THE

A CENTURY OF ENGAGEMENT

by

James C. McNaughton

Center of Military History

United States Army

Washington, D.C., 2012

THE

 A CENTURY OF ENGAGEMENT
CMH Pub 70–120–1

First Printing 
iii

Contents

Page

Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v

The Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

An Army for Empire, 1898–1941 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

The War with Spain and the Philippine War, 1898–1902 . . . . 5

Pacific Outposts, 1900–1937 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

The Gathering Storm, 1937–1941 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Pacific War and Aftermath, 1941–1950 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

The Thin Red Line, 1941–1943 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

The Jungle Road to Tokyo, 1943–1944 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Many D-Days in the Pacific, 1944–1945 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

In the Ruins of Empire, 1945–1949 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 

Hot and Cold Wars, 1950–1973 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

Korean War, 1950–1953 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

The New Look in the Far East, 1953–1965 . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

Vietnam War, 1965–1973 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

After Vietnam, 1973 to Present . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Restoring Confidence, 1973–1991 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

After the Cold War, 1991–2001 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

The Asia-Pacific in the Age of Terror, 2001–2012 . . . . . . 82

Further Readings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

Maps

 No.

 1. The Philippines, 1899 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 

 2. World War II in the Pacific, 1941–1945 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

 3. Korea, 1950–1953 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

 4. Southeast Asia, 1965–1973 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

 5. U.S. Army in the Pacific, 2012 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
iv 

Page

Illustrations

Troops fording a river in the Philippines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Soldiers mingle with Filipinos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Artillerymen firing a 12-inch gun at Battery Selfridge, Oahu . . . 15

Soldiers defend the perimeter of Shanghai’s foreign quarter . . . 18

Men cross a river near Saidor on New Guinea . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Soldiers attack a Japanese position on Kwajalein Island . . . . . 30

Unloading supplies on Leyte in the Philippines . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Seoul Street Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Unloading supplies and equipment at Inch’on, Korea . . . . . . . 52

Soldiers of Company F, 9th Infantry, 2d Infantry Division, 

 climb “Bloody Ridge,” summer 1951 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Corporal Hiroshi N. Miyamura . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Soldiers air assault into a hilltop position in Quang Ngai 

 Province . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

Street Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

American officers coach their South Vietnamese 

 counterparts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

Men with M2A1 Bradley fighting vehicles and M1A1 

 Abrams tanks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

U.S. soldiers train Philippine Army troops at Fort Ramon 

 Magsaysay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

Illustrations courtesy of the following sources: pp. 9, 10, Library 

of Congress; 15, U.S. Army Museum of Hawaii; 18, 53, National 

Archives; 28, 30, 38, U.S. Army Signal Corps; 45, 55, 68, U.S. Army 

Art Collection; 52, U.S. Navy; 67, U.S. Army; 70, U.S. Army Center 

of Military History; 79, 85, Department of Defense.
v

Foreword

The experiences of the U.S. Army in the Pacific provide significant insight into the complexity and uncertainty we face today. At a 

time when our Nation’s leaders have called for a renewed emphasis 

on the Pacific, and many of our Soldiers have spent much of the last 

decade engaged in other parts of the world, it is important to review 

our long-standing engagement in this critical region. The Pacific has 

always played a significant role for the United States. Today, seven of 

ten of the largest armies in the world are in the Pacific and there are 

approximately 66,000 U.S. Soldiers stationed in the region. They are 

the modern day standard-bearers of an Army tradition dating back 

to 1803, when Lewis and Clark first gazed on the Pacific after leading 

the Corps of Discovery across the North American continent. In the 

future, this role will increase in significance as the Pacific becomes host 

to some of the world’s largest populations, militaries, and economies. 

Whether it was the intense combat in World War II or disaster relief in 

northern Japan in 2011, the Army’s experience in the Pacific is replete 

with lessons for the future.

As this work clearly illustrates, the Army has conducted almost 

every conceivable mission in the Pacific region. From training 

Philippine forces in the 1920s to working as part of an international 

force in the 1930s, the Army learned and adapted to changes in the 

environment. Changes in national requirements caused the Army to 
vi 

transition from intense combat in Korea and Vietnam in the 1950s 

and 1960s to training and building partner capacity in Thailand and 

Japan in the 1990s. Simply put, the Pacific experience illustrates the 

breadth of missions the U.S. Army has conducted and provides a 

useful backdrop for those the Army must be prepared for in the future. 

The first chapter of this history describes the Army’s forty-year 

engagement with the many diverse cultures, people, and languages of 

the Pacific. From these formative experiences rose Army leaders like 

Generals Marshall and MacArthur, who understood the complexity 

and interdependence of regions, cultures, and religions. In the future, 

as technology lowers barriers to communications and travel, building 

on a similarly well-developed understanding of the many dynamic 

factors present in this environment will be increasingly important.

The Pacific also provides examples of joint, interagency, intergovernmental, and multinational operations. From the first time U.S. 

Army Soldiers sailed to the Philippines on Navy ships, through joint 

amphibious operations in the central Pacific, to multinational operations in the Korean Conflict and more recently, humanitarian relief 

operations in Japan, the Army has demonstrated the capability to 

operate in a joint, interagency, intergovernmental, and multinational 

environment. Soldiers and leaders can expect to build on these capabilities to provide the desired effects to achieve our Nation’s objectives.

Most importantly, this history is a timely reminder that change 

is the nature of the Army profession. The second and third chapters, 

dealing with World War II and the Cold War, relate the complex challenges the Army faced as former adversaries became partners and 

transnational terrorists threatened the world order. The Army’s experience in the Pacific serves as a reminder that the only thing certain is 

the unexpected. 

Soldiers should read this history with pride and honor in the long 

tradition of service that they now carry forward. I expect that leaders 

will use this volume to develop challenging professional development 

vignettes to generate perspective and context for our combat-proven 

Soldiers. Our Pacific history is one of both valor and strength, and 

provides the inspiration to secure our Nation’s future.

Washington, D.C. RAYMOND T. ODIERNO 

16 August 2012 General, United States Army
vii

The Author

James C. McNaughton is chief of the Contemporary Studies 

Branch, Histories Division, U.S. Army Center of Military History. 

He previously served as the command historian for several Army 

and Joint commands, including the U.S. Army, Pacific. He received 

a B.A. degree from Middlebury College, Vermont, and M.A. and 

Ph.D. degrees in history from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 

Maryland. He has served as an officer in the Active Army, National 

Guard, and Army Reserve, and as an Army civilian. He is the author 

of Nisei Linguists: Japanese Americans in the Military Intelligence 

Service during World War II (2006).

1

Introduction

For the first century or more of its existence, the U.S. Army 

served the nation as a continental army for an expanding country. 

But in 1898, America unexpectedly expanded overseas and its 

Army changed into a global expeditionary force. The War with 

Spain pushed America first into the Caribbean but then with more 

enduring results into the Asia-Pacific region. Most Americans 

called this region the Far East, even though in some ways it could 

be considered the westward extension of the American frontier. As 

on the frontier, in this complex region the Army would be called 

upon for a variety of missions, from counterinsurgency and nation 

building to major combat and deterrence. Over the next century, 

the Army would experience there some of its greatest successes 

and greatest disappointments.

Several experiences foreshadowed the Army’s future in the 

region. American seafaring merchants had first become involved 

in the China trade as early as 1784. But it was the Louisiana 

Purchase that drew the Army toward the Pacific. In 1804, 

President Thomas Jefferson sent two experienced infantry officers, 

Capt. Meriwether Lewis and 2d Lt. William Clark, to explore the 

new territory and reconnoiter a path across the continent. Their 

expedition, also known as the Corps of Discovery, traveled up the 
2 

Missouri River from St. Louis with thirty-four soldiers and twelve 

contract boatmen. Eighteen months and more than four thousand 

miles later, they reached the mouth of the Columbia River. “Great 

joy in camp,” Clark wrote in his journal, “we are in View of the 

Ocian, this great Pacific Octean which we been So long anxious 

to See [spelling and emphasis in the original].” But the excitement 

did not last. They built winter quarters and waited out the dreary 

rain and unfriendly natives of the Pacific Northwest. The following 

year, they returned home to a hero’s welcome. The expedition 

established America’s first foothold on the shores of the Pacific 

and demonstrated to the young nation that it had what came to 

be called a “manifest destiny,” a mission to spread its civilization 

across the continent. Henceforth, America would face not just 

the Atlantic Ocean but the Pacific as well. To protect America’s 

growing commerce and whaling in the region, the U.S. Navy established the Pacific Squadron in 1821.

The Army’s next Pacific encounter came in 1846 when war 

broke out between the United States and Mexico, and the Pacific 

Squadron seized ports in Alta California. To hold the new territory, 

President James K. Polk sent soldiers by land and sea. Col. Stephen 

W. Kearny led a mounted force from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 

to Santa Fe and then onward over the Rocky Mountains. There, 

Kearny’s three hundred regulars linked up with a detachment of 

sailors and marines to fight the Californios at San Pascual and take 

San Diego and Los Angeles. Meanwhile, the War Department sent 

Company F, 3d Artillery, by sea around Cape Horn into the Pacific. 

“Swords were brought out, guns oiled and made ready, and every 

thing was in a bustle, when the old Lexington dropped her anchor 

on January 26, 1847, in Monterey Bay,” wrote 1st Lt. William T. 

Sherman, “after a voyage of 198 days from New York.” By that time, 

the fighting had already ended and its mission changed to establishing a military government over the large province. In 1848, 

gold was discovered near Sacramento, and the soldiers maintained 

order until California won statehood in 1850. By the time the 

transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, America had 

expanded “from sea to shining sea.”

For the rest of the century, the United States saw itself drawn 

further into the Pacific, with the Navy as its principal instrument. 

The Army had only a secondary role. In 1853, the Navy sent 

Commodore Matthew C. Perry to open Japan to American trade. 

In 1867, when the United States purchased Alaska from Russia, the 
3

War Department sent Battery H, 2d Artillery, and Company F, 9th 

Infantry, to Sitka to take possession. In 1871, when Korean coastal 

forts fired on U.S. Navy ships, the Asiatic Squadron conducted 

punitive raids with sailors and marines. In 1872, the secretary of 

war sent the commander of the Military Division of the Pacific, 

Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield, and his chief engineer, Lt. Col. 

Barton S. Alexander, to the Kingdom of Hawaii for “ascertaining 

the defensive capabilities of the various ports and their commercial 

facilities.” The two officers recommended that the United States 

acquire a quiet lagoon named Pearl Harbor. Hawaii granted rights 

to Pearl Harbor in 1887, but Congress did not appropriate funds 

for dredging until after Hawaii became a U.S. territory. In 1878, the 

United States signed a treaty for a South Pacific coaling station with 

the Kingdom of Samoa. In 1893, the Pacific Squadron put ashore 

in Hawaii a landing party of one hundred sixty sailors and marines 

to protect a junta of Americans who had overthrown the Hawaiian 

monarchy. In 1897, the War Department sent troops to provide 

security for the Klondike gold fields in Alaska. By the 1890s, the 

United States had expanding interests in the Asia-Pacific region, 

but was not yet a Pacific power. No one yet envisioned a major role 

for the Army in this maritime theater.

5

An Army for Empire, 1898–1941

The War with Spain and the Philippine War, 1898–1902

In early 1898, Spain’s harsh counterinsurgency campaign 

on Cuba caused tensions with the United States. In January, as 

a show of force, the Navy deployed the USS Maine to Havana. 

On 15 February, while riding at anchor in the harbor, the battleship exploded with a loss of two hundred sixty men. Americans 

instantly blamed Spain. Although proof was lacking, on 25 April 

Congress declared war. For the first time since the Civil War, the 

War Department went on a war footing and tens of thousands of 

volunteers flocked to the colors. At the same time on the other 

side of the world, the U.S. Navy’s Asiatic Squadron sailed from 

Hong Kong to destroy the Spanish squadron in Manila Bay. 

Commodore George Dewey accomplished this easily, then telegraphed Washington to send soldiers. Naval power, he said, could 

“reach no further ashore. For tenure of the land you must have the 

man with a rifle.”

President William McKinley chose a veteran of the Civil War 

and Indian Wars, Maj. Gen. Wesley Merritt, to organize and lead the 

U.S. Army’s VIII Corps to the Philippines “for the twofold purpose 

of completing the reduction of Spanish power . . . and of giving 

order and security to the islands while in the possession of the 
Subic Bay

Manila

Bay

Fort Stotsenburg

Fort William McKinley

Corregidor

Manila

B A T A A N

0 25

Miles

CELEBES SEA

SUL U SEA

S OUTH

CHINA

SEA

PHILIPPINE

SEA

B A BUYAN IS.

L U Z O N

MINDOR O

P ANA Y

NEGROS

MINDANA O

P A L A W A N

SAMAR MASB A T E

VISA Y AN ISL ANDS

LEYTE

CEB U

BOHOL

SULU

B ASIL A N

S u l u A r c h i p e l a g o

Manila

Balangiga

NORTH

BORNEO

THE PHILIPPINE S

1899

0 150

Miles

Map 1
7

United States.” At the Presidio of San Francisco, Merritt assembled 

and trained two thousand regulars and thirteen thousand volunteers. The first contingent sailed from San Francisco on 25 May, 

stopping at Honolulu and Guam along the way. When Congress 

voted in July to annex Hawaii, the War Department sent the 1st 

New York Volunteers and the 3d Battalion, 2d U.S. Volunteer 

Engineers, to garrison the strategically located islands.

When the first soldiers arrived in Manila on 30 June, after 

more than a month at sea, they found a revolutionary army of some 

thirteen thousand Filipinos led by Emilio Aguinaldo besieging the 

Spanish troops inside Intramuros, the walled city in Manila. The 

rebels had struggled against Spanish rule for years and hoped the 

Americans had come to help them gain independence. Instead, 

American commanders conducted talks directly with the Spanish 

commander. After six weeks of waiting, the VIII Corps attacked 

Manila on 13 August in a heavy tropical rainstorm. Within hours 

the Spanish retreated behind the walls of Intramuros and then 

surrendered. The Americans suffered 17 killed and 105 wounded. 

Three days later, news arrived that an armistice had already been 

signed, but the information had been delayed because the U.S. 

Navy had cut the undersea telegraph cable during its initial attack. 

(Map 1)

The United States now controlled Manila but not the countryside. Merritt and Dewey telegraphed Washington for instructions on how to treat the Filipino insurgents. The War Department 

replied that there would be no joint occupation of Manila and 

that the insurgents “must recognize the military occupation and 

authority of the United States.” The Army was given the task of 

establishing control over this distant land, if necessary against 

armed opposition. 

Less well understood at the time was that the United States 

had been catapulted into a region on the verge of profound crisis, 

torn by instability and great power rivalry. The Manchu dynasty 

in China was faltering, while Japan was emerging as Asia’s first 

modern power and acquiring an empire of its own. Britain, France, 

and the Netherlands were determined to hold on to their existing 

empires. As the new century unfolded, America was no longer 

an outside observer but part of the regional great power system 

with possessions and expanding commercial interests to protect. 

The U.S. Army was inexorably drawn into this unfamiliar arena 

of conflict.
8 

Philippine nationalists declared their independence, but the 

United States refused to recognize this. The VIII Corps, sent to 

capture Manila from the Spanish, awaited further instructions. 

Merritt left to join the American peace delegation in Paris, leaving 

Maj. Gen. Elwell S. Otis in command. The American soldiers 

held defensive lines around Manila for almost six months as the 

Filipino Army of Liberation camped outside, both sides waiting for 

the peace negotiations. In December, the United States and Spain 

signed the Treaty of Paris, which gave independence to Cuba but 

not to the Philippines. The treaty gave the Philippines to the United 

States in exchange for a $20-million payment to Spain. President 

McKinley ordered the Army to extend military government 

“with all possible dispatch to the whole of the ceded territory” 

and to demonstrate that “the mission of the United States is one 

of benevolent assimilation, substituting the mild sway of justice 

and right for arbitrary rule.” The insurrectionists felt betrayed. 

On the night of 4–5 February 1899, patrols clashed in the dark 

and Otis launched an offensive to push the rebels away from the 

capital. It took only a few weeks to defeat the revolutionary army 

and capture the provisional rebel capital, but the rebels refused to 

accept defeat.

The Army now faced a protracted campaign that required 

more manpower. The state volunteers had enlisted for the 

duration of the War with Spain, which was now over. In 1899, 

Congress authorized a temporary force of U.S. Volunteers 

specifically for service in the Philippines. These fresh soldiers 

began to arrive in September, augmented by state volunteers 

who were enticed to stay in the Philippines by a large enlistment 

bonus. The U.S. Volunteers increased American troop strength 

to almost twenty-seven thousand, which enabled the VIII 

Corps to push into northern Luzon. In November, Aguinaldo 

ordered the remnants of his army to shift from conventional to 

guerrilla warfare.

The Army now fought to extend its authority throughout 

the archipelago in a small-unit war, similar in many ways to 

the Army’s frontier campaigns against the Indians. Most senior 

officers and noncommissioned officers brought with them the 

skills and experiences of that kind of fighting. The VIII Corps 

created regional commands and posted detachments around the 

country, which gave great autonomy to small-unit leaders. The 

guerrillas knew they could not defeat the Americans outright, so 
9

instead fought to inflict losses that would cause the Americans 

to abandon their objectives. American soldiers struggled against 

boredom, climate, fatigue, and tropical diseases. They learned 

to call their rations by a pidgin word, “chow.” They endured 

endless patrols through the “boondocks,” the Tagalog word 

for “mountain.” They could never be sure that civilians did not 

support the insurgents, and sometimes called them derogatory 

names such as “goo-goo” or “gook.” 

In the fall of 1899, the Army began to organize small indigenous units, called Philippine Scouts, under the leadership of 

American officers. The Scouts provided essential language and 

cultural skills and proved effective in suppressing the guerrillas. 

In 1901, Congress authorized the Philippine Scouts as part of the 

U.S. Army.

The United States had no government agency responsible 

for governing overseas possessions, so the War Department 

was given the job. In December 1898, it established a Division 

of Customs and Insular Affairs (renamed the Bureau of Insular 

Affairs in 1902). In the Philippines, U.S. soldiers built schools, 

roads, bridges, and railroads and implemented modern public 

health measures to encourage pacification. In July 1901, the 

Troops fording a river in the Philippines, 1899
10 

Army helped organize the Philippine Constabulary as one 

historian later called a “police force to control brigandage and 

deal with the remnants of the insurgent movement.” Army 

troop strength reached some seventy thousand, which enabled 

the Army to wage simultaneous campaigns in different areas. 

The Navy provided mobility and fire support throughout the 

archipelago and restricted the guerrillas from moving among 

the islands. The Army used a carrot-and-stick approach, 

combining harsh coercive measures, such as burning crops 

and buildings of troublesome areas, with conciliation and civic 

action. In some areas, the Army “concentrated” the civilian 

population to separate them from the guerrillas, a tactic that 

had outraged the American public when the Spanish did the 

same in Cuba.

The American public grew uneasy with its new empire. In 

February 1899, British author Rudyard Kipling urged America to 

take up “the white man’s burden,” but many Americans disagreed. 

During the 1900 presidential campaign, Democratic Party candidate William Jennings Bryan denounced America’s involvement. 

Fighters on both sides committed atrocities, which were widely 

reported in American newspapers. In September 1901, Filipinos 

 Soldiers mingle with Filipinos.
11

surprised an American unit in Balangiga on Samar and killed 

more than forty soldiers. The Army retaliated brutally, killing 

large numbers of civilians as well as insurgents. When American 

military authorities court-martialed soldiers accused of atrocities, the trials fed the flames of controversy at home.

In March 1900, President McKinley appointed William 

H. Taft to chair a commission to organize a civilian government, and in July 1901, the United States established civilian 

rule over much of the Philippines. Taft became the first 

civilian governor-general. Army officers worked closely with 

American and Filipino civilian officials toward the mutual goal 

of restoring law, order, and administration to the Philippines. 

The commission continued the Army’s nation-building activities. For example, in 1901–1902 the commission recruited more 

than one thousand American civilian teachers from the United 

States. The first group was carried to the Philippines aboard 

the U.S. Army Transport Thomas, so they were nicknamed 

“Thomasites.” America’s first overseas colony became America’s 

first major nation-building project.

The Army gradually subdued the insurgents with a judicious mix of attraction and chastisement. In March 1901, Brig. 

