Invasion of the U.S.?

Any time war breaks out between Japan and the United States, I shall not be content merely to capture Guam and the Philippines and occupy Hawaii and San Francisco. I am looking forward to dictating peace to the United States in the White House at Washington.

The official Japanese news agency Domei last week attributed this statement to Japan's naval Commander in Chief, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, in "a letter which Yamamoto sent to a close friend, dated Jan. 24 this year." In announcing his intention of invading the U.S., Admiral Yamamoto echoed an extraordinary warning issued in 1909 by an extraordinary man named Homer Lea.

Homer Lea was a hunchback who wanted to be a hero. Before he was 18 he had mastered every detail of every battle Napoleon ever fought. While studying law at Leland Stanford University he made the acquaintance of some San Francisco Chinese who set his imagination to sparking on the coming Chinese Revolution. Knowing that he would never be accepted by the U.S. Army, he went to China, offered his services to Premier Kong Yu Wei, who was secretly plotting against the Dowager Empress.

Kong's plot was discovered and the Empress put a price of $10,000 on Lea's head. He made his way to Hong Kong, there met the great Sun Yat Sen, who later made Lea his chief military adviser with the rank of general. Lea went with Dr. Sun into exile in Japan. Then he went back to San Francisco and, after years of travel and study, wrote The Valor of Ignorance.

Its theme, as good in 1941 as 1909: The U.S. was contemptuous of Japan only because it had no idea of the grandiose and fanatical ambitions of the Japanese militarists. It had not learned the lessons of the Russo-Japanese War.

Key to East Asia. "The Philippine Islands," wrote Lea, "bear the same strategic relationship to the Southern Asian coast as the Japanese islands do to the Northern. . . . Without the Philippines, Japan's dominion in Asian seas will be no more than tentative, and her eventual domination or destruction will depend upon who holds these islands." Considering U.S. unpreparedness in the Philippines as of the time he was writing, Homer Lea said the islands could be captured by Japanese as easily as the U.S. took Cuba from Spain. In 1941 U.S. preparedness had begun to be more formidable. But only a few weeks ago, U.S. officers in the Philippines told Author-Correspondent Clare Booth about Homer Lea because his conception of a Japanese attack on the Philippines was still valid even in many details.

Key to Central Pacific. "Hawaii . . . can be considered the most important position in the Pacific." Hawaii, Lea thought, would be assaulted from within by the 1909 version of a fifth column. He asserted that there were more Japanese "immigrants" in the Hawaiian Islands with army experience than there were soldiers in the entire field army of the U.S.

Key to Victory. But Homer Lea thought that assaults on the Philippines and Hawaii would be only a beginning. He wrote in 1909 (in 1941 he would probably add air battles wherever he referred to naval battles): "The advocates of naval expansion have . . . given a wrong impression to the public, not as to the necessity of a navy, but as to the accomplishment of enterprises beyond its sphere. Neither now nor in the future will international conflicts be determined by naval engagements. In some instances naval victories may produce conditions that will tend to hasten the conclusion of a war, but ... to affect, to cripple or destroy a nation in wartime can only be done by injuring to that degree its power of government, its resources and its ability to defend itself against the enforcement of hostile demands." In short, to defeat the U.S., Japan would have to invade it. That he expected Japan to do.

Triple Assault. Homer Lea dragged his sick little hunchbacked body up "down the U.S. Pacific coast, exploring for himself the beaches, the bays, the gaps and the passes through which landings might be established. His conclusions: > The first Japanese landings would be established in Washington and Oregon. Their focus would be the rocky, grey, low land around Grays Harbor, where the Wynoochee, Chehalis, Wishkah and Humptulips Rivers have scooped out the best natural pass inland. Centering on Centralia and Chehalis, the invaders would throw their left flank toward Seattle, their right toward Portland. They would seize the passes in the Baker-Rainier-Hood chain and sit tight.

> Next they would hit the one great center on the U.S. southern flank--the Los Angeles area. Here they had a strictly coastal job, all within range of naval guns (and therefore their invasion might take the air-land-sea character of British attacks in Libya). After seizing Los Angeles they would strike out for Saugus, Cajon and San Jacinto Passes, sealing the coastal strip, and again hold tight. (Development, since Homer Lea wrote, of the San Diego base would suggest the necessity of a flanking attack, perhaps through Lower California--see p. 21.)

> The final, climactic attack would be directed against the center of U.S. Pacific trade, San Francisco. General Lea expected Japanese landings in Bodega Bay to the north and Monterey Bay to the south of the city, then converging attacks on it.

When San Francisco had fallen, General Lea pictured a U.S. utterly helpless on the inner side of the coastal range. It is a picture which would make, and doubtless has made, Admiral Yamamoto's eyes glitter with anticipation: "Not months, but years, must elapse before armies equal to the Japanese are able to pass in parade. These must then make their way over deserts such as no armies have ever heretofore crossed; scale the intrenched and stupendous heights that form the redoubts of the desert moats; attempting, in the valor of their ignorance, the militarily impossible; turning mountain gorges into the ossuaries of their dead, and burdening the desert winds with the spirits of the slain." At this point Admiral Yamamoto would take a trip to the White House.

One third of a century has passed since Homer Lea had visions of invasion. Many men, among them many men of the U.S. Army and Navy, have had plenty of time to ponder his lessons.

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