Russian Ships at Pearl Harbor?

field_image
aerial photo of Pearl Harbor before the attack
Question

If America had opened its ports at Pearl Harbor and the Philippines to the Russians prior to 1941, do you think that might have delayed or caused the Japanese to think twice about attacking these places, so as not to get America and Russia combined against them?

Answer

Most probably not. Although the Japanese generally avoided attacking Russian ships, there simply was not a lot of Soviet merchant shipping in the Pacific at the time. And perhaps more important, there were almost no Soviet warships in the region, so the chance of the Japanese attackers encountering and engaging with Russian ships by accident was small. Even if they had, Japan and Russia had chosen to gloss over incidents in the recent past because they calculated it was in their larger interests to do so. The chance that Japanese attackers might have damaged Russian ships did not affect Japanese planning.

Russian Ships in American Ports

American ports were not closed to Russian warships or merchant ships. A fleet of 11 Soviet ships, for example, left port at Balboa, U.S. Canal Zone, in July 1939, for the Russians' naval base at Vladivostok. Four mine layers among the fleet went by way of San Francisco, and the other ships went by way of the merchant shipping port facilities next to Honolulu.

Russian freighters and tankers often used port facilities in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Dutch Harbor, Alaska. It was Russia's merchant ships, not its navy, that crossed the Pacific at this time. At the beginning of World War 2, many of the Soviet Union's warships, in fact, had been purchased from or built by the U.S. The bulk of its navy was based in the west, in Leningrad, Kronstadt, Sevastopol, Odessa, and Murmansk.

Soviet Naval Power before the War

Soviet maritime activity, both mercantile and military, had waxed and waned from the late 19th century to the World War 2 period. Japan was a regional rival and this tension erupted in the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War, in the course of which Japan all but obliterated the Russian fleet and emerged as a world naval power. The 1917 Russian Revolution and 1919-21 civil war drew off much of the Russian military presence in the Far East and Pacific region, but it began to build up again, including at its Pacific base in Vladivostok, in response to Japanese incursions in China in the late 1920s and into the 1930s. The Soviet Pacific Ocean Fleet at that time consisted almost entirely of small submarines, torpedo boats, and coastal patrol boats.

Russian warships would not have been cruising the Pacific, either in Hawaii or the Philippines before the war.

Almost all of the Soviets' "blue water," heavy warships were in the west. This did not have anything to do with American policy regarding its ports. In short, Russian warships would not have been cruising the Pacific, either in Hawaii or the Philippines, before the war. They were needed elsewhere.

Volatile Relations between the U.S., the Soviet Union, and Japan

The Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact was signed in April 1941. Cross-border skirmishes in Japanese-occupied Manchuria and in Mongolia motivated Japan to sign in order to keep Russia from tying it down in northern Asia while it accomplished its goals of territorial expansion in Southeast Asia. Russia signed it because it was focusing its military might to the west, supplying Germany with food and war material, in line with the August 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, but also preparing for a confrontation with Germany itself. That came in June 1941, when Germany suddenly invaded the Soviet Union.

Both the Soviets and the Japanese found it expedient to honor their neutrality pact throughout most of the war.

At that time, Japan, as an ally of Germany, apparently briefly considered abrogating its neutrality pact with the Soviets and invading Russia, but decided against it in favor of focusing on military conquests toward the south. Both the Soviets and the Japanese found it expedient to honor their neutrality pact throughout most of the war. That included, for Japan, allowing passage to Russian merchant ships that were carrying supplies from the U.S. to Vladivostok.

After the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the U.S. had conducted its Russian trade warily, with some constraints on what it would allow to be sold to the Russians (to try to prevent material from being further shipped to Germany). Britain, during this time, pressed the U.S. to drastically reduce its trade with Germany, Italy, and Japan, as well as Russia, as a partner in its "economic warfare."

From the summer of 1941, after Germany invaded Russia, U.S. relations with the Soviet Union went into flux, as FDR's administration moved to convert a near-adversary into an ally. In September 1941, for example, FDR promised Russia that the U.S. would deliver five new B-17s, flying them to Russia over the skies of Germany. U.S. constraints on sales were lifted and America began shipping food, fuel, and other war material to Russia, via Vladivostok, under the terms of the Lend Lease Act.

At nearly the same time, Roosevelt, not wishing to subsidize Japan's expansion in Asia, stopped shipment of U.S. oil and gasoline to Japan. It was at this point that Japan concluded that it would have to go to war with the U.S. in order to ensure its own territorial expansion. From Japan's point of view, at least privately, the die had been cast. The U.S. was still, however, trying to sort out its interactions with Russia under the changed circumstances. No joint naval operations, for example, had been authorized by the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations by the end of 1941.