Gen. Frederick N. Funston used an elaborate ruse to capture 

Aguinaldo. Although much hard fighting remained in southern 

Luzon and Samar, the Army broke the insurrection by the end of 

the year. The U.S. Volunteers mustered out that summer, leaving 

the last fighting to the regulars and a marine battalion, which 

participated in the campaign on Samar in 1901–1902. On 4 July 

1902, President Theodore Roosevelt declared the unpopular 

war over. The war cost the Army about four thousand deaths, 

three thousand of which died from disease. As one measure of 

the intensity of the fighting, seventy soldiers were awarded the 

Medal of Honor.

Active service in the Philippines marked a generation of 

Army leaders. Every Army chief of staff from 1903 through 

General George C. Marshall served in the Philippines, some 

more than once. Taft returned to Washington in 1904 to become 

secretary of war and was elected president in 1908. In 1913, 

veterans of the War with Spain and the Philippine Insurrection 

formed the Veterans of Foreign Wars. The Army’s experiences 

in the region left a permanent mark on the institution and the 

soldiers who served there.
12 

Pacific Outposts, 1900–1937

Once the United States became part of the international 

system in the Far East, it used the Army to protect the country’s 

interests. Japan was modernizing rapidly and asserting itself as 

a regional power. China was suffering from internal instability 

and was unable to defend itself against outside forces. France, 

Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands kept a tight grip on their 

possessions in South and Southeast Asia against the rising force of 

nationalism. Technology was transforming the region, including 

steam ships, railroads, petroleum, telegraphy, radio, and aviation.

China’s descent into chaos became the key challenge, and 

conditions grew worse after its humiliating defeat at the hands of 

Japan in 1894–1895. The United States declared an “open door” 

policy to prevent China from being carved into spheres of influence, which became the foundation of American policy in Asia 

until 1941. As the Chinese government attempted reforms, a 

popular movement, the “Boxers,” arose to drive out foreign influences. In 1900, the Boxers laid siege to the foreign legations in 

Peking (Beijing) and attacked foreign-operated railroads. As 

a result, Japan, Russia, France, Britain, and the United States 

deployed an international peacekeeping force. This became the 

Army’s first experience in coalition operations since the American 

Revolution.

In July 1900, the Army joined the China Relief Expedition 

under Japanese command to attack the port of Tientsin (Tianjin), 

the gateway to Peking. The Army sent two regiments from the 

Philippines and one from the United States. Maj. Gen. Adna R. 

Chaffee, a veteran of the Civil War and Indian Wars, commanded 

the contingent of twenty-five hundred American soldiers and 

marines that marched with the international force seventy miles 

to Peking in temperatures exceeding 100 ̊F, then fought a sharp 

battle to end the 55-day siege of the legation quarter. For several 

months afterward, the international forces administered the city 

and sent expeditions into the surrounding countryside to root 

out the last vestiges of Boxer resistance. Chaffee returned to the 

Philippines and was promoted to Army chief of staff in 1904.

In the Philippines, the Army continued to fight bandits for 

several years, aided by the Philippine Constabulary and Philippine 

Scout companies. In the southern islands, the Army confronted a 

different kind of resistance. On the islands of Mindanao, Sulu, and 
13

other smaller islands was a Muslim society quite different from 

that of the Christianized north, a society of Muslim tribesmen 

known as Moros. As had the Spanish before them, American 

commanders used a mix of persuasion and coercion to subdue the 

Moros. In 1899, Brig. Gen. John C. Bates negotiated an agreement 

with the sultan of Sulu by which the sultan recognized U.S. sovereignty, while the United States agreed to pay him an annuity, to 

respect his jurisdiction in criminal cases involving only Muslims, 

and to respect local religious customs. In November 1901, Capt. 

John J. Pershing led a force to subdue the datos (tribal chiefs) 

and their tribesmen. When Maj. Gen. Leonard Wood became 

governor of the Moro Province in 1903, he attempted even harsher 

measures. When Pershing returned in 1909 as a brigadier general 

and governor of Mindanao, he found the situation improved, but 

armed resistance continued until 1913.

In 1904–1905, the regional strategic situation changed 

dramatically. Japan’s empire already included Taiwan, the Ryukyus, 

and Korea. In February 1904, Japan began a war with Russia with 

a surprise naval attack against the Russian fleet at Port Arthur in 

Manchuria. The U.S. Army sent a handful of officers, including 

Captain Pershing, to observe the land campaign. When Japan 

defeated Russia, the United States realized it could not leave its 

possessions undefended against this rising power and developed 

a joint Army-Navy contingency plan for war against Japan, War 

Plan Orange. As the Philippine Commission assumed more 

governmental functions, including policing with the Philippine 

Constabulary, the Army turned its attention to external defense.

In Hawaii and the Philippines, the Army built coastal defenses 

and permanent posts. In Hawaii, these building projects included 

Fort Shafter and Schofield Barracks and coast artillery batteries 

at Fort DeRussy and elsewhere on Oahu. Meanwhile, the Army 

Corps of Engineers built civil works, including harbors and lighthouses, and dredged the entrance to Pearl Harbor.

Near Manila, Army engineers built Fort William McKinley, 

named after the president who first sent soldiers to the islands. This 

8,045-acre post became home to the Philippine Division headquarters. Eighty miles further north and with a higher elevation 

and healthier climate, the Army built Fort Stotsenburg on some 

151,000 acres, which became home to field artillery and cavalry 

units. A lieutenant with the 5th Field Artillery wrote a song in 

1908 about field training at the post that was later set to music by 
14 

John Philip Sousa and made into the Army song: “Over hill, over 

dale, we have hit the dusty trail, / As the caissons go rolling along.” 

After a war scare with Japan in 1907, the Army also built 

modern coast artillery fortifications to defend Manila and Subic 

Bay. At the mouth of Manila Bay, Fort Mills on Corregidor Island 

became an island fortress. Philippine Scout units were trained in 

coastal defense to augment the limited American units. The Army 

also opened the U.S. Military Academy to promising Filipino 

cadets. The first graduate was Vincente Lim, class of 1914, who 

later rose to chief of staff of the Philippine Army. Over the next 

quarter century, more than twenty Filipinos graduated from the 

academy, going on to lead the Philippine Scouts and later the 

Philippine Army.

The War Department’s poor experience with commercial 

shipping during the War with Spain led it to create the Army 

Transport Service to operate a small fleet of vessels in the region. 

The War Department found it prudent in war and peace to have its 

own vessels for overseas movement of soldiers, horses, and materiel.

After the Klondike gold rush, the War Department did not 

regularly station units in Alaska. However, from 1900 to 1904, 

the Signal Corps built the Washington-Alaska Military Cable and 

Telegraph System to connect the populated sections of the territory with the Pacific Northwest with a network that included 1,497 

miles of land lines, 2,128 miles of submarine cable, and a wireless 

link of 107 miles.

The War Department gradually put its overseas garrisons on 

a more permanent basis. It organized the Hawaiian Department 

in 1911 and the Philippine Department in 1913. The Corps of 

Engineers completed the Panama Canal in 1914, linking the 

Atlantic and Pacific. The Army also built and manned modern 

coast artillery defenses for Manila, Honolulu, and the West Coast 

ports. But with the outbreak of war in Europe, the War Department 

stripped these two departments of most of their regular units 

and personnel. In the Philippines, the Army left behind the 31st 

Infantry and organized the Philippine Scout companies into five 

provisional regiments. In Hawaii, the War Department called up 

the Hawaii National Guard. 

The Great War had little direct impact in the Far East, but 

Japan declared war on Germany and seized Germany’s possessions 

in China and the Pacific, including the Mariana, Caroline, and 

Marshall Islands, which complicated the U.S. Navy’s war planning. 
15

Australia and New Zealand took German New Guinea, the 

Bismarck Archipelago, and the Solomon Islands. After the war at 

the Washington naval disarmament talks, the United States agreed 

to tonnage limits and not to further fortify its possessions in the 

western Pacific. The Army continued to man the coastal defenses 

of Manila and Honolulu, but construction and improvements 

ceased. The Philippine Department organized fifteen Philippine 

Scout (PS) coast artillery companies, which were reorganized in 

1924 into the 91st and 92d Coast Artillery (PS), alongside two 

regular U.S. coast artillery regiments. 

In 1918, when the Russian Bolshevik revolutionaries signed a 

separate peace with Germany, Japan organized a coalition to intervene 

in Siberia, the Russian Far East. Along with Japan, Britain, and France, 

the United States contributed nine thousand soldiers, including the 

31st Infantry from the Philippines and others from the 8th Division 

at Camp Fremont, California, which had been only weeks away from 

movement to France. The secretary of war summoned the division 

commander, Maj. Gen. William S. Graves, and handed him President 

Woodrow Wilson’s instructions: “This contains the policy of the 

Artillerymen firing a 12-inch disappearing gun at Battery Selfridge in the 

1920s. Once part of the harbor defenses of Oahu, Battery Selfridge is now on 

Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.
16 

United States in Russia which you are to follow. Watch your step; you 

will be walking on eggs loaded with dynamite.”

The American Expeditionary Forces, Siberia, arrived in 

Vladivostok in August and September 1918 and were soon 

patrolling the railroad all the way to Lake Baikal. General Graves 

struggled to remain neutral in the complex situation with monarchist White Russians, Red Communist partisans, anti-Communist 

Cossacks, former Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war organized as 

the Czech Legion, and other international contingents, the largest 

being the Imperial Japanese Army with seventy thousand troops. 

Eventually, the United States agreed to transport the Czech Legion 

to Trieste and Fiume in the Adriatic Sea aboard eleven U.S. Army 

transports. The American contingent was withdrawn in April 1920. 

Graves’ chief intelligence officer, Lt. Col. Robert L. Eichelberger, 

saw harbingers of future trouble. “When I departed the Japanese 

were in full control of eastern Siberia,” he later wrote. “Out of my 

Siberian experiences came a conviction that pursued me for the 

next twenty years: I knew that Japanese militarism had as its firm 

purpose the conquest of all Asia.” The Bolsheviks consolidated 

their control over the Russian Far East in 1922.

In the 1920s, after more than twenty tumultuous years, 

the Army settled into a peacetime routine. In 1921, the War 

Department organized the Hawaiian Division and the Philippine 

Division. For the next two decades these two divisions, with 

organic infantry, cavalry, field artillery, and supporting arms, were 

the largest combined arms formations in the Army. A generation 

of officers and noncommissioned officers learned to soldier in 

the region. Stationed in the Philippines was the “Carabao Army,” 

consisting of about five thousand American soldiers with about 

sixty-five hundred Philippine Scouts. The Americans usually 

served overseas for three-year tours. Officers often brought their 

families, while enlisted men sometimes married local women. The 

units would conduct large-scale maneuvers every year to train for 

the defense of Luzon. With the insurrection fading into memory, 

the Philippine Scouts evolved into well-trained garrison units 

under the direction of American officers. The Army organized the 

Philippine Scouts into permanent regiments, including the 45th 

and 57th Infantry (PS), 24th Field Artillery (PS), and supporting 

arms. When the 9th Cavalry, the last African American unit 

stationed in the Philippines, returned to the United States in 1922, 

it left its vehicles, horses, and equipment to the 26th Cavalry (PS). 
17

But pay for the Philippine Scouts was about one-third what their 

American counterparts received, which led to a brief mutiny in 

1924 at Fort William McKinley.

Army units in the Philippines supported contingency operations in the region, including humanitarian assistance. On 1 

September 1923, a powerful earthquake struck the Tokyo area, 

killing over one hundred thousand people. Within a week, the 

Philippine Department shipped over sixteen thousand tons of 

subsistence stores, tentage, clothing, and medical supplies to the 

stricken city.

During the 1920s, America’s policy towards the Philippines 

remained unclear, but in 1934, Congress called for complete independence after a ten-year transition. Until then, the United States 

would retain responsibility for its defense. The Philippine Senate 

requested an American military mission to begin building its own 

defense capabilities. The Philippine president-elect, Manuel L. 

Quezon, invited the retiring Chief of Staff of the Army, General 

Douglas MacArthur, who had served three previous tours in the 

Philippines, to serve as his military adviser. MacArthur brought 

his personal staff, including his aide, Maj. Dwight D. Eisenhower. 

Together, they set about building a new army for the Philippine 

Commonwealth.

In China, the 15th Infantry was stationed in Tientsin to 

protect American citizens and serve as part of an international 

force to keep open the rail lines to Peking, alongside British, 

French, Italian, and Japanese troops. This regiment was the Army’s 

showcase unit in the region because of its high professional standards and rigorous training. It had first been posted there in 1912 

when Chinese revolutionaries established the Chinese Republic. 

International forces remained during the civil war and anarchy 

of the 1920s and 1930s. When Col. George C. Marshall served 

as regimental executive officer from 1924 to 1927, rival warlords 

often threatened the international settlement but never attacked 

the Americans. In one such incident, a force of about twelve 

thousand Chinese soldiers approached Tientsin, and Maj. Matthew 

B. Ridgway went out on horseback with two other soldiers to meet 

them and watch them turn away. The commander of U.S. forces in 

China recommended that these forces be withdrawn, as they could 

do little to help stabilize the country and were too few to defend 

themselves, commenting that: “During the recent war we escaped 

conflict by as narrow a margin as I consider possible.” Elsewhere in 
18 

China, the 4th Marines were posted in Shanghai in 1927 and Navy 

gunboats patrolled the Yangtze River.

In 1932, Japan landed seventy thousand soldiers in Shanghai 

to battle Chinese warlords for control of southern China. The U.S. 

Army chief of staff sent an urgent cable to the Philippine Department 

to deploy the 31st Infantry “to furnish protection for American lives 

and property in International Settlement. . . . Equip troops for indefinite stay and every emergency. Leave animals behind for present.” 

The regiment sailed for Shanghai with a company of marines 

to reinforce the 4th Marines alongside other European forces. 

According to one historian: “The troops served as a neutral force, 

protecting foreign lives and property. . . . Operating under strict 

rules of engagement, the infantrymen endeavored to achieve their 

objectives through tact, conciliation, and intimidation rather than 

by force. In this they were successful.” After several tense months, 

the soldiers withdrew. 

In Hawaii, soldiers called themselves the “Pineapple Army.” 

Most of the fifteen thousand soldiers were stationed on the island 

of Oahu at Schofield Barracks. The Army and Navy conducted 

exercises every year or two in and around the Hawaiian Islands, 

funding permitting. Hawaii, the linchpin of America’s defenses 

Soldiers of the 31st Infantry defend the perimeter of Shanghai’s foreign 

quarter in March 1932.
19

in the region, became known as the Gibraltar of the Pacific. The 

soldiers would rehearse defeating beach landings and air raids. 

In 1921, the War Department formally established a Reserve 

Officers’ Training Corps at the University of Hawaii, as well 

as the National Guard and Organized Reserve Corps. In 1933, 

when President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Civilian 

Conservation Corps, the Hawaiian Department established 

camps where young men were put to work on public works 

projects under the direction of Army officers and noncommissioned officers.

In Alaska, the War Department stationed small elements of 

the 7th Infantry at Chilkoot Barracks in Haines, which had been an 

important supply center for the Klondike gold rush. The University 

of Alaska in Fairbanks established a Reserve Officers’ Training 

Corps in 1936. But this relative neglect of Alaska’s defenses was 

changing with the growth of long-range commercial and military 

aviation. In November 1935, Pan American Airways sent the China 

Clipper, a flying boat that could carry thirty-six passengers, on the 

first commercial flight from San Francisco to Manila by way of 

Honolulu, Midway, Wake, and Guam. But Alaska and the remote 

Aleutian Islands were the shortest air route to Northeast Asia. In 

1934, former Army Air Corps Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell declared 

that “in the future he who holds Alaska will rule the world.”

The Gathering Storm, 1937–1941

By 1937, the era of peacetime soldiering and small-scale 

contingency operations in the Far East was coming to an end. 

In July, the Imperial Japanese Army began a full-scale invasion 

of China. In December, Japanese planes attacked a U.S. Navy 

gunboat, the USS Panay, on the Yangtze River near Nanking. 

The United States realized the seriousness of the situation and 

withdrew the 15th Infantry from Tientsin. In 1939, when another 

world war erupted in Europe, the great power rivalry in the Far 

East threatened to explode as Japan sought to create a Greater 

East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere. The War Department reassessed 

its plans and posture and reviewed War Plan Orange, but the 

mismatch between the threat and available resources could not 

be reconciled. British and American planners had already agreed 

that, if the United States became involved in the war, its priority 

would be the defeat of Germany, not Japan.
20 

The Philippine Department focused on the defense of Manila 

Bay, including the island fortress of Corregidor, while MacArthur’s 

military mission hurried to create the Philippine Army. Military 

dependents in the Philippines were sent back to the United 

States in June 1941. In July, the War Department activated a new 

command, the U.S. Army Forces in the Far East, and called “the 

organized forces of the Government of the Commonwealth of the 

Philippines” into the service of the United States, under MacArthur’s 

command. In August, the War Department sent National Guard 

units to the Philippines, including the 200th Coast Artillery (AntiAircraft), the 192d and 194th Tank Battalions, along with aircraft, 

ammunition and supplies, and hundreds of reserve officers. The 

Navy sent reinforcements, including submarines. The Philippine 

Scouts doubled to twelve thousand. In September, elements of the 

Philippine Army were mobilized. Each new Philippine division 

was assigned forty U.S. officers and twenty noncommissioned 

officers as instructors. A senior American adviser told a new 

instructor: “You have no command status. You have no authority. 

But you are directly responsible for the success or failure of the 

regiment.” MacArthur expected that his command would be ready 

for war by April 1942.

In 1940, the War Department began to reinforce Alaska 

and organized the Alaska National Guard. That June, the Army 

Corps of Engineers began construction of several air bases and 

a large base near Anchorage, Fort Richardson, named for Brig. 

Gen. Wilds P. Richardson, who had served three tours of duty in 

Alaska between 1897 and 1917. The Navy also built up its forces 

in Alaskan waters. In February 1941, the War Department created 

the Alaska Defense Command. By December 1941, Army ground 

forces in Alaska had grown from a few hundred to about twenty 

thousand, including four infantry regiments, three-and-a-half 

antiaircraft regiments, and supporting troops.

The Hawaiian Department also mobilized for war. The Pacific 

Fleet had shifted from San Diego to Pearl Harbor in the spring 

of 1940, adding the defense of the fleet to the Army’s mission 

set. That fall, the National Guard was called to active duty, and 

Selective Service put several thousand young men into training at 

Schofield Barracks. Unlike regular soldiers, the selectees reflected 

Hawaii’s unique racial mixture, including more than two thousand 

American citizens of Japanese ancestry. The Army Corps of 

Engineers improved defenses, built underground gasoline and 
21

ammunition storage facilities, and worked on hundreds of other 

construction projects, including an air ferry route from Hawaii to 

Australia along a string of remote South Pacific islands to bypass 

Japanese-controlled islands. The Signal Corps began testing an 

experimental new technology, radar. In February 1941, Lt. Gen. 

Walter C. Short arrived to bring the Hawaiian Department to 

wartime readiness. That fall, the Hawaiian Department organized the 24th and 25th Infantry Divisions. National Guard units 

and individual replacements poured in from the United States, 

bringing Army manpower in Hawaii to over forty-three thousand, 

most stationed on Oahu. In late November, after the conclusion 

of extensive field maneuvers, the Hawaiian Department received 

word from the War Department that diplomatic talks with Japan 

appeared to be terminated: “Prior to hostile Japanese action, you 

are directed to undertake such reconnaissance and other measures 

as you deem necessary but these measures should be carried out so 

as not, repeat not, to alarm the civil population or disclose intent.” 

General Short ordered his command to prepare for possible 

sabotage or internal unrest, and awaited further developments.

23

Pacific War and Aftermath

 1941–1950

The Thin Red Line, 1941–1943

World War II began with two crushing defeats for the U.S. 

Army. In Hawaii on 7 December 1941, the Army failed to defend 

the vaunted Gibraltar of the Pacific against a surprise air raid by 

the Japanese Navy, despite having two infantry divisions and four 

antiaircraft regiments stationed in the territory. The novelist James 

Jones, who was then a soldier at Schofield Barracks, later told how 

a cynical Regular Army first sergeant growled to his panicked 

soldiers: “All right, all right you men. Quiet down. Quiet down. 

