Daniel Immerwahr - How to Hide an Empire: A Short History of the Greater United States

Daniel Immerwahr is an associate professor of history at Northwestern University and the author of Thinking Small: The United States and the Lure of Community Development, which won the Organization of American Historians Merle Curti Award. He has written for n+1, Slate, Dissent, and other publications.

ALSO BY DANIEL IMMERWAHR

Thinking Small: The United States and the Lure of Community Development

To the uncounted

: Draft of the Infamy speech: Draft 1, Significant Documents Collection, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum

: Philippine ten-peso note: U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing

: Indian Country in 1834: Data from U.S. Forest Service, Tribal Lands Ceded to the United States

: Map of Indian removals: After Theodore Taylor, The Bureau of Indian Affairs: Public Policies Toward Indian Citizens (Boulder, CO, 1984), 13

: A delirious land rush: Studio of William S. Prettyman / Oklahoma Historical Society

: Sheet music: Jay T. Last Collection of Agricultural Prints and Ephemera, Huntington Library

: U.S. guano island claims, 18571902: Data from Jimmy M. Skaggs, The Great Guano Rush: Entrepreneurs and American Overseas Expansion (New York, 1994), appendix

: Navassa rioters: Thomas I. Hall and Columbus Gordon, The Navassa Island Riot (Baltimore, 1889)

: Young Theodore Roosevelt: George Grantham Bain / 2009633164, Library of Congress

: The Greater United States: Allen C. Thomas, An Elementary History of the United States (Boston, 1900)

: The Greater America Exposition: Greater America Exposition (Omaha, 1899), Huntington Library

: Balangiga Massacre site: Courtesy of Gloria Sommer

: First Lieutenant Pedro Albizu Campos: Folder 1, box 38, Ruth M. Reynolds Papers, Archives of the Puerto Rican Diaspora, Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueos, Hunter College, City University of New York

: The governmental center of Baguio: I1626, American Historical Collection, Rizal Library, Ateneo de Manila University

: Legislative Building: Filipinas Heritage Library

: Corpses in Ponce: Carlos Torres Morales / Palm Sunday Massacre folder, box 257, Harold L. Ickes Papers, Library of Congress

: New wartime globe-style map: David Rumsey Map Collection, courtesy of the Richard Edes Harrison estate

: Tanks on Beretania Street: Hawaii War Records Depository 1054, Archives and Manuscripts Department, University of Hawaii, Mnoa

: Honolulu childrens book: Frances Baker, We the Blitzed (Honolulu, 1943), Hawaii War Records Depository, Archives and Manuscripts Department, University of Hawaii, Mnoa

: Major Marston and Alaska Territorial Guard member: Rusty Heurlin / 1976-021-00157, box 826, Ernest Gruening Papers, Alaska and Polar Regions Department, Archives and Manuscripts, University of Alaska, Fairbanks

: I have returned: Gaetano Faillace / U.S. Army

: Manila, 1945: I10836, American Historical Collection, Rizal Library, Ateneo de Manila University

: The Quirinos neighbors: IIIA2014, American Historical Collection, Rizal Library, Ateneo de Manila University

: Legislative Building after shelling: U.S. Army / 01218902, Getty Images page 219: Solomon Islanders unloading crates of beer: U.S. Army / 111-SC-339250, United States National Archives

: Polar azimuthal projection: Fortune, March 1942 / Cornell University Library, courtesy of the Richard Edes Harrison estate

: Original UN emblem: Charter of the United Nations and Statute of the International Court of Justice (San Francisco, 1945)

: Forty-nine-star flag: Mts.Seals & Flags folder; box 70; 9-0-2, Office of Territories Classified Files, 19071951; Records of the Office of Territories, Record Group 126; United States National Archives, College Park, Maryland

: GIs protesting in Manila: Dave Davis, ACME Photos / 2008680591, Library of Congress

: Martin Luther King Jr.: Associated Press File Photo

: El Fanguito: Jack Delano / 2017798176, Library of Congress

: Oscar Collazo: Harvey Georges / Associated Press

: B. F. Goodrich worker: DC-54, Lot 3464, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

: Synthetica, a New Continent of Plastics: Ortho Plastic Novelties / Fortune, October 1940

: Conquest of the Japanese main islands: Data from Kenneth Hewitt, Place Annihilation: Area Bombing and the Fate of Urban Places, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 73 (1983), table 3

: The All-Red Line Around the World: George Johnson, The All Red Line: Annals and Aims of the Pacific Cable Project (Ottawa, 1903)

: Sign at army hospital: MAMAS D44-145-1, National Museum of Health and Medicine

: Herbert Hoover: Harris & Ewing / 2016882827, Library of Congress

: Wartime poster: National Aircraft Standards / Industrial Standardization, January 1943

: Li Yang: China Photos / 73813303, Getty Images

: Ernest Gruening: Paradise of the Pacific, January 1938

: Marine Corps Air Station Futenma: Wikimedia Commons

: Sony transistor radio and mascot: Courtesy of Michael Jack

: Major coalition airfields: After Richard P. Hallion, Storm over Iraq: Air Power and the Gulf War (Washington, DC, 1992)

: The face of battle in a war of points: Steve Horton / 070807-F-9602H-101, U.S. Air Force

The only problem is

they dont think much

about us

in America.

Alfrredo Navarro Salanga, Manila

December 7, 1941. Japanese planes appear over a naval base on Oahu. They drop aerial torpedoes, which dive underwater, wending their way toward their targets. Four strike the USS Arizona, and the massive battleship heaves in the water. Steel, timber, diesel oil, and body parts fly through the air. The flaming Arizona tilts into the ocean, its crew diving into the oil-covered waters. For a country at peace, this is a violent awakening. It is, for the United States, the start of the Second World War.

There arent many historical episodes more firmly lodged in national memory than this one, the attack on Pearl Harbor. Its one of the few events that most people can put a date to (December 7, the date which will live in infamy, as Franklin Delano Roosevelt put it). Hundreds of books have been written about itthe Library of Congress holds more than 350. And Hollywood has made movies, from the critically acclaimed From Here to Eternity (1953) starring Burt Lancaster to the critically derided Pearl Harbor (2001) starring Ben Affleck.

But what those films dont show is what happened next. Nine hours after Japan attacked the territory of Hawaii, another set of Japanese planes came into view over another U.S. territory, the Philippines. As at Pearl Harbor, they dropped their bombs, hitting several air bases, to devastating effect.

The armys official history of the war judges the Philippine bombing to have been just as disastrous as the Hawaiian one. At Pearl Harbor, the Japanese hobbled the United States Pacific fleet, sinking four battleships and damaging four others. In the Philippines, the attackers laid waste to the largest concentration of U.S. warplanes outside North Americathe foundation of the Allies Pacific air defense.