Soviet-Japanese Maritime Clashes

Although the Germans pressured their Japanese allies to stop the shipping of U.S. goods via Russian freighters to Vladivostok, it continued, mostly unmolested, throughout the war. Both the Russians and the Japanese generally went out of their way avoid conflict with each other, despite isolated incidents. On May 1, 1942, a Japanese submarine sunk the Soviet cargo ship Angarstroi, loaded with sugar, in the Sea of Japan after it was detained, searched, and released by the Japanese Navy. At first, the Japanese blamed it on an American submarine, but the Soviets were not fooled and tensions escalated. The same month, a Japanese submarine exchanged fire with a Russian freighter off the coast of Australia.

At that point in the war, Japan was riding on the crest of victories at Pearl Harbor and the Philippines and it is possible that some of its naval officers were emboldened enough to disregard the Russia-Japan Neutrality Pact. Both countries built up their forces facing each other, separating Siberia from Manchuria, and Outer Mongolia from Inner Mongolia, but Russian and Japanese diplomats and military officers decided to pass over the incidents at sea and Russia and Japan continued to avoid conflict.

Japanese Planning and Objectives

The Japanese meticulously planned their attacks at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and, on the following day, at Manila. Their goal, which they largely (though only temporarily) achieved, was to destroy or disable the American Pacific fleet, especially its capital ships (aircraft carriers and battleships), in order to clear obstacles to the Japanese invasion of suth and southwest Asia, starting with the Philippines.

For the Pearl Harbor attack, the attacking Japanese pilots knew the composition of the American fleet and targeted specific ships. They were even prepared to fly to Maui in pursuit of these particular ships if the fleet had moved to its occasional anchorage at Lahaina.

Japanese pilots knew the composition of the American fleet and targeted specific ships.

The attackers, in other words, were not aiming to cause general chaos and destruction, but rather to destroy specific warships, to the extent that they could locate them. (The Americans' aircraft carriers happened to be out at sea that morning). The Japanese did not attack the merchant docks in Honolulu Harbor, and so, whatever foreign freighters happened to be there were not imperiled. The attack on the Philippines 10 hours later was aimed particularly at destroying U.S. military airpower in the Pacific, the B-17s and P-40s at Clark and Iba air bases. This would give Japan's airplanes uncontested control of the air and, therefore, allow the Japanese army's invasion of the Philippines.

Bibliography

Gordon William Prange, At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (New York: Penguin, 2001).

William H. Bartsch, December 8, 1941: MacArthur's Pearl Harbor (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2003).

Kinoaki Matsuo, How Japan Plans to Win. Trans. Kilsoo K. Kaan (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1942).

Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon, eds. The Pearl Harbor Papers: Inside the Japanese Plans (Washington: Brassey's, 1993).

Ian Kershaw. Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941 (New York: Penguin, 2007), pp. 331-381.

Donald W. Mitchell, A History of Russian and Soviet Sea Power (New York: Macmillan, 1974).

Mairin Mitchell. The Maritime History of Russia, 848-1948 (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries, 1969).

Jurgen Rohwer and Mikhail S. Monakov. Stalin's Ocean-Going Fleet: Soviet Naval Strategy and Shipbuilding Programmes, 1935-1953 (New York: Frank Cass Publishers, 2001).

"Russia, Japan Mobilize; Soviet Gunboat Is Sunk; Ultimatum for Moscow," Washington Post, July 1, 1937, p. 1.

"Soviet Ships Quit Panama: Vessels Take Diverse Routes on Trip to Vladivostok," New York Times, July 18, 1939, p. 10.

"Soviet Attitude Toward Chinese Influenced by Stand U.S. Takes," New York Times, July 14, 1940, p. 29.

Raymond Daniell, "British Seek the Enlistment of U.S. in Economic War on Axis and Allies," New York Times, January 29, 1941, p. 1.

Bertram D. Hulen, "Soviet Requests U.S. Help; Offers to Pay for Supplies," New York Times, July 2, 1941, p. 1.

"Russian Ship Shelled: Japanese Submarine Driven Off in Attack Off Australia," New York Times, June 26, 1942, p. 2.

"Soviet Ship Sunk by Japs," Los Angeles Times, June 26, 1942, p. 1.

"Japan Lets Russia Get Our Supplies," New York Times, March 13, 1943, p. 4.

John G. Norris, "Knox Sees Little Chance of Russo-Jap War Now," Washington Post, June 23, 1943, p. 3.

Barnet Nover, "Japan and Russia: Is Their Truce About to End?" Washington Post, August 14, 1943, p. 4.

