Scholar Francis Lieber codified the ideal form of arch-occupation in a series of lectures at Columbia University, where he was a professor, just prior to the Civil War. A former Prussian soldier who was wounded at Waterloo, Lieber was particularly concerned with the potential for draftee Union armies to brutalize occupied people and create local hostility, which could undermine battlefield victories. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln promulgated Lieber’s ideas as General Orders 100—commonly known as the Lieber Code—which created rules for Union soldiers occupying Confederate territory. Minimal intervention, including respect for local populations and existing institutions, was central to the Lieber Code, and although Union forces did not always adhere to it perfectly, it nonetheless provided a framework for conciliatory occupation that extended into the post–Civil War Reconstruction of the South.57
Hunt did not universally praise the American occupation of the Rhineland. His recommendation against using regular soldiers for MG was perhaps his most important contribution. He noted that “tactical” soldiers are not trained in civil affairs. They retain a potential combat role, hindering their ability to build collaborative relationships with occupied peoples. For him, the lack of officers trained in governance was a major failing of US MG in the Rhineland, and he suggested copying the British and French colonial styles of indirect administration by specialist officers.58 The genesis of the Charlottesville school partly lies in the military’s adoption of Hunt’s suggestions. FM 27-5 also clearly differentiated between the security provided by tactical troops and the administration of military government, which was the purview of MGOs.59
In keeping with the importance placed on MGOs, FM 27-5 elevated officer discretion. According to the writers, “military government must be flexible. It must suit the people, the country, the time, and the strategical and tactical situation.” Officers had to be “capable of change without undue inconvenience.”60 This flexibility was the conceptual keel for the minimalist American approach to MG. It revealed a recognition that occupation is unpredictable. Conditions would vary from region to region—as Hamilton and Joublanc found in Nuremberg and Augsburg—let alone from nation to nation. The mission was therefore distilled to enforcing order. An MGO’s instruments were martial law and respectful use of existing people and institutions. But beyond these core elements, the only thing linking different instances of MG was a pragmatic recognition that the outcomes legitimized the methods.
Thought in Practice: The Axis Threat and Military Government in Hawaii
The bombing of Pearl Harbor on the morning of 7 December 1941 accelerated preparations for foreign occupation already underway in the War Department. The attack also meant putting MG into practice. That Sunday afternoon, as smoke and debris filled the air, Territorial Governor of Hawaii Joseph B. Poindexter declared martial law using powers in the 1900 Hawaiian Organic Act, which had created the territory. Lieutenant General Walter C. Short, head of the US Army’s Hawaii Department, became military governor.61 Martial law, Poindexter announced, would apply to “all persons … whether residents … or not, whether citizens of the United States or not.”62
Short’s tenure as military governor was brief. Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall recalled him to Washington on 17 December to answer for the Japanese surprise, demoting him in the process.63 Lieutenant General Delos C. Emmons replaced him and Thomas H. Green—later a guest instructor at Charlottesville—became Emmons’s executive officer.64 At Charlottesville, Green used Hawaii as a living example of MG in the courses he delivered, providing insight into the thinking that guided the operation.65 Following the Pearl Harbor attacks, military command in Hawaii had believed that Japanese invasion was imminent and that Japanese subversives on the islands posed a real threat. These together were rationales for martial law and convinced President Franklin D. Roosevelt to authorize it.66
MG in Hawaii continued until late 1944. The Supreme Court ruled in February 1946 that subjecting Americans to martial law was unconstitutional.67