Bibliographical Note
Records and studies about Quartermaster Corps activities in the war against Japan fall into three general classes—U.S. Army official records, published works, and manuscript histories. Of these classes, Army records are by far the most valuable, and this volume is therefore based mainly upon them.
U.S. Army Official Records
The quality of Army records relating to Quartermaster activities varies widely from area to area, from activity to activity, and from troop unit to troop unit. In the early months of the war, in the South and the Southwest Pacific as well as in the beleaguered Philippines, shortages of office clerks and equipment prevented maintenance of proper records. To some extent these deficiencies continued until the surrender of Japan. Higher headquarters, which were usually at least fairly well manned and equipped, kept the most complete records. Those at bases varied in quality with the interest of commanders and the ability of file clerks. Quartermaster troop units at best maintained sketchy records of little—often no—historical value. Some of the periodical historical summaries and after action reports are illuminating surveys, but most of them were prepared by men who possessed little conception of what matters had permanent interest. The authors in general stressed matters of merely ephemeral significance; this was especially true of unit histories. Worst of all, some Quartermaster records were apparently destroyed after the war, on the ground that they were not worth preservation. Certainly, the disconcertingly wide gaps that on occasion appear in the documentary record of the Corps cannot otherwise be easily explained.
The scarcity of Quartermaster records is most marked in the study of the fall of the Philippines. Cut off from the outside world by a strangling blockade, American forces in that archipelago in 1942 could use little of the precious space on the few departing submarines and planes to ship records. Most of the records remained in the islands and were destroyed in the final disaster. The only surviving documents of importance to research on Quartermaster operations is a group of G-4 files, apparently sent to Washington from Corregidor before its surrender. These files, designated USAFFE-USFIP Records, are located in the Departmental Records Branch (DRB) , AGO. They are especially useful for the study of food conditions both on Corregidor and on Bataan. DRB AGO Finding List 31 gives a detailed inventory of these documents.
The chief source of information on Quartermaster activities during the events that culminated in the fall of the Philippines is the series of reports prepared after the war by higher commanders and key officers who had spent three years or more in Japanese prison camps. The Chief Quartermaster, Brig. Gen. Charles C. Drake, and Quartermaster officers who had performed a major role in supporting the Philippine garrison,
were brought to the Office of The Quartermaster General (OQMG) in Washington to prepare their reports from memory and from notes they had made during their captivity. These accounts eventually became Annex XIII of Gen. Jonathan M. Wain-wright’s voluminous Report of Operations of USAFFE and USFIP in the Philippine Islands, 1941–1942. This annex, entitled Report of Operations, Quartermaster Corps, United States Army, in the Philippine Campaign, 1941–1942, is referred to in the text of this volume as General Drake’s Report. Despite conspicuous gaps and other shortcomings that could not be corrected under the circumstances, Annex XIII furnishes the best account of Quartermaster activities before and during the fall of the Philippines. It is indeed the only source for many aspects of these activities. Chapter 1 of this volume is of necessity based largely upon it. A copy of the annex is on file in the OQMG. Another copy, attached to General Wainwright’s report, is available in Departmental Records Branch, AGO.
Annex XIV, Medical Department Activities in the Philippines, 1941-6 May 1942, throws light on actual food receipts in combat units and on the dire physical results of starvation diets. A few of the annexes devoted to tactical commands, notably number VI, Report of Operations of Luzon Force, 12 March 1942 to 9 April 1942, also give interesting sidelights on these matters.
During the research for this volume the records of overseas commands were located in the Organization Records Branch (ORB), Records Administration Center, AGO, St. Louis, Mo., but have since been removed to the Kansas City Records Center, AGO, Kansas City, Mo. These materials provided most of the information on which this publication is based. The author spent a total of seven weeks at St. Louis in examination of the overseas records. He selected for shipment on loan to the OQMG in Washington about 140 foot lockers of pertinent materials. Informative documents were photostatted in whole or part in order to have exact copies for use in writing. Reproduction was made on paper five by eight inches for the sake of greater ease in filing and handling.
The records from St. Louis cover with varying degrees of thoroughness the activities of the QMC at higher headquarters. The records of U.S. Army Services of Supply (USASOS) tell the story of Quartermaster activities in that Southwest Pacific command in adequate fashion, but equally satisfactory material could not be found for the higher supply headquarters of other Pacific areas. Files of base sections everywhere vary substantially in coverage of Quartermaster operations, again proving most helpful as regards General MacArthur’s command. Quartermaster materials in the files of task forces, of the Sixth, Eighth, and Tenth Armies, and of infantry divisions and other tactical organizations are also uneven in value; their usefulness is greatest for higher organizations and least for lower organizations. The documentary records of many Quartermaster troop units could not be located, and often, when they were found, proved valueless for the purposes of this volume.
