August 2004 Newsletter
Marshall, Leahy, and Casualty Issues-A Reply to Kort's Flawed Critique
by Barton J. Bernstein
I read with mixed feelings Michael Kort's spirited December 2003
essay, "Casualty Projections for the Invasion of Japan, Phantom Estimates,
and the Math of Barton Bernstein.” Responding to each of Kort's numerous
charges would require a lengthy and tediously detailed essay, so I will focus
primarily upon what seems to trouble Kort most in my interpretation of the casualty
estimates for the invasion of Japan: my reliance upon Admiral William Leahy's
diary entry for 18 June 1945 as an important alternative and supplement to the
official minutes of the 18 June meeting at the White House. That high-level
meeting between President Harry S. Truman and most of the military chiefs was
called to discuss Olympic, the plan to invade the Japanese island of Kyushu,
projected for 1 November 1945. Leahy's diary provides valuable information not
included in the official minutes: namely, that General George C. Marshall estimated
at the meeting that there would be no more than 63,000 U.S. casualties among
the 190,000 U.S. combatant forces in Olympic.
Kort considers my decision to rely on Leahy's diary summary indefensible. He
usually disregards my published reasons for relying on the diary as a reliable
source for that key White House conference, and he charges me with "alchemy,"
with creating "phantom" estimates, and with putting words into major
actors' mouths. Yet in his own analysis he relies upon strained readings, omission
of crucial material, severely limited research, unfair and facile resolution
of complicated matters, and invidious language and interpretations. He also
mixes large issues with trivial ones and neglects relevant archival sources
and much of the published work upon the casualty issue. Finally, he has serious
problems with quoting accurately, revealing fundamental problems as a craftsman.
Admiral William Leahy's diary (from the Library of Congress and the Wisconsin
Historical Society) contains a lengthy entry for 18 June, written either on
that day or the next (we can't be sure exactly when). It includes a few paragraphs
on the White House meeting and shows Leahy's reflections on some invasion- and
occupation-related matters. The paragraph at issue--with emphasis added--is
the second one quoted here. The others are included partly to ensure adequate
context. The bracketed additions are mine:
From 3:30 to 5:00 P.M. the President conferred with the Joint Chiefs of
Staff [Leahy, Marshall, Admiral Ernest King, and Lt. General Ira Eaker for General
Henry Arnold], the Secretary of War [Henry L. Stimson], the Secretary of the
Navy [James Forrestal], and Assistant Secretary of War [John J.] McCloy, in
regard to the necessity and the practicability of an invasion of Japan. General
Marshall and Admiral King both strongly advocated an invasion of Kyushu at the
earliest practicable date.
General Marshall is of the opinion that such an effort will not
cost us in casualties more than 63,000 of the 190.000 combatant troops estimated
as necessary for the operation (emphasis added).
The President approved the Kyushu operation and withheld for later consideration
the general occupation of Japan. The Army seems determined to occupy and govern
Japan as is being done in Germany. I am unable to see any justification from
a national defense point of view for a prolonged occupation of Japan. The cost
of such an occupation will be enormous in both lives and treasure.
Leahy's diary entry is an arresting archival source. I had thought about his
reference to Marshall’s casualty estimate for approximately a decade,
from about 1985 to 1994, before using it in public. During that time I also
discussed it with about a dozen historians, including at least four military
historians (three of whom had or would have at least the rank of lieutenant
colonel). Among the problems, most agreed, was to figure out how Leahy's report
on Marshall's estimate squared with what are usually considered the official
minutes for 18 June, written by Brigadier General A. J. McFarland. It seems
likely that Marshall’s estimate of 63,000 referred only to U.S. battle
casualties in Olympic, and not to battle and nonbattle casualties, because the
charts he discussed earlier at this meeting provided only battle casualties.
(The term "battle casualties" refers to those killed, wounded, or
missing in the fighting, and not to those incapacitated by illnesses or nonbattle
injuries, both of which are categorized as nonbattle casualties.) If Marshall
meant only battle casualties, as seems most likely, did the upper limit of 63,000
refer to the entire Olympic operation of perhaps about three months, or only
the total for the first month or two? Besides the 190,000 combatant forces,
what about the other U.S. troops (approximately 490,000 to 600,000) not counted
as combatant forces but ultimately scheduled for involvement in the military
operation? Most of the historians I consulted also agreed that any analysis
of Leahy’s diary would require an assessment of McFarland's 18 June minutes
on other matters (especially casualty issues) to determine whether they are
sometimes incorrect or incomplete on important issues.