Its only a war. Aint you never been in a war before?” The soldiers 

would see enough of war in the coming years, but the senior Army 

and Navy commanders in Hawaii who had permitted the defeat 

were relieved at once. (Map 2)

In the Philippines, long the keystone of the Army’s regional 

defenses, a Japanese air raid the same day destroyed the Far East 

Air Force on the ground, ending any chance of an effective defense 

against a Japanese invasion. General MacArthur organized his 

forces to defend Luzon; but with little air cover or hope of reinforcement, defeat was a matter of time. The Japanese Army landed on 22 

December. MacArthur conducted a delaying action, then declared 

Manila an open city and shifted his forces to the jungle-covered 

Bataan Peninsula. There the Philippine and American forces fought 
SOUTHEAST ASIA COMMAND

SOUTHWEST PACIFIC A REA

May 42

Ju

Aug 42

Darwin Strike 

19 Feb 42

Jun 42

Aug 42

Ju

Battle o

Fe

Battle of Okinawa Apr 45

S OUTH

CHINA

SEA

I NDIAN

OCEA N

FORMOSA

KYUSHU

HONSHU

LUZON

Gu

PALAU

ISLANDS 

 

MINDANAO

BORNEO

CELEBES

S U M A T R A

NEW GUIN

JAVA

UNION OF SOVIE T

SOCIALIST REPUBLICS

USSR

TIB E T

NEPA L

BHUTA N

INDIA

BURM A

THAILAND

FRENCH

INDOCHINA

M ANCHURIA MONGOLIA

K OREA

A U STRALI A

P

MALAYA

J

PHILIPPINES

N E T HERLANDS INDIES

SARAWAK NORTH

BORNEO

CHINA

Hong Kong

Rangoon

Peking

Yenan

Shanghai

Nanking

Seoul

Vladivostok

Hiroshima

Nagasaki

Tokyo

Singapore

WORLD WAR II IN THE PACIFIC

1941–1945

Allied Axis of Advance

Japanese Limit of Control

0 1600

Miles at the Equator

Map 2

SOUTHEAST ASIA COMMAND

SOUTHWEST PACIFIC A REA

May 42

Ju

Aug 42

Darwin Strike 

19 Feb 42

Jun 42

Aug 42

Ju

Battle o

Fe

Battle of Okinawa Apr 45

S OUTH

CHINA

SEA

I NDIAN

OCEA N

FORMOSA

KYUSHU

HONSHU

LUZON

Gu

PALAU

ISLANDS 

 

MINDANAO

BORNEO

CELEBES

S U M A T R A

NEW GUIN

JAVA

UNION OF SOVIE T

SOCIALIST REPUBLICS

USSR

TIB E T

NEPA L

BHUTA N

INDIA

BURM A

THAILAND

FRENCH

INDOCHINA

M ANCHURIA MONGOLIA

K OREA

A U STRALI A

P

MALAYA

J

PHILIPPINES

N E T HERLANDS INDIES

SARAWAK NORTH

BORNEO

CHINA

Hong Kong

Rangoon

Peking

Yenan

Shanghai

Nanking

Seoul

Vladivostok

Hiroshima

Nagasaki

Tokyo

Singapore

WORLD WAR II IN THE PACIFIC

1941–1945

Allied Axis of Advance

Japanese Limit of Control

0 1600

Miles at the Equator
C ENTR AL PACIFIC AREA

C ENTR AL PACIFIC AREA

Central Pacic

Axis of Advance

Southwest Pa cic 

Axis of Advance

NORTH PACIFIC AREA

SOUTH PACIFIC AREA

un 42

May 42

Aug 42

Battle of Midway 4 Jun 42

Battle of Attu May 43

Pearl Harbor Strike 7 Dec 41

Battle of Coral Sea 

8 May 42 

Battle of Guadalcanal Aug 42–Feb 43

Jun 42

May 42

Aug 42

un 44

of Iwo Jima 

eb 45

P A CIFI C

OCEA N

B E R I N G S E A

C O R A L S E A

HOKKAIDO

SAKHALIN

KAMCHATKA PENINSULA

MARIANA

ISLANDS

uam

Truk

CAROLINE

ISLANDS

BISMARCK

ARCHIPELAGO

SOLOMON

ISLANDS

NE A

NEW

CALEDONIA

HAWAIIAN

ISLANDS

MIDWAY

ISLANDS

MARSHALL

ISLANDS

Makin

ELLICE

ISLANDS

NEW

HEBRIDES

FIJI

ISLANDS

TONGA ISLANDS

GILBERT

ISLANDS

Tarawa

A L E U T I A N I S L A N D S

Kiska

USS R

ALASKA

PAPUA

A

P

A

N

Dutch Harbor
26 

courageously against the enemy, terrain and weather, disease, and 

finally starvation. The Japanese Navy prevented the U.S. Navy from 

bringing reinforcements. The soldiers on Bataan paid the price of a 

war plan that was doomed to fail in the face of a determined enemy. 

The first three Medals of Honor awarded to U.S. soldiers during 

World War II went to two American lieutenants and one Filipino 

sergeant assigned to Philippine Scout units on Bataan.

Before the end, President Roosevelt ordered MacArthur to 

Australia. Once he arrived there, MacArthur told reporters that he 

had been sent there for the purpose “of organizing the American 

offensive against Japan, a primary object of which is the relief of 

the Philippines. I came through and I shall return.” But for the 

Philippine and American forces still holding out, no relief came. 

The “battling bastards of Bataan” surrendered on 9 April 1942 

and more than seventy thousand American and Filipino soldiers 

marched into captivity. Many died on what became known as the 

Bataan Death March to the prisoner-of-war camps. The island 

fortress of Corregidor held out under constant bombardment until 

6 May, when Lt. Gen. Jonathan M. Wainwright surrendered all his 

forces.

America’s allies in the region also suffered defeat. The 

Japanese easily seized Hong Kong, garrisoned by British and 

Canadian troops; captured the fortress of Singapore on the Straits 

of Malacca, defended by British, Indian, and Australian troops; 

seized the Netherlands East Indies, defended by Dutch troops 

and a small American contingent; and raided Darwin in northern 

Australia, sinking eight ships and killing nearly two hundred 

fifty people. In a few months, a rising Asian power had shattered 

European empires that had stood for centuries.

The U.S. Army had to respond everywhere at once. The Army 

Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall, sent reinforcements 

to Hawaii, Australia, and the South Pacific. He sent Lt. Gen. 

Joseph W. Stilwell to serve as senior military adviser to Chinese 

President Chiang Kai-shek (Jiăng Jièshí), who gave him command 

over Chinese forces, keeping open the lines of communications 

through Burma. Because of the rapid Japanese advance, Stilwell 

was lucky to escape with his immediate staff amid thousands of 

civilian refugees by a ten-day march through the mountains of 

northern Burma. On arrival in India, Stilwell told reporters: “I 

claim we got a hell of a beating. We got run out of Burma and it is 
27

humiliating as hell. I think we ought to find out what caused it, go 

back and retake the place.”

In the face of these defeats, the Hawaiian Department braced 

for an invasion and declared martial law. Thirty thousand military 

dependents were evacuated to the mainland. Years of racial prejudice and plantation labor strife had made Army officials wary of 

the large Japanese population. As soon as the first reinforcements 

arrived from the mainland, the Hawaiian Department sent thirteen 

hundred second-generation Japanese American soldiers to the 

mainland. These Nisei were organized into the 100th Infantry 

Battalion (Separate) and later fought valiantly in Italy and France. 

Hawaii became the springboard to victory as millions of soldiers, 

sailors, airmen, and marines poured through, along with millions 

of tons of war materiel. On the mainland, the Western Defense 

Command declared the entire West Coast a military restricted 

area and ordered the removal of more than a hundred thousand 

persons of Japanese ancestry.

The Japanese, instead of attacking Hawaii, raided the 

American naval base at Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands in 

June and landed detachments on Attu and Kiska. At Midway in the 

Central Pacific, the Japanese fleet met decisive defeat at the hands 

of the U.S. Navy and Army Air Forces.

During the first year, the Army scrambled to establish 

new bases of operations in Australia and New Zealand, both 

of which had been left exposed when the British government 

sent their armed forces to the Middle East. The United States 

created air and sea lines of communications via Tonga, Efate in 

the New Hebrides, Fiji, and French New Caledonia. The War 

Department rushed two National Guard divisions to Australia, 

and in September, MacArthur airlifted two regiments into Papua 

New Guinea to fight alongside the Australian Army in some of 

the most forbidding terrain in the world. When the American 

infantry bogged down near Buna, MacArthur ordered the I 

Corps commander, Lt. Gen. Robert L. Eichelberger, to take 

personal command. After months of combat, the Americans and 

Australians finally defeated the Japanese by 22 January 1943. This 

ended the immediate threat of an invasion of Australia, but at a 

cost of 8,546 Allied killed and wounded. It took almost a year to 

reconstitute the 32d Infantry Division.

Nine hundred miles to the east of New Guinea, Japan 

seized the Solomon Islands to threaten the lifeline to Australia. 
28 

On 7 August 1942, the Navy responded by landing the 1st Marine 

Division to capture a Japanese airfield under construction on 

Guadalcanal. The United States eventually reinforced with two 

Army divisions, another Marine division, and an Army corps 

headquarters, supported by air and naval forces, which together 

pressed home a costly victory by February 1943. These soldiers 

and marines formed the “thin red line” that halted the Japanese 

advance. After the American victory, General Marshall reassigned 

two key leaders to Europe to share their hard-won experience 

in amphibious and joint operations: XIV Corps commanding 

general, Maj. Gen. Alexander M. Patch, and 25th Infantry Division 

commanding general, Maj. Gen. J. Lawton Collins. Both men rose 

to higher command.

 Men of the 31st Infantry Division cross a river near Saidor on New 

Guinea, January 1944.
29

The Jungle Road to Tokyo, 1943–1944

Behind the battlefront, Army quartermasters, engineers, 

signaleers, transporters, and medical personnel built up the joint 

theater logistics infrastructure essential to victory in the air, on 

land, and on sea. In the spring of 1942, Chief of Naval Operations 

Admiral Ernest J. King was rumored to have said, “I don’t know 

what the hell this ‘logistics’ is that Marshall is always talking about, 

but I want some of it.”

Across the region, soldiers repeatedly proved their ability to 

adapt and innovate in every imaginable environment. Soldiers 

learned to fight the close fight and prevail against a tenacious 

enemy. Small-unit leadership was key to mission accomplishment 

in amphibious assaults, jungle fighting, infantry-tank cooperation, 

and fire support. In the process, soldiers developed an intense 

hatred of their Japanese opponents, inspired by combat fury and a 

deep-rooted anti-Japanese prejudice common in prewar America. 

With “Remember Pearl Harbor!” as the country’s rallying cry, the 

conflict became what historian John W. Dower has described as a 

“war without mercy.”

The Army Ground Forces learned to work closely with the 

Army Air Forces, Navy, and Marine Corps. In particular, amphibious operations required close coordination. Theater commanders 

often organized joint task forces for specific operations. In the 

Southwest Pacific, MacArthur’s command included the Sixth 

Army, Fifth Air Force, and Seventh Fleet, as well as Australian 

forces. Soldiers usually fought in regimental combat teams that 

combined infantry, field artillery, engineer, and support units.

As the scale of operations grew, corps- and army-level 

headquarters became important for command and control. On 

Guadalcanal, an Army corps headquarters commanded Army and 

Marine units. The Southwest Pacific Area started with one field 

army and one corps; by 1944, it had grown to two field armies and 

four corps. The South Pacific Area and Central Pacific Area each 

used one Army corps. For Okinawa, the War Department activated the Tenth Army to command the Army’s XXIV Corps and 

the III Marine Amphibious Corps. By the end of the war, soldiers 

outnumbered marines in the Pacific by more than three to one, not 

counting the Army Air Forces. The Marine Corps provided two 

amphibious corps and six divisions; the Army provided three field 

armies, six corps, twenty-one divisions, and logistical support to 
30 

several theaters. In all, the Army made more amphibious landings 

in the Pacific than the Marine Corps.

The Army also worked closely with Allies. In the Philippines, 

it had fought alongside the Philippine Army and small numbers 

of Army officers later organized Philippine guerrilla bands 

against the Japanese occupying forces. In New Guinea, it fought 

with Australians. In the Solomon Islands, it fought with New 

Zealanders. In Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, it fought with 

Canadians, including the combined U.S.-Canadian First Special 

Service Force. In Burma, it fought with British, Commonwealth, 

and Chinese units.

The war in the Pacific saw technology develop at a rapid pace. 

Before Pearl Harbor, the War Department fielded the new M1 Garand 

rifle in the Philippines and Hawaii, and it performed exceptionally 

well. The Chemical Warfare Service fielded the man-portable 

flamethrower, which proved effective against bunkers and caves. 

Because Japan was rumored to have used chemical weapons in 

China before 1941, the Army maintained readiness to retaliate in 

kind and stockpiled hundreds of tons of chemical munitions in 

Australia and Hawaii. The Army developed the capability to make 

 Soldiers of the 7th Infantry Division attack a Japanese position with a 

flamethrower on Kwajalein Island, 4 February 1944.
31

opposed amphibious landings, building on Marine Corps doctrinal 

development before the war. Soldiers learned to handle Higgins 

boats and amphibious tractors, which were essential for crossing 

coral reefs. The Army created six engineer special brigades for 

amphibious landings, four of which served in the Pacific. MacArthur 

also used airborne units, including the 503d Parachute Infantry in 

New Guinea and the 11th Airborne Division on Luzon. 

Fire support for amphibious operations was unusually 

complex. For a successful landing, the orchestration of air and 

naval bombardment was critical. Once soldiers came ashore, 

organic field artillery and mortars were added. Major operations 

later in the war saw the employment of field artillery on an unprecedented scale, sometimes directed by air observation posts.

The Signal Corps faced unprecedented challenges to link 

together communications networks over half the globe. For 

amphibious operations, Army signaleers invented a new tactical 

signal organization, the Joint Assault Signal Company.

On islands devoid of modern infrastructure, Army engineers 

built entire cities, ports, roads, bridges, petroleum pipelines, water 

systems, electrical systems, and airfields. MacArthur stated the 

obvious when he said, “This is an air and amphibious war; because 

of the nature of air and amphibious operations, it is distinctly an 

engineer’s war.”

For the first time the Army fielded extensive intelligence capabilities throughout the region. Each regiment had an intelligence 

and reconnaissance platoon; divisions and corps had intelligence 

sections. Senior intelligence officers built large organizations for 

translation, interrogation, order of battle, technical intelligence, 

and signals intelligence at the theater level. In Brisbane, Central 

Bureau employed over one thousand American and Australian 

personnel, who used the latest IBM collators, tabulators, and 

printers to decipher Japanese message traffic. In Hawaii, the J–2, 

an Army engineer officer, created the Joint Intelligence Center, 

Pacific Ocean Areas, an innovative all-source intelligence center 

with nearly eighteen hundred Army and Navy personnel. The 

Army used several thousand Japanese American soldiers as translators and interpreters down to the regimental level.

The Medical Corps treated tropical diseases in the South 

Pacific and frostbite in the Aleutians. Army medicine made great 

strides in protecting soldiers against malaria and other tropical 

diseases and pioneered aerial evacuation. Despite the challenges 
32 

of time and distance, the Army medical system provided unparalleled care.

African American soldiers served in the Pacific, but in 

segregated units. The 24th and 25th Infantry regiments fought 

in the Solomon Islands and New Guinea. Twelve thousand black 

soldiers served in antiaircraft units. The first Distinguished Service 

Cross for an African American in World War II was awarded to 

Pvt. George Watson of the 29th Quartermaster, who lost his life 

in March 1943 while rescuing fellow soldiers from a sinking ship 

that had been attacked by enemy bombers near New Guinea. More 

than four thousand five hundred black soldiers served in more 

than twenty-five amphibian truck companies in support of dozens 

of assault landings, including Iwo Jima and Okinawa. About one 

hundred thousand black soldiers served in the Pacific and more 

than twenty thousand in China-Burma-India, where over half of 

the Americans building the Ledo Road were African American.

Thousands of women served in the Pacific in the Army Nurse 

Corps or Women’s Army Corps. Before the war, over a hundred 

nurses were assigned to the Philippines; sixty-seven became prisoners of war. Others served in Hawaii, Alaska, and the Southwest 

Pacific. In July 1944, the War Department sent about four hundred 

to China-Burma-India to serve with the Army Air Forces.

As Army and Navy commanders parried Japanese thrusts 

in 1942–1943, the Joint Chiefs of Staff hammered out a strategy. 

They established two independent theaters: the Southwest Pacific 

Area under General MacArthur, based in Australia, and the Pacific 

Ocean Areas under Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, based in Hawaii. 

Nimitz also created a subordinate command, the South Pacific 

Area, headquartered in the French colony of New Caledonia until 

the Solomons campaign concluded in 1944. American prewar 

plans had not envisioned two separate theaters, but the loss of the 

Philippines, coupled with Roosevelt’s desire to give MacArthur 

a command appropriate to his stature, made two theaters inevitable. In the Central Pacific, closely supervised by the chief of 

naval operations, Nimitz followed the general lines of War Plan 

Orange as it had been repeatedly rehearsed during the interwar 

period, while also clearing the Solomon Islands. In the Southwest 

Pacific, American and Australian soldiers fought on the world’s 

second largest island, New Guinea, and the Bismarck Archipelago, 

before turning north toward the Philippines. The struggle for 

resources between competing theaters made interservice rivalry 
33

inevitable, forcing the Army chief of staff “to become deeply 

involved in interservice quarrels and special problems,” according 

to Forrest C. Pogue, General Marshall’s biographer, and “to serve 

as a buffer between the Army and Navy leaders in the Pacific, 

helping to provide a measure of unity that would otherwise have 

been lacking.”

In 1944, the Joint Chiefs of Staff added a third line of operations, strategic bombardment of Japan with the Boeing B–29 

Superfortress, by the Twentieth Air Force, which reported directly to 

General Henry H. Arnold, commanding general of Army Air Forces. 

Initially this aerial campaign was staged from India through air 

bases constructed by Army engineers in central China. In mid-1944, 

the campaign shifted to the Mariana Islands. The United States also 

supported two adjacent Allied theaters: China and Southeast Asia. 

These multiple campaigns, which reflected divergent strategic goals, 

could only have been possible by the capability of the United States 

to sustain more than one simultaneous drive.

In the North Pacific, the United States had to defend Alaska 

and the Aleutian Islands. But in order to take on that mission, the 

Army Corps of Engineers had to first build a land route to Alaska. 

The Army organized an engineer brigade with seven engineer regiments for the unprecedented construction project. In just seven 

months, they carved out over fifteen hundred miles of road through 

peat bogs and permafrost, through forests and mountains, and over 

untamed rivers. The first convoy traveled the completed road in 

November 1942. In May 1943, the 7th Infantry Division, which had 

trained for amphibious operations at Fort Ord, California, recaptured Attu at a cost of 550 killed in action and 1,150 wounded. In 

August, a larger force of American and Canadian soldiers, including 

the U.S.-Canadian First Special Service Force, landed on Kiska, but 

found the Japanese defenders had already left. Soon after, the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff dropped plans for a separate northern thrust against 

Japan, and Alaska lost priority.

On the Asian mainland, World War II had begun in July 1937, 

when Japan invaded China and quickly captured coastal areas and 

major cities. The Chinese Nationalist and Communist forces agreed 

to an uneasy cease-fire to confront the invaders. The United States 

began economic and military aid and established a military mission. 

At first, the United States sent lend-lease supplies through Rangoon 

(Yangon), until the Japanese captured Burma (Myanmar), leaving 

only the air route, flying “the Hump” over the Himalaya Mountains. 
34 

Logistics remained a key constraint on operations in this landlocked 

theater, and much of the tonnage was dedicated to the air campaign. 

While airmen conducted the largest airlift up to that time, fifteen 

thousand American soldiers built a highway through rugged mountains from northeast India to southwestern China. The first convoy 

over the Ledo Road arrived in Kunming on 4 February 1945.

Stilwell served as chief of staff to the Chinese president; 

commander of U.S. forces in China, Burma, and India; and 

commander of Chinese and American combat forces in Burma. 

He had served three previous tours in China, spoke Mandarin, and 

had served as Army attaché to Peking during the 1937 Japanese 

invasion. Even so, he found his new assignment challenging, 

with complex command arrangements and the sensitivities of 

advising the Chinese government. Stilwell sought to train and 

equip the Chinese Nationalist Army. At Ramgarh in northeast 

India, American advisers trained two Chinese divisions that were 

committed into combat in northern Burma. The Army even sent 

a small liaison and observer mission to the Chinese Communist 

headquarters in Yenan (Yan’an).

