[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 156 (Friday, October 31, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S13706-S13707]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY IN 1942

  Mr. INOUYE. Mr. President, I would like to share with my colleagues a 
fascinating article by Dr. James Schlesinger, who served our Nation in 
a number of prestigious positions, such as Secretary of Defense, 
Secretary of Energy, and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. 
The article, ``Underappreciated Victory,'' was published in the October 
2003, issue of the Naval History magazine, a publication of the Naval 
Institute Proceedings. The article calls for the recognition of the 
world-historic significance of the Battle of Midway in 1942 because it 
was the turning point in our Nation's war in the Pacific, which, in 
turn, proved critical to our efforts in the European theater of war. 
Yet the Battle of Midway, which played such a crucial strategic role 
for both the European and Pacific war, scarcely gets mentioned in the 
history books. I wish to submit a copy of Dr. Schlesinger's article to 
be printed in the Record. This brilliant article sets the record 
straight.
  I ask unanimous consent the article be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From Naval History Magazine, Oct. 2003]

                        Underappreciated Victory

                         (By James Schlesinger)

       As we honor those who turned the tide of World War II with 
     a victory over ostensibly overwhelming force at the Battle of 
     Midway in 1942--61 years ago--too few of us understand the 
     battle's world-historic significance. It is essential, 
     therefore, for us to go forth and proselytize.
       I continue to be puzzled over the fact that it comes as 
     something of a revelation to many people that this battle 
     played such a crucial strategic role for the war in Europe. 
     So the question before us is: Why is Midway not recognized as 
     the crucial battle for the West in World War II, just as 
     Stalingrad is recognized as a crucial battle for the Soviet 
     Union? The comparative neglect of Midway is a great 
     historical puzzle and, in a sense, a great injustice.
       In relation to what British Prime Minister Winston 
     Churchill and others called Grand Strategy, Midway was far 
     more than a decisive naval victory. It was far more than the 
     turning of the tide in the Pacific war. In a strategic sense, 
     Midway represents one of the great turning points of world 
     history. And in that role, the battle remains 
     underappreciated.
       Consider the Grand Strategy of the Allies, which Churchill 
     naturally preferred and President Franklin D. Roosevelt was 
     eager to endorse. It was, quite simply, to deal with Adolf 
     Hitler and with the German threat in Europe first. It has 
     been embraced shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl 
     Harbor, at the Arcadia Conference. President Roosevelt 
     clearly recognized and acted on the conviction that the Third 
     Reich was the greater menace. Dramatic as the Japanese 
     advance after Pearl Harbor had been, it was into slightly 
     developed colonial regions--to be sure, those possessing 
     rubber and tin. Yet, at its base, it was far less dangerous 
     than Hitler's continuing advance, crushing and then 
     organizing the industrial nations of Europe, while to that 
     point almost entirely obliterating far more formidable 
     resistance. But it was Japan that had attacked the United 
     States, and it was Japan on which the anger of the American 
     people had focused.
       Though Churchill could almost automatically concentrate on 
     Europe, it required considerable courage for President 
     Roosevelt to carry through on the Grand Strategy. Germany's 
     declaration of war on the United States on 8 December 1941 
     provided a small opening. Yet, had it not been for Midway, 
     President Roosevelt could not have persevered with a Europe-
     first policy. Public opinion would not have allowed it. 
     Indeed, even after Midway, he paid a substantial political 
     price. In the mid-term election of 1942, the Democrats lost 
     44 seats in the House of Representatives, barely retaining 
     control, with comparable losses elsewhere. In a subsequent 
     poll of all the Democratic congressional candidates, the 
     principal reason given for the debacle: ``frustration'' and 
     fury at Roosevelt's Germany-first strategy, which translated 
     into failure to punish the Japanese more aggressively for 
     Pearl Harbor.
       Nonetheless, despite the inclinations of the public, 
     President Roosevelt recognized that the larger threat lay 
     elsewhere, and he was prepared to pay the domestic political 
     price for that larger national objective, defined by his 
     Grand Strategy.
       Consider the overall military situation in spring 1942, 
     Japan was on a roll. The Philippines had fallen, including 
     the final outposts of Bataan and Corregidor. The Japanese had 
     swept through the Malay Peninsula from French Indochina, and 
     on 15 February the supposedly ``impregnable fortress'' of 
     Singapore had fallen to numerically inferior Japanese forces. 
     The Dutch East Indies had been captured. Japanese forces were 
     advancing into Burma and threatening India. Even Australia 
     appeared to be a target. U.S. naval forces significantly 
     weakened by the attack at Pearl Harbor, appeared vastly 
     inferior to the armada that Japan was gathering to advance 
     eastward in the Pacific toward Midway--then possibly to the 
     Hawaiian Islands or even to the U.S. West Coast. Additional 
     Japanese victories would have made it politically impossible 
     for President Roosevelt to continue to pursue the Grand 
     Strategy of Europe-first.
       Then came Midway. Through an extraordinary combination of 
     the skill and courage of our pilots, splendid intelligence, 
     prudent risk-taking by our commanders that paid off, and 
     sheer good luck, the apparently inferior U.S. forces were 
     victorious. This victory occurred despite inferior aircraft, 
     ineffective torpedoes, the substantial absence of backup 
     surface ships, and our overall numerical inferiority. The 
     rest is well known. Four Japanese carriers had been sunk, 
     confirming the dictum of Otto von Bismarck: ``the Lord God 
     has special providence for fools, drunkards, and the 
     United States of America.'' The Japanese offensive had 
     been blunted. The Japanese fleet turned back toward the 
     home islands, their opportunity for victory lost forever. 
     President Roosevelt could then execute his Grand Strategy, 
     with all that was to imply regarding the condition of 
     postwar Europe.
       After Midway, the United States could, to the chagrin of 
     General Douglas MacArthur, turn its primary attention back to 
     the European theater. After the stunning surrender of Tobruk, 
     which appeared to jeopardize both

