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Abstract
This article reviews the military duties of a number of U.S. geographers during World War II. It divides those duties into three kinds: spies, teachers, and occupiers. In each case, a specific form of geographical expertise was deployed—instrumental to achieving a particular military end. In particular, the article examines the roles of geographers: first, in the analysis of military intelligence at the Office of Strategic Services; second, in the provision of geographical courses for the university-based Civil Affairs Training School and the Army Specialized Training Program; and, finally, as agents of occupation in Japan once World War II ended.
本文回顾若干美国地理学者在第二次世界大战中的军事任务。本文将这些任务分为三大类：间谍、老师, 以及佔领者。在每个案例中, 皆部署了特定的地理专业形式——作为获致特定军事目的的手段。本文特别检视地理学者在下列情境中的角色：首先, 在策略服务办公室进行军事情报的分析；第二, 为以大学为基础的政战训练学校与军队特种训练计画提供地理课程；以及最后作为第二次世界大战结束后, 佔领日本的行动者。
Este artículo revisa los deberes militares de un número de geógrafos americanos durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Se dividen estos deberes en tres clases: espionaje, docencia y ocupación. En cada caso, una forma específica de experticia geográfica fue considerada—que fuese instrumental para lograr un fin militar particular. El artículo examina, en particular, el papel de los geógrafos: primero, en el análisis de inteligencia militar en la Oficina de Servicios Estratégicos; segundo, en la provisión de cursos geográficos para la Escuela de Entrenamiento en Asuntos Civiles y el Programa de Entrenamiento Especializado del Ejército, basados en universidad; y, finalmente, como agentes de ocupación en Japón tan pronto terminó la Segunda Guerra Mundial.
Notes
1. Warntz's later work as a graduate student at Penn (1949–1955), as a Research Associate at the American Geographical Society (1956–1966), and eventually as a professor at Harvard (1966–1971) was in social physics. In his case, that meant applying Newtonian astrophysical formulations to terrestrial phenomena (Janelle Citation1997, 2000).
2. A likely exception were geographers at Berkeley, particularly Carl Sauer and John Leighly, who disagreed with, often feigned not to understand, but mainly just ignored Hartshorne (see Porter Citation1978).
3. Hartshorne arrived in Vienna to begin his academic leave five months after the Anschluss (Hartshorne 1979). In a 1989 letter to Derek Gregory about that period, Hartshorne wrote, “We were living mostly with Jewish people. Our choice and the right choice because if they were being herded towards Auschwitz they did not have to pretend it was a good thing, they could be human on the way. And we could help them a little by being there, even though we felt like deserters [‘cowards’ in the previous draft, and ‘traitors’ in an even earlier draft] when we pulled out our American passports and waved goodbye” (R. Hartshorne to D. Gregory, 19 October 1989, Box 195, Hartshorne correspondence/D-E, Papers of Richard Hartshorne, American Geographical Society Library, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee).
4. “COI came first,” Office of Strategic Services: America's First Intelligence Agency, https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/oss/index.htm (last accessed 30 August, 2014).
5. Functions of Research and Analysis in strategic services, R&A No. 2700, no date, pages 2–3, RG 226, Box 9, Folder 3, National Archives and Record Administration (NARA), College Park, MD.
6. Rössler (Citation1996, 79) provided a list of titles and in some cases authors (although all reports were anonymized when published). Some representative titles include “German Political Emigration,” “Current Agricultural Conditions in the Russian Occupied Zone of Germany in 1945,” “German Social Stratification,” “The Housing Situation,” and “Transportation and Communication in Japan.”
7. Functions of Research and Analysis in strategic services, R&A No. 2700, no date, page 2, RG 226, Box 9, Folder 3, NARA.
8. “All requests for studies are referred to the [Projects] Committee and it considers all projects for studies instituted within the Branch. It assigns priorities and designates what division is to be responsible and what other units should cooperate or be consulted in the preparation of the work. Finally, it passes upon [sic] finished reports and controls their distribution” (Functions of Research & Analysis in Strategic Services, no date, RG226, Box 9, Folder 3, NARA).
9. Functions of Research & Analysis in Strategic Services, no date, page 4, RG226, Box 9, Folder 3, NARA; R&A Administrative Regulation # 2, 12 March 1943, RG226 Entry 1, Box 1, Folder 2, NARA.
10. An example was the clash between Hartshorne and staff from the political subdivision of the Europe–Africa Division who included former Frankfurt School members Herbert Marcuse and Franz Neumann. Hartshorne tried to block the publication of their R&A Research Report 1549, Germany's Social Democratic Party, suggesting that it did not meet R&A's standards of “sound, mature and objective scholarship.” Such standards, however, were exactly the ones being called into question by the ex-Frankfurt School members (R. Hartshorne to S. Kent and Lt. C. E. Schorske, R&A No. 1549, page 1, 14 July 1945, RG 226, Entry 1, Box 4, Folder 1, NARA).