In India, the Army created a vast logistical and training base, 

including port facilities, rail lines, airfields, pipelines, and depots, 

in support of operations in China and Burma. Those serving in 

the Office of Strategic Services Detachment 101 were among the 

first Americans to see combat in Southeast Asia. Composed of 

Americans and Kachin tribesmen from the Burma hill country, 

they began operations behind Japanese lines early in 1943. In 

February 1944, the Allies established the Northern Combat Area 

Command for American, British, and Chinese forces in northern 

Burma. The United States agreed to commit a regimental-sized 

American unit, the 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional). Dubbed 

by American reporters “Merrill’s Marauders” after its commander, 

Brig. Gen. Frank D. Merrill, the unit, together with two Chinese 

divisions, in February 1944 penetrated deep behind Japanese lines. 

In May, they captured the Japanese airfield at Myitkyina, which 

was threatening the airlift to China. In the ensuing battle, the unit 

suffered terrible losses with few reinforcements. The Northern 

Combat Area Command later committed two additional American 

regiments, but not until Merrill’s Marauders had been rendered 

combat ineffective.

Allied hopes for the China Theater failed to materialize and 

led to distrust and mutual recriminations. In April 1944, a powerful 
35

Japanese offensive shattered the Chinese Army and overran 

several American-built air bases. In June 1944, the Twentieth Air 

Force began sending B–29s from India and China against strategic targets in Japan and elsewhere in the region, but by the end 

of the year, the strategic bombardment campaign shifted to the 

Mariana Islands, which were less vulnerable and more logistically 

sustainable. In October 1944, after months of friction, the Chinese 

government requested Stilwell’s replacement. He was replaced by 

Lt. Gen. Albert C. Wedemeyer, who also commanded U.S. Forces, 

China. Stilwell’s deputy, Lt. Gen. Daniel I. Sultan, took command 

of U.S. Forces, India-Burma.

Wedemeyer planned a new Chinese offensive for early 1945 

and established the Chinese Combat Command, with adviser 

teams down to the division level, totaling about thirty-one 

hundred soldiers and airmen. Each team had twenty-five officers 

and fifty enlisted men, including an air-ground liaison team with 

dedicated communications for air support. He also established a 

Chinese Training Command. That spring, an American-trainedand-equipped Chinese force turned back a Japanese offensive and 

began a push toward the coast. By August 1945, the Army had 

about sixty thousand air and ground soldiers stationed in China.

As American capabilities expanded in the Pacific, the Army 

conducted larger, more complex joint operations at even greater 

distances than before, using corps and army headquarters for 

command and control, while repositioning its lines of communications. After Guadalcanal, operations continued in the South 

Pacific for another year. In November 1943, the 3d Marine 

Division landed on Bougainville, then handed off the island 

to the Army’s XIV Corps. By the time the Japanese defenders 

counterattacked in March 1944, the XIV Corps had two divisions 

well dug-in and backed by eight artillery battalions and sixteen 

additional batteries. American firepower completely destroyed 

the attackers. Japanese losses amounted to over 5,000 killed, 

compared to 263 American soldiers killed. After this victory, the 

United States reassigned the American forces to other theaters 

and turned over subsequent operations in the Solomon Islands 

to the 3d New Zealand Division.

In the Central Pacific, the offensive phase began on November 

1943 with an attack on the Gilbert Islands, the first major opposed 

landings in the Navy’s “island-hopping” strategy. The 2d Marine 

Division deployed from New Zealand to attack Tarawa, while the 
36 

27th Infantry Division deployed from Hawaii to attack Makin Atoll. 

Both assault forces used the new amphibious tractors, popularly 

called alligators, to cross the coral reef. The 27th Infantry Division 

was accompanied by the Army’s first field historian, Lt. Col. S. L. A. 

Marshall, to collect combat lessons from the battlefield.

The Central Pacific offensive continued on 1 February 1944 with 

attacks in the Marshall Islands. The 4th Marine Division attacked 

Roi and Namur Islands, while the 7th Infantry Division, reconstituted after the Aleutians, attacked Kwajalein. In June and July 1944, 

Admiral Nimitz attacked his biggest targets yet on Japan’s inner line 

of defense in the Mariana Islands: Saipan, Tinian, and Guam. The 

battle on Saipan was marred by interservice rivalry, when the corps 

commander, Marine Lt. Gen. Holland M. “Howling Mad” Smith, 

relieved the commander of the 27th Infantry Division, Army Maj. 

Gen. Ralph C. Smith, citing his division’s poor performance. The 

battle was won after three weeks of bitter fighting, but Army officers 

remained outraged by the general’s relief. An Army investigation 

concluded that the relief was “not justified by the facts,” and transferred General Smith out of the theater. The controversy “produced 

a crisis in interservice relations that poisoned Marine Corps–Army 

relations for the rest of the war,” according to historian Allan R. 

Millett, “and even fueled postwar interservice controversies.”

The battle for Saipan was unusual for another reason as well. 

For the first time in the Pacific fighting, soldiers and marines 

encountered civilians in significant numbers. Thousands were 

killed in the fighting and thousands of Japanese civilians killed 

themselves rather than surrender to American soldiers and 

marines. The Americans captured about seventeen hundred 

prisoners of war, many of whom turned out to be civilians, not 

Japanese soldiers.

Saipan, Tinian, and Guam became the hub of American 

naval and air power in the Central Pacific. The U.S. Pacific Fleet 

moved to Guam, and Nimitz moved his advanced headquarters 

from Pearl Harbor to Guam as well. Army engineers scraped out 

air bases that enabled B–29 bombers to strike the Japanese home 

islands, the first raid being launched in November. Army and Navy 

engineers and medical personnel created a hospital network with 

nine thousand beds for the costly campaigns to come.

Halfway between the Mariana Islands and Tokyo lay the 

volcanic island of Iwo Jima. On 19 February 1945, three marine 

divisions assaulted the island. They destroyed the Japanese garrison 
37

of twenty-one thousand and captured the island’s airfields with 

help from Army support units, including three African American 

amphibious truck companies, nineteen of whose soldiers were 

awarded the Silver Star.

In the Southwest Pacific in April 1944, MacArthur’s forces, 

guided by signals intelligence and supported by the Fifth Air Force 

and Seventh Fleet, leapfrogged four hundred miles along the 

north coast of New Guinea to land two divisions near Hollandia 

and cut off the Japanese Eighteenth Army. In July and August, the 

Japanese counterattacked fiercely along the Driniumor River. The 

Americans suffered heavy casualties; four soldiers were awarded 

the Medal of Honor. The Japanese attackers were destroyed with 

nearly ten thousand killed and thousands more left to starve in 

the jungle.

Other American forces conducted regimental- and divisionsized landings in the Bismarck Archipelago and Admiralty Islands 

northeast of New Guinea. On 27 May 1944, the 41st Infantry 

Division attacked Biak Island farther west to gain its three 

airfields, but the Japanese fought hard from well-prepared positions in deep caves. Almost three weeks later, the division had still 

failed to dislodge the defenders. The Sixth Army commander, Lt. 

Gen. Walter Krueger, sent Eichelberger, the I Corps commander, 

to take personal command as he had at Buna. Eichelberger flew to 

Biak and ordered the corps staff to follow at once. “Moving a corps 

headquarters on fire-alarm notice is no easy job,” Eichelberger 

wrote, but the corps staff followed by boat the next day. He took 

charge, assessed the situation, relieved the division commander, 

and reorganized the attack. By the time the island was secured, 

the Americans had killed all forty-eight hundred Japanese 

defenders. The Army learned to use coordinated amphibious and 

airborne operations to keep up relentless pressure. To capture 

more airfields, in July 1944, the 158th Regimental Combat Team 

assaulted Noemfoor Island from the sea, while the 503d Parachute 

Infantry landed from the air. Together, they killed 1,759 Japanese 

and captured another 889.

In two years, MacArthur’s forces had advanced half the 

distance back to the Philippines. Army logisticians shifted their 

base of supply from Australia to Hollandia, where Army engineers 

constructed vast facilities where nothing had existed before. The 

Army left Australia and New Zealand almost as rapidly as it had 

come. Army headquarters and support units had come to rely on 
38 

Australian women for administrative and clerical jobs, but their 

government would not allow them to deploy to forward areas. To 

solve this dilemma, the Southwest Pacific Area requested Women’s 

Army Corps soldiers from the United States. The first group 

arrived in May 1944 and their number eventually grew to fifty-five 

hundred.

Many D-Days in the Pacific, 1944–1945

In October 1944, the Sixth Army attacked Leyte in the 

Philippines with two corps and six divisions, putting more men 

ashore on the first day than the Allies had in Normandy four 

months earlier. For this, the largest ground campaign to date in 

the Pacific, American forces crossed hundreds of miles of open 

ocean to reach the landing beaches. MacArthur made good on his 

Soldiers unload supplies on Leyte in the Philippines, 21 October 1944.
39

promise to the people of the Philippines. Initially, the Americans 

were unable to establish air and maritime superiority, so the 

Japanese were able to bring reinforcements from elsewhere in the 

Philippines and as far away as Japan and China. Fierce fighting 

continued for ten weeks before the island was declared secure. 

In January 1945, the Sixth Army invaded Luzon with two 

corps and a force that eventually counted eleven divisions. In 

four weeks, forward units reached Manila, which the Japanese 

decided to defend. For nearly a month, the 1st Cavalry Division, 

37th Infantry Division, and 11th Airborne Division fought houseto-house to destroy the Japanese defenders, resulting in the total 

destruction of the city of eight hundred thousand and its old walled 

inner city, Intramuros, which the Americans had captured in 1898. 

Near the end of the battle, MacArthur announced the reestablishment of the Commonwealth of the Philippines. “Your capital city,” 

he told a provisional assembly of prominent Filipinos, “cruelly 

punished though it be, has regained its rightful place—citadel of 

democracy in the East.”

The campaign for Luzon continued to the end of the war. 

Soldiers fought a sustained campaign to defeat Japanese forces on 

the large island. Philippine guerrillas provided vital intelligence 

and combat power. The largest group, called U.S. Army Forces in 

the Philippines (North Luzon), numbered up to eighteen thousand 

irregulars and was led by Col. Russell W. Volckmann. Volckmann, a 

graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, had refused to surrender in 

1942 and stayed behind to organize resistance. In southern Luzon, 

the 11th Airborne Division conducted several combat jumps, and 

in February 1945, the 503d Parachute Regimental Combat Team 

seized the fortress of Corregidor, which had surrendered to the 

Japanese three years before.

While the Sixth Army conquered Luzon, the Eighth Army 

conducted more than fifty amphibious assaults to recapture the 

southern Philippines. The largest came in April, when the X Corps 

attacked Mindanao, the large southern island where the Japanese 

had expected the first American attack. The 24th and 31st Infantry 

Divisions were aided by a guerrilla force of twenty-four thousand, 

led by an Army Reserve engineer officer, Lt. Col. Wendell W. 

Fertig, who had refused to surrender in 1942.

In this way, the Army returned to the country it had pacified 

and garrisoned for decades. The towns and countryside had 

suffered terrible destruction from the fighting of 1941–1942, the 
40 

harsh years of Japanese occupation and guerrilla war, and the 

liberation in 1944–1945. The Sixth Army used thirteen Philippine 

civil affairs units, staffed in part by exiled Filipinos recruited in the 

United States, for humanitarian assistance.

For the next campaign, the War Department activated 

the Tenth Army in Hawaii. On Easter Sunday, 1 April 1945, 

Lt. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. landed the Army’s XXIV 

Corps and the III Marine Amphibious Corps on Okinawa, for 

a total of 183,000 troops. Soldiers and marines fought three 

months of intense combat that came to resemble the trench 

fighting and heavy artillery barrages on the western front 

during World War I. The Japanese defenders could not hope to 

defeat the Americans but were determined to demonstrate that 

any invasion of the Japanese home islands would be unthinkable. Perhaps as many as 110,000 Japanese combatants died in 

the fighting, as did an estimated 42,000 civilians. The Japanese 

inflicted 49,151 casualties on the attackers, including 12,520 

killed or missing. On 18 June, Buckner himself was mortally 

wounded when a Japanese shell hit near a forward observation 

post he was visiting. Marine Lt. Gen. Roy S. Geiger assumed 

temporary command of the Tenth Army for five days until the 

arrival of General Stilwell, returning to the Pacific eight months 

after leaving China.

Luzon and Okinawa became launch pads for the planned 

invasion of Japan. On 3 April 1945, the Joint Chiefs of Staff designated MacArthur as the Commander in Chief, Army Forces 

in the Pacific, and he began planning for Operation Olympic, 

the invasion of the southernmost island, Kyushu, scheduled 

for 1 November. When Germany surrendered in May, the War 

Department prepared to redeploy fifteen divisions and their 

supporting forces to the Pacific.

In the Ruins of Empire, 1945–1949

On 6 August 1945, the Twentieth Air Force sent a B–29 from 

the Mariana Islands to drop an atomic bomb over Hiroshima. The 

bomb destroyed the port city and immediately killed between 

70,000 and 80,000 people. Three days later, another bomb was 

dropped over Nagasaki, destroying the city and killing more than 

35,000 people. In both cities, tens of thousands more died over 

the coming months of acute radiation exposure and other injuries. 
41

These two bombs, products of America’s scientific, industrial, and 

organizational prowess, changed the face of Asia. On 9 August, the 

Soviet Union declared war on Japan and the Red Army attacked 

Manchuria, destroying in weeks the Japanese dream of an empire 

on the continent of Asia. Japan gave its unconditional surrender 

on 14 August.

On 30 August, the 11th Airborne Division airlifted to Atsugi 

naval air station near Tokyo, while the Third Fleet landed the 

4th Marines at Yokosuka naval base. MacArthur accepted the 

Japanese surrender on 2 September. Harried staff officers quickly 

rewrote the movement plans for Operation Olympic for unopposed landings, sometimes across the same beaches they had been 

planning to attack. Combat and combat support forces earmarked 

for the invasion of Japan were rushed to Japan, Korea, and China. 

While policymakers in Washington considered new policies for 

the postwar world, soldiers on the ground dealt with local issues 

as they arose.

Local Army commanders accepted the surrender of Japanese 

forces throughout the region in dozens of local surrender ceremonies. The Office of Strategic Services flew small teams throughout 

the region to liberate prisoner-of-war camps, while the Army 

repatriated about thirty-six thousand Allied military personnel 

and civilian internees. The Army supervised the demobilization 

of 7 million Japanese soldiers and sailors, half of whom were still 

overseas, and repatriated 1.2 million foreign workers in Japan and 

its empire. The Counter Intelligence Corps eliminated the feared 

Japanese military police and gathered evidence for war crimes 

trials that were conducted by Army judge advocates in Manila, 

Tokyo, and Yokohama. 

While managing these postconflict responsibilities of bewildering complexity, the Army dismantled itself. On 1 September 

1945, Army ground and air forces in the region included 1,460,000 

soldiers in the Pacific; 196,000 in India-Burma and China; and 

38,000 in Alaska. Soldiers and their congressmen clamored for 

their rapid demobilization and return. In January 1946, the War 

Department announced a slowdown of redeployments, causing 

soldier morale to plummet. On 6 January 1946, twenty thousand 

American soldiers held a mass demonstration in Manila to protest 

the slowdown, as did others on Guam, in Hawaii, and elsewhere 

in the region. Selective Service continued to draft young men who 

now were urgently needed to replace returning veterans.
42 

While the Army was absorbed in these tasks, the region 

was plunged into turmoil. British, French, and Dutch armies 

returned to reclaim their colonial possessions, but their empires 

never recovered from the impact of war and occupation. The 

Japanese “Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere” vanished as 

quickly as it had arrived. The former colonial powers, themselves devastated by the war, needed their former colonies and 

worried about rising nationalism and communist subversion. 

The old order had collapsed, but the new order was not yet 

visible. When the United Nations was founded in 1945, only 

five independent countries joined from the region: China was 

given a permanent seat on the Security Council, but the country 

soon slid back into civil war; Australia, India, New Zealand, 

and the Philippines were still moving toward full sovereignty. 

Three more joined by 1950 and six more by 1960 as the region 

shifted slowly and painfully from an arena of colonial rivalries 

to a zone of independent states.

The focus of U.S. national security planning adapted to the 

profoundly altered strategic landscape. Japan, no longer a threat, 

had to be occupied. Its industrial power had to be restored 

and preserved from absorption into the Soviet sphere of influence. The Soviet Union, which had conquered Manchuria with 

eighty divisions, threatened to upset American plans. China was 

embroiled in civil war. A permanent American presence in the 

region seemed vital to national security.

At the same time, the Army had its own institutional 

concerns. “World War II proved to be the army’s finest hour,” 

writes historian Brian McAllister Linn. “Yet at this moment of 

greatest triumph, the explosion of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima 

dramatically redefined modern warfare, making the army and 

‘conventional warfare’ seem irrelevant.” The Army had helped 

defeat Japan as part of a joint team. Yet in the final analysis, it was 

not clear how much the Army had contributed to victory. In the 

public eye, it was the marines who had captured Guadalcanal, Iwo 

Jima, and Okinawa. The Navy could point to the destruction of 

Japan’s navy and merchant marine. The Air Force, which became 

an independent service in 1947, could point to the destruction of 

Japan’s cities from the air and to a terrifying new weapon. Navy 

and Air Force leaders convinced themselves that Japan had been 

on the verge of surrender with no need for a costly invasion. The 

Army suddenly did seem almost irrelevant.
43

The Army’s most pressing task was to occupy Japan and 

enforce the surrender terms, something the Navy and Air Force 

could not do. Over seventy million Japanese were exhausted by 

eight years of war, by the destruction of their cities and merchant 

fleet, by the stripping away of their overseas empire and traditional 

economic relations, and by the utter discrediting of their rulers. 

On 14 August 1945, the Joint Chiefs of Staff designated MacArthur 

as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP). He rushed 

thirteen Army and two Marine Corps divisions to Japan. He gave 

the honor of marching into Tokyo to the 1st Cavalry Division. 

It soon became clear that the occupation forces would face no 

armed resistance. Within months, Army units and headquarters 

were hollowed out by rapid demobilization. By the end of 1945, 

some 286,000 American soldiers remained in Japan. The Sixth 

Army was inactivated in January 1946, leaving the Eighth Army 

to conduct the occupation. In January 1946, the Eighth Army lost 

48,830 soldiers and received only 1,385 replacements. By 1948, the 

Army’s occupation strength dropped to 91,000. Most Marine Corps 

units left Japan by the spring of 1946. The British agreed to send 

occupation forces, which began to arrive in February 1946. The 

British Commonwealth Occupation Force assigned to southern 

Japan included brigades from Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and 

India. The Soviet Union asked for the northern island of Hokkaido 

as an occupation zone, but the United States refused to give them 

any share in the occupation.

MacArthur’s General Headquarters (GHQ) undertook 

America’s largest nation-building project since the Philippines. 

A small team of Army Reserve officers and civilians under Army 

Reserve Col. Charles L. Kades in the GHQ Government Section 

wrote a new constitution for Japan in February 1946. GHQ supervised a general election in April 1946. Within two years, occupation officials began to talk of a “reverse course,” as Japan was 

miraculously transformed from a defeated enemy to a valuable 

ally. Some even talked of a peace treaty and an end to the occupation. For the Eighth Army, occupation duty became easier. The 

Army assigned several thousand Japanese American soldiers who 

used their language and cultural skills to bridge the two cultures. 

In late 1946, the War Department allowed officers and noncommissioned officers to bring their families to Japan, where they 

lived in requisitioned housing and enjoyed inexpensive domestic 

staff. “Life in the ‘colonial army’ took on traditional form,” wrote 
44 

historian Roy K. Flint. With the arrival of families, “the social 

routine that developed was similar in every way to patterns in the 

Philippines and China before World War II. Virtually overnight, 

the Occupation Army became a nine-to-five organization.” The 

occupation also had a dark underside of black market, drug abuse, 

and crimes against civilians. But in general, the occupation was 

widely perceived to be a success, in large part due to the Army.

While the Army ran the occupation, policymakers in 

Washington focused on the emerging Cold War in Europe. Between 

May 1946 and October 1949, no member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 

visited Tokyo; nor did MacArthur return to the United States until 

1951. MacArthur, like his counterpart in Germany, General Lucius 

D. Clay, “occupied, in reality, highly independent positions,” wrote 

George F. Kennan, chief of the State Department Planning Staff. 