At first glance, the McFarland minutes seem to suggest that at the 18 June meeting
Leahy was thinking of much higher battle casualty figures than Marshall’s
63,000: about 230,000–268,000. After all, in the McFarland minutes Leahy
estimated that Olympic would result in casualty figures of 35 percent, based
on what he stated as the rate among U.S. ground forces in the ongoing Okinawa
campaign. In reply to Leahy's query, Marshall said in McFarland's minutes that
the United States would have a total of 766,700 troops in Olympic. According
to my early research, Leahy erred somewhat on the battle casualty percentage
(it was at least a few points under 35 percent) for U.S. ground forces on Okinawa
up to about 18 June. But that small error did not greatly change his apparent
meaning. Allowing for that error, Leahy’s figure implied an estimate of
about 230,000–268,000 battle casualties in Olympic. However, I concluded
that he was implicitly applying the 35 percent to the 190,000 combatant forces
(Marshall's operative number) and thus meant about 66,500 battle casualties.
In context, Leahy’s remarks very probably refer to 66,500 casualties.
If Leahy had truly meant something in the 230,000–268,000 range and Marshall
had suggested 63,000 or even 100,000 (allowing for many troops besides the 190,000
combatant forces), there would probably have been an open argument at the 18
June meeting. Even if Leahy meant battle and nonbattle casualties, as seems
highly unlikely, and Marshall only battle casualties, as is highly likely, there
would have been sharp disagreement. But neither McFarland's minutes nor any
of the four individual diaries (by Leahy, Forrestal, McCloy, and Stimson) that
refer to this meeting indicate such disagreement. For that matter, there is
no mention of a disagreement at this meeting in any other archival material
from that mid-1945 period or in later memoirs.
Normally, a historian would be inclined to privilege McFarland's minutes, which
at first glance seem quite detailed about battle casualty numbers. They even
include from the early part of the meeting an elaborate chart on battle casualty
numbers in other American military campaigns during the war. Only by going back
to the archives of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) files and elsewhere could
I definitely determine that McFarland had put together the very detailed portion
of the minutes (including the chart with at least fifteen specific numbers on
U. S. and enemy casualty information for some earlier WWII campaigns) simply
by inserting, usually verbatim, the text of the staff-prepared paper (with General
John Hull's initials removed) that Marshall had read at the opening of the 18
June meeting. The text Marshall read had about thirty-eight numbers (mostly
involving casualties), and McFarland had deleted the nine paragraphing numbers
but retained all the others, including some dates, various ratios, and numbered
parts of a crucial sentence.
Curiously, McFarland's minutes -did err in reporting the identity and nature
of the paper that Marshall read aloud at that White House meeting. That paper,
contrary to McFarland's claim in the minutes, was not a digest of JCS 1388,
but a paper that departed from JCS 1388 on some important matters. Prepared
by staff, this paper constitutes about the first two-fifths of the total McFarland
minutes. The remaining three-fifths of the minutes presumably summarize much
of the subsequent dialogue at the 18 June meeting and include some important
details about Olympic. But there is no reason to conclude that this second section
summarizes everything that might be important.
Leahy's statement about a 35-percent casualty rate in Olympic and Marshall's
statement about the 766,700 U.S. forces both appear in the second section of
the minutes, which McFarland presumably produced by rewriting at some later
point the notes he took at the meeting. This section also includes Admiral King's
casualty estimate for Olympic, which is not easy to interpret (see below). Presumably
Marshall also gave his estimate of 63,000 casualties in this segment of the
meeting, though it is not mentioned in McFarland’s minutes. The minutes
were published, with a few deletions, in FRUS: Conference of Berlin
(Potsdam). I, pp. 903-10, and at least two sets of draft minutes, including
one with handwritten interlineations apparently by McFarland, exist in various
archives. Some draft minutes were also published in 1995 in a documentary collection
edited by Dennis Merrill. Kort apparently relies on this volume and not the
minutes at the archives.
Marshall’s figure of 63,000 casualties, drawn from Leahy’s diary,
is considerably lower than what all the secondary literature published into
the early 1980s seems to conclude that Marshall, Leahy, and others believed
in mid-June 1945. Yet can one simply dismiss the figure Leahy ascribed to Marshall
as some kind of error by Leahy? It would have been strange if Leahy had erred
on this casualty matter, which greatly concerned him, and about which he had
somewhat obliquely queried Marshall at the 18 June meeting.