"It Depends on Who's Winning," Los Angeles Times, November 16, 1944, p. A4.

Pearl Harbor Attack, 7 December 1941. Department of the Navy, Naval History & Heritage Command.

Images:
"This is Not [a] Drill" Dispatch, 12/07/1941, National Archives and Records Administration, Waltham, Massachusetts.

Aerial Photograph of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii: 01/07/1941, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.

Republicanism and Anti-imperialism Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 01/04/2008 - 14:04
Description

Professor John Moser discusses U.S. foreign policy in the 1890s, when the U.S. acquired territories including the Philippines and Guam. He considers how anti-imperialists believed such territorial acquisitions would threaten the ideals of republicanism.

To listen to this lecture, scroll down to the Monday, July 12th, 7:30-9:30 pm session. Then click on the Real Audio link in the gray bar to the left of the main text.

Rancho de Guadalupe Historical Society [CA] Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 01/08/2008 - 13:36
Description

The Rancho de Guadalupe Historical Society seeks to preserve and share the history of Guadalupe, California. To that end, the society operates a museum, a historic jail, and a non-circulating library. Artifacts on display include Native American adobes and pieces representative of the cultures which succeeded the Chumash—the Chinese, Filipinos, Mexicans, Swiss, Italians, Spanish, Japanese, and Portuguese.

The society offers exhibits and library access.

America Abroad jbuescher Mon, 02/01/2010 - 12:28
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Battleship USS Connecticut, 1906
Question

Was America's shift away from a predominantly isolationist foreign policy stance a historical inevitability or did Theodore Roosevelt and his persuasive image as a leader push us into the modern age of global interaction?

Answer

Political, social, economic, and cultural forces were at work at the time, but Roosevelt's actions, undertaken consciously and intentionally, had important consequences as well.

American Isolationism?

The conventional wisdom that America was generally "isolationist" until the end of the 19th century has some severe limits. It is only true if it means that the United States was reluctant to become involved in European politics (as opposed to European business, manufacturing, and trade relationships, which the U.S. was not so reluctant to engage in, despite the imposition of protectionist tariffs).

The reluctance derived from the fact that European immigrants to America, from the very beginning, had often fled to escape Europe. For them, America was a place apart, free of the "entangling alliances" (Jefferson's phrase) of entrenched interests, monarchies, and religious restrictions. The idea was fortified by geography, with oceans separating the Old World and the New.

The problem with the idea of "American isolationism," however, comes when it is taken to imply that the policy of the U.S. during this time was "peace with each other and all the world" (as President Polk said during his inaugural address) or that it was guided exclusively by the simple desire not to interfere with other peoples' lives. If the U.S. relationship with North American indigenous peoples is not evidence enough to the contrary, its relationship with Mexico throughout the 19th century—well before the Spanish-American War—should demonstrate that the U.S. did not refrain from interfering with other peoples' lives or other country's policies or from exercising military power over them.

Progressivism

The Northern victory in the U.S. Civil War and the consequent abolition of slavery, appeared to justify the use of state power to impose solutions to social problems, to demonstrate that social progress could be engineered by the state. This was the essence of "Progressivism," and, as a political or social philosophy, it was a departure from the deep-rooted American suspicion of, and aversion to, a strong central state power. Progressives sought first to uplift and re-order America, but then turned their view outward, especially with the emergence of a popular view that the valued American pioneer "spirit" would diminish as the westward settling of the continent reached the Pacific Ocean.

The Progressives contemplated doing unto other lands what they were already doing to their own; or, as Mark Twain sarcastically put it, "extending the blessings of civilization to our brother who sits in darkness."

The U.S. did not refrain from interfering with other peoples' lives or other country's policies or from exercising its military power over them.
American Action Abroad Dependent on Strengthening Naval Power

Nevertheless, if we limit ourselves to considering American actions overseas, then a sea change of sorts did occur toward the end of the 19th century. America deliberately fashioned itself into a formidable naval power. U.S. Naval officer Alfred Thayer Mahan encapsulated the rationale for this in his highly influential book, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, published in 1890.

Not surprisingly, America's overseas reach was made possible by a large effort to expand and modernize the U.S. Navy, which began under President Chester A. Arthur in 1882, 16 years before the Spanish-American War. President Arthur also negotiated with the Kingdom of Hawaii the right to use Pearl Harbor as a coaling station for U.S. Navy ships.

It was also in 1882 that young Theodore Roosevelt published his first historical book, The Naval War of 1812. He was friends with Mahan and shared his view of the need for the U.S. to develop its navy. President William McKinley appointed Roosevelt to the post of Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1897. He resigned the following year to fight in the Spanish-American War.