“They would not have admitted it, but they were virtually laws 

unto themselves.”

The United States separated Okinawa from Japan, but the 

destruction of battle would take many years to repair. The surviving 

population of over three hundred thousand lived mostly in refugee 

camps. American military strength on Okinawa peaked in August 

1945 at 259,000. One year later, the number had declined to 20,000, 

and by August 1949 to 12,500. The Navy handed over administration of the islands to the Army on 1 July 1946. Nature itself 

added to Okinawa’s sufferings: fierce typhoons struck the island 

in 1948 and again in 1949, causing extensive damage. It seemed as 

if Okinawa might never recover. In 1949, the Army activated the 

29th Regimental Combat Team on Okinawa.

The former Japanese colony of Korea posed different challenges. The United States and Soviet Union agreed to a temporary 

dividing line along the 38th Parallel, with the Soviets disarming 

Japanese forces north of the line and American forces to the south. 

In September 1945, the Tenth Army deployed the XXIV Corps 

from Okinawa to set up the U.S. Army Military Government in 

Korea, which established the Korean Constabulary in January 

1946. When the Republic of Korea was established in the south on 

15 August 1948, the United States terminated the military government. In the north, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was 

established. But deep-rooted problems remained. In the south, a 

civil war erupted and both regimes indulged in cross-border raids. 

But neither the United States nor the Soviet Union desired to be 

drawn into local quarrels and withdrew by 1949.
45

In August 1948, the Army had established a provisional 

military advisory group to help create a new South Korean army. 

On 1 July 1949, the provisional group became the Korea Military 

Advisory Group with about five hundred officers and noncommissioned officers. By June 1950, they had begun to train eight light 

infantry divisions. In June 1949, the Joint Chiefs of Staff called for 

a regional defense based on an “offshore island chain,” and on 16 

February 1950, the Joint Chiefs removed Korea from MacArthur’s 

area of responsibility.

In the Philippines, the United States kept its promise to grant 

independence. During the last months of the war, the Army reconstituted the Philippine Army and Philippine Scouts under U.S. 

command. But as the Philippines gained independence on 4 July 

1946, the War Department separated the Philippine Army from the 

U.S. Army and demobilized its soldiers, many of whom had served 

under U.S. command in 1941–1942 and again in 1944–1946. The 

Philippine Scouts, a statutory component of the U.S. Army, reorganized some units in the fall of 1945 and added others. By October 

1946, over twenty thousand Filipinos had enlisted in the Scouts. 

For the first time, the Army deployed Scout units elsewhere in the 

region, including one thousand in the Marianas and five thousand 

in the Ryukyus. However, in 1947 the War Department halted 

further enlistments. In 1949, it offered seven hundred enlisted 

Seoul Street Scene, by Steven R. Kidd, 1945, depicting two soldiers with the 

U.S. occupation forces
46 

Scouts transfers to the Regular Army and discharged the others. 

The last Philippine Scout units were inactivated in the early 1950s.

The new Philippine government looked critically at retaining 

U.S. bases. After hard bargaining, in March 1947 the Philippines 

and the United States signed an agreement that allowed the Air 

Force to retain Clark Field and the Navy to retain Subic Bay. The 

Army asked to retain Fort William McKinley, but the Philippine 

government refused. Instead, on a portion of the renamed Fort 

Bonifacio the American Battle Monuments Commission built 

the American Cemetery and Memorial, America’s only overseas 

military cemetery in the region. The Army headquarters was 

replaced by a joint U.S. military advisory group.

China, for many years the focus of America’s hopes and 

dreams in Asia, was an area of great uncertainty as the war ended. 

The Joint Chiefs of Staff sent fifty thousand marines from the III 

Marine Amphibious Corps to stabilize North China. The Army Air 

Forces and Navy transported more than four hundred thousand 

Nationalist troops to north China and the coastal areas to seize 

areas under Japanese control and block Communist troops. The 

conflict between the Nationalists and Communists threatened to 

flare up again, and the United States feared becoming involved. 

On 25 August 1945, Communist soldiers killed U.S. Army Capt. 

John Birch, a former Baptist missionary serving with the Office 

of Strategic Services. His death, little noted at the time, was later 

remembered as the first casualty of the Cold War in Asia by the 

anti-Communist John Birch Society.

In December 1945, President Harry S. Truman sent General 

Marshall to China to mediate, and he worked for a year to bring 

both sides to a compromise. In early 1946, Truman authorized a 

U.S. Army advisory group, but that summer, to put pressure on 

America’s wartime ally, the United States halted arms shipments. 

Even Marshall’s talents were not sufficient to reach a peaceful 

resolution. The civil war resumed in April 1946, and Nationalist 

forces initially gained the upper hand, but during 1947, they 

suffered severe reverses. The Nationalists consolidated their hold 

on Taiwan, where the U.S. Army advisory group established a 

ground forces training center in December 1947. By late 1948, 

the situation was lost. “Military matériel and economic aid,” wrote 

Maj. Gen. David G. Barr, the group chief, “in my opinion is less 

important to the salvation of China than other factors. No battle 

has been lost since my arrival due to lack of ammunition or equip-
47

ment.” In 1949, the Chinese Communists drove the Nationalists 

off the mainland and established the People’s Republic of China. 

The United States became embroiled in a bitter controversy over 

“who lost China,” that poisoned domestic politics for years.

Elsewhere in the region, the Army reestablished itself to 

meet the new realities. Hawaii remained the keystone to regional 

defense. The Army reorganized the Hawaii Army National Guard 

in 1946 and activated the 5th Regimental Combat Team at Schofield 

Barracks in 1949. When the war ended, construction was already 

under way on the 1,500-bed Tripler General Hospital. When the 

hospital was completed in 1948, it became the centerpiece of 

the Army medical system in the region. The Corps of Engineers 

also built the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in the 

Punchbowl overlooking Honolulu, which in 1949 became the 

final resting place for thousands of servicemen who had died in 

the Pacific.

Military strength in Alaska declined from a wartime high of 

about 150,000 to 13,000 in 1946. However, the military left behind 

new infrastructure, including a modernized rail system, roads, and 

airfields. In 1949, the Army stationed the 4th Regimental Combat 

Team at Fort Richardson and reorganized the Alaska National 

Guard, including the specialized Arctic experience of the Eskimo 

Scouts in the 207th Infantry Group.

Postwar defense planning took place in a rapidly changing 

bureaucratic environment. In late 1946, the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff established three unified commands: Far East Command 

(FECOM) in Tokyo; Pacific Command (PACOM) at Camp H. M. 

Smith, Hawaii; and Alaskan Command (ALCOM) at Elmendorf 

Air Force Base, Alaska. On 1 January 1947, FECOM was given 

responsibility for all U.S. forces in Japan, Korea, the Ryukyus, the 

Philippines, the Marianas, and the Bonins. The Air Force became 

independent in September 1947, which required Army forces in 

the Pacific to divide into separate Army and Air Force elements, 

from logistics to engineers to intelligence. At the same time, the 

renamed Department of the Army was incorporated into a new 

National Military Establishment, soon renamed the Department 

of Defense.

By 1949, the Army’s posture in the Far East was significantly 

different from what it had been before 1941. Japan was the new 

center of America’s security framework in Northeast Asia. China 

had fallen to the Communists. The United States retained Okinawa 
48 

and Guam. The Philippines allowed American air and naval bases, 

but no Army bases. Hawaii remained the anchor. The Army now 

had four understrength divisions in Japan, one regimental combat 

team on Okinawa, one in Hawaii, and another in Alaska. In Japan, 

the new Eighth Army commander, Lt. Gen. Walton H. Walker, 

began a rigorous training program to prepare his units to defend 

against a possible Soviet invasion.

America’s national leaders came to believe the country’s 

security rested on its atomic monopoly and began using remote 

South Pacific islands to test the next generation of atomic weapons. 

The Army supported Operation Crossroads, which conducted 

atomic tests at Bikini Atoll beginning in July 1946.

But America’s atomic monopoly could not last. In September 

1949, an Air Force reconnaissance aircraft flying from Misawa, 

Japan, to Eilson Air Force Base, Alaska, detected traces of a Soviet 

atomic test in distant Central Asia. Years ahead of expectations, 

the Soviet Union had become the world’s second atomic power. 

The balance of power in Asia would soon shift once again.

Journalist Frank Gibney later wrote: “If the map of East Asia 

seemed to have stabilized by 1949, this was an illusion. Life within 

the new countries continued to be in turmoil. Two major international wars were on the way, not to mention a rash of revolts, 

confrontations, and border skirmishes. . . . Ironically, it was Japan, 

the country that had thrown the Asia-Pacific world into chaos, 

that now began to seem an island of stability.”
49

Hot and Cold Wars, 1950–1973

Korean War, 1950–1953

On 25 June 1950, Korean Communist leader Kim Il Sung 

launched the North Korean People’s Army across the 38th Parallel 

to unify his country by force. The civil war that had simmered since 

1948 burst into flames with global repercussions. The Communists 

had the advantage of T34 tanks from their Soviet allies and tens 

of thousands of veteran Korean soldiers who until recently had 

fought in the Chinese civil war. Once again, the United States was 

caught by surprise. General MacArthur urgently requested help, 

and President Truman quickly authorized a military response, 

telling an aide: “There’s no telling what they’ll do, if we don’t put up 

a fight right now.” With this decision, Truman extended the Cold 

War policy of containment from Europe to Asia. (Map 3)

In the opening days, the inexperienced and poorly equipped 

South Korean Army crumpled and U.S. air attacks from Japan 

failed to stem the tide. Seoul fell on the fourth day. The United 

Nations Security Council asked its members to “furnish such 

assistance to the Republic of Korea as may be necessary to repel 

the armed attack and to restore international peace and security in 

the area.” Korea was where the Cold War first became hot.

The Eighth Army threw its units into the maelstrom as fast 

as they could move from their garrisons in sleepy Japanese towns. 

First into the fight was the 1st Battalion, 21st Infantry, of the 24th 
15 Sep 1950

25 Jan 1951

25 Jun 1951

25 Nov 1950

Yalu R

Yalu R

Y ELL O W

SEA

S E A

O F

J A P A N

Y ELL O W

SEA

Imjin R

Han R

Naktong R

Kum R

DEMILITARIZED LINE

3 8o P A R A L L E L

Changjin (Chosin)

Reservoir

Pujon (Fusen) Reservoir

TSU SHIM A

KOJE-DO

AN-TUNG

Sinuiju

Sinanju

Ch’osan

Yudam-ni

Hungnam

Hamhung

Iwon

Wonsan

Kosong

Ch’orwon

Ch’unch’on

Yangyang

P’YONGYANG

Kaesong

Panmunjon

Inch’on

Osan

Uijongbu

Wonju SEOUL Samch’ok

P’ohang-dong

PUSAN

TAEGU

Taejon

Mokp’o

Hyesanjin

Ch’ongjin

CHIN A

CHIN A

KOREA

1950–1953

0 100

Miles

United Nations Line, Date Indicated

Map 3
51

Infantry Division, commanded by Lt. Col. Charles B. Smith. Task 

Force Smith set up a blocking position north of Osan on 5 July 

with two rifle companies and a battery of 105-mm. howitzers, only 

to watch helplessly as enemy tanks rolled through their position 

and enemy infantry outflanked them. Outnumbered and inadequately equipped, the 540-man task force suffered over 180 casualties and lost all its vehicles and equipment other than small arms. 

The remainder of the division was severely mauled, losing 1,150 

men as it fought a covering force action for sixty miles during two 

weeks of hard fighting. Some American units disintegrated as their 

soldiers “bugged out,” rather than stand and fight. Leaders struggled to maintain control. While evacuating Taejon, the division 

commander, Maj. Gen. William F. Dean, became separated from 

his command and evaded capture for thirty-six days before being 

taken prisoner. 

The Eighth Army fought back to a perimeter around the 

southern port of Pusan (Busan), joined by the 1st Provisional 

Marine Brigade from Camp Pendleton, California, and surviving 

elements of the Republic of Korea Army. Lt. Gen. Walton H. 

Walker directed the defense of the perimeter, while the valiant 

efforts of the American and South Korean defenders under 

scorching summer skies bought precious time to deploy additional American forces from Japan, as well as the 5th Regimental 

Combat Team from Hawaii, two battalions of the 29th Regimental 

Combat Team from Okinawa, and the 2d Infantry Division from 

Fort Lewis, Washington. Meanwhile, the president reinstituted 

draft calls and called up much of the Army Reserve and four 

National Guard divisions plus many nondivisional units. Many of 

these citizen-soldiers augmented Army forces in the continental 

United States or Europe. Army logisticians began to build up the 

theater support system, including port and rail operations and an 

equipment rebuild program in Japan. The United States built an 

international coalition that grew to more than twenty countries. 

In addition to air, naval, and medical forces, more than a dozen 

countries sent ground combat troops; Britain, Canada, and Turkey 

committed full brigades.

During the war against Japan, MacArthur had learned the 

value of bold amphibious maneuver. On 26 August, he activated 

the X Corps for just such a counterstroke. On 15 September, 

the X Corps launched Operation Chromite, landing at Inch’on 

(Incheon) with the 7th Infantry Division, augmented with 8,652 
52 

South Korean draftees, and the 1st Marine Division with one 

South Korean marine regiment. The Eighth Army attacked from 

the south and the North Korean forces reeled back. Within weeks, 

the United Nations forces liberated Seoul, then drove north of the 

38th Parallel to the Chinese border on the Yalu River. On 25–29 

October, the X Corps conducted another landing, this time in 

the northeast near Wonsan. By November, the Eighth Army was 

poised to drive the Communist regime into exile and complete the 

unification of the country. 

The unexpected United Nations advance alarmed both 

China and the Soviet Union and triggered a decisive intervention by those powers. Mao Tse-tung (Mao Zedong) sent a massive 

Chinese ground force into the fight and Stalin sent the Soviet Air 

Force to provide air cover. The Chinese attacked the Eighth Army 

on the night of 25 November. In the chaos of battle, the Republic of 

Korea’s II Corps collapsed in the center of the United Nations line. 

The 2d U.S. Infantry Division narrowly escaped total destruction, 

losing one-third of its men killed, wounded, or missing and most 

of its equipment. In the northeast, the 1st Marine Division and 

one regimental combat team of the 7th Infantry Division fought 

Unloading supplies and equipment at Inch’on, Korea, September 1950
53

out of entrapment around 

the Chosin (Changjin) 

Reservoir at a heavy cost. 

The Eighth Army withdrew 

to positions just north of 

Seoul. On 23 December, 

while visiting forward units, 

General Walker was killed 

when a South Korean truck 

struck his jeep. 

On 26 December, Lt. 

Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway 

took command of the Eighth 

Army. As long supply lines 

and relentless air attacks 

stalled the Chinese offensive, 

General Ridgway revitalized 

his demoralized command. 

He insisted on an aggressive 

spirit and the maximum use 

of firepower and relieved 

commanders who had 

become exhausted or ineffective. In January 1951, he began a cautious counterattack using 

“meat grinder” tactics to inflict maximum casualties.

Author T. R. Fehrenbach later summed up the paradox of the 

Korean War in the nuclear age: “Americans in 1950 rediscovered 

something that since Hiroshima they had forgotten: You may fly 

over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and 

wipe it clean of life—but if you desire to defend it, protect it, and 

keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way 

the Roman legions did, by putting your young men into the mud.”

As America’s young men fought in the mud and snow, 

President Truman and his advisers were determined not to 

allow the war to become World War III. This limited kind of war 

perplexed soldiers and the public alike and led to an unprecedented crisis in civil-military relations. Truman declined to ask 

Congress for a declaration of war, but instead called the intervention a “police action” by the international community to 

enforce collective security. Truman dispatched the Seventh Fleet 

to prevent the Chinese Communists from attacking Taiwan, but 

Soldiers of Company F, 9th Infantry, 

2d Infantry Division, climb “Bloody 

Ridge,” summer 1951.
54 

declined Chiang Kai-shek’s offer of Nationalist troops for South 

Korea. The Joint Chiefs of Staff rejected MacArthur’s requests to 

bomb enemy airfields in Manchuria. An all-out war with China, 

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Omar N. Bradley 

later told Congress, “would involve us in the wrong war, at the 

wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy.” 

While sending reinforcements to the Far East, Truman simultaneously built up forces in Europe, activating the Seventh Army in 

Germany. In March 1951, as United Nations forces liberated Seoul 

and approached the 38th Parallel, Truman pursued a cease-fire. 

MacArthur disagreed vehemently with these political restrictions and his opinions soon become public. “If we lose this war to 

Communism in Asia the fall of Europe is inevitable,” he wrote to a 

congressman. “There is no substitute for victory.” Truman viewed 

the world situation very differently and dismissed the 71-year-old 

theater commander, who had become the symbol of America’s 

past achievements in the Far East.

In April and May 1951, the Chinese launched major offensives, but this time the United Nations Command was ready with 

a powerful counterattack. Now, along with its allies, the United 

States had six Army divisions and one marine division backed by 

extensive artillery and air support. Ridgway followed MacArthur 

at FECOM, and Lt. Gen. James A. Van Fleet took over the Eighth 

Army after having led U.S. military assistance to Greece during 

its civil war. The United Nations Command defeated the Chinese 

offensives and in June stabilized the front near the 38th Parallel. 

Armistice talks began in July at the village of Panmunjom, but the 

fighting continued for two more years, as each side sought to gain 

ground to influence the negotiations.

This was a new kind of war in many ways. It was the first 

war conducted under the 1947 reorganization that had created the 

Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency, formalized the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and created an independent Air Force. 

Wartime pressures to keep units manned compelled the Army to 

implement Truman’s 1948 executive order ending segregation. By 

the armistice, the Army was fighting as a racially integrated force. 

During 1951, the Army, to keep its units up to strength, was forced 

to implement individual rotation. Military historian Col. S. L. A. 

Marshall complained that “to my mind it was ruinous to morale 

and to good administrative order with an armed force. Whatever it 

gave the soldier, it sacrificed most of the traditional values, such as 
55

earned promotion and citation, pride in unit and close comradeship, which are supposed to keep troops steadfast.” Concern over 

the fighting qualities of American soldiers rose even further 

after the war, when about thirty-eight hundred returned from 

prisoner-of-war camps, bringing shocking reports of indiscipline, 

poor morale, and even collaboration. The Defense Department 

published a Code of Conduct for the “American fighting man” in 

1955. The Communists were accused of “brainwashing” American 

soldiers, as sensationalized in a 1959 novel, The Manchurian 

Candidate, and the 1962 film of the same name.

In truth, the Army did not always fight well. Early in the war, 

some units and soldiers failed to successfully transition from a 

peacetime to a wartime mentality. Later in the war, leaders faced 

the difficult challenge of motivating their men in what was already 

being called the “forgotten war.” At other times, units fought with 

great skill, such as the defense of Chipyong-ni in February 1951 

by the 23d Infantry Regimental Combat Team reinforced by a 

French battalion. In the closing months of the war, the 7th Infantry 

Corporal Hiroshi N. Miyamura, by George Akimoto, 1977. Corporal Miyamura 

of the 7th Infantry, 3d Infantry Division, repels Chinese soldiers during a night 

attack, 24–25 April 1951. Miyamura was subsequently captured and did not learn 

he had been awarded the Medal of Honor until his release in August 1953.
56 

Division fought bravely to gain control of Pork Chop Hill, only to 

withdraw, rather than expend more lives unnecessarily before the 

armistice.

During the fighting, the U.S. Army rebuilt the Republic 

of Korea Army to over five hundred thousand strong. The U.S. 

military advisory group grew to about two thousand soldiers, 

who helped establish the Korean Army Training Center, reestablished the Korean Military Academy, and sent hundreds of Korean 

officers to military schools in the United States. Koreans provided 

direct support to U.S. forces with up to seventy-five thousand 

civilian laborers in the Korean Service Corps and about twentyseven thousand Korean soldiers in the Korean Augmentation to 

the United States Army (KATUSA) program.

U.S. Army strength in the Far East grew to 247,000 soldiers 

in Korea, 108,000 in Japan, and 12,000 in the Ryukyu Islands. 

The Army fought in Korea with the doctrine, organization, and 

equipment of World War II. Innovations included body armor 

to protect against shell fragments and small-arms fire and an 

improved medical system that featured rapid casualty evacuation 

by helicopter, mobile army surgical hospitals, and a network of 

general hospitals in Japan, Okinawa, Hawaii, and the United States. 