For the Southwest Pacific the most useful group of documents is that of the United States Army Forces in the Western Pacific (AFWESPAC), which now includes the records of USASOS for the entire war period. Other especially useful collections of the Southwest Pacific Area are those of the Australian Base Command (ABCOM) and the New Guinea Base Section (NUGSEC),
which both contain many documents originally part of the files of former base sections in these territorial areas. The records of the U.S. Army Forces, Pacific (AFPAC) , contain information on supply matters that required collaboration with Australian agencies or coordination between G-4 and the Office of the Chief Quartermaster, USASOS.
The best source of documents for the Quartermaster history of the South Pacific proved to be the Adjutant General and Quartermaster portions of the records of U.S. Army Forces in New Caledonia (USAFINC) . These records consist mainly of materials from Headquarters, U.S. Army Forces in the South Pacific (USAFISPA) , and from Services of Supply, South Pacific Area, and are particularly valuable for a study of supply activities in late 1942 and in 1943. Usable information on activities at base sections in the South Pacific was also culled from the Adjutant General files of the U.S. Forces in the northern Solomons.
Documents relative to the QMC in the Central Pacific during the last half of the war were conspicuously scarce but for the earlier period were reasonably adequate. Material on the potential dangers to the Hawaiian food supply in wartime and on the plans for stockpiling imported food and building warehouses for reserve stores are printed in Exhibits IP, 133, and 153 of Part 18 of the hearings of the joint committee that investigated the Pearl Harbor attack (79th Congress, Second Session). Parts 19 and 28 contain testimony about the status of the Hawaiian food supply. Additional documents on prewar plans for meeting a food crisis are available at Kansas City in the Adjutant General section of Army Ground Forces, Pacific, files. This collection also provides necessary material on supply activities in the Central Pacific during the year after Pearl Harbor.
The Army Records Section, formerly Historical Records Section, Departmental Records Branch, AGO, in Alexandria, Va., contains historical records of tactical organizations that operated in the Pacific. The after action reports of infantry divisions, of the Sixth, Eighth, and Tenth Armies, and of tactical corps, are often highly valuable for Quartermaster history. Nearly all these reports contain both G-4 and Quartermaster annexes dealing with supply and service problems and achievements from the standpoint of the principal logistical offices of reporting organizations. The annexes convey a reasonably clear picture of Quartermaster support of combat forces in general but ordinarily contain little information about individual Quartermaster units in action. The study of these units is further hampered by the inadequacy of many after action unit reports.
During World War II the OQMG in Washington acquired few documents bearing on Quartermaster activities overseas. The most significant materials in its possession on the Pacific phase of the war were reports prepared by observers the OQMG itself sent out to study the actual utility of Quartermaster items under combat conditions and to determine what new items or modifications of old ones were needed. Particularly noteworthy are the reports of Col. D. B. Dill, Capt. Robert L. Woodbury, and Capt. Robert D. Orr. The latter officer spent nearly two years in the Southwest Pacific, a longer time than any other OQMG observer. Because of his familiarity with the special problems of that area, his analyses of Quartermaster items are especially illuminating. Pacific documents obtained by the OQMG are now located in Quartermaster
Southwest Pacific and Pacific Ocean Areas files in the Technical Records Section, Departmental Records Branch, AGO, at Alexandria, Va. Most of the observers’ reports are filed under 319.25.
Papers in this and other bodies of overseas documents wherever located were ordinarily arranged in accordance with the War Department decimal file system. Bulletins, circulars, manuals, and other general directives were almost invariably filed under 30Q and when these directives are cited in the text, it should be understood that they were so filed unless another location is indicated. The file locations of other cited documents are specifically indicated in the footnotes. Personnel records were placed under numbers ranging from 200 to 299, each of which represented a different subject. For example, documents pertinent to funerals, burials, and graves registration in general were put under 293 or its decimal subdivisions. Administrative records were assigned numbers in the 300-399 series. In this series, aside from 300, the file numbers most significant to the student of Quartermaster affairs are probably 310.1 ( office organization) ; 314.7 (military history) ; 319.1 and 319.25 (periodical and other reports) ; 320.3 (tables of organization) ; 323.3 (depots) ; and 333.1 (inspection of posts).
