Abstract
As Canadian diplomat Escott Reid walked through the streets of San Francisco on VE Day, 8 May 1945, he detected only minimal public enthusiasm or display over Germany’s defeat. It had been a long, bloody, frightening war and there was little evidence that Californians much appreciated the significance of the Nazi collapse. Reid surmised that for people on the west coast, the Pacific War was the encounter of real import; and, apparently, Japan’s final defeat was yet a good many months in the future.1 Celebration in May would be premature. The enemy lurker, while banished from the threshold, still maintained large armies in the field in Asia and was preparing by most accounts a desperate defense of the home islands. More grisly battlefields awaited in a war which had encouraged a ‘visceral hatred’ of the Japanese, stoked by ‘racist codewords and imagery’: treacherous, simian-like, a monolithic swarm.2 The anxiety and humiliation of December 1941 was not forgotten as San Francisco hosted the founding conference of the United Nations Organization, dedicated to reconciliation and international co-operation as the capstones of a new world order.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Escott Reid, On Duty: A Canadian and the Making of the United Nations, 1945–1946 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1983), p. 35.
John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986), pp. 9–10, 19–21, 28, 36–7, 81–7, 92, 294.
Leonard Woolf, Imperialism and Civilization ( New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1928 ), p. 20;
V. G. Kiernan, From Conquest to Collapse: European Empires from, 1815–1960 ( New York: Pantheon, 1982 ), p. 213.
Robert M. Blum, Drawing the Line: The Origin of the American Containment Policy in East Asia ( New York: W. W. Norton, 1982 ), p. 104.
Gabriel Kolko, Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the United States, and the Modern Historical Experience ( New York: Pantheon, 1985 ), p. 4.
George E. Taylor, American in the Pacific (New York: Macmillan, 1942), pp. 4, 5, 6, 17, 22, 29, 93, 107, 110–11, 146, 149. In a similar vein, Julius Pratt, ‘Anticolonialism in United States Policy’, wrote that the United States practised colonialism ‘with an uneasy conscience and a more or less steady purpose of return to the paths of virtue’; in Robert Strausz-Hupé and
Harry W. Hazard (eds), The Idea of Colonialism ( New York: Praeger, 1958 ), p. 114.
John Carter Vincent, ‘The Post-War Period in the Far East’, Department of State Bulletin 13 (21 October 1945): p. 648;emphasis in original.
Draft declaration, 9 March 1943, Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conferences at Washington and Quebec 1943 (Washington: GPO, 1970), pp. 718–19. Additional volumes of this series will hereafter be cited as FRUS followed by the appropriate year, volume number and page.
Christopher Thorne, Allies of a Kind: The United States, Britain, and the War Against Japan, 1941–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978, paperback), pp. 396, 456, 468–9, 538, 724–5.
See Philip Ziegler, Mountbatten ( New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985 ), pp. 219–21, for a discussion of the politics of Mountbatten’s appointment. The complicated command structure in the region following SEAC’s creation is discussed in
Charles F. Romanus and Riley Sunderland, Stilwell’s Mission to China ( Washington: Department of the Army, 1953 ), p. 364.
Davies memorandum, ‘Anglo-American Cooperation in East Asia’, 15 November 1943, pp. 1, 4–5, 7, 9, 10–11, Box 48, Entry 99, RG 226, Military Reference Branch, National Archives and Records Administration (hereafter cited as MRB). Similar views had been expressed earlier; see memorandum by the chief of the Division of Near Eastern Affairs (Paul H. Alling), 19 June 1943, FRUS 1943, 4: p. 239. Ailing quoted from a Davies memo (n.d.) to the effect that US and British psychological warfare interests in SEAC did not coincide and that the United States must not be identified by Asians as simply another imperial power. Alling noted that his division ‘heartily concurs’ with Davies’ analysis. See also John Paton Davies, Jr., Dragon by the Tail: American, British, Japanese, and Russian Encounters with China and One Another (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972), p. 304.
OSS/SEAC Mission Report, July 1944, enclosure in Heppner to Donovan, 1 August 1944, Box 47, Entry 99, RG 226, MRB; OSS/SEAC Mission Report, September 1944, enclosure in Heppner to Donovan, 4 October 1944, ibid. In the words of another OSS staffer, relations between the two agencies became ‘marked by pathological suspicion’; Taylor, Richer by Asia, p. 75. See also Heppner to Donovan, 4 October 1944, folder 2222, Box 127, Entry 154, RG 226, MRB. British intelligence was plagued with internal bureaucratic conflicts as well; see Charles Cruickshank, SOE in the Far East (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983).