America's overseas reach was made possible by a large effort to expand and modernize the U.S. Navy
Foreign Trade

Counting the value of foreign commerce in the leading commercial nations from 1870 to 1890, the U.S. ranked 4th behind the United Kingdom, Germany, and France.

From 1850 to 1890, the dollar value of U.S. total imports and exports rose from $318 million to $1.3 billion, an increase of 400 percent. As America's own industries grew in the 2nd half of the 19th century, the percentage of manufactured goods (as opposed to raw materials) exported also grew.

Just as important, America's direct investment overseas increased, placing more American businesses in situations in which they operated within local conditions around the world. These businesses dealt directly with local foreign markets, governments, labor pools, and raw material suppliers.

Filibustering around the Americas

During this period, American business entrepreneurs in the Pacific and in Central and South America began to venture deeply into local political and even military affairs. Actions sometimes reached far beyond mere business activities, including the organization of "free lance" military expeditions called "filibusters" against governments in the Caribbean and Central and South America.

American companies, such as the United Fruit Company, came to own vast plantations in these countries and operated them as agricultural colonies. They often pressured the U.S., especially throughout the 1st half of the 20th century, to intervene militarily in countries such as Nicaragua, Honduras, and Haiti when their interests were threatened by local wars and revolutions.

America across the Pacific

The pattern of American commercial interests supported by American military power had already been set by the beginning of the 20th century. Hawaii was first annexed to the U.S. in February 1893, after immigrant businessmen and politicians from the U.S., including Sanford Dole (his cousin James would become the "Pineapple King") ousted the Hawaiian royalty, with the backing of U.S. diplomats and soldiers. The annexation was withdrawn, but was re-instituted under President McKinley in 1898, with an eye toward using Hawaii as a naval base in the Pacific to fight Spain in Guam and the Philippines.

In the Spanish-American War of 1898, naval power was decisive to the U.S. victory. Quasi-colonial competition between the U.S. and Spain was one factor in the war, as well as an ambivalent notion in the U.S. that it was expelling Old World domination (Catholic and monarchical) from the New World. This in theory helped to free the hemisphere for democratic revolution and republicanism, while at the same time advancing U.S. economic and political power over the same region.

The end of the war saw the U.S. emerge as a fully-fledged, although ideologically conflicted, colonial power. That ideological conflict regarding the destiny and direction of American foreign policy would continue through the 20th century. This new era of foreign involvement was underway before Theodore Roosevelt held any national elected office.

Roosevelt's Role

Practically speaking, of course, the U.S. had no way to become militarily entangled in Europe—even if it had wished to—until it had a navy and commercial fleet capable of protecting its own shores, but more importantly, capable of transporting troops and supplies across the Atlantic.

As the Republican Vice Presidential candidate in 1900 campaigning for McKinley's second term, Roosevelt publicly argued in favor of the annexation of the Philippines, contending that both the Philippines and the U.S. would benefit.

After McKinley was assassinated in 1901 and Roosevelt became President, he built the "Great White Fleet," four battleship squadrons of new naval ships. He then dispatched them around the world from 1907-1909 on a mission of friendship and goodwill, but with a subtext of demonstrating that the U.S. had come of age as an international naval power.

Roosevelt also strengthened and extended the Monroe Doctrine in his 1904 address to Congress. He claimed that the U.S. had the right to intervene—to exercise "international police power"—in the economic affairs of Central American and Caribbean nations in order to stabilize them. This claim became known as the "Roosevelt Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine.

Roosevelt had wide support in the U.S. for his foreign policy bullishness, although strong and significant opposition existed against actions that appeared to be at odds with the country's own republican ideals.

He quickly recognized the legitimacy of Panamanian rebels to separate from Columbia, and he committed the U.S. to protect their independence. But this (and the U.S.'s negotiated lease for the Canal Zone) suggested an action quite at odds with the country's refusal to allow states to secede from the Union during the Civil War.

Roosevelt, however, was convinced that a canal would be built across the Isthmus of Panama and that the U.S. must control it. During the war, American ships fought in the Atlantic and the Pacific. Transferring the fleets from one ocean to the other meant sending ships around Cape Horn, a difficult, expensive, and time-consuming operation. When the canal was finished, thought Roosevelt, only if American controlled it, could the U.S. ensure its ability to defend both of its own coasts.

All of Roosevelt's actions fortified the outward-looking expansive trend in U.S. foreign policy. Roosevelt's decisions, such as undertaking the Panama Canal project and strengthening the Navy, had long term consequences for the U.S.

Bibliography

Alfred Thayer Mahan. The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783, Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1890.
Alfred Thayer Mahan. The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future, Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1898.