11. W. L. Langer to W. J. Donovan, Personnel situation R&A Branch, 10 May 1943, RG 226, Box 4, Folder 11, NARA.
12. Apart from Richard Hartshorne, Preston James, and Chauncy Harris, some of the more prominent geographers at R&A in Washington included Edward Ackerman, William Applebaum, George Brightman, Clarence Fielding Jones, John Morrison, Clarence Olmstead, Arthur Robinson, Kirk Stone, Edward Ullman, and Leonard Wilson.
13. C. D. Harris, Geographers in Washington, ca. 1941, Box 89, Folder 16, Chauncy D. Harris Papers (CDHP), Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library; C. Harris, Professional geographers in government offices in Washington, D.C., 30 June 1942, Department of State, Box 99, Folder 9, CDHP.
14. A more detailed version of that questionnaire was also sent out in January 1942, by Preston James and Richard Hartshorne, respectively Chair and Vice-Chair of the Committee on Geographic Research, National Research Council, to recruit yet more geographers (National Research Council, 7 January 1942, Box 89, Folder 16, CDHP).
15. R&A Administrative Regulation, 21 January 1943, page 4, RG 226 Entry 1, Box 1, Folder 2, NARA.
16. Hartshorne wrote to Derwent Whittlesey, Professor of Geography at Harvard, on 8 October 1941, about the state of hires at the Geography Division: “[Edward] Ackerman is the only person committed besides myself, so you can call that safe. I am trusting next to get Robinson from Ohio State” (R. Hartshorne to D. S. Whittlesey, 8 October 1941, Box 38, 1940–42, Ackerman, Edward A. Papers (AEAP), American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming at Laramie).
17. Harris (Citation1997, 251) said that Robinson “changed his career line” after that chance meeting with Hartshorne. Robinson had gone to OSU intending to leave cartography and in which he had completed an MA at Wisconsin. Before meeting Hartshorne, his PhD thesis was to be about the population of the Mississippi Valley; see also C. Olmstead, Recollections of map intelligence in the Office of Strategic Service during World War II, no date, Folder 4, Box 102, CDHP.
18. Army Specialized Training Bulleting, No. 6, January 1944, pages, 3, 7. School for Overseas Administration (SfOA), Harvard University Archive (HUA), uav 663.95.1.
19. Reveille was at 6:30 a.m., breakfast at 7:00 a.m., followed by three one-hour language classes beginning at 8:00 a.m. At 11:00 a.m. there was an hour lecture. Lunch was between 12:15 and 1:20 p.m., followed by two hours of supervised activities (lectures, films, study groups). Drill was at 3:30 p.m., supper at 6:30 p.m., supervised study at 7:30 p.m., and Taps at 10:30 p.m. (Keefer 1988, 75).
20. The Director of Harvard's CATS program, C. J. Friedrich, wrote in May 1944, that “stiffness of the program mak[es] it virtually impossible for any but the very best men to do the job to their own satisfaction” (Memo: Concerning the Civil Affairs Training School, 26 May 1944, SfOA, HUA, uav 663.95.1).
21. Hyneman (Citation1944, 345) said the degree of language proficiency achieved by enrollees “was a revelation” and led to the pedagogical techniques used at CATS being transferred to other government units that taught foreign languages. Students were given between 120 and 136 contact hours to speak the new language colloquially.
22. C. D. Harris, Oral history, 14 January 1986, pp. 9–11, Box 90. Folder 10, CDHP.
23. Dean P. H. Buck to W. L. Langer, 3 June 1943, Box 38, “1943–1947,” AEAP.
24. E. A. Ackerman to P. H. Buck, 7 August 1943, SfOA, HUA, uav 663.95.1.
25. Ackerman listed five languages that he could at least read, but Japanese was not among them (“United Nations Personal History” “Edward A. Ackerman Bibliography,” Box 1, AEAP).
26. Industrializing areas and urban settlements, Outline of lecture by Dr. E. A. Ackerman, 16 January 1945, page 3, HUA, SfOA, uav.663.246.
27. E. A. Ackerman to C. C. Colby, 15 August 1945, Box 38, “1943–1947,” AEAP.
28. In his brilliant book about the U.S. occupation of Japan, Embracing Defeat, Dower (Citation1999, 23) said MacArthur's acts as Supreme Commander were “a remarkable display of arrogant idealism—both self-righteous and genuinely visionary.” Their progressive political character was achieved in spite of MacArthur's barely muffled Christian missionary zeal, Republican Party membership, Orientalism, and a colonial jingoism that conceived the remaking of Japan as yet another of “the white man's burdens.”
29. James, as already discussed, was involved in military intelligence from 1923. At R&A at different times he was Chief of the Latin American and Europe–Africa Divisions. Dickinson was a British geographer with expertise especially in urbanization and the geography of Germany (where he traveled extensively in the second half of the 1930s before war broke out; Johnston Citation2001). He served in intelligence within the Royal Air Force during the war, likely contributing to setting bombing targets in Germany, including possibly the ones over which William Warntz navigated his B-24 Liberator. Warntz also wrote about the history of geography but, like James's and Dickinson's, his histories were warless.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Trevor J. Barnes
TREVOR J. BARNES is a Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests are in economic geography—he is writing a textbook with Brett Christophers—and the history of geographical thought from World War II to around 1980.