World War II Demobilization: United States Soldiers Reactions
World War II was the bloodiest war ever fought by the United States. At least sixty million deaths were recorded. After World War II ended in September of 1945 very suddenly when Japan surrendered, soldiers were eager to return to their families after fighting such a long war. Just before Victory in Japan Day, there were 8.5 million men and women deployed in various locations around the world, from Germany to Japan, to Italy, to the Philippines.(1) The process of bringing men and women home from war is called demobilization, and the post World War II demobilization was the largest demobilization in United States history. Because of this, it didn’t go as quickly as soldiers wished.(2) With such a slow demobilization, one might ask, what were the attitudes of soldiers toward the discharge process they went through at the end of the war?
Throughout the United States armed forces demobilization process following World War II, soldiers were treated unfairly resulting in declining performance. Soldiers who believed the United States was handling the demobilization process poorly asserted their disapproval through letters and protests, such as the one in Fig. 1.
Research Methods and Historiography
Research focusing on the demobilization of WWII soldiers is limited. This study analyzed the demobilization through soldiers’ letters home to their families as well as secondary sources. The primary sources include letter collections from three different WWII soldiers that have all been transcribed and uploaded digitally. The secondary sources were discovered through different academic search engines.
The topic of soldier disapproval has been researched and discussed in scholarly articles that will be referenced in this work. John C. Sparrow's discusses the effects the demobilization of World War II had on soldiers in a quantitative context, such as reduction of strength and willingness to fight.(3) This article was used for some statistics in the argument of this work. David May's article summarizes the strike movement of soldiers following World War II, and it supports this argument with examples of soldier strikes.(4) R. Alton Lee's work was the principal foundation for secondary work relating to the topic of soldiers' reactions to demobilization. The article describes soldiers' determined attempts to expidite the demobilization.(5) Daniel Garcia's article focuses on the contrasting treatment of United States soldiers and officers. Garcia's argument fits well with this one becuase poor treatment of soldiers augmented the muntiny.(6) The last article used for research was written by Shortal. It was used for some brief statistics, but it confirmed and supported other secondary information discovered.(7)
Unfair Treatment: Why Do Officers Get It Better?
Officers often received preferential treatment compared to regular GIs in terms of demobilization. Officers got to come home earlier than lower ranked soldiers because of their higher status, but most of the time, the officers would rather stay deployed because of their optimal living conditions. Officers had larger living quarters and access to any form of entertainment they wanted. The regular soldiers on the other hand, had much poorer living conditions; their food was often spoiled, and they had little to no entertainment. According to military historian Gerald Linderman, officers during the demobilization process “seemed less intent on enhancing their effectiveness as fighting men than on humiliating them as enlisted men.” Once the war ended, officers made soldiers perform hundreds of hours of aimless jobs like enhancing officers’ living quarters, running errands, and polishing shoes. This unfair treatment made GIs want to return home all the more.(8)
Protests
Becasue of the unfair treatment and slow demobilization process, many soldiers participated in petitions and protests to persuade the government to accelerate demobilization. In 1946, around 18,000 soldiers signed a petition saying, “Isn’t it worth six cents a day to get home?,” suggesting the government should invest more of their time and money into the demobilization process. Men deployed in the Far East started a campaign with the slogan, “No Boats, No Votes.” On Christmas Day of 1945 in Manilla, 4,000 men held a protest march because there was a cancellation of a boat returning to the United States.(9) In January of 1946, many Soldier's Committees were established, and one of them located in the Phillipines embodied 139,000 soldiers.(10) It was clear with all of these campaigns and protests, soldiers wanted to be home as soon as possible.