[[Page S13707]]

     Cairo and the Suez Canal, President Roosevelt thus could 
     accommodate the somewhat distraught Churchill's request for 
     300 of the new Sherman tanks to bolster the defenses in 
     Northeast Africa, ultimately leading to the victory at El 
     Alamein. The Battle of the Atlantic gradually turned with the 
     steady improvement in antisubmarine warfare, thereby helping 
     to ease the shipping shortage. By the fall, Operation Torch, 
     the landings in North Africa, initiated offensive operations 
     that ultimately led to the destruction of Field Marshal Erwin 
     Rommel's Afrika Korps. The invasion of Sicily soon followed, 
     succeeded by the invasion of Italy and eventually the 
     landings in Normandy.
       Had these events not taken place or been much delayed, it 
     is possible the Soviet Union would not have survived. But if 
     it had, and succeeded in its march westward, the face of 
     postwar Europe would have been vastly different. Soviet 
     forces would have deployed farther to the west. Germany 
     likely would have been occupied in its entirety. The West's 
     foothold in Europe would have shrunk, perhaps dramatically. 
     The ability of France and Italy to survive communist 
     pressures, precarious as it was in 1947, would have been much 
     reduced. In brief, it was Midway, a battle in the distant 
     Pacific, that shaped the face of postwar Europe.
       Despite its crucial historic role, Midway gets scarcely 
     more attention in our history books than the War of 1812 
     naval battles on Lake Champlain or Lake Erie--let alone the 
     scant attention Europeans have paid to it. Let us reflect on 
     a few other notable battles that turned the tide of history.
       In 480, B.C., Athens had fallen to the Persian army, but 
     Athens had in a sense survived in the form of its 200 naval 
     vessels that Athens, prodded by Themistiocles, an early 
     apostle of naval construction, had created. On 28 September 
     in the straits of Salamis, before the very eyes of the 
     Emperor Xerxes, the combined Greek naval force delivered a 
     devastating blow, sinking some 200 Persian ships, with the 
     loss of only 40 of their own. Xerxes, as Herodotus describes, 
     had wanted to rule Europe as well as Asia. Fearing an attack 
     on its bridges over the Hellespont, the Persian army largely 
     withdrew. Greek (and European) civilization had been 
     preserved. Indeed, begging pardon for a lapse from political 
     correctness, Europe had been saved from Oriental Despotism. 
     It was a naval battle that decided the fate of a 
     civilization, a turning point in history.
       Each year, the English-speaking world celebrates Trafalgar. 
     Yet, it is not clear that even in the absence of victory 
     England would not have survived. Midway, at a minimum, was 
     the most decisive naval victory since Trafalgar, and perhaps 
     the most strategically decisive victory since Salamis.
       What of the crucial battles here in the United States? The 
     Revolutionary War Battle of Yorktown is, of course, 
     celebrated appropriately. Yet, after the Battle of the Capes, 
     Yorktown was but the frosting on the cake, an almost 
     inevitable triumph. The Battle of Saratoga, by contrast, is 
     seen rightly as the turning point of the Revolution.
       One is no doubt obliged to speak also of the Civil War 
     Battle of Gettysburg. Yet, while Gettysburg may have been the 
     high-water mark of the Confederacy, the outcome of the war 
     was never much in doubt. Just recall the remarks of that 
     military logistician, Rhett Butler, at the beginning of Gone 
