedy’s War: The Cold War, Vietnam, the Southeast Asia)(Tokyo: Asahi Shimbunsha, 1999).
80
Lawrence J. Bassett & Stephen E. Pelz, “The Failed Search for Victory: Vietnam

40

YOSHIKATSU HAYASHI

and the Politics of War,” in Thomas G. Paterson, ed., Kennedy’s Quest for Victory:
American Foreign Policy, 1961–1963 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 223–
252; Walter LaFeber, The American Age: United States Foreign Policy at Home andAbroad since 1750 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989), 563.
81
William A. Williams, Thomas McCormick, Lloyd Gardner & Walter LaFeber, eds.,
America in Vietnam: A Documentary History (Garden City: Anchor Press, 1985), 23;
For a comprehensive study of the subject, see, for instance, Edwin E. Moïse, Tonkin
Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War (Chapel Hill: The University of North
Carolina Press, 1996).
82
Marvin E. Gettleman, Jane Franklin, Marilyn B. Young & H. Bruce Franklin, eds.,
Vietnam and America: The Most Comprehensive Documented History of the Vietnam
War ((New York: Grove Press, 1995), 255–268; Young, The Vietnam Wars, 124–191.
83
Warren I. Cohen, America in the Age of Soviet Power, 1945–1991 (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1993), 160.
84
James S. Olson, ed., Dictionary of the Vietnam War (Westport: Greenwood Press,
1988), 7–8, 47–49, 67, 387.
85
Young, The Vietnam Wars, 63
86
Quoted in Richard Drinnon, Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating andEmpire-Building (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 448–449.
87
Edelman, ed., Dear America, 109–110.
88
Mar Baker, Nam: The Vietnam War in the Words of the Soldiers Who Fought There,(New York: Berkley Books, 1981), 64, 66. See also, David W. Levy, The Debate overVietnam (2nd ed. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 59–60.
89
Ibid., 62.
90
Christopher Thorne, Allies of a Kind: The United States, Britain and the War against
Japan, 1941–1945 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1978), 695.
91
Baker, ed., Nam, 65.
92
Quoted in James R. Ebert, A Life in a Year: The American Infantryman in Vietnam,
1965–1972 (Novato, CA.: Presidio, 1993), 280.
93
Young, The Vietnam Wars, 243.
94
John E. Mueller, War, Presidents and Public Opinion (Lanham, MD.: University
Press of America, 1985), 52–58; David J. Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin LutherKing, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (New York: Vintage
Books, 1988), ch. 10.
95David W. Levy, The Debate over Vietnam, 63–64.
96
Richard Polenberg, One Nation Divisible: Class, Race, and Ethnicity in the UnitedStates since 1938 (New York: Penguin Books, 1980), 236.
97
Robert S. McNamara, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (NewYork: Times Books, 1995), especially, 319–335. See comments on his book, “ARoundtable Review: McNamara’s In Retrospect,” in Diplomatic History 20, No. 3(Summer 1996): 440–471.