A New Manifest Destiny in the Pacific: An American View

A NEW MANIFEST DESTINY IN THE PACIFIC: AN AMERICAN VIEW Louis B. WRIGHT FOR more than a century and a half, North Americans have been dimly conscious of a great world in the Pacific Ocean, but by and large they have done their best to ignore it. Before the mid-nineteenth century, interest in the Pacific was a monopoly chiefly of whalers, merchants in the China trade, missionaries, and an occasional explorer or adventurer. With the discovery of gold in California and the consequent migration around the Horn and across the Isthmus of Panama, interest in the Pacific increased slightly, but to the rank and file of American citizens it concerned them scarcely more than the mountains on the moon. Not even the acquisition of possessions in the Pacific, and the development of rapid transportation between -American ports and the Orient brought to the citizen of Illinois or Iowa any conception of the importance to his welfare of Asia or the Pacific islands. Although a few politicians on the West Coast from time to time had shouted about the Yellow Peril, not until the disaster of Pearl Harbor did Americans generally realize that distant regions of the Pacific vitally affected their daily lives. Even then Senator Gerald Nye of North Dakota held out against believing the truth, and explained the belligerency of Japan as a sinister plot of Roosevelt and Churchill. By a single rash deed, the Japanese air force cracked the hard shell of American isolationism and unwittingly performed a service which embattled political scientists could not have accomplished in a century. Overnight ancient convictions about American security went into the discard, as the United States and Canada both realized that they stood in imminent peril from an Asiatic foe. Twenty-four hours earlier the majority of citizens would have scorned the thought of such a danger. Before Pearl Harbor, statesmen and political thinkers who tried to arouse the American public to a sense of responsibility in the Pacific found themselves struggling against a vast inertia. The great Middle West refused to get excited about Japan, or China, or the islands to the South. To a multitude of Americans, the Philippines were just a nuisance to be rid of as soon as possible. 43 44 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY I n the consciousness of the average citizen, the Dutch East Indies were a murky blur. Not one American in a thousand had ever heard of the Solomon Islands. To the members of Congress Guam meant only an appropriation to be killed ~hen thrifty Representatiyes howled about "war-mongers" wasting money to fortify a patch of sand in an ocean they never wanted to see. After Pearl Harbor, the public was more easily persuaded of the importance of the Pacific Ocean. Even in the Middle West, citizens learned that what went on in Tokio had a meaning in Keokuk. When Bataan fell, the nation's grief was mingled with chagrin because we had complacently disregarded the most elementary preparations for defending that outpost. But it was not the loss of the Philippines that finally drove home to every American the significance of the Pacific war; it was the inability to buy a new automobile tire. Then, and then only, was everyone aware that foreign regions like Malaya and the Dutch East Indies had an intimate relationship to the welfare of the United States. For the first time, many a citizen is beginning to understand that the United States is a part of a global structure. Gradually the idea is spreading that if this nation is to survive as an important power, it must pay some attention to the world fabric. Thousands of ordinary folk, who before never thought about the Pacific once in a year, now earnestly discuss the importance of taking and keeping Rabaul, or Truk, or some other speck in that vast ocean. Their sons are out there. And they want to be sure that never again will American boys have to die in South Sea jungles- because of the megalomania of Japanese, or other, war lords. Out of the personal experiences of thousands of families is coming a new sense of national destiny, vague, perhaps, and...