Adding to the relevant evidence, in his 1950 memoir, I Was There, Leahy
discussed the 18 June meeting and basically repeated the key sentence from his
diary about Marshall's estimate of 63,000 casualties (p. 384). The only change
in that sentence between Leahy's 1945 diary entry and his 1950 memoir is that
in 1950 Leahy put Marshall's opinion on likely casualties in the imperfect tense
("was") instead of in the extended present ("is"). That
minor revision makes it doubly clear that Leahy was summarizing Marshall's opinion
from the 18 June meeting and not just some opinion Marshall uttered before or
after that conference.
In various articles published in the mid- and late 1990s I sought to explain
the context of Leahy's summary, Marshall's likely meaning, and Leahy's own battle
casualty estimate (about 66,500) at the 18 June meeting. Because my analysis
clearly rested on interpretation rather than unreflective empiricism I sometimes
used words like “probably,” “apparently,” and “strongly
suggests.” In such a complicated matter involving multiple sources, it
was important to communicate to readers the reasons for my judgments on the
sources and their meaning. Kort seems briefly approving of but ultimately dismayed
by my careful verbal hedging. Presumably he would prefer an easier target, for
he sometimes disregards my thoughtful, careful phrasing and distorts what I
stated.
Kort’s argument on the issue of the minutes, when stripped down to essentials,
involves variously contending or assuming that McFarland's minutes for 18 June,
despite their considerable ambiguity (which Kort does not admit) on the crucial
issue of casualty numbers, are clear and complete on what Marshall meant and
on what Leahy understood and meant. Kort is unimpressed by the fact that Leahy's
diary entry, in focusing in part on Marshall's casualty estimate, emphasizes
one of the three major matters (the other two were surrender terms and the need
for the invasion) that concerned Leahy at the meeting. Leahy's diary reveals
that he had apparently gotten a useful answer from Marshall (the 63,000 estimate),
though McFarland's minutes do not record that answer by Marshall.
Kort seeks to impugn Leahy's diary as a reliable source by describing it unfairly
as "haphazardly organized." He dismisses Leahy's diary summary of
Marshall's comments on the grounds that it is "hearsay" and that the
present-tense phrasing of the key sentence means that Leahy was summarizing
Marshall's pre–18 June thinking, not his 18 June analysis. Kort also contends
that since McFarland's minutes were "reviewed," they must be full
(and thus reliable) summaries of all important matters (especially casualty
issues). Furthermore, he claims that the abundance of specific numbers in the
minutes indicates that McFarland could not have missed Marshall's estimate of
63,000 if Marshall had uttered it at the meeting. Finally, Kort points out that
according to the minutes, Marshall said that he thought it "wrong to give
any estimate in numbers." Therefore Kort is certain that he would not have
done so.
To many readers, Kort's objections may initially seem reasonable and even compelling.
However, years before he published this critique, I had considered all these
points, along with many others, and after careful thought and research--research
that Kort, to judge from his article's text and endnotes, apparently did not
do--rejected them as unconvincing, strained or flimsy. Consider Kort’s
"hearsay" charge. Because they were not written by any of the eight
active participants in the 18 June meeting, McFarland's minutes are subject
to the same "hearsay" standard invoked by Kort and cannot be characterized
as “indisputably” the most reliable account of the meeting. Unless
it was proved that Leahy, Marshall, or someone else (other than McFarland) from
that key June meeting had reviewed and approved McFarland's minutes, there can
be no basis for preferring one source (McFarland's minutes) over the other (Leahy's
diary).
Years ago, in anticipating Kort's contention about "reviewed" minutes,
I investigated whether McFarland's minutes had been reviewed by Leahy or by
any or all of the seven other participants at that White House meeting, including
Marshall and Truman. Despite checking in many archives (at least nine libraries
involving over twenty collections), I could find no evidence that any one of
the eight key men from that White House meeting ever reviewed these 18 June
minutes, and I found substantial indirect evidence that Truman, Leahy, Marshall,
Stimson, and the JCS as a body did not.
