Quotes from Ian W. Toll

King wrote a colleague during the conference. "I have found it necessary to find time to point out to some 'amateur strategists' in high places that unity of command is not a panacea for all military difficulties—and I shall continue to do so.

I am convinced that there must be one man in command of the entire theater—air, ground, and ships," he said. "We can not manage by cooperation. Human frailties are such that there would be emphatic unwillingness to place portions of troops under another service. If we make a plan for unified command now, it will solve nine-tenths of our troubles.

In facing up to the knotty problem so early in the conflict, Marshall began to reveal why he would prove the one really indispensable American military leader of the Second World War.

A man he seems of cheerful yesterdays and confident tomorrows. . . . Possesses that calm and steady-going Dutch way that gets to the bottom of things.

There is no such thing as security for any nation—or any individual—in a world ruled by the principles of gangsterism

Indiscriminate firebombing of the urban centers continued and intensified.

Observing his captors, Kojima was astounded by their racial and ethnic diversity: "Blond, silver, black, brown, red hair. Blue, green, brown, black eyes. White, black, skin colors of every variety. I was stunned. I realized then that we'd fought against all the peoples of the world. At the same time, I thought, what a funny country America is, all those different kinds of people fighting in the same uniform!"61 On

One could go on, but with diminishing returns. MacArthur was a serial confabulator

United States sailed on November 3, reaching the port of Lisbon three and a half weeks later.

He correctly predicted that the Americans would not play into Japanese hands by sending a fleet to rescue the Philippines in the first phase of the war, but would take as much time as needed to build up overwhelming naval and air power, and then return by way of a methodical island-hopping campaign.

War is the tao of deception. Therefore, when planning an attack, feign inactivity. When near, appear as if you are far away. When far away, create the illusion that you are near. If the enemy is efficient, prepare for him. If he is strong, evade him. If he is angry, agitate him. If he is arrogant, behave timidly so as to encourage his arrogance. If he is rested, cause him to exert himself. Advance when he does not expect you. Attack him when he is unprepared. —Sun-Tzu, The Art of War

Nimitz alone bore the "horrible" burden of command: "It stops right there, and no one else can take it away from him, and no one else can help him.

As between an ethical professional requirement that a journalist hold nothing back and a patriotic duty not to shoot one's own soldiers in the back, we have found no difficulty in making a choice. Freedom of the press does not carry with it a general license to reveal our secret strengths and weaknesses to the enemy.

Somebody handed me two hand grenades," said Seaman Warren G. Harding of the California. "I said: 'What do I do with them?' He said: 'Never mind! Don't pull this!' That's all the instruction I had.

Given Stalin's recent backsliding on the political independence of Eastern Europe

Roosevelt, according to a story told by Hopkins, was once wheeled into Churchill's bedroom just as the prime minister was emerging from his bath, stark naked. The president, flustered, told his attendant to back him out of the room, but Churchill theatrically declared, "The Prime Minister of Great Britain has nothing to conceal from the President of the United States.

During the postwar occupation, many of MacArthur's policies reinforced and abetted the collective amnesia of the Japanese. By order of the supreme commander, there was no concerted public effort to preserve the history or memory of the war—no monuments, no references in school textbooks, no national museum.

Waldron took care to convey confidence, to assure his men that they were the best torpedo squadron in the fleet, and even to guarantee that the squadron would score hits on the Japanese carriers in the coming battle.

Dixon prompted a round of applause on the Yorktown and Lexington when he radioed back the prearranged message: "Scratch one flattop! Dixon to Carrier, Scratch one flattop!

But he also emphasized that they should arrange their personal affairs and write letters to their families, "just in case some of us don't get back.

To an island people, enclosed on all sides by the sea, the quintessential great fighting admiral occupies a peculiar place in the national imagination.

Nimitz concerned himself with the general discipline of leadership.

Musashi. As one of the two most heavily armored ships in the world, she could take a great deal of punishment, and she had—more than twenty bomb hits topside, and about nineteen or twenty torpedoes below the waterline, including fifteen in her port side.

Mahanian dogmas" that governed the thinking of naval strategists right up until the beginning of the Second World War—the cult of the big gun battleship, the iron rule of concentration, and the annihilation of the enemy fleet in a single decisive battle.