Theodore Roosevelt. The Naval War of 1812; or the History of the United States Navy during the Last War with Great Britain to Which Is Appended an Account of the Battle of New Orleans. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1882.
Mark Twain. "To the Person Sitting in Darkness," North American Review, Vol. 172, issue 531 (February, 1901): 161-176.

U. S. Treasury Department. Annual Report and Statements of the Chief of the Bureau of Statistics on the Foreign Commerce and Navigation, Immigration, and Tonnage of the United States for the Year Ending June 30, 1890. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1891.

Theodore Roosevelt's Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine (1905) at www.ourdocuments.gov. (Theodore Roosevelt's Annual Message to Congress for 1904; House Records HR 58-A-K2; Records of the U.S. House of Representatives; Record Group 233; Center for Legislative Archives; National Archives).

Robert Kagan. Dangerous Nation: America's Foreign Policy from Its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century. New York: Vintage Books, 2007.

Warren Zimmermann. First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002.

Howard K. Beale. Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956.

James R. Holmes. Theodore Roosevelt and World Order: Police Power in International Relations. Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2006.

David McCullough. The Path between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1977.

Images:
Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt (front, center) at the Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island, circa 1897, with the college's faculty and class members. U.S. Naval Historical Center.

Battleship USS Connecticut, BB-18, running speed trials off the Maine coast, 1906. U.S. Naval Historical Center.

Teaching about the Age of Imperialism

Description

This workshop will use the Choices' program's unit "Beyond Manifest Destiny: America Enters the Age of Imperialism" as a jumping-off point for discussing the Spanish-American War and the resulting U.S. colonial acquisitions, as well as how these may be taught.

Contact email
choices@brown.edu
Sponsoring Organization
Choices for the 21st Century Education Program
Phone number
1 401-863-3155
Target Audience
Secondary
Start Date
Duration
One day
Website
http://www.choices.edu/pd/calendar.php
The Jones Acts of 1916 and 1917 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/20/2008 - 13:28
Description

This iCue Mini-Documentary describes how the Philippines was promised independence in 1916, but didn't receive it until 1946.

This feature is no longer available.

Resistance to American Imperialism in the Philippine Islands Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/20/2008 - 14:16
Description

This iCue Mini-Documentary describes Philippine soldiers' beginning to fight against the U.S. soldiers who occupied the Philippine Islands after the Spanish-American War, tipping off a debate in the United States about whether America should be imperialist.

This feature is no longer available.

Letters from the Philippines

Bibliography
Image Credits

Video 1:

  • Photo. Downtown Beatrice, Nebraska. 1887.
  • Image. Wadhams, William H. "U.S.S. Maine." c.1898. New York Public Library Digital Gallery, Image ID: 1648984.
  • Photo. "U.S.S. Maine." NHHC Collection. Photo No. 61236.
  • Photo. "Details of the wreck of the U.S.S. Maine." 1898. New York Public Library Digital Gallery, Image ID: 114482.
  • Photo. "Beatrice Military Band." 1898. Gage County Historical Society.
  • Painting. "Off For the War." J.W. Buell. Behind the Guns with American Heroes. Chicago: International Publishing Co.. 1899.
  • "Troops for Manila, Last Man." 1899. Calisphere/Keystone-Mast Collection, UCR/California Museum of Photography, University of California at Riverside.
  • Photo. "George Dewey." William McKinley. Exciting Experiences in Our Wars with Spain and the Filipinos. Chicago: Book Publishers Union, 1899.
  • Image. "Admiral Dewey at the Battle of Manila." NHHC Collection, Photo No. NH 84510-KN.
  • Image. "Battle of Manila Bay." NHHC Collection, Photo No. NH91881-KN.
  • "Map of Manila Bay." J.W. Buell. Behind the Guns with American Heroes. Chicago: International Publishing Co.. 1899, 496.
  • Image. "In the Court of Ayuntamiento, After the Surrender." Scribner's Magazine, 24:6 (December 1898): 684.
  • Photo. Rau Studios. "Emilio Aguinaldo." New York Public Library Digital Galley, Image ID: 437565.
  • Photo. Rau Studios. "Aguinaldo and his Advisors." New York Public Library Digital Galley, Image ID: 437566.
  • Photo. "Church in the Plaza Calderon de Barca." Scribner's Magazine, 24:6. (December 1898): 683.
  • Illustration. "Puzzle Picture." William McKinley. Exciting Experiences in Our Wars with Spain and the Filipinos. Chicago: Book Publishers Union, 1899.
  • Illustration. "The Eyes of the World Are Upon Him." William McKinley. Exciting Experiences in Our Wars with Spain and the Filipinos. Chicago: Book Publishers Union, 1899.
  • Photo. "Guard at the causeway connecting Cavite and San Rogue. Cavite, P.I." Calisphere/Keystone-Mast Collection, UCR/California Museum of Photography, University of California at Riverside.
  • Photo. "Types of Spanish Soldiers in the Southern Philippines." 1899–1900. New York Public Library Digital Galley, Image ID: 831254.