When the 2.35-inch M9 Bazooka antitank rocket proved ineffective against the T34 tank, the Ordnance Corps rapidly fielded the 

3.5-inch M20 Super Bazooka. The Army’s mixed experience with 

unconventional warfare using anti-Communist partisans in the 

north led it to organize the U.S. Army Special Forces in 1952.

The Army faced enormous humanitarian challenges in the 

Korean War. During the first year, intense fighting and bombing 

swept the peninsula from north to south and created hundreds 

of thousands of refugees, often sick, injured, or starving. Refugees 

were caught in the crossfire, while political killings were common 

on both sides. Seoul changed hands four times. Villages, roads, 

and bridges were destroyed. Civil affairs loomed larger than ever 

before in the eyes of Army commanders.

The war of movement also generated large numbers of 

Chinese and Korean prisoners of war. The Army established 

prisoner-of-war camps on two islands: Koje-do and Cheju-do. 

By November 1950, their numbers swelled to one hundred thirty 

thousand. American and South Korean military police found 

it difficult to control the prisoners who staged riots, targeted 

killings, and disturbances inside the camps. In one such incident 
57

on Koje Island, Communists captured the camp commandant, 

a U.S. Army brigadier general, and held him hostage for four 

days. The United Nations Command eventually committed two 

American regimental combat teams and several allied units to 

regain control. The prisoner-of-war issue became a major stumbling block in the armistice negotiations, as well as a source of 

friction between the United States and its South Korean ally. At 

the end of the war, the United Nations Command repatriated 

82,493 prisoners of war and the Communist forces returned 

13,444 United Nations personnel.

To fight the war, the Army helped create a joint theater intelligence system. Army intelligence professionals created collection 

and analytic capabilities against North Korea, China, and Russia, 

including signals intelligence, prisoner-of-war interrogations, 

and translations. The Korean War was a “major milestone in the 

development of Army Intelligence,” according to Army historian 

John Patrick Finnegan. “It revived intelligence capabilities which 

had grown moribund in the post–World War II retrenchment. It 

also witnessed the development of large-scale intelligence formations in the field.” The Army sent elements of the 525th Military 

Intelligence Service Group to Korea to support field commanders 

and established the 500th Military Intelligence Service Group in 

Japan. In 1952, the Army’s signals intelligence arm, the Army 

Security Agency, became part of the National Security Agency, 

with field stations in Japan, Okinawa, the Philippines, Hawaii, 

and Alaska. The new Central Intelligence Agency grew rapidly 

in the region.

The American public grew restless with the seemingly interminable stalemate. They followed the fighting in newspapers and 

by radio, especially if their sons were subject to the draft, but the 

news lacked the sweeping drama and bold victories of World 

War II. The 1952 presidential campaign was fought in part over 

Truman’s policies in Korea. Eisenhower ran with a promise to go 

to Korea and end the war. Combined with Joseph Stalin’s death in 

March 1953 and the general exhaustion of all parties to the conflict, 

a settlement was finally reached that July. American civilian and 

military leaders—other than the Army leadership—concluded 

that it was air power that had forced the Communists to sign an 

armistice, not ground troops. But Korea was essentially a ground 

war; the Army bore the brunt of American losses, including 27,731 

soldiers killed in action.
58 

The New Look in the Far East, 1953–1965

The Korean War occurred at a time of great turbulence in the 

region, as nationalist forces fought to overthrow western colonial 

power and postindependence governments sought to build new 

nations. The French fought one insurgency in Vietnam while the 

British fought another in Malaya. Many of the newly independent 

nations, including India and Indonesia, refused to align with either 

Cold War bloc. The United States built a framework for regional 

security that included mutual defense treaties with Australia and 

New Zealand, Japan, the Philippines, and the Republic of China 

(Taiwan), as well as South Korea. In 1954, the United States 

negotiated a Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty, although 

the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) never became 

an integrated military alliance like the North Atlantic Treaty 

Organization (NATO). After 1953, the Army poured resources 

into strengthening the armed forces of its regional partners: Japan, 

South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, and South Vietnam.

The war led the United States to dramatically increase its 

defense budgets, the size of its armed forces, and its research and 

development program. A consensus emerged among America’s 

leaders and the public that the “Free World” was engaged in a 

global struggle with the Soviet Union. However, despite the “hot 

war” in Korea, most Americans considered Europe to be the most 

important arena of this struggle. During the 1950s, most senior 

Army leaders were veterans of World War II in Europe, not the 

Pacific. Of the twelve Army chiefs of staff who served in the thirty 

years after 1945, only four had served in the Pacific theater during 

World War II. Popular memory of the Pacific War emphasized the 

Navy and Marine Corps, such as the first major film documentary of the television age, Victory at Sea; the Iwo Jima Memorial 

in Arlington, Virginia; and the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl 

Harbor. Nevertheless, the Korean War marked a rising generation 

of Army officers; of the next eleven Army chiefs of staff who served 

after 1953, all but two had served in Korea.

The Pacific Ocean became a Navy lake in another way, when 

the Defense Department inactivated FECOM in 1957, thus ending 

the division of the region between two commands. The Navy-led 

Pacific Command assumed responsibility for the entire region.

After the armistice, the Eighth Army was reduced to a single 

U.S. corps with two divisions standing watch along the demilita-
59

rized zone. The 1st Marine Division returned to the United States in 

1955, after which the Army provided the only remaining American 

ground troops on the peninsula. By then, only sixty thousand 

American soldiers remained, mostly draftees on one-year tours, 

living in primitive field conditions in small posts. To deter aggression and counter the vast manpower reserves of North Korea 

and China, in 1958 the Army began to deploy atomic-capable 

systems to South Korea. These included the Honest John rocket, 

Nike-Hercules air defense missiles, 280-mm. cannon, and 8-inch 

howitzers. A U.S. Army general served as commander in chief of 

the United Nations Command, with command authority over all 

American, South Korean, and other United Nations forces, as well 

as joint commander of all U.S. forces. “Convoluted might be the 

kindest term describing the chain of command in Korea” during 

this period, wrote Daniel P. Bolger.

Korea remained a devastated land. The Army established 

the Korean Civil Assistance Command and the Armed Forces 

Assistance to Korea program, using military equipment and 

materiel for civilian relief and rehabilitation. Economic misery 

was compounded by political instability. In 1960–1961, founding 

president Syngman Rhee was ousted and Maj. Gen. Park Chung 

Hee established a military dictatorship.

In Japan, the Korean War brought an end to the occupation. The United States pressed the new Japanese government to 

arm itself against the Soviet threat, despite the Japanese constitution that explicitly prohibited military forces. Occupation 

authorities ordered Japan to establish a paramilitary National 

Police Reserve, which the Army helped expand to one hundred 

ten thousand personnel. On 8 September 1951, the United 

States and Japan signed a peace treaty and a mutual security 

treaty that ended the occupation on 28 April 1952. The U.S. 

Army continued to help Japan build its “ground self-defense 

forces” to about two hundred fifty thousand. The economic 

stimulus of Korean War spending put Japan on the path of 

rapid economic growth.

After 1953, the United States maintained substantial air 

and naval forces in Japan, but removed all ground combat 

forces. The 3d Marine Division arrived in Japan from the 

United States in 1953 but moved to Okinawa in 1956. In 1957, 

the 1st Cavalry Division in Japan transferred its colors to the 

24th Infantry Division in Korea and was inactivated. When 
60 

FECOM was inactivated, the Air Force took command of all 

U.S. forces in Japan. U.S. Army, Japan, located at the former 

Imperial Japanese Army Academy at Camp Zama outside 

Tokyo, became the service component command. The Army 

maintained a large logistical, intelligence, and medical infrastructure in Japan, but by 1959, fewer than six thousand 

soldiers remained.

Okinawa became the keystone of U.S. air and land power 

in the region because of its strategic location and its legal 

status as an American protectorate. After the United States–

Japan peace treaty, the United States established the U.S. 

Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands. Army lieutenant 

generals continued to serve as military governor until 1957, 

and after that, as high commissioner. In November 1956, 

the IX Corps headquarters transferred from Korea to Camp 

Buckner, Okinawa, where in January 1957 it merged with U.S. 

Army Ryukyus Command. In 1953, the Army Security Agency 

consolidated all signals intelligence activities on Okinawa at 

Kobe, renamed Torii Station in 1958. In the late 1950s the 

United States began to deploy atomic-capable systems to 

Okinawa. In June 1957, the Army activated the 1st Special 

Forces Group on Okinawa to prepare for unconventional 

warfare missions in China, Korea, and Indochina.

The Okinawan population recovered only slowly from 

the ravages of war, and the U.S. military remained a powerful 

presence in people’s day-to-day lives. Between 1950 and 1957, 

the Army Corps of Engineers spent $300 million on the island 

to build military facilities, airfields, family housing, and infrastructure. In September 1956, the island was hit by the worst 

typhoon in living memory with winds up to 150 miles per 

hour. About 2,650 homes were completely destroyed and more 

than 4,000 severely damaged. The Army provided emergency 

relief and helped rebuild damaged infrastructure.

The United States had ended security assistance to 

Chinese Nationalist forces in late 1948, but with the outbreak 

of war in Korea, President Truman committed the United 

States to the defense of Taiwan. In May 1951, the United States 

established a military assistance advisory group. In 1954, the 

two Chinas seemed on the brink of war. The United States and 

the Republic of China signed a mutual defense treaty and the 

United States established the United States Taiwan Defense 
61

Command, headed by an American vice admiral. The Army 

did not station any ground combat forces on Taiwan, but the 

Army Security Agency established a field station near Taipei.

In the Philippines, the center of America’s pre-1941 regional 

defense strategy, the new government faced opposition from the 

Hukbalahaps, a Marxist-led peasant guerrilla army in central 

Luzon. In 1950, the United States expanded the Joint United States 

Military Assistance Group and assisted the government with a 

combination of military, economic, and psychological warfare 

measures. The Philippine government defeated the rebellion by 

1955, much as the U.S. Army had defeated the Philippine guerrillas half a century earlier, by a mix of punitive and conciliatory 

measures. This success encouraged American military leaders 

to believe that success in counterinsurgency was possible, given 

the right strategy, a competent local government, and a limited 

commitment of resources.

In Indochina, where the French Army had been fighting 

since 1946 for control against Communist-led nationalists, 

the Viet Minh, the United States agreed to provide military 

assistance and in September 1950 established a military assistance advisory group in Saigon. In 1953, the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff sent the commander of U.S. Army, Pacific, Lt. Gen. John 

W. O’Daniel, on a military mission to Indochina, and he later 

assumed command of the advisory group. Late in 1953, the 

Viet Minh surrounded more than ten thousand French troops 

at Dien Bien Phu. The United States considered massive air 

strikes to break the siege, but General Ridgway, now the Army 

chief of staff, advised against relying on air power alone. Based 

on his experiences in Korea, he decried “the old delusive idea 

. . . that we could do things the cheap and easy way.” President 

Dwight D. Eisenhower agreed and major U.S. assistance was 

withheld. On 7 May 1954, the French troops at Dien Bien Phu 

surrendered and France agreed to withdraw from Indochina. 

The United States took on responsibility to aid the new government of the Republic of Vietnam, established a training mission 

for the South Vietnamese Army, and began sending Vietnamese 

officers to military schools in the United States. By the late 

1950s, the Army had over five hundred advisers stationed in 

that new country.

After 1953, Hawaii remained as important as ever to 

America’s defense posture in the Pacific. In 1954, the 25th 
62 

Infantry Division moved from Korea to Schofield Barracks, 

and over the next several years, the Army developed the 

Pōhakuloa Training Area on the Island of Hawaii with 108,863 

acres and built sixteen hundred family housing units on Oahu. 

After FECOM was inactivated, U.S. Army, Pacific, at Fort 

Shafter was elevated to the four-star level and became the 

service component command for all Army forces in the AsiaPacific region.

Alaska remained vital, especially for North American air 

defense. The Army reinforced its defenses in 1951 with a regimental 

combat team mobilized from the South Dakota National Guard. 

The Army operated the Northern Warfare Training Center and in 

1963 activated the 171st Infantry Brigade at Fort Wainwright and 

the 172d Infantry Brigade at Fort Richardson.

By 1959, when Congress approved statehood for Hawaii and 

Alaska, long-range aviation was transforming the strategic geography of the Asia-Pacific region. The Army was transforming itself 

in organization, doctrine, and equipment. The Army prepared to 

fight on an atomic battlefield, ready to deliver battlefield atomic 

weapons, if needed. It broke up its traditional regiments to form 

“pentomic” battle groups and began fielding a new generation of 

weapons systems in Hawaii and Korea, such as the M60 battle 

tank, M113 armored personnel carrier, UH–1 helicopter, and the 

7.62-mm. M14 rifle. Rapidly advancing missile technology and the 

growing threat of long-range Soviet bombers caused the Army to 

turn to atomic-capable air defense systems. The Army deployed 

sophisticated air defense missile systems in Korea, Japan, Okinawa, 

and Hawaii. In 1958–1959, the Army Corps of Engineers built 

Nike-Hercules sites on Oahu, Okinawa, and Taiwan. In Hawaii, 

the Army National Guard assumed the antiaircraft mission.

Soldiers also supported nuclear weapons testing in the 

Marshall Islands and soon began testing missile defense technologies. In October 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the 

first artificial satellite. Two years later, the U.S. Army Rocket and 

Guided Missile Agency selected Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall 

Islands for a ballistic missile defense test site. The Army Corps of 

Engineers built a missile testing range on the remote atoll, and on 

12 December 1962, a Nike-Zeus missile from Kwajalein successfully intercepted an intercontinental ballistic missile nose cone 

launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. Nuclear 

weapons testing ended at the Pacific Proving Grounds when 
63

the United States signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963, but 

missile tests continued.

The John F. Kennedy administration came into office 

proclaiming a strategy of “flexible response,” which gave greater 

weight to the Army and especially the Special Forces. At the same 

time, the Soviet Union declared support for “wars of national 

liberation.” Yet the Korean War, wrote T. R. Fehrenbach in 1963, 

had “reaffirmed in American minds the distaste for land warfare 

on the continent of Asia.” The United States responded to instability in Southeast Asia by deploying forces to Thailand, Laos, and 

South Vietnam. In 1961, the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) 

deployed mobile training teams to Laos in Operation White Star. 

In May 1962, the United States deployed a battle group from the 25th 

Infantry Division to Thailand, together with a Marine brigade, and 

established the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Thailand. In 

1963, the Army activated the 173d Airborne Brigade on Okinawa 

as the quick-reaction force for Pacific Command and established a 

forward floating depot at Subic Bay in the Philippines with equipment for three battle groups. In 1964, the 25th Infantry Division 

tested the pre-positioning concept by sending units to a training 

exercise in Okinawa to link up with this materiel. Army divisions in Korea and Hawaii transformed under the Reorganization 

Objective Army Division (ROAD) design, which had a universal 

division structure with a variable number of maneuver brigades 

and combat battalions for different contingencies.

Vietnam War, 1965–1973

By the early 1960s, the Republic of Vietnam was losing the battle 

against the Communist-led Viet Cong. U.S. Army personnel strength 

in South Vietnam increased to eleven thousand, and the Army 

deployed helicopters for battlefield mobility. In February 1962, Pacific 

Command established the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam 

(MACV), under General Paul D. Harkins, deputy commander of U.S. 

Army, Pacific. An adviser to a South Vietnamese infantry division, 

Lt. Col. John Paul Vann, admitted to reporters: “They’re not the 

world’s greatest fighters, . . . but they’re good people, and they can win 

a war if someone shows them how.” Special Forces soldiers trained 

and equipped Civilian Irregular Defense Group forces in the Central 

Highlands. Yet bad news continued to flow from the battlefields. In 

November 1963, the South Vietnamese Army overthrew the Saigon 
Tonle Sap

GULF

O F

T O NKIN

GULF

O F

T HAIL A N D

SOUT H

CHIN A

S E A

Red R

Black R

Me kong R

Mekong R

Mekong R Ia Drang R

DEMARCATION LINE

HAINAN

Dao Phu Quoc

Con Son

Dien Bien Phu

Vinh

Quang Tri

Hue

Da Nang

Pleiku

My Lai

Qui Nhon

Cam Ranh Loc Ninh

Tay Ninh

Can Tho

Bien Hoa

Long Binh

Khe Sanh

VIENTIANE

PHNOM PENH

SAIGON

BANGKOK

HANOI

CHINA

NORT H

V I E T N A M

CHIN A

CHINA

L A O S

THAILAN D

CAMBODIA

SOUTH

V I E T N A M

BURM A

SOUTHEAST ASIA

1965–1973

0 150

Miles

Map 4
65

regime, and after almost a decade of nation building the American 

project in South Vietnam teetered on the brink of failure. (Map 4)

In May 1964, MACV became a subunified command under 

General William C. Westmoreland, who had commanded the 187th 

Regimental Combat Team in Korea. MACV activated a joint unconventional warfare task force, the highly classified Studies and Observations 

Group (MACV-SOG), with about two thousand personnel, and the 

Army deployed the 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) from Fort 

Bragg, North Carolina. The Navy began an aggressive patrolling 

program against North Vietnam, and in August 1964 U.S. and North 

Vietnamese naval vessels clashed in the Gulf of Tonkin. In response, 

the U.S. Congress authorized President Lyndon B. Johnson “to take all 

necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the 

United States and to prevent further aggression,” and to assist South 

Vietnam “in defense of its freedom.” In February 1965, the Air Force 

and Navy began a sustained bombing campaign to interdict soldiers 

and materiel sent from the north. In March, President Johnson sent 

ground combat units into South Vietnam to defend air bases and 

stabilize the situation. The 9th Marines deployed from Okinawa and 

the Philippines to defend the airfield at Da Nang. The 173d Airborne 

Brigade deployed from Okinawa to secure an air base at Bien Hoa 

northeast of Saigon, followed by the 2d Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, 

from Fort Riley, Kansas; the 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, from 

Fort Campbell, Kentucky; and the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) 

from Fort Benning, Georgia. 

The first major clash between American and North Vietnamese 

units came in November 1965, when a brigade of the 1st Cavalry 

Division air-assaulted into the Central Highlands into the midst of 

three regiments of the People’s Army of Vietnam. When the enemy 

attacked the 1st and 2d Battalions, 7th Cavalry, the Americans 

fought back with everything they had but took heavy casualties. The 

battle demonstrated the airmobile concept, but more importantly 

the valor and skill of the American soldier.

During 1965 and 1966, the Army poured combat and 

support units into South Vietnam. The Marine Corps deployed 

the III Marine Amphibious Force to the northern provinces 

with two Marine divisions. In December 1965, the 25th Infantry 

Division began to deploy from Hawaii. In September 1966, 

the 11th Armored Cavalry arrived and was equipped with the 

pre-positioned materiel stored afloat in the Philippines. In 

July 1965, the Army established U.S. Army, Vietnam, and the 
66 

1st Logistical Command to support the Army, other services, 

and allied forces throughout the country. U.S. Army Engineer 

Command, Vietnam, supervised thousands of soldiers, civilians, 

and contractors to create the infrastructure to support a massive 

effort in the undeveloped country. 

The war was devastating to the Vietnamese people, millions 

of whom became refugees. American soldiers often scorned 

Vietnamese as “gooks,” but also conducted extensive humanitarian 

assistance and civic action programs to win “hearts and minds” 

and encourage support for the Saigon regime. As had happened 

in Korea, the internecine guerrilla war and the presence of foreign 

soldiers in large numbers inevitably distorted Vietnam’s society, 

culture, and economy.

The U.S. Army in Vietnam was led by senior officers and 

noncommissioned officers, many of whom were Korean War 

veterans. Most junior officers were commissioned through the 

Reserve Officers’ Training Corps or Officer Candidate School. 

To train junior noncommissioned officers, the Army established 

twelve-week noncommissioned officer candidate schools. Despite 

rising manpower requirements, President Johnson increased 

draft calls rather than call up the National Guard or Reserves. 

As in Korea, the Army used individual replacements to keep 

units up to strength, rather than rotating units, and officers 

rotated to noncombat assignments after six months. As a result, 

wrote historian Ronald H. Spector, “the Army was faced with the 

problem of endemic personnel turbulence occasioned by the very 

high turnover rates made necessary by the twelve-month tour.”