Bishop memorandum, ‘South East Asia Command’, 4 November 1944, enclosure with Robert L. Buell, consul at Colombo, to secretary of state, 10 November 1944, folder ‘S.E.A. 1944–46’, Box 4, Records of the Philippine and Southeast Asia Division, Lot Files, National Archives (State Department files hereafter cited as DSNA); Heppner to Donovan, 4 October 1944, folder 2222, Box 127, Entry 154, RG 226, MRB. Ziegler, Mountbatten, pp. 279–80, noted that the Kandy headquarters ‘soon became a byword for elegance and luxury’; however, he contended that while overstaffed the Kandy complex was not overluxurious, did operate efficiently, and ‘was a superbly effective piece of public relations’ vis-à-vis communicating a new sense of pride and purpose to Allied forces in Southeast Asia. Former OSS operative Elizabeth P. MacDonald, Undercover Girl (New York: Macmillan, 1947), p. 121, noted that Americans also jokingly referred to SEAC as ‘Save England’s Asiatic Colonies’; her book contains a description of the Kandy headquarters by colleague Jane Foster (p. 132).
The quoted phrase is from a Foreign Office memorandum of 21 March 1944, ‘The Essentials of an America Policy’, in Terry H. Anderson, The United States, Great Britain, and the Cold War, 1944–1947 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1981), pp. 12–13;
see also Robert M. Hathaway, Ambiguous Partnership: Britain and America, 1944–1947 ( New York: Columbia University Press, 1981 ), p. 52.
Minute by L. H. Foulds, Far Eastern Department, 5 March 1945, quoted in Peter Dennis, Troubled Days of Peace: Mountbatten and South East Asia Command, 1945–46 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1987), p. 26;
see also the discussion in John J. Sbrega, ‘“First Catch Your Hare”: Anglo-American Perspectives on Indochina during the Second World War’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 14 (March 1983): pp. 71–2.
JCS memorandum, 17 July 1945, CCS 890/1, FRUS: Conference of Berlin (Potsdam), 1945, 2: p. 1314; see also Marc S. Gallicchio, The Cold War Begins in Asia: American East Asian Policy and the Fall of the Japanese Empire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), pp. 30–32.
Raoul Aglion, Roosevelt and de Gaulle, Allies in Conflict: A Personal Memoir ( New York: Free Press, 1988 ), pp. 180–81;
Albert Camus, American Journals, trans. Hugh Levick (New York: Paragon House, 1987 ), p. 31.The French edition was copyright 1978. Camus was less impressed after debarking, characterizing Manhattan as a ‘desert of iron and cement’ (p. 51).
See also Charles de Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle, 1940–1946, 3 vols in one (1967; reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1984 ), p. 907.
Evelyn Colbert, Southeast Asia in International Politics, 1941–1956 ( Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977 ), p. 42.
‘Situation in French Indo-China’, 26 December 1944, enclosure in Glass to Major David Hunter, 8 January 1945, headquarters, OSS, India-Burma Theater, Box 24, Entry 110, RG 226, MRB. By early 1945, the OSS/SEAC group had been restructured as OSS/IBT (India-Burma Theater), still headquartered at Kandy, with Heppner promoted to colonel and designated Strategic Services Officer (SSO), China Theater; see Archimedes L. A. Patti, Why Viet Nam? Prelude to America’s Albatross (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 26–7.
SWNCC meeting minutes, 13 April 1945, ibid.; Gary R. Hess, The United States’ Emergence as a Southeast Asian Power, 1940–1950 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), p. 150.
See, for example, Gabriel Kolko, The Roots of American Foreign Policy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), p. 92.
See Jean Sainteny, Ho Chi Minh and His Vietnam: A Personal Memoir, trans. Herma Briffault (Chicago: Cowles, 1972 ), p. 60. He considered Maj. Archimedes Patti a ‘rabid anticolonialist’ who ‘regarded with a jaundiced eye anything that remotely resembled a return of French colonialism in Indochina’ (p. 47). Sainteny nonetheless had great respect for Ho Chi Minh, with whom he had much contact.
Peter M. Dunn, The First Vietnam War ( New York: St Martin’s Press, 1985 ), has offered the most extreme version of the seduction theme, referring to Patti as ‘a virulently anti-Allied, pro-Viet Minh OSS officer’ (p. 22) and asserting that the actions of OSS personnel in Vietnam in 1945 ‘ensured the survival of the Communists in Indochina’ (p. 49).
See also Gary R. Hess, ‘United States Policy and the Origins of the French-Viet Minh War, 1945–46’, Peace and Change 3 (Summer–Fall 1975): p. 25; and idem, United States’ Emergence as a Southeast Asian Power, p. 178.
The phrase is from Oliver E. Clubb, The United States and the Sino-Soviet Bloc in Southeast Asia (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1962), p. 143.
Benjamin Rivlin, The United Nations and the Italian Colonies (New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1950), p. 3.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1990 Scott L. Bills
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bills, S.L. (1990). War’s End in Southeast Asia. In: Empire and Cold War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20969-9_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20969-9_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-20971-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-20969-9
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)