Video 2:

  • Photo. "Group of American Soldiers, San Roque (Cavite), Philippines." c.1899. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, #LC-USZ6-1511. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2002724002/#
  • Photo. "A Filipino Restaurant, Manila, Philippine Islands." Calisphere/Keystone-Mast Collection, UCR/California Museum of Photography, University of California at Riverside.
  • Photo. "View of a Suburb of Manila." J.W. Buell. Behind the Guns with American Heroes. Chicago: International Publishing Co., 1899.
  • Photo. "Filipino Bamboo Band, Philippines." Calisphere/Keystone-Mast Collection, UCR/California Museum of Photography, University of California at Riverside.
  • Cartoon. "Pinned." William McKinley. Exciting Experiences in Our Wars with Spain and the Filipinos. Chicago: Book Publishers Union, 1899.
  • Print. Kurtz & Allison. "Spanish-American Treaty of Paris." December 10, 1898. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, No. LC-DIG-pgs-01948.
  • Illustration. "Peace." William McKinley. Exciting Experiences in Our Wars with Spain and the Filipinos. Chicago: Book Publishers Union, 1899.
  • Cartoon. "Uncle Sam." Milwaukee Journal, August 10, 1898.
  • Cartoon. Berryman, Clifford. Untitled cartoon. Washington Post, February 4, 1899. National Archives, Archival Research Catalogue, Identifier No. 6010306.
  • Cartoon. Berryman, Clifford. "A Burden That Cannot Be Honorably Disposed of at Present." Washington Post, September 25, 1899. National Archives, Archival Research Catalogue, Identifier No. 6010332.

Video 3:

  • Photo. "The 14th Infantry Entrenched at Pasig, P.I." Calisphere/Keystone-Mast Collection, UCR/California Museum of Photography, University of California at Riverside.
  • Photo. "William McKinley." c.1900. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, No. LC-USZ62-13025.
  • Cartoon. "How Some Apprehensive People Picture Uncle Sam After the War." Milwaukee Journal, May 16, 1898.
  • Photo. "Aguinaldo, A Prisoner on the U.S.S. Vicksburg." March, 1901. New York Public Library Digial Gallery, Image ID: 114144.
  • Image. William McKinley. William McKinley. Exciting Experiences in Our Wars with Spain and the Filipinos. Chicago: Book Publishers Union, 1899.
  • Cartoon. "Not Laughing at Uncle Sam Now." Denver Evening Post, July 5, 1898.
  • Cartoon. Berryman, Clifford. "Not in a Position to Give Up the Chase." Washington Post, May 1, 1899. National Archives, Archival Research Catalogue, Identifier No. 6010319.
  • Cartoon. "Uncle Sam's Schoolhouse of Democracy." Denver Evening Post, December 28, 1898.
  • Cartoon. "Uncle Sam Finds the Philippines to be Stubborn." Denver Evening Post, February 16, 1899.

Video 4:

Video Overview

Primary sources reveal many different perspectives on historical events. At home, the U.S. government painted the Philippine-American War as an act of liberation, freeing the Philippines from oppression. Paul A. Kramer analyzes letters from American soldiers in the Philippines that show a very different view of the war.

Video Clip Name
Kramer1.mov
Kramer2.mov
Kramer3.mov
Kramer4.mov
Video Clip Title
The U.S. in the Philippines
Changing Views
The Language of Liberation
Letting Sources Speak
Video Clip Duration
4:49
5:08
3:32
1:25
Transcript Text

I'm going to be talking about letters from the Philippines written by a soldier named Andrew Wadsworth from Nebraska between the years 1898 and 1900.

Andrew Wadsworth is born in New Lebanon, NY, in 1869; he moves out to Beatrice, NE, to live with his uncle in 1887. He works in his uncle's jewelry shop. In the meantime, he enlists in Company C of the Nebraska National Guard. In 1897, tensions are heating up between the U.S. and Spain over the status of Cuba. At that point, the United States had long standing interests in Cuba in terms of sugar, in terms of the U.S.'s larger strategic objectives. When a humanitarian crisis erupts over Spain's attempt to suppress a Cuban rebellion, this inflames a humanitarian crusade in the United States to do something. The American public begins to be prepared for some sort of intervention. As is well known, the U.S.S Maine is sent to the Havana harbor in the spring of 1898 to protect American options and also to protect Americans in Cuba, and it's blown up. This inflames the American public for war.