The American soldier’s experience in Vietnam varied greatly 

depending on time and place. Most served on large firebases 

in support functions. Soldiers absorbed a torrent of new technology during the war, including helicopters, armored personnel 

carriers, body armor, tactical and strategic communications, 

and automatic data processing systems. Soldiers in combat units 

faced a tenacious foe in an unforgiving environment. Novelist 

Tim O’Brien, himself a Vietnam veteran, has one character 

express irritation when people said “how special Nam is, how it’s 

a big aberration in the history of American wars—how for the 

soldier it’s somehow different from Korea or World War Two. 

Follow me? I’m saying that the feel of war is the same in Nam 

or Okinawa—the emotions are the same, the same fundamental 

stuff is seen and remembered.” 
67

The United States brought in allies through the Free World 

Assistance Program, informally known as Many Flags. Several key 

regional allies joined in the fight. The Republic of Korea sent two 

infantry divisions and one marine brigade, which served under 

independent command. Thailand sent a division. Australia sent a 

brigade-size task force. New Zealand sent two rifle companies and 

a 105-mm. howitzer battery. The Philippines sent a civic action 

group of engineers and medical personnel.

While the United States was engaged in Vietnam, instability 

continued to threaten the rest of the region. In Korea, the I Corps 

included the 7th Infantry Division and the 2d Infantry Division 

(reflagged from the 1st Cavalry Division in 1965). North Korean 

leader Kim Il Sung launched commando raids and probing 

attacks across the Demilitarized Zone, captured the USS Pueblo, 

an unarmed U.S. Navy intelligence-collection vessel off its coast, 

and shot down a U.S. Navy EC–121 intelligence-collection aircraft 

over international waters. U.S. and South Korean soldiers fought 

a low-intensity conflict along the Demilitarized Zone. American 

units suffered from personnel shortages, a lack of funding, and 

sagging morale.

Soldiers of the 1st Squadron, 9th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), 

air assault into a hilltop position in Quang Ngai Province, April 1967.
68 

Elsewhere in the region, the United States stepped up 

military assistance. In the Philippines, two armed opposition 

groups developed in the late 1960s, the Maoist New People’s 

Army and the Moro National Liberation Front in the Muslim 

south. After a military regime in Indonesia destroyed the 

Communist Party in 1965–1966, the United States resumed 

military-to-military contacts, and the 1st Special Forces Group 

began teaching the Indonesian Army how to conduct civic 

action programs.

In South Vietnam, American and South Vietnamese forces 

took the offensive by the fall of 1966. Allied forces simultaneously fought a guerrilla war and a big unit war. Like the Korean 

War, the Vietnam War was not fought for terrain or military 

victory, but for limited political objectives. U.S. officials ramped 

up the “other war,” pulling together all support to pacification 

in a unique organization, Civil Operations and Revolutionary 

Development Support (CORDS), under the direction of a civilian 

MACV deputy commander. 

By early 1968, American combat involvement had already 

lasted as long as the Korean War, with no end in sight. American 

civilian and military leaders remained publicly optimistic about 

the war’s progress, but privately expressed growing concerns. In 

Street Scene, by Kenneth J. Scowcroft, 1967
69

January 1968, with U.S. troop strength over half a million, intelligence indicators pointed towards a Communist offensive. The 

commander of II Field Force in Long Binh, Lt. Gen. Frederick C. 

Weyand, responded by repositioning his forces to better protect 

Saigon. On 30 January 1968, the Communist offensive began during 

the Tet new year’s holiday truce. American and South Vietnamese 

forces recovered from their initial surprise and over several weeks 

dealt a crushing defeat to the attackers, killing an estimated fiftyeight thousand and destroying the local Viet Cong infrastructure. 

The U.S. Army lost almost four thousand killed in action and the 

South Vietnamese Army almost five thousand. President Johnson 

finally authorized a limited mobilization of the reserve components, 

including the 29th Infantry Brigade (Hawaii Army National Guard) 

and 100th Battalion, 442d Infantry (Army Reserve), many of whose 

soldiers served in Vietnam as individual replacements.

American search-and-destroy tactics, combined with heavy 

fire power, raised dilemmas of waging war with civilians nearby, 

and on occasion American soldiers committed atrocities. The 

most notorious such incident occurred on 16 March 1968, when 

a platoon from the 11th Infantry Brigade on a search-and-destroy 

mission wantonly killed as many as five hundred villagers at My Lai. 

When the incident came to light, the Army Criminal Investigation 

Division investigated and the Army chief of staff convened a threestar board of inquiry. The platoon leader, 1st Lt. William L. Calley 

Jr., was convicted by court-martial and sentenced to life in prison. 

He served three years.

Although the Tet offensive was an allied battlefield victory, it 

caused the American people to rethink their open-ended support 

for the war. President Johnson announced he would not run for 

reelection, halted the bombing of the north, and initiated peace 

talks with the North Vietnamese. Westmoreland returned to the 

United States to become Army chief of staff. His replacement, 

General Creighton W. Abrams, had spent the previous year working 

to build the South Vietnamese Army. That same year, Americans 

had other concerns beyond Vietnam. In April 1968, American 

cities erupted in anger after the assassination of civil rights leader 

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The 1968 presidential campaign was 

tumultuous. The Republican candidate, Richard M. Nixon, hinted 

that he had a plan to end the war, just as President Eisenhower had 

promised to end the Korean War, and upon taking office he sought 

“peace with honor.”
70 

Nevertheless the war continued, as did the interminable 

peace talks in Paris. After Tet, Abrams placed increased emphasis 

on Vietnamization and pacification. By 1970, the United States 

assigned more than fourteen thousand advisers, 90 percent of 

whom were provided by the Army, to South Vietnamese units. In 

April 1969, at the peak of its involvement, the United States had 

some 543,000 military personnel in Vietnam, with many thousands more stationed throughout the region in Thailand, Okinawa, 

Japan, and Hawaii. President Nixon announced a phased withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam and the “Guam Doctrine,” by 

which the United States would rely on South Vietnamese forces, 

and regional partners more broadly, to bear the burden of security 

with only indirect American support. He announced that America 

would no longer prepare to fight two wars simultaneously, but only 

one-and-a-half wars. By implication, the half war would be in Asia. 

Despite Nixon’s efforts, public support in America continued 

to erode and the antiwar movement gathered strength. On 27 June 

1969, Life Magazine shocked the nation by publishing the photographs of one week’s toll, the pictures of 242 young Americans 

killed from 28 May to 3 June 1969. Under pressure of a lengthy 

American officers coach their South Vietnamese counterparts during a 

combat operation, 1969–1970.
71

and unpopular war, elements of the draftee Army slid into insubordination, racial tension, and drug abuse. Professional officers 

and noncommissioned officers faced the strain of multiple combat 

tours. By early 1970, senior Army leaders expressed concern that 

the prospect of sending officers back for a third one-year tour was 

causing too many to resign their commissions.

Nixon sought to regain the initiative with bold action. In 

the spring of 1970, he sent the U.S. Army and South Vietnamese 

Army across the border into Cambodia to disrupt Communist 

forces in what had been an off-limits sanctuary, but U.S. Army 

involvement in combat operations was drawing down. The 101st 

Airborne Division began the last major U.S. combat operation on 

5 September 1970. In February 1971, the division also supported 

the South Vietnamese Operation Lam Son 719 across the border 

into Laos with helicopter and artillery support, but no ground 

troops or advisers.

In the spring of 1971, the III Marine Amphibious Force left 

for Okinawa with the last Marine ground combat units. The 101st 

Airborne Division remained until January 1972. In the spring of 

1972, the North Vietnamese launched a conventional invasion of 

the south, but the South Vietnamese, with the support of U.S. air 

power and logistical support, seemed able to defend themselves. 

That June, the Army withdrew its last two infantry brigades, the 3d 

Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, and the 196th Infantry Brigade. By 

30 November 1972, only 16,100 Army personnel remained. After 

intense U.S. bombing raids against the north in December 1972, an 

armistice was signed in Paris that took effect on 28 January 1973 

and allowed the Army to complete its withdrawal, leaving only 

a small defense attaché office in Saigon. The Army had suffered 

over thirty thousand killed in action. Many were laid to rest in the 

Punchbowl in Hawaii alongside casualties of World War II and the 

Korean War.

73

After Vietnam, 1973 to Present

Restoring Confidence, 1973–1991

The South Vietnamese government endured for two years 

after the U.S. Army departed, but when the North attacked again 

in April 1975, the war-weary Congress failed to provide any more 

support. The U.S. Congress had ended the draft, restricted presidential war-making powers, and slashed aid to South Vietnam. 

President Nixon resigned in August 1974 during the Watergate 

scandal, further weakening America’s commitment to enforcing 

the Paris Peace Accords. America’s withdrawal from Vietnam 

was part of a general American drawdown in the region. Nixon 

withdrew the I Corps and the 7th Infantry Division from Korea 

in 1971 and in 1972 inactivated the 171st Infantry Brigade at Fort 

Wainwright, Alaska. The United States returned Okinawa to Japan 

in 1972. Japan allowed the United States to continue to station 

forces on Okinawa, but the United States had to withdraw all 

nuclear weapons. In 1974, the Army inactivated U.S. Army, Pacific. 

The Eighth Army in Korea and U.S. Army, Japan, became independent major commands that reported directly to Headquarters, 

Department of the Army.

In early 1975, North Vietnam launched a final offensive that 

more resembled the North Korean attack on South Korea in 1950 

than the guerrilla tactics of the previous twenty years. Congress 
74 

would approve the use of U.S. troops only for the evacuation of 

U.S. citizens. “The Americans could provide money and weapons,” 

concluded historian George C. Herring, “but they could not 

furnish the ingredients necessary for political stability and military 

success.” With little American support, the South Vietnamese 

Army collapsed and Saigon fell on 1 May 1975. In Cambodia, 

the Khmer Rouge established a violent dictatorship until a 

Vietnamese invasion drove them from power in 1979. Thailand 

stood alone as a bulwark against communism in Southeast Asia 

but ordered all American forces to withdraw and established full 

diplomatic relations with Hanoi. The Army sent two thousand 

support troops to Guam, where they set up a tent city for more 

than fifty thousand Indochinese refugees, eventually helping 

process over one hundred twelve thousand. In the United States, 

the Army established refugee centers at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, 

and Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, which together housed 

over seventy-two thousand.

The strategic geography of the Asia-Pacific region was 

shifting. Once the arena of great-power rivalry, now no external 

power could exercise much influence. Britain had announced in 

1968 that it would withdraw its remaining troops from “east of 

Suez,” primarily Malaysia and Singapore, except for a garrison in 

Hong Kong. France retained only token forces in the South Pacific. 

SEATO dissolved in 1977, leaving in its place the Association of 

Southeast Asian Nations, which excluded the United States and 

was not a collective security organization.

China increased its influence in the region. A border conflict 

with the Soviet Union in 1969 made it impossible to speak any 

longer of a monolithic Communist threat. President Nixon 

began a rapprochement in 1971 that reduced the risk of military 

confrontation. When Deng Xiaoping came to power in 1977, he 

put an end to the Cultural Revolution and announced a major 

reform program known as the Four Modernizations that put 

China on a path towards rapid economic growth. China seemed 

to focus on its domestic agenda, but attacked its former ally, 

Vietnam, in 1979 and remained a strategic threat with a small 

nuclear arsenal and ballistic missiles that could reach Hawaii and 

the West Coast. In 1979, the United States switched its diplomatic recognition to the People’s Republic of China and ended 

military assistance to Taiwan. Although sales of military supplies 

and equipment to Taiwan continued, the United States Taiwan 
75

Defense Command was inactivated and the mutual defense 

treaty was terminated.

Some countries experienced unprecedented growth. Japan, 

South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan became known as the Four 

Tigers for their rapid, export-driven industrial growth. Other 

countries, many of them nondemocratic and unstable—such as 

China, Indonesia, Cambodia, and Malaysia—recovered slowly 

from internal unrest or civil wars. In 1986, the “People Power” 

movement overthrew an authoritarian regime in the Philippines, 

but the Maoist New People’s Army remained active and on 21 

April 1989 assassinated U.S. Army Col. James N. Rowe, who was 

assigned to the Joint U.S. Military Advisory Group.

The Vietnam War had a lasting effect on the Army as an 

institution. All its senior leaders had served in Vietnam, including 

every Army chief of staff until 2003. The war’s bitter end was a 

painful personal loss for all the soldiers who had served there. 

The Army turned away to rebuild Seventh Army in Europe while 

still preparing for limited contingencies in Southwest Asia. Army 

leaders reoriented doctrine and training towards high-intensity 

conventional operations in Central Europe, as had occurred during 

the October 1973 war in the Middle East. In 1976, U.S. Army 

Training and Doctrine Command published a new Field Manual 

100–5, Operations, that was explicitly focused on defending 

Central Europe against the superior numbers of the Warsaw Pact. 

“The part of the Army configured for the main battle of Central 

Europe,” wrote RAND analyst Carl H. Builder in 1989, “is, I think, 

the mainstream Army—that is its first love and priority.”

As the Army became an all-volunteer force, Congress 

increased military pay and benefits and funded quality-of-life 

improvements, but it still faced difficulties in recruiting and a 

decline in the overall quality of recruits. It opened more Army 

specialties to women and sent more of them overseas. The number 

of female soldiers stationed in Korea rose from 20 in 1972 to 1,593 

in 1978.

Under the new Total Force policy, the Army assigned National 

Guard brigades to active divisions. The 25th Infantry Division was 

reactivated in 1972 at Schofield Barracks with only two active 

brigades. The 29th Infantry Brigade of the Hawaii Army National 

Guard was assigned as its “round-out” brigade. The Army began 

the CAPSTONE program in 1979 to align other reserve component units with their wartime chain of command, and in 1981 
76 

the Army began using reserve component soldiers on short tours 

under the Overseas Deployment Training Program.

The Korean Peninsula remained volatile as the U.S. Army 

struggled to rebuild its units there. Most soldiers served unaccompanied one-year tours and were housed in the austere conditions 

of a combat zone. Lt. Col. Colin L. Powell, who served two tours in 

Vietnam, took command of an infantry battalion in Korea in 1973 

and faced daunting challenges of indiscipline, drug abuse, and 

racial tension. Off-base, soldiers were seen as a source of crimes 

such as drug trafficking and prostitution.

Nevertheless, the Army strengthened its leadership and 

upgraded its capabilities on the peninsula. The 2d Infantry Division 

deployed advanced weapons systems that the South Korean Army 

did not have, such as the TOW antitank missile, AH–1 Cobra 

attack helicopter, and in the mid-1980s, the AH–64 Apache attack 

helicopter. In the mid-1970s, the Army replaced Honest John and 

Sergeant missiles with dual-capable Lance missiles with a range of 

up to seventy-eight miles. Army logisticians with the 19th Support 

Command created the Army Pre-positioned Stock-4 at Camp 

Carroll with equipment for an armored brigade.

Pacific Command maintained Operation Plan 5027 for the 

defense of Korea, which called for massive reinforcement from 

the United States. In 1976, the United States and South Korea 

began Exercise Team Spirit to show their resolve. That same year, 

North Korean guards unexpectedly attacked a U.S. Army party 

trimming a tree in the Joint Security Area at Panmunjom, killing 

a U.S. captain and wounding several other U.S. and South Korean 

personnel. The United States and South Korea responded with 

Operation Paul Bunyan, a powerful show of force.

Despite such incidents, President Jimmy Carter announced 

a total withdrawal of U.S. forces in 1977. The chief of staff of U.S. 

Forces, Korea, Maj. Gen. John K. Singlaub, was quoted in the 

Washington Post as saying: “If U.S. ground troops are withdrawn 

on the schedule suggested, it will lead to war.” Carter ordered his 

relief, but apparently the controversy had an effect. The president 

halted the withdrawal before all U.S. forces were removed. The 2d 

Infantry Division remained as a tripwire force.

In 1978, the United States and Republic of Korea established 

the binational Combined Forces Command that was distinct 

from United Nations Command and did not fall under U.S. 

Pacific Command. United States Forces Korea and Eighth Army 
77

continued much as before. In 1979, a military coup overthrew the 

South Korean government, and the next year the new government 

violently suppressed an uprising in Kwangju, killing hundreds of 

protesters. Many Koreans were angered at the United States for 

tacitly condoning the killings because the Korean forces involved 

were assumed to have been under the control of Combined 

Forces Command. Yet the contrast between the north and south 

was still clear. While Seoul prepared to host the 1988 Summer 

Olympic Games, North Korea became an active state sponsor of 

terrorism. It attempted to assassinate the South Korean president 

and his entire cabinet while on a state visit to Burma (the president 

escaped, but the blast killed four cabinet officers and two senior 

presidential advisers), and in 1987 it planted a bomb on a Korean 

Airlines flight, killing 115.

The United States was also concerned that the Soviet Union 

would take advantage of its withdrawal from Asia. In 1979, the 

Soviet navy established a base in Vietnam at the former American 

military port of Cam Ranh Bay with about twenty-five ships and 

nearly forty aircraft. In Northeast Asia opposing forces remained 

on a hair trigger. U.S. forces remained nuclear-capable throughout 

this period as a deterrent against other regional nuclear powers. 

American leaders still perceived nuclear weapons to have tactical 

utility for countering massed land formations, for air defense, and 

for striking command and control facilities. When a commercial 

airliner flying from Anchorage to Seoul strayed over the Kamchatka 

Peninsula on 1 September 1983, the Soviet air defenses, thinking 

it was an American reconnaissance aircraft, destroyed it, killing all 

269 passengers and crew, including U.S. Congressman Lawrence P. 

McDonald (D-Georgia). Cold War tensions rose to a fever pitch, 

but tensions eased in 1986 when a new Soviet leader, Mikhail 

S. Gorbachev, traveled to Vladivostok to announce a new era of 

Soviet engagement with the Asia-Pacific region.

The United States took a renewed interest in South Asia 

and the Indian Ocean after the India-Pakistan war of 1971. On 

1 January 1972, the secretary of defense assigned to Pacific 

Command responsibility for the countries of southern Asia and 

much of the Indian Ocean, and the U.S. Navy built an airfield and 

communications station on the remote British territory of Diego 

Garcia. In 1980, the Army stationed the Army Pre-positioned 

Stock-3 afloat there with equipment for an armored brigade.
78 

The Army continued to rebuild and modernize in the region 

by engaging in a number of construction and facilities improvement 

programs. From 1975 to 1979, the Army Corps of Engineers oversaw 

construction of a $113 million, 2,600-unit joint-service housing 

project on Oahu in the former ammunition storage depot in the 

Aliamanu Crater, which one historian has called “the largest family 

housing development ever attempted by the Corps of Engineers.” In 

1976, in order to tell the story of the Army in Hawaii and the AsiaPacific, U.S. Army Support Command, Hawaii, opened the U.S. 

Army Museum of Hawaii in a former coast artillery emplacement 

at Fort DeRussy. In Japan, the Japanese government began the Japan 

Facilities Improvement Program in 1979 for military construction, 

especially family housing and community support facilities. Also 

in 1979, the Army activated U.S. Army Western Command at Fort 

Shafter. In 1980, Army signals intelligence activities moved into a 

renovated World War II–era underground facility at Wheeler Field, 

which became Field Station Kunia. 

The Army in the Asia-Pacific region benefited from President 

Ronald W. Reagan’s defense buildup in the early 1980s. The secretary of defense, Caspar W. Weinberger, had served as a 41st Infantry 

Division platoon leader on New Guinea in 1943. Weinberger later 

wrote that he was “proud to have served in the infantry, and even 

given the vastly different situation of the 1980s, I knew the infantry 

was and is still the infantry. Without it and its ability to take and 

hold enemy ground, we would never be able to win wars.” In 1985, 

the 25th Infantry Division expanded to include a third active 

infantry brigade and transformed into a light infantry division.

Alaska grew in importance with the discovery of oil at Prudhoe 

Bay in 1968 and the completion of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline in 

1977. The Army activated the 6th Infantry Division (Light) at Fort 

Richardson in 1986, absorbing the 172d Infantry Brigade and 

adding a second active brigade. The 81st Infantry Brigade of the 

Washington Army National Guard became its round-out brigade. 

The Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 expanded the importance 

of joint operations and the authority of combatant commanders, 

such as Pacific Command. The Army increasingly supported joint 

and special operations activities. Pacific Command established 

Special Operations Command Pacific in 1983 at Camp H. M. 