Expressing Disapproval Through Letters
After examining letter collections of two soldiers: John Graham and Howard Sarty, it became apparent that these two gentlemen wanted to come home from war when almost every letter toward the end of their collections talked about getting a discharge. In one of Graham’s letters he explained that he was angry because two of his fellow soldiers were getting a discharge, saying, "two of the boys from the old bunch who are in another squadron came over to the hangar and told us they were on the list to go. They have no more points than I have and certainly have jobs as essential as mine."(11) Sarty wrote about how much he wanted to come home and see his wife in every letter he wrote home. Specifically, in one of Sarty's letters that can be seen in Fig. 2, he said "I miss you so very much to night [sic] and I want you but it seems that the army wants me to [sic] so I guess I’ll have to stay here a little longer."(12)
Along with these personal letters from soldiers to their wives, letters were written from soldiers to the government and to publications. In Daniel Garcia's article, he examined over 5,000 letters of discontent from soldiers to publications, including Stars and Stripes, Yank Magaine, and Daily Pacifican. The letters were featured in "gripe" sections of the magazines, and it helped soldiers discover other soldiers that felt the same way about the demobilization situation.(13) Some soldiers even expressed their discontent directly to the President of the United States. The White House received letters and telegrams from United States soldiers frequently, and one of them was signed by 10,000 soldiers.(14) It is apparent in these letters that the soldiers were very unhappy with the demobilization process.
Performance Declination: Not In the Mood
When demobilization happened, the men that were still deployed didn’t care enough to perform efficiently. For example, when the numbers of the Air Force were cut in half four months after the war was over, only two of its 55 groups were deemed efficient.(15) Howard Sarty, who was referenced earlier, complained "to-day was my first day at driving and I didn’t work very hard because I just didn’t feel in the mood." This quote from Sarty came towards the end of his military service in October of 1945 and can be seen in Fig 3.(16) It seemed as though soldiers were protesting war by performing tasks poorly on purpose.
Conclusion
The demobilization process after World War II came about very suddenly, and the United States had little time to prepare. Soldiers wanted to come home as soon as possible, but this simply could not happen. Soldiers expressed their disapproval for the slow demobilization by writing letters of complaint to the government and their families, as well as organizing protests. On top of wanting to go home, the GIs were treated poorly by their officers, and their performance was affected negatively.
Lessons Learned
Following World War II, the United States was faced with two more daunting demobilizations: The Vietnam War and the Cold War. While the United States learned important lessons that could be applied to the next demobilization, the Vietnam War demobilization was just as slow and poorly handled as World War II's, with only half of the United States forces returning home in the three years following the Vietnam War. It wasn't until the Cold War demobilization that the United States completely changed their strategy to maximize the efficiency of the demobilizaiton. According to Shortal, the new demobilization strategy "required the Army to do three things: Shape the international environment, respond to increasingly varied and complex crises, and prepare for an uncertain future." With this new strategy in place, Active Army is now the smallest it has been since Pearl Harbor.(17)
Author: John Huebner
Notes
(1) Daniel May, “Lessons of the Post WW-2 U.S. Soldiers’ Movement: The 1945/46 Strikes,” Socialist Appeal, May 2006, http://socialistappeal.org/history-theory/labor-history/136-lessons-of-the-post-ww2-soldiers-movement-the-strikes-of-1945-1946.html.
(2) John F. Shortal, “20th-Century Demobilization Lessons.” Military Review 78, vol. 5 (1998). Academic Search Premiere.
(3) John C. Sparrow, “History of Personnel Demobilization in the United States Army.” Department of the Army 210, no. 20 (1952): 270. http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/104/104-8/CMH_Pub_104-8.pdf.
(4) May, “Lessons”.
(5) Alton R. Lee, “The Army ‘Mutiny’ of 1946.” The Journal of American History 53, no. 3 (1966). JSTOR.
(6) Daniel E. Garcia, “Class and Brass: Demobilization, Working Class Politics, and American Foreign Policy between World War and Cold War.” Diplomatic History 34, no. 4 (2010): 686. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7709.2010.00882.x.
(7) Shortal, “Demobilization Lessons”.
(8) Garcia, “Class and Brass”.
(9) Lee, “Army ‘Mutiny’”.
(10) May, “Lessons”.
(11) John William Graham to Mr. & Mrs. William J. Graham, August 1945, in John William Graham letters, August 1945, (The University of Iowa Libraries).
(12) Howard Sarty to Yvette Sarty, October 11, 1945, (Concordia College Archives, 2015).
(13) Garcia, “Class and Brass”.
(14) Lee, “Army ‘Mutiny’”.
(15) Sparrow, “History of Personnel Demobilization”.
(16) Sarty to Sarty, October 8, 1945.
(17) Shortal, “Demobilization Lessons”.