Significantly, Kort does not cite any evidence on this key matter of reviewed
minutes. He proceeds by assertion, using the word "reviewed" (p. 5)
as an adjective modifying the phrase "official minutes." But did anyone
besides McFarland review the minutes? Certainly there is every indication that
Truman never saw the 18 June minutes in 1945 or at any time during his White
House years. The then-director of the Truman Library, Ben Zobrist, informed
me on 16 April 1986 that the library did not have these minutes in manuscript
copy in its Truman archival files or in its related materials. In about 1994,
eight years after my written inquiry, the library, presumably to supplement
published materials, did finally obtain copies of the final and the draft minutes
from another archive. The library then put those archival copies into the Truman
Library's “Miscellaneous Historical Documents” collection, which
is what archivists refer to as an artificially constructed collection. Because
Kort cites these materials in his endnote (see his note 8, which draws on Merrill's
published edition of mostly archival-type documents located at the Truman Library),
it is unclear whether Kort knows and understands the significance of how the
Truman Library rather belatedly obtained xerox copies of these manuscript minutes,
which neither Truman's own files nor his associates' files at the library actually
include.
Having dealt with Kort's ideas about "hearsay" evidence and "reviewed"
minutes, let me move to his argument about Leahy's use of the present tense
in the crucial diary paragraph on Marshall. To argue on the grounds of Leahy's
employment of the present tense, as Kort does, that Leahy was only summarizing
Marshall's earlier view and not dealing directly with his statement from the
18 June meeting is certainly peculiar. Kort simply avoids the plain meaning
of Leahy's language and fails to understand the context of that second paragraph
in Leahy's diary. The casualty issue was an important subject at the meeting.
Why would Leahy summarize only Marshall's earlier view prior to the meeting,
put the summary in the present tense, and not really deal with Marshall's statement
at the June meeting? And how does Kort know it was an earlier view and not also
a later view? His contention on this matter is strained, and its implausibility
is deeply underscored by Leahy's use of this diary entry in his 1950 published
memoir. Curiously, Kort never mentions that Leahy's 1950 memoir used his 1945
diary entry.
Kort also argues that McFarland's minutes must be judged as reliable, and Leahy's
diary entry as unreliable, because McFarland "was [not] shy about taking
down numbers" (p. 4). Kort even devotes almost half a column on p. 5 to
citing some of the numbers in McFarland's minutes. But there is a fatal problem
with Kort's contention. Most of the numbers he (often obliquely) refers to from
the McFarland minutes did not emerge from McFarland's "taking down numbers."
Rather, McFarland simply inserted in nearly verbatim form the number-laden text
that Marshall had read aloud at the meeting. Marshall's text was just retyped,
with some underlining and paragraphing numbers removed, to constitute most of
the first two-fifths of McFarland’s minutes. McFarland did not have to
write or copy a single number to produce that number-laden segment, which includes
over twenty-two numbers involving casualty data.
Because Kort apparently never did the necessary archival work, he did not discover
how McFarland constructed these minutes or that McFarland erred in identifying
the source as the JCS 1388 digest. Because Kort relied uncritically on the McFarland
minutes, Kort apparently does not know which part is taken verbatim from a staff
paper and which part is a summary of meeting comments, presumably from notes.
Of the numbers referred to by Kort from the minutes, only about five were from
the second, lengthier section of McFarland’s minutes, which presumably
depended on McFarland’s notes. Had Kort understood how the minutes were
constructed, he might have recognized that his point about the abundance of
quoted numbers in McFarland’s minutes might boil down to this dubious
proposition: McFarland could not err and Leahy could, even though Leahy cared
greatly about casualty numbers and about Marshall's casualty estimates.
Kort is quite correct to note that Marshall stated at the meeting that it "is
considered wrong to give any [casualty] estimate in numbers." Yet is that
what Marshall actually did, according to McFarland’s minutes? No. Marshall's
prepared text, while avoiding an exact number, actually did give an upper limit
in numbers for American battle casualties for the first thirty days of Olympic.
According to McFarland’s minutes, Marshall said that "the first 30
days in Kyushu should not exceed the price we have paid for Luzon," and
his chart specified 31,000 battle casualties on Luzon. How could Kort ignore
this in his assessment?
Compare the statement by Marshall about the first thirty days of the invasion
of Kyushu to the estimate Leahy ascribed to Marshall. In his diary Leahy wrote,
summarizing Marshall, that "[Kyushu] will not cost us in casualties more
than 63,000. . . ." Like Marshall's estimate for the first thirty days,
that, too, is an upper limit and not truly an overall estimate.
Had Kort noted in this segment of his article (p. 5) Marshall's casualty estimate
of up to 31,000 men for Olympic's first thirty days immediately after mentioning
Marshall's warning against providing casualty numbers, Kort might not have dismissed
Leahy's diary. But Kort's closest mention of this casualty estimate is at least
twenty-five lines away from his quotation of Marshall's no-estimates statement.