     With the Wind, when he rebukes some Southern hotheads by 
     pointing to the overwhelming industrial domination of the 
     North.
       They why, if Midway had such world-historic strategic 
     significance, has it received so much less attention than it 
     deserves? A recent documentary supposedly detailing the 
     Pacific War, produced by Steven Spielberg and Stephen 
     Ambrose, moves smoothly from Pearl Harbor to island hopping 
     in the western Pacific, with scarcely a mention of Midway. 
     How could such a momentous victory come to be overshadowed? 
     There are, I believe, three prominent reasons.
       First, the Europeans are quite naturally even more 
     Eurocentric than we are. For them, the crucial battle for the 
     European theater had to begin the European theater itself and 
     not some remote spot in the Pacific. There is still little 
     sense in Europe of what a vast enterprise the war in the 
     Pacific was. El Alamein continues to be celebrated in the 
     United Kingdom. Similarly, the Battle of the Bulge is 
     celebrated annually here. But the outcomes of both those 
     battles were almost foreordained by the balance of forces.
       Moreover, the most prominent, indeed almost the canonical, 
     history of World War II was written by Winston Churchill 
     himself. And where would Churchill look? Not to some purely 
     American engagement in the distant Pacific. Midway is 
     mentioned only in Churchill's six-volume history, with no 
     indication of how it shaped the outcome in Europe.
       Second, Midway always has lain in the shadow of D-Day, 
     which occurred 2 years later, but which has an anniversary 
     that coincides with Midway in the calendar year. D-day, which 
     was truly touch-and-go, deserves all the attention it has 
     received. But it should not come at the detriment of Midway 
     itself. For without Midway, there would have been no D-Day on 
     6 June 1944, with all that that implies about the condition 
     of postwar Europe.
       Third, it is also in a sense the fault of the U.S. Navy 
     itself. The Navy (take no offense) is both too shy in blowing 
     its own horn and too complacent. Naming a carrier after a 
     battle, for example, is considered so high an honor that 
     nothing more needs to be said.
       Midway may be the victim of intraservice politics or more 
     exactly, intertribal fights. If one glorifies what was so 
     dramatically a carrier victory, it might be interpreted to 
     the detriment of the surface Navy and/or the submarine force. 
     So tact required a relatively discreet silence. Thus, 
     regarding the crucial significant of Midway in world history, 
     more than the submarine force has been the ``Silent 
     Service.''
       Our British allies perennially have demonstrated a masterly 
     touch in displaying, not to say marketing, their armed forces 
     and their accomplishments. Go to London. See the centrality 
     of Trafalgar Square in the city. Observe that obelisk for 
     Admiral Horatio Nelson towering over the Square. It all 
     provides a setting and reinforcement for the annual 
     celebration of the naval battle itself. By contrast, Farragut 
     Square in Washington is a very dim competitor. And where, 
     pray tell, is Midway? It is, of course, the Midway, a part of 
     Chicago, named after the 1893 World's Fair--or a nearby 
     airport, a transition point halfway across the United States.
       Now hear this! It is time to go forth and proselytize and 
     underscore the world-historic role of Midway. The battle and 
     its veterans deserve no less.

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