Wadsworth in Nebraska is learning about what's happening. He sees that his company is about to be mobilized. He is not sent to Cuba to fight in the Spanish-Cuban-American War, but in fact he's sent west. He's sent west because the first campaign of the war against Spain is in fact—the decision to send Commodore Dewey and the Pacific Squadron to Manila, which was in Spain's last and largest colony in Asia at that time. This was very much part of a larger strategic plan to extend U.S. power into Asia; to get U.S. bases and naval power close to China. So Wadsworth is sent along with his company first to San Francisco—where he's mustered out—and then he's sent to Honolulu, and then they end up in Manila, after Dewey has defeated the Spanish navy. He's part of an initial group of about 13,000 U.S. soldiers that are sent after the Spanish fleet is destroyed. He finds himself in Cavite, near Manila, and spends several months kind of wondering what his forces are in fact doing there: the Spanish have been defeated in terms of naval power.

At that time a Filipino revolution has—which had initially been defeated by Spain in 1897—has been renewed, has successfully overthrown Spanish power on the mainland of Luzon. The U.S.'s relationship to that revolution is unclear. Wadsworth is able to see the revolution's battles against Spain at a distance, but he's not really sure exactly what U.S. forces are doing there. He says this in his letters. He says, "It's strange that we're here because, as far as we're concerned, the battle against the Spanish has been won at sea."

In August, the United States basically coordinates with Spain to have the Spanish surrender the capitol city of Manila. There's a battle—it's very brief—U.S. forces occupy the city, and importantly they make sure that the revolution stays out of the capitol. Again, there's this very ambiguous relationship between U.S. and Filipino forces. On the one hand, there's a kind of tacit understanding that the U.S. is there to liberate the Philippines from Spain, but it's not clear whether that's to liberate it for the United State's purposes or Filipino purposes. Then it becomes very clear—when U.S. forces basically take the capitol and occupy it, protecting Spaniards from Filipino insurgents—that they’re there to occupy the isles.

Wadsworth and his unit end up in Manila—which is a highly armed area—and he says we can walk around here without weapons it's so locked-down, against both internal disruption and also in terms of outside Filipino forces.

You can see Wadsworth's perceptions of Filipinos changing over the time period that he's in the Philippines. From the mid-1898 period when he arrives—when he has kind of this ambiguous relationship to the campaign in the Philippines—to the early part of 1899, when the war against the Filipinos starts.

In the pre-war period, when he's in Manila, he and other soldiers have a set of very complex interactions with the Filipinos on the ground. Filipinos run a lot of the shops in the area—there's casual commercial contact in terms of bars, in terms of buying fruit, buying food. Wadsworth in his letters reflects a certain ambivalence about Filipinos and about Filipino society. He reflects on the fact that Manila is not as highly hygienic as he'd like it to be. When it comes to Filipinos, he has a lot of nice things to say actually. For example, Filipino bands will come to the military bases in order to play to entertain these troops that aren't fighting. Wadsworth writes about these very lively evenings in which Filipino bands will play, soldiers will sing, it will be this lively several hours, and then he'll say Filipinos are natural-born musicians and artists, for example. At one point, even before he lands in Manila, he reflects casually upon his first real encounter with Filipinos. He says Filipinos are "as bright and intelligent as the average run of people." So it's this kind of offhanded, yeah, they're sort of like us, they're kind of like everyday people that I know.

During that window in late 1898, Wadsworth and his comrades are basically just hanging out in Manila. There's a lot of description of touring, seeing the sights, he's feasting; by the end of 1898 he's starting to get a little bored, they really are beginning to wonder what the heck they're doing there. Wadsworth says, "We came here to fight, and it doesn't look like we're going to get to fight anybody here." That reality changes towards the end of 1898.

U.S. diplomats settle the status of the Philippines at the Treaty of Paris, that begins to meet in the fall of 1898. No Filipino delegates or diplomats are allowed to participate. So this is basically the United States and Spain sitting down to negotiate the fate of the islands—not reflecting the fact that much of the islands are, in fact, not occupied by the U.S. or Spain, but in fact a Philippine government that's declared itself independent. When word gets back that the U.S. has basically pushed Spain to surrender sovereignty over the islands for a payment of $20 million, it becomes clear to the Filipinos on the ground that the U.S.'s formal statements that it is engaging in what was called "benevolent assimilation," were in fact not so benevolent—that in fact the U.S. is preparing a military occupation. So tensions on the ground begin to rise.