Intentionally or not, Kort thus obscures the crucial relationship between what
Marshall said he would not do and what he actually did.
In summary, Kort's argument against trusting Leahy's diary on Marshall's casualty
estimate of 63,000 is not sustainable. Indeed, the case is stronger for trusting
Leahy’s diary on Marshall’s figure than it is for using only the
minutes assembled by McFarland. It certainly strains credulity to disregard
Leahy's diary and to conclude, as Kort does, that Marshall did not make such
a comment at the White House meeting.
For those interested in the casualty numbers dispute and the problems of interpreting
evidence, it may also be useful to consider, at least briefly, the statement
in McFarland's minutes (FRUS: Berlin. I, p. 907) about Admiral King's
estimate of casualties in Olympic at the 18 June session. In McFarland's paraphrase
of King in these minutes, which closely parallels King's own 1952 memoir, Fleet
Admiral King, written with Walter Whitehill (p. 606), King stated that
"a realistic casualty figure for Kyushu would be somewhere between the
number experienced by General MacArthur on Luzon and the Okinawa casualties."
At first glance, that statement may seem clear, but there is considerable ambiguity.
Was King giving a casualty estimate for only the first thirty days of Olympic,
as I think? Or for the entire Olympic operation, as seems less likely? Did he
mean only battle casualties, as I think likely, given Marshall's use of the
battle casualties chart? Might King have meant casualties for ground and naval
forces on Okinawa, which seems unlikely in view of his comment about MacArthur's
forces on Luzon and in view of the rest of the 18 June dialogue as summarized
in McFarland's minutes?
Such questions about McFarland's minutes, in this case involving King, led me
to recognize years ago that McFarland's minutes were neither clear nor complete
on important issues. If King or Leahy had, in a diary, provided clarifying material
on King's 18 June comments, would we have to reject that diary source on King
because the information was not in McFarland's minutes? In my judgment, no.
Had Kort dealt with the problems involving King's casualty estimate statement
as summarized in McFarland's minutes, Kort might have understood the dangers
of using McFarland's minutes as if they were precise, clear, and complete on
casualty estimates.
Because Kort in places seems to misunderstand or ignore my published explanations
for relying on Leahy's diary, and sometimes seems to deny that I noted and explained
the crucial differences on casualty matters involving Leahy's diary and McFarland's
minutes, readers may wish to reread Kort on this matter and then examine my
published statements, most notably in the Pacific Historical Review
(Nov. 1999, pp. 569-75). As I indicated on p. 572 of that essay, there are multiple
sources on the 18 June meeting, and no single source can be fully, and exclusively,
relied on for interpreting casualty estimates. Why did Kort omit this statement
from his article? Might it have undercut some of his charges and forced him
to admit what he chose variously to ignore or deny? Did Kort violate standards
of fairness and accuracy by this omission?
On the basis of McFarland's 18 June minutes Kort also asserts that Leahy's explicit
statement about a 35 percent casualty rate for U.S. combatants in the Okinawa
operation included nonbattle as well as battle casualties. That seems highly
unlikely. If Kort does not think the concern at the 18 June conference was primarily
about battle casualties, as opposed to both battle and nonbattle casualties,
he should carefully reexamine the pre-18 June documents leading into the key
JCS 1388 series, other preliminary work by various military staff assistants
and committees, and, most important, the number-laden chart used by Marshall
at the meeting. That chart, which is in the published minutes (FRUS: Berlin.
I, p. 905), provides only battle casualty information, as I have indicated.
It never even mentions nonbattle casualties. If the main issue on the 18th also
involved nonbattle numbers, as Kort argues, why weren't nonbattle casualties
listed in the detailed chart for five previous military campaigns? Why didn't
someone in the June meeting ask specifically for that nonbattle casualty data
for the previous American military operations in order to gain a better picture
of the total casualty costs of Olympic?
Kort’s argument for including nonbattle casualties in the casualty rate
estimates also runs contrary to much of the published scholarship on the war,
including the work of Herbert Feis in his 1961 and 1966 volumes on the A-bomb,
Ronald Spector in his 1985 book on the Pacific war, William O'Neill in his 1993
volume on the war period, and Robert Ferrell in his 1994 biography of Truman.
But even if Kort is correct, and Feis, Spector, O'Neill, Ferrell, and many others
are wrong on this matter, Kort's conclusion will probably not advance a deeper
understanding of the basic issue of estimates for battle casualties at the 18
June meeting and may well deflect attention from the major issue of estimating
American battle casualties.
