In the 1930s Americans knew conflicts were brewing in Europe, Asia and Africa, but still scarred by World War I and deep in the Great Depression, neither Congress nor the public wanted to get involved. There were active efforts to keep the country out. Yet the government was also quietly preparing.
Staying out
Between 1935 and 1939 Congress passed a series of neutrality laws, among other things banning U.S. companies from selling arms to nations that had declared war on each other. Until 1939 they kept American factories from investing in large-scale arms production for export: manufacturers feared the law could cut them off from buyers at any moment, so they would not tie up money in stock or retooling.
With Congress repeatedly refusing to fund preparations for war, President Franklin D. Roosevelt used New Deal programs to build military readiness. Researchers have identified over 6,000 military projects by the Works Progress Administration, the Public Works Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps — armories, airfields, target and bombing ranges, and hundreds of military ships and aircraft.
Japan in the Pacific
In the 1930s Japan left the League of Nations, invaded China without formally declaring war, and expanded its military presence in the Pacific. Because it was not technically at war, it could keep buying American supplies, especially high-quality scrap iron and oil; by 1940, 80% of Japan's fuel came from the United States. As Japan built airfields, ports and fortifications across the Pacific, Washington saw a threat to American political, business and civilian interests and to its allies China and Australia.
The government wanted a larger Pacific presence without appearing to expand militarily, provoking Japan or alarming the public. Its cover was civilian: settlement through the American Equatorial Islands Colonization Project and commercial expansion through Pan American Airways' trans-Pacific service. Both were still running when the United States entered the war, and behind both stood the military — landing fields, radio stations and other improvements could be, and were, turned over to military use.
The Hui Panalāʻau
The government set up the colonization project secretly in 1935, to cement U.S. claims to remote islands and have civilians build weather stations, landing fields and other strategic facilities. The colonists were not told of the military purpose; they understood they were there to record events, wildlife and weather and to collect specimens for Hawaiʻi's Bishop Museum.
More than 130 colonists took part, now known as the Hui Panalāʻau ("society of colonists" or "club of settlers of the southern islands"). Most were Native Hawaiian men aged 19 to 24, recruited with the promise of adventure and $3 a day — almost $67 in 2023 dollars — at a time when evidence points to high unemployment in the islands. The Coast Guard landed five to seven at a time on Baker, Howland and Jarvis islands with water and supplies for six weeks to several months, returning with fresh supplies and new colonists. Many were dismayed on arrival: one, Elvin Mattson, later recalled an empty island of nothing but millions of birds, and how long it took to adjust. They lived at first in tents, later in permanent housing and buildings with fences and food and water storage.
Colonists Joseph Kim, Charles Ahia, Bak Sung Kim and Edward Young wave to the ship that left them on Jarvis Island, January 19, 1937. National Archives and Records Administration.
From 1940 the colonists reported Japanese ships nearby. In June 1941, as tensions rose, naval officials recommended evacuating the islands; their superiors refused, and when Japan attacked a few months later, two colonists were killed.
Pan Am's Clippers
Better aircraft in the 1920s and 1930s made commercial flights for passengers, mail and cargo possible. In the 1930s Pan Am built a fleet of flying boats, the Clippers, which could land on water and refuel in ports without runways. Working with the government, it built what were really small towns on Wake Island, Midway Atoll and Guam where Clippers could resupply, and leased and expanded facilities in Hawaiʻi and the Philippines. U.S. ships blasted and dredged lagoons for safe landings; Pan Am added radio navigation, housing, power plants, hangars, desalination plants and gardens.
The first trans-Pacific airmail flight was in November 1935, and the first passengers crossed in October 1936. Regular service linked California, the Philippines and later Hong Kong until the war. Immediately after Pearl Harbor, Pan Am handed its operations to the military; by then the Pacific Clippers had carried 350,000 passengers and 750,000 pounds of mail and flown 2.4 million miles.
Despite Roosevelt's and the government's efforts to stay neutral, events pulled the United States into a world war fought on three fronts: Europe, the Pacific, and at home.
Sources
Rewritten from the National Park Service article "The American Home Front and the Buildup to World War II: Plan for The Worst, Hope for the Best," by Megan E. Springate of the University of Maryland for the NPS Cultural Resources Office of Interpretation and Education, part of the series The American Home Front and World War II, in hubnx's own words; a colonist's oral history is paraphrased. The article's notes say the Hawaiian colonists were recalled in October 1940, while its text has them on the islands when Japan attacked; the page follows the text. An America First flyer credited to Wikimedia and a 1935 Popular Mechanics map are not reproduced.
- Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.
Licence: CC0 1.0 (public domain) · Adapted from www.nps.gov
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