In February 1899, just on the brink of the Senate's ratification of the Treaty of Paris, fighting breaks out on the outskirts of Manila between U.S. and Filipino forces when U.S. sentries fire on some Filipino sentries. So suddenly there's war in the Philippines. It's not clear exactly what this conflict is going to be called. To call it a "war" would be to acknowledge that this is a [conflict] with an independent state. So, the official language that's used in the U.S. is that this is an "insurrection," this is in a sense a kind of internal problem of law and order against our legitimate authority.

Wadsworth finds himself fighting on the outskirts of Manila during the early months of the campaign. As I was tracking his letters in the archive from this period where he's hanging out in Manila, socializing, having a good time, into the war period, very quickly his language changes in terms of describing Filipinos. Within the span of a few months we've seen him basically talking about Filipinos as sort of bright and intelligent as other people, to using the most hostile and violent racial language to describe them. When I saw this, I was really struck by it, because it really went against the conventional wisdom which was that the soldiers on the ground were immediately going to apply racial vocabularies from the domestic context to the Philippines. It told me a lot about the way that context really mattered for these soldiers, that something about the setting itself and the kind of situation in which they found themselves was fundamentally shaping the way they understood their presence in the Philippines.

There's a whole series of efforts to minimize the conflict even when it's happening. There's this initial decision to call it the "Philippine Insurrection." But then one of the things that we see—which I think is very striking—is a whole series of declarations that the war is over. In any case, the war bogs down in 1900. In November 1900, there's a presidential election [and] McKinley is reelected. [It was] an election that had as one of its major themes the question of imperialism. This is seen as a referendum on imperialism by the advocates of the war; they say, "Well, the Filipinos can't possibly sustain any more resistance now that the American people have spoken, so the war is over yet again." Of course, the resistance continues. Then, in March 1901, Aguinaldo is captured; the declaration is, "Well, now the revolution can't proceed without its main leader." Resistance continues yet again. Then in basically May of 1902, Theodore Roosevelt makes a public announcement that the war is over.

I think one of the interesting things about U.S. colonialism at the turn of the century is that it's waged and promoted in the language of liberation, at least initially. This in some ways begins in the Cuban context, with the question of liberating Cuba from the oppressive Spanish. So [there's] this language of where the U.S. intervenes it's going to liberate. That really becomes quite powerful in the American public sphere. And I think this gets transferred to some extent to the Philippine context, because when the U.S. intervenes initially in the Philippines it imagines that it's going to be liberating Filipinos from oppressive Spanish rule. There's a sense that this liberation is going to be freeing, it's going to be benevolent, it's going to reflect positively on the kind of world power that the U.S. is going to be.

One of the important audiences for this kind of language is the European powers. Up until 1898, the U.S. has a kind of inferiority complex vis-à-vis the European powers. Here it is, it's this growing industrial giant that has conquered and consolidated its hold on the North American continent in the 19th century, but it doesn't have overseas colonies at a time when that is the measure of what it is to be a European power. 1898 is an important moment in terms of sending those messages out to the world. The U.S. is now on the world stage. But in doing so, it doesn't want to appear to be identical to the European powers. So, the language of liberation is also about trying to set some distance between the U.S. and the European powers. It says, yes we are going to be an empire-building nation, but in fact we're going to liberate our subjects rather than conquer them.

In some of the soldiers' letters you have that of sense of a kind of perverse sense of ingratitude—we're here to liberate you, and you clearly don't understand our good intentions. The way I see this manifesting itself most, though, is in very sarcastic use of a language of liberation in soldiers' letters. The soldiers are able to get a hold of newspapers from the United States that their families are sending them, so they know that senators who are defending the war are talking about uplift, are taking about civilization and benevolence, and they look at the kind of war they're fighting. For them this is a kind of degraded form of war, so they see this language of uplift and benevolence coming through in terms of justifying this war and their response is one of bitter irony.

I had been studying this war for a while by the time that I got to the archives and the fact that I was surprised by what I saw is something that on the one hand I think many historians experience. You go into the archives with one set of questions, and if you are really paying attention to what's in front of your face, it will inevitably change your opinion. It needs to change your opinion, because if it doesn't alter your preconceptions, then you are imposing them on the sources rather than letting the sources speak to you.

With that said, the fact that I was surprised by what I saw also says that the soldiers' opinions are not really well collected, they are not very available to students or to scholars even. And I think there may be a number of reasons for that. When I think of how an archive gets built, how is it that a soldier's letter goes from a shoebox in somebody's attic in to an excerpted box in a textbook? That happens, I think, in part because someone—usually a family member or a community member—is aware this is historically significant. Then it gets collected, it gets archived, and I think there's something about the way that this war [had] been kind of sidelined that prevented some of that communication from happening.

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