The records of most value to the QMC are found in the 400-499 series, which is devoted to supplies, services, and equipment. It includes much material about the procurement, storage, and distribution of supplies and the characteristics and problems of individual items. The 400.1 series, which deals mostly with the selection, adoption, betterment, and procurement of supplies, is indispensable to an understanding of the general problems of specifications, designs, patterns, sizes, and tariff tables, of the letting of contracts, and of numerous other transactions carried out in the process of buying supplies. This series is also indispensable to a study of the general problems of inspecting, marking, and packing supplies before shipment. The 400.2 series deals with the handling, storage, and transfer of items from one point to another. It contains materials relating to depot administration, stock replenishment, reserve stores, and methods of warehousing supplies and utilizing space. The 400.3 series, devoted to distribution activities, gives information about shipping priorities, preparation and filling of requisitions, and methods of issuing supplies. Farming operations are dealt with under 403. Records about the special problems of general supplies—mostly hardware—are filed in the 410-419 series; those dealing with clothing, footwear, toilet articles, tentage, and other items of individual and organizational equipment in the 420-429 series; and those concerning food in the 430-437 series. Material on tobacco products is found in 439; on horses, mules, and other animals in 454; on funeral supplies in 468; on cold storage in 486.1; and on laundering and repair services in 486.3.
Published Works
The number of books, magazine articles, and other published works containing material about Quartermaster activities in the war against Japan is small and limited in value. No published volume treats of Quartermaster activities as such; most published works are concerned almost wholly with strategy and tactics and normally make only fleeting reference to logistics. Frequently,
Quartermaster activities are not even mentioned. Pertinent magazine articles are confined in the main to The Quartermaster Review and the Quartermaster Training Service Journal.
Among the published books utilized in studying events associated with the fall of the Philippines were Gen. Jonathan M. Wainwright, General Wainwright’s Story, edited by Robert Considine (New York, 1946) ; A. Whitney Griswold, The Far Eastern Policy of the United States (New York, 1938) ; Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War (New York, 1948) ; and Lt. Gen. Lewis H. Brereton, The Brereton Diaries (New York, 1946). The fullest account of prewar planning and food and medical problems in the Philippines in 1941 and 1942 is that of Louis Morton in The Fall of the Philippines (Washington, 1953), one of the combat volumes in U.S. ARMY IN WORLD WAR II. Three other volumes in this series contain considerable information on prewar mobilization planning and preparations in the Philippines. They are Maurice Matloff and Edwin Snell’s Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare; Mark Skinner Watson’s Chief of Staff: Prewar Plans and Preparations; and Ray S. Cline’s Washington Command Post: The Operations Division. All these works are helpful to a study of the strategic concepts into which preparations for Quartermaster support of the defense of the Philippines were fitted. Among articles containing information on the supply of Bataan are the “Bataan Diary of Major A. C. Tisdelle,” edited by Louis Morton, in Military Affairs, Volume XI (Fall 1947), and Capt. Harold A. Arnold’s “The Lesson of Bataan,” in The Quartermaster Review, Volume XXVI (November–December 1946). Bogart Rogers’ “Help for the Heroes of Bataan” in Cosmopolitan, CXIX (November–December 1945) , an article based on information furnished by Col. John A. Robenson, gives a detailed account of the desperate efforts to outfit blockade-runners in the Netherlands Indies for the relief of Bataan.
Published sources are of almost no significance for Quartermaster history after the surrender of Corregidor. Only the combat volumes of U.S. ARMY IN WORLD WAR II have importance. Though primarily concerned with tactical and strategical developments, they contain useful information about logistical problems in general and occasionally shed light on the provision of gasoline and rations. The volume by John Miller, jr., on Guadalcanal: The First Offensive proved especially serviceable.
Manuscript Histories
Two manuscript surveys were of particular service. One is a 330-page History of Quartermaster Operations, U.S. Army Forces, Middle Pacific, During the War With Japan, which appeared as an appendix to the History of United States Army Forces, Middle Pacific and Predecessor Commands, a study prepared by the Historical Subsection, G-2, Headquarters, AFMIDPAC. An annex, attached to the Quartermaster history, contains pertinent statistics and important directives. The Other survey, in eight sections, is entitled Military History, Office of the Chief Quartermaster, USASOS. It was prepared semiannually, one of its eight sections appearing every six months until 30 June 1945. While it is by no means a complete account of
Quartermaster operations in the Southwest Pacific, it gives considerable information not easily accessible elsewhere. For the South Pacific there is no general study of Quartermaster activities quite as rewarding as are those for the Middle and Southwest Pacific. But the manuscript History of the United States Army Forces in the South Pacific During World War II, 30 March 1942-1 August 1944 (4 parts) , prepared by the G-2 Historical Sections of U.S. Army Forces in the South Pacific Area, and of South Pacific Base Command, contains some useful data.