Smith, and in 1984 the Army reactivated the 1st Special Forces 

Group (Airborne), with one battalion at Torii Station, Okinawa, 

and two at Fort Lewis, Washington.
79

These new capabilities were well suited to the new emphasis 

on military-to-military engagement. Western Command began 

the Expanded Relations Program in 1978 with annual Pacific 

Armies Management Seminars and a slate of bilateral training 

exercises. In the early 1980s, the United States began a series of 

bilateral exercises with several countries, such as Exercise Cobra 

Gold with Thailand and Exercise Yama Sakura with Japan.

After the Cold War, 1991–2001

In Europe, 1989 brought dramatic changes; in the AsiaPacific region, the end of the Cold War was less notable. China’s 

rulers suppressed prodemocracy demonstrators in Tiananmen 

Square in June 1989. Longer-term trends in the region ultimately had greater impact than the end of the global superpower confrontation. Democracy blossomed in South Korea, 

Taiwan, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Standards of living rose 

and dozens of cities swelled into enormous urban conglomeraMen of the 1st Battalion, 23d Infantry, 3d Brigade, 2d Infantry Division, with 

M2A1 Bradley fighting vehicles and M1A1 Abrams tanks in the Twin Bridges 

Maneuver Area, South Korea, November 1998. The soldiers deployed from Fort 

Lewis, Washington, for Exercise Foal Eagle.
80 

tions, including several where the U.S. Army had fought or been 

stationed in years past: Shanghai, Beijing, Tokyo, Seoul, Jakarta, 

and Manila. The British colony of Hong Kong peacefully reverted 

to China in 1997. Economies steadily became more connected 

to the global economy, although the downside of this became 

evident when the region plunged into a severe financial crisis in 

1997–1998. The United States became ever more dependent on 

raw materials and finished products from the region, especially 

from China. Countries in the region adopted the Internet with 

astonishing speed. Russia withdrew from the region to concentrate on its internal problems and the Russian Navy left Cam 

Ranh Bay. The wars of the past century seemed a distant memory, 

with one exception.

On the Korean Peninsula, the Cold War continued as North 

Korea slid into prolonged crisis. China and Russia reduced the aid 

that had long propped up the regime. Kim Il Sung died in 1994 

and the country suffered flooding and a severe famine. Yet, North 

Korea continued to be a formidable military threat. In 1998, it 

fired a ballistic missile over Japanese territory and developed the 

capability to span the Pacific as far as America’s West Coast. South 

Korea and the United States kept their military forces in readiness 

but also sought to reduce tensions. In 1991, President George H. 

W. Bush announced the withdrawal of all nuclear weapons from 

the region. The Army also withdrew its stocks of chemical weapons 

and destroyed them in the Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal 

System from 1990 to 2000. The 2d Infantry Division inactivated its 

third brigade in 1992. South Korea and the United States suspended 

Exercise Team Spirit in 1993 and the U.S. Army pulled back from 

the Demilitarized Zone. At the same time, to increase its combat 

power on the peninsula, the Army deployed the 6th Cavalry Brigade 

with attack helicopters and sent Patriot surface-to-air missiles. 

Meanwhile, the United States had shifted its attention to 

Southwest Asia. The hundred-hour victory over Iraq in the final 

ground phase in Operation Desert Storm in 1991 was a far cry 

from the three years of the Korean War or the ten years of the 

Vietnam War. President Bush boasted: “By God, we’ve kicked the 

Vietnam syndrome once and for all.” By that time, the Army had 

already begun drawing on its forces in the Asia-Pacific region 

for contingencies elsewhere. The 7th Infantry Division (Light) 

at Fort Ord, California, long apportioned to the Korean contingency, was sent to Panama in December 1989. In early 1995, the 
81

25th Infantry Division (Light) at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, 

deployed to Haiti for peacekeeping duties.

Even with the victory against Iraq, Army Chief of Staff 

General Gordon R. Sullivan was concerned about readiness in an 

era of declining budgets and proliferating missions. To remind 

the Army of the costs of unpreparedness, he reached back to the 

Korean War. In many of his speeches, he would state clearly that 

on his watch there would be “No more Task Force Smiths!”

Within the region, the Army became involved in multinational peacekeeping missions. In the wake of civil war in 

Cambodia, it supported the United Nations Transitional 

Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), led by an Australian general, 

while Special Operations Forces soldiers conducted humanitarian demining operations in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and 

Vietnam. In 1992, the Defense Department formed Joint Task 

Force–Full Accounting, which included the U.S. Army Central 

Identification Laboratory–Hawaii (established in 1976), to 

identify the remains of U.S. service personnel missing in action 

in Southeast Asia. The joint task force even opened a detachment 

in Hanoi. In 1995, the Defense Department opened the AsiaPacific Center for Security Studies on Fort DeRussy in Honolulu.

Pacific Command stepped up its military-to-military engagements in the region. In 1992, Special Operations Command 

Pacific started the Joint/Combined Exchange Training Program. 

However, engagement became more difficult with some countries. The Philippines let U.S. basing rights expire in 1991, which 

forced the U.S. Navy and Air Force to close their long-time 

facilities, but approved a new bilateral training series, Exercise 

Balikatan. In 1992, the U.S. Congress suspended security cooperation with Indonesia after Indonesian security forces shot and 

killed civilian demonstrators in East Timor. U.S. Army, Pacific, 

expanded its senior-leader engagement program with the Pacific 

Armies Chiefs Conference, a biannual event that started in 1999 

in Singapore and was attended by Army Chief of Staff General 

Eric K. Shinseki. Born in Hawaii, he was the first U.S. Army 

general of Japanese descent. His uncles had served in World War 

II in the 100th Infantry Battalion and 442d Regimental Combat 

Team; he had graduated from the U.S. Military Academy and had 

served and been wounded in Vietnam.

Soldiers also supported numerous humanitarian operations. 

On 11 September 1992, Typhoon Iniki struck the island of Kauai, 
82 

Hawaii. U.S. Army, Pacific, activated Joint Task Force–Hawaii 

to organize relief with 2,900 active-duty soldiers, 1,800 National 

Guardsmen, and 1,900 sailors and marines. The Army used two 

logistics support vessels based at Pearl Harbor, Maj. Gen. Charles 

P. Gross (LSV–5) and CW3 Harold C. Clinger (LSV–2). When an 

earthquake struck Kobe, Japan, on 17 January 1995, killing about 

6,400, the logisticians of U.S. Army, Japan, provided rapid assistance. 

Soldiers provided similar support for other natural disasters around 

the Ring of Fire, a belt that girds the Pacific in which large numbers 

of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur. These included the 

earthquake and tsunami that struck in the Indian Ocean on 26 

December 2004 and killed over two hundred thousand, and the 

earthquake and tsunami that hit Fukushima, Japan, on 11 March 

2011, which left almost twenty thousand dead or missing.

In 1999, when violence erupted in East Timor (Timor-Leste) 

between the Indonesia military and independence forces, the 

United Nations Security Council authorized the International Force 

for East Timor (INTERFET), which was led by Australia. U.S. Army, 

Pacific, deployed the U.S. Support Group East Timor with up to 

two thousand personnel to provide logistics and communications 

support. For the first time in the region, the Army used the Logistics 

Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP) in support of the United 

Nations operations in East Timor for a broad range of logistics and 

support services to U.S. and allied forces. Army Materiel Command 

awarded the first contract to DynCorp in 1997 and in 2001 a followon contract to Kellogg, Brown & Root Services.

Other threats were less obvious. In January 1995, Manila police 

stumbled on a plot to place bombs on eleven airliners headed for the 

United States. The ringleader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, eluded 

capture and set about planning to use airliners for even more effective attacks against the United States. On 23 March 1995, a Japanese 

religious sect, Aum Shinrikyo attacked the Tokyo subway system 

with sarin nerve gas in an attempt to spread panic and terror by 

causing mass casualties. Their plan misfired, but they killed thirteen 

and severely injured fifty. The world was learning that nonstate 

actors could create as much havoc as state-sponsored terrorists.

The Asia-Pacific in the Age of Terror, 2001–2012

When al-Qaeda attacked the United States on 11 September 

2001, U.S. forces stationed in the Asia-Pacific region went on high 
83

alert. The suspension of air traffic reminded everyone of the region’s 

interdependence and vulnerabilities in the era of “just-in-time” 

manufacturing and the military’s reliance on power projection 

from the continental United States. Pacific Command designated 

U.S. Army, Pacific, as the Joint Rear Area Coordinator–Hawaii and 

it prepared to protect military and civilian assets in Hawaii. The 

task force soon grew into Joint Task Force–Homeland Defense, 

responsible also for Guam, American Samoa, and other territories 

in the South Pacific. When Northern Command was activated in 

2002 for homeland defense, Pacific Command retained responsibility for Hawaii and its Army component, U.S. Army, Pacific, 

remained involved in local joint and interagency coordination to 

a greater extent than most Army commands in the continental 

United States.

Since the mid-1990s, the United States had been concerned 

about terrorist groups operating within the region. In 1997, the 

U.S. State Department had named the Abu Sayyaf Group in the 

southern Philippines as a terrorist organization for its persistent 

bombings and kidnappings. On 30 December 2000, another 

terrorist group, suspected to be the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, 

exploded a bomb outside the U.S. embassy in Manila, injuring 

nine. On 27 May 2001, the Abu Sayyaf Group kidnapped sixteen 

people on Palawan Island, including three Americans. In addition 

to threats to its officials and citizens, the United States had broader 

concerns about possible regional, and perhaps even worldwide, 

links among radical Islamist groups.

When Pacific Command began Operation Enduring 

Freedom in the Philippines, Special Operations Command 

Pacific activated Joint Task Force 510. The commander of 

1st Special Forces Group (Airborne) activated Army Special 

Operations Task Force–Philippines. In conjunction with Exercise 

Balikatan 02-01, about six hundred U.S. military personnel 

deployed to the southern Philippines in February 2002, of whom 

up to 160 deployed to Basilan Island. The 10th Area Support 

Group in Japan assumed the logistical support mission. The task 

force suffered its first casualties on 21 February 2002 in the crash 

of a MH–47E that killed eight soldiers and two airmen. U.S. 

soldiers had waged counterinsurgency in this area one hundred 

years earlier. According to journalist Robert D. Kaplan, who 

visited the southern Philippines in 2003, “in historical terms 

America had come full circle.”
84 

Violent extremists struck in Indonesia as well. On 12 October 

2002, Jemaah Islamiyah exploded a vehicle-borne bomb that 

killed 202 and injured 240 others in a tourist spot on Bali, and on 

5 August 2003, bombed a JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta. The United 

States and its allies were engaged in what appeared to be a global 

insurgency. Much of what the Army knew about insurgencies had 

been learned over the previous century in the Asia-Pacific region.

When the United States struck back in Afghanistan, the 

source of the attacks on 11 September 2001, nations throughout 

the region contributed forces, including Australia and New 

Zealand. Others cooperated closely with the United States, each 

in its own way. When the United States and Britain attacked 

Iraq to remove a suspected nuclear threat, several long-term 

partner nations in the region joined the international coalition, including Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the Philippines, 

Thailand, and Tonga. The Republic of Korea committed two 

infantry brigades.

Over the next several years, active and reserve component 

forces from Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, and South Korea deployed 

to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Horn of Africa as part of the global 

force pool and the Army Force Generation process. In 2004, 

Headquarters, 25th Infantry Division (Light), went to Afghanistan 

and took over the mission as Combined Joint Task Force–76 with 

nearly thirteen thousand U.S. personnel and forces from eighteen 

coalition nations. In 2005, the 172d Infantry Brigade at Fort 

Richardson, Alaska, which had replaced the last active brigade 

of the 6th Infantry Division, transformed into a Stryker brigade 

combat team, deployed to Iraq, and on its return, was reflagged 

as the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division. The 1st 

Battalion, 501st Infantry (Airborne), at Fort Wainwright became 

the nucleus for the 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 25th 

Infantry Division. Other units deployed for previous commitments. In early 2002, the 25th Infantry Division (Light) deployed 

more than two thousand soldiers as part of the NATO Stabilization 

Force in Bosnia-Herzegovina. 

While the Army continued these operations, it also transformed how it managed its installations. In 2002, the U.S. 

Army Installation Management Agency (renamed Installation 

Management Command in 2006) created regional headquarters 

in Hawaii and Korea that took over garrison functions from the 

senior mission commanders. The two regions merged in 2011.
85

The confrontation in Korea continued after 2001, as North 

Korea rejected international calls to halt its nuclear weapons 

program. Any future conflict on the peninsula seemed likely to 

involve North Korean use of chemical or nuclear weapons. North 

Korea tested a ballistic missile capable of reaching most of Asia 

and the Hawaiian Islands. In October 2006, North Korea declared 

that it had successfully conducted a nuclear test.

Nevertheless, the secretary of defense considered the situation stable enough to deploy Korea-based forces to Operation 

Iraqi Freedom. In 2004, the 2d Infantry Division deployed its 

2d Brigade Combat Team to Iraq, the first out-of-area deployment 

of U.S. soldiers based in Korea. The brigade later redeployed to 

the United States, leaving the 2d Infantry Division with only one 

remaining brigade combat team. Nevertheless, the U.S. Army in 

Korea remained a lethal force. Between 2001 and 2003, the Eighth 

Army received the AH–64D Apache Longbow attack helicopter. 

Soldiers knew that war could erupt at any moment and that 

they would be involved from the opening minutes. They had to 

Soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 5th Infantry, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 25th 

Infantry Division, train Philippine Army troops at Fort Ramon Magsaysay, 

February 2008. The U.S. soldiers deployed from Fort Wainwright, Alaska, to the 

Philippines for Exercise Balikatan.
Indian O c ean

P a c ic O c ean

A r c tic O c ean

United Nations Command

Combined Forces Command

US Forces Korea

Eighth Army

2d Infantry Division(-)

19th Sustainment Command

SOUTH KOREA

10th Support Group

1st Bn, 1st Special Forces Group (Abn

OKINAWA

US Army Ja

I Corps (F

JAPAN

U .S. P A CIFIC COM

U .S. EUROPEAN COMMAND

U.S. CENTRAL

COMMAND

U.S. AFRICA

COMMAND

Map 5
A r c tic O c ean

P acic O c ean

US Pacic Command

US Army, Pacic

25th Infantry Division (-)

8th Sustainment Command

HAWAII

n)

apan

wd)

US Army Alaska

1st BCT, 25th Inf Div

4th BCT, 25th Inf Div

ALASKA

US Army Kwajalein Atoll

KWAJALEIN

U .S. NOR THERN COMMAND

U .S. P A CIFIC COMMAND

MMAND

U.S. SOUTHERN

COMMAND

U . S. ARMY IN THE PACIFIC

2012

Joint and Army Headquarters and Major Units

Joint Responsibility Area

A r c tic O c ean

P acic O c ean

US Pacic Command

US Army, Pacic

25th Infantry Division (-)

8th Sustainment Command

HAWAII

n)

apan

wd)

US Army Alaska

1st BCT, 25th Inf Div

4th BCT, 25th Inf Div

ALASKA

US Army Kwajalein Atoll

KWAJALEIN

U .S. NOR THERN COMMAND

U .S. P A CIFIC COMMAND

MMAND

U.S. SOUTHERN

COMMAND

U . S. ARMY IN THE PACIFIC

2012

Joint and Army Headquarters and Major Units

Joint Responsibility Area
88 

be prepared to “fight tonight” to defeat any attackers attempting 

to drive down the Uijeongbu corridor to Seoul. The unpredictable North Korean regime continued to threaten the south. For 

example, in November 2010 the U.S. Army’s 210th Fires Brigade 

supported the South Korean force when the North Korean Army 

bombarded an island near the border.

The key to any battlefield success in Korea has always been the 

plans for reception, staging, onward movement, and integration of 

reinforcements from the United States. Arriving units rehearsed 

marrying up with the pre-positioned equipment from Army 

Pre-positioned Stock-4. Frequent exercises such as Foal Eagle

and Ulchi Focus Lens kept skills sharp. The U.S. commitment to 

South Korea, paid in blood from 1950 to 1953 and during the sixty 

years that followed, remained strong, as demonstrated by the U.S. 

“putting its young men into the mud” on that troubled peninsula.

In 2002, the United States and South Korea agreed to a plan 

to consolidate most American soldiers at Camp Humphreys 

south of the Han River and to close Yongsan in Seoul, home to 

the Eighth Army and U.S. Forces, Korea. In 2008, the Army also 

began considering longer tours and allowing up to half of assigned 

soldiers to bring families, although this would require a substantial 

investment in family housing and community support facilities. 

By 2010, this construction was well under way. U.S. Army, Pacific, 

took over service component command functions for Korea and 

activated the 8th Theater Sustainment Command in Hawaii. The 

Eighth Army became an operational-level field army.

Ballistic missiles grew as a regional concern as China and 

North Korea pursued advanced capabilities. The United States 

installed ballistic missile interceptors at Fort Greely, Alaska, 

operated by the Alaska Army National Guard’s 49th Missile 

Defense Battalion, activated in January 2004. In 2005, the Army 

activated the 94th Army Air and Missile Defense Command in 

Hawaii, responsible for an area stretching from Northeast Asia 

to Okinawa, including the 35th Air Defense Artillery Brigade in 

South Korea. The 1st Battalion, 1st Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 

was sent to Okinawa with Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC–3) 

missiles. Ballistic missile defense required an unprecedented 

degree of cooperation among all services and allies, including 

Japan and Korea.

During the decade after 2001, the U.S. Army in the AsiaPacific region transformed under the pressure of combat opera-
89

tions and active security cooperation missions. Units reorganized 

into modular brigades and trained for network-centric operations. 

One brigade in Hawaii and one in Alaska converted to Stryker 

brigade combat teams. U.S. Army, Pacific, organized a contingency command post. Through it all, they provided deterrence 

and stability for a dynamic region that was inextricably linked to 

the United States and its future. (Map 5)

In the fall of 2011 during an address to the Australian 

Parliament, President Barack Obama announced a strategic 

“pivot” to the region and tacitly acknowledged the importance of 

the U.S. Army in the region for more than a century:

Our new focus on this region reflects a fundamental 

truth—the United States has been, and always will be, a Pacific 

nation. Asian immigrants helped build America, and millions 

of American families, including my own, cherish our ties to this 

region. From the bombing of Darwin to the liberation of Pacific 

islands, from the rice paddies of Southeast Asia to a cold Korean 

Peninsula, generations of Americans have served here, and died 

here—so democracies could take root; so economic miracles 

could lift hundreds of millions to prosperity. Americans have 

bled with you for this progress, and we will not allow it—we will 

never allow it to be reversed.

During a century of engagement in the Asia-Pacific region, 

the U.S. Army became a global expeditionary force. It deterred 

conflicts, and when deterrence failed, it defeated America’s 

enemies and supported its allies. It fought alongside allies and 

sister services in the Philippines, on Pacific islands, in Burma, 

Thailand, Korea, and Vietnam. It conducted occupations, led 

nation building, and eased human suffering. Under its protection, 

democracies took root and economies prospered, thanks to the 

selfless service and courage of generations of American soldiers. 

The U.S. Army played a vital and stabilizing role in the evolution 

of the Asia-Pacific region during a turbulent century.

91

Further Readings

Blair, Clay. The Forgotten War: America in Korea, 1950–1953. New 

York: Times Books, 1987.

Herring, George C. America’s Longest War: The United States and 

Vietnam, 1950–1975. New York: Knopf, 2001.

James, D. Clayton. The Years of MacArthur. 3 vols. Boston: 

Houghton Mifflin, 1970–1985.

Linn, Brian McAllister. The Philippine War, 1899–1902. Lawrence: 

University Press of Kansas, 2000.

________. Guardians of Empire: The U.S. Army and the Pacific, 

1902–1940. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 

1997.

McDonough, James R. Platoon Leader. Novato, Calif.: Presidio 

Press, 1985.

Moore, Harold G., and Joseph L. Galloway. We Were Soldiers Once 

. . . and Young: Ia Drang, the Battle That Changed the War in 

Vietnam. New York: Random House, 1992.

Spector, Ronald H. Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with 

Japan. New York: Free Press, 1985.

________. In the Ruins of Empire: The Japanese Surrender and the 

Battle for Postwar Asia. New York: Random House, 2007.

Stueck, William. Rethinking the Korean War: A New Diplomatic 

and Strategic History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 

2002.

Tuchman, Barbara W. Stilwell and the American Experience in 

China, 1911–45. New York: Macmillan, 1971.