Kort's emphasis on casualties in the Okinawa campaign may lead him astray on
another matter. His contention, which reaches beyond a discussion of Leahy’s
35-percent estimate, is that it is more meaningful to combine battle and nonbattle
casualties. Although both kinds of casualties can lead to death and both do
deplete the ranks of available fighting men, conflating the two can greatly
distort matters, as Kort acknowledges me saying. He is correct in noting that
about 115,000 American nonbattle casualties in WWII died from their wartime
injuries, but he minimizes a crucial matter: that the rate of death for U.S.
nonbattle casualties was far lower in WWII than for battle casualties. The difference
was overwhelming.
The rate of death from the approximately 965,000 American battle casualties
was under 31 percent--meaning 292,000 dead. In sharp contrast, the rate of death
from nonbattle casualties was under .6 percent. Total nonbattle casualties for
the American army in World War II exceeded 16.9 million, but the total resulting
death figure was under 84,000. For that reason the distinctive categories of
battle and nonbattle casualties are important for analysis and for considering
the implications of casualty estimates and reports. As the army's Medical
Statistics in World War II shows (pp. 25-35), a U.S. soldier wounded on
the battlefield in that war was on average about fifty times more likely to
die than a soldier categorized as a nonbattle casualty. Adding together battle
and nonbattle casualties, as Kort urges, would totally obscure profound differences
about comparative risks and about depleting or sustaining U.S. forces.
Kort properly points out that nonbattle casualties, like battle casualties,
are removed from the fighting force. But for how long? Normally, except in the
comparatively rare fatal cases, the nonbattle casualty in the army was generally
removed for a much shorter period than the battle casualty--probably about eighteen
to nineteen days on average. The non-fatal battle casualty in the army was generally
out of action much longer--apparently on average over one hundred days. Battle
Casualties, among other sources, provides illuminating data on these subjects
(pp. 21-31). As this example illustrates, Kort often fails to delve deeply enough
into issues. He assumes, in dealing with complex matters, that the answers are
simple and within easy reach. Judging from his article, he did very limited
research. Some archival work and much wider reading will be necessary if he
is to avoid various errors of omission and commission.
To support his contention that Leahy meant battle and nonbattle casualties,
Kort quarrels about the number of U.S. ground troops involved in the 1945 Okinawa
operation. He asserts that when used as a denominator, with U.S. casualties
on Okinawa as a numerator, that number can establish whether Leahy's 35 percent
was correct for Okinawa as of 18 June 1945. However, Kort usually does not use
18 June data for total casualties, but data for the entire operation. That operation,
though officially ending on about 22 June, actually continued for about two
weeks after 18 June, with continuing American casualties. Thus Kort is padding
the numerator, probably by a few thousand.
Kort also goes wrong on other matters. Norman Polmar and Thomas Alien err greatly
in their 1995 book on the invasion plans and in their summary article on casualties
by stating that there were 100,000 U.S. troops involved in the Okinawa "assault
force." They implicitly use that questionable number as the denominator
in their calculation of the American casualty rate on Okinawa. Focusing on more
than twenty troubling problems in Polmar and Alien's work, my twenty-nine-page
critique of their study in Peace & Change (April 1999) contends
briefly, in a relatively minor point in about a dozen lines of text (p. 229)
plus a shorter endnote (17), that the actual size of the American force was
"about 154,000" for the early Okinawa period (which is what Polmar
and Alien seem to mean by the "assault force") and that the total
number later rose "as high as 227,000.”
Had I used a larger number than "about 154,000" for the denominator,
Polmar and Alien would have been even farther off on their casualty rate percentage,
since a larger denominator would obviously have produced a percentage well under
35 percent. Thus, by using the "about 154,000" figure, despite some
ambiguity in the sources suggesting the possibility of a higher number in the
denominator, I was operating against my own interests and possibly understating
somewhat the magnitude of Polmar and Alien's error. Little did I expect to be
attacked for such kindness on a minor matter where there was some ambiguity
in the sources.
Kort focuses energetically on the number 154,000. He generally disregards my
hedge (“about”), never mentions my explicit statement that the number
later rose to 227,000 (though he acknowledges that I said the number rose),
and faults me for using 154,000. Relying heavily on the official army history
(Roy Appleman et al., Okinawa: The Last Battle), he asserts that the
correct number for the assault force is definitely 183,000. He seems to think
that this conclusion is not subject to challenge on evidentiary grounds.
