Asia Looks Seaward

important battles were dominated by air power rather than by battleships.

Although many important sea battles occurred between American and Japanese

fleets—including the Coral Sea, Midway, the Marianas, and the Philippine

Sea—none resolved the conflict, by itself or in aggregate. Instead the maritime

war was won by U.S. industrial capacity, more effective training, operational

acumen, and superior leadership.

ThePacificWarwaslargelyoneofairpower.TheUnitedStatesbuiltmore

survivable airplanes (the Japanese Zero’s speed and maneuverability was canceled

out by its lack of armored fuel tanks), built thousands more than Japan, and

pursued a much more effective pilot training program. Under the seas, Japan

never made effective use of its submarine force, while the United States destroyed

the Japanese merchant marine and effectively blockaded the home islands.

American industrial capacity overwhelmed Japan in all areas of production,

from small arms to aircraft carriers, but the war at sea was not won merely by

numbers. Even more significant was the greater quality of U.S. naval leadership

and operational performance. The maritime war in the Pacific was ‘‘bookended’’

by the great naval battles of Midway,inJune1942,andtheLeyteGulf,in

October 1944. In both cases, Japan tried to carry out unrealistically complicated

plans overseen by naval commanders who were unequal to their tasks. By 1945,

the Japanese navy had been destroyed and the U.S. Navy alone ruled Asian waters.

TheU.S.Navydidnothaveacoherentwar-fightingstrategyreadyforthe

post-1945 Asia-Pacific, but one did not seem required during the brief hiatus

between World War II and the Cold War. The world wars ended in 1945

with Japan a smoking ruin, Great Britain no longer an Asian naval power of

significant standing, and the United States dominant throughout this intensely

maritime region.

The navy dominated U.S. strategic planning in Asia during the first half of the

twentieth century, although the army was a significant partner in thinking about

defense of the American island possessions.^20 Planning was steadily conducted by

both services from 1902 to 1941, but no satisfactory plan for the defense of the

U.S. Asian empire emerged. This was due primarily to the simple mismatch

between geography and resources. The Philippines, Guam, and other American

colonies were many weeks’ steamingtime away for the reduced U.S. Navy,

while Japan, located in the region, posed the most likely military threat. Further-

more, U.S. adherence to the Nine-Power Treaty’s limitations on constructing

fortifications in the Far East significantly reduced U.S. forces’ ability to withstand

Japanese assaults during World War II.^21

The Cold War Begins

The Navy soon determined that a new maritime strategy was necessary for the

new global situation, both to defend the nation and to assure that, in the face of

56 Asia Looks Seaward