Kort is so sure that I erred, and that the figure must be 183,000, that he apparently
never did the necessary work in the archives and is presumably unaware that
the monthly army publication Health, in its 31 May 1945 edition (p.
16), listed 154,000 as the preliminary estimated average U.S. troop total for
the first 58 days of the Okinawa campaign. Health seemed to me a reliable
source. Put together partly by Dr. Michael DeBakey, who would become the co-author
of a valuable book on WWII casualty matters (Battle Casualties) and
an important heart surgeon, Health produced a monthly report series
that seemed closely attentive to troop and casualty numbers and carefully calculated
casualty rates for U.S. forces. Because I worried whether Health was
precisely correct, however, and because I had also seen a 9 June 1945 report
from the Operations Division (OPD) of the War Department General Staff that
indicated a number of 165,500 for the first two months, I intentionally used
the phrase "about 154,000." The OPD report seemed a bit high on some
other numbers, so I was concerned that it might be too high on the Okinawa number,
especially if one was seeking to determine the size of the assault force. I
also thought that the official army history, with its higher number for the
Okinawa invasion force, was somewhat ambiguous about the size of the actual
assault force (see p. 26 and appendix C, including footnotes).
Perhaps I made a mistake by not citing in my late-1990s articles the major source
(Health) for my estimate of "about 154,000" and by not explaining
why determining the number of American troops in the "assault force"
on Okinawa or the total ground forces for April, for April–May 1945, for
the period up to 18 June, or for the ninety-one-day campaign (April-June) is
so difficult. In my 1999 Pacific Historical Review article (p. 571),
I briefly deal with some of these problems and note that the "total U.S.
ground troops in the Okinawa operation for April" (a force that was very
probably larger than the assault force) apparently averaged more than 170,000.
However, when I was crafting articles in the late 1990s it seemed to me that
my essays already had so many numbers that it would be a mistake to include
another highly detailed set of figures that were not essential to the larger
analysis. Sometimes seemingly minor omissions, the result of intellectual parsimony,
may later make an author vulnerable to sniping.
More recently, I also found a surprising report in naval records that gives
a much lower figure for the first-day American landing force, which might be
what Polmar and Alien mean by "assault force." But that naval archives
paper also had some handwritten emendations written in May 1945 or possibly
later, so it would probably be impossible to assess its reliability or significance
without substantial research.
Those interested in a deeper appreciation of the complications involved in researching
numbers for U.S. ground troops in the "assault force" on Okinawa,
for all of April, for April–May 1945, for the period up to 18 June, and
for the entire campaign might want to consult, among other sources: (1) the
official army history, Okinawa: The Last Battle, including the charts
in appendix C and their footnotes; (2) the 31 May 1945 issue of Health;
(3) later issues of Health; (4) OPD files in Record Group (RG) 165
at the National Archives (NA); (5) reports in the records of the Office of Chief
of Naval Operations in RG 38 at the NA; and (6) the book co-written by DeBakey
and Gilbert Beebe, Battle Casualties, especially pp. 50-51. Other archives
contain various reports on the campaign, and certainly the files of the Surgeon
General include material relevant to Okinawa casualty numbers. Those interested
in this problem must also carefully assess: (1) evidence about the number of
U.S. casualties on Okinawa at various key dates; (2) what was actually known
about the relevant numbers at various bureaucratic levels in Washington on 18
June; (3) what Leahy knew that day; and (4) what reasons particular historians
cite for reaching their conclusions.
Fortunately, no important conclusion on mid-1945 casualty estimates for the
invasion of Japan depends on whether the accurate number for the assault force
in early April is 183,000 or 154,000 or less. Kort has gotten into a minor issue.
He then mishandles the problems of evidence, apparently by not doing the hard
research, oversimplifies, and fails to understand the dimensions of the problem.
Kort also argues that it is incorrect or unreasonable to focus, as I did briefly,
on the separation of Japanese military forces on southern Kyushu and northern
Kyushu in late July 1945 and to note the comparative numbers in each geographical
area. He does not address the key question of whether a successful U.S. air
force interdiction strategy, designed to block the Japanese shift from north
to south, would have substantially impeded the progress of Japanese reinforcements
to the south. John Ray Skates, in The Invasion of Japan, treats this
subject briefly for the period up to early August 1945 (p. 144). Kort's own
judgments seem inadequately informed by the relevant scholarship and by important
archival material. Although he quotes two documents--one from 29 July and the
other from 1 August 1945--from General MacArthur's staff about the possible
flow of Japanese troops from north to south on Kyushu and into Kyushu from elsewhere,
he does not quote MacArthur's own contrary judgment on these matters. Why not?
On 9 August, a little more than a week after the two staff assessments quoted
by Kort, MacArthur sent his own analysis to Marshall. MacArthur cabled that
the U.S. Air Force operations on Kyushu would largely immobilize Japanese troops
in their positions on Kyushu, and thus, by implication, a north-to-south flow
would not be a problem, nor would a flow into Kyushu from elsewhere. Kort never
mentions this cable, part of which has been quoted by me in print (see Pacific
Historical Review, Nov. 1999, p. 586). It is also available in various
archives.
Perhaps Kort would rebut MacArthur's judgment. MacArthur did tend to be unduly
optimistic, and he certainly wanted the Olympic operation, so he was reluctant
to be wary--at least on paper, and in reports to Washington. MacArthur may have
been too optimistic on this matter of effective interdiction, but Skates, who
is not pro-MacArthur, seems to reach a similar conclusion: the north-to-south
flow would not have been substantial. Regardless of whether or not Kort would
argue against MacArthur and Skates, his omission of MacArthur's judgment and
Skates's view is significant.
Even as Kort tilts against my efforts to distinguish the size of the Japanese
forces in southern Kyushu from those in the north, he never tells readers that
the central point of my 1999 article in the Pacific Historical Review
was not about comparative Japanese troop numbers in the north versus the south.
Rather, I was speculating that the large Japanese force in southern Kyushu in
mid-August 1945 would very probably have led Washington to reconsider Olympic
if the war had not ended then. Indeed, it seems possible that Olympic would
have been canceled and plans shifted to a new invasion site. Kort's omissions
of context, of MacArthur's important message, and of Skates's relevant book
seem to be part of a larger pattern. Kort's apparent strategy is to present
virtually a litigator's brief, excluding contrary evidence and all material
that might lead to a broader, more judicious analysis.
Kort also has some other difficulties. He frequently misquotes various sources.
Drawing upon about seventeen lines from a 1 August document (Kort, pp. 9-10),
he makes at least six errors in quoting. He also misquotes a report from 29
July (Kort, p. 9). In addition, his first three quotations from me (Kort, p.
4) contain errors (see the text keyed to notes 3-5), as does the first endnote
(2) in which he quoted me. In summary, he errs in every set of quotations—six
in toto—that I checked, and I quit checking at six. His errors, though
minor, reveal remarkable carelessness and certainly do not inspire confidence.
To get a good sense of Kort's scholarship in other ways, readers should look
closely at a seemingly minor matter in his essay that is actually quite revelatory
of his peculiar tactics. In endnote 2 Kort discusses but fails to summarize
accurately my 1986 comment about the dangers of inferential thinking in certain
situations. He greatly distorts my meaning and fails to report that I was not
opposing the general use of inference as a part of historical analysis. Who
would? I was opposing the use of inference for conclusions as a substitute for
first consulting the relevant archival material. Consultation of archival sources
does not mean that all readers will agree on interpretation, but using those
documents, as I was contending, is far wiser than disregarding them and seeking
to infer what they may state. By generally disregarding archival material Kort
sometimes falls prey to the error that I warned against in 1986 and that Kort
misrepresents in endnote 2: using inference as a substitute for necessary archival
research.
For those interested in independently assessing Kort's judgment, claims and
scholarly standards, let me advise looking closely at his summaries and the
quotations in his text and endnotes and then checking back on what he is purportedly
drawing upon and citing. Equally important, those interested in the subject
at hand should read more broadly and take note of what Kort omits and how infrequently
he goes back to the relevant archival collections to check his interpretation.
Some dismaying tactics will become apparent in his treatment of matters both
large and small.
Stressing Kort’s errors, inadequate research, distortions, dubious judgments,
and omissions is not tantamount to claiming that I got everything right on the
complicated casualty issues. I tried hard, discussed the issues privately with
a number of historians of various interpretive persuasions, and sometimes revised
my judgments in print and critiqued some of my earlier work (see, for example,
Pacific Historical Review 1999, p. 563, note 4, and Peace and Change
1999, p. 240, note 5). There is undoubtedly still room for thoughtful challenge
and dispute and broadening the framework of analysis, but such efforts should
be intelligent and fair-minded, careful and well-researched. Kort's deeply flawed
essay seldom, if ever, meets the standards for serious, responsible academic
discourse.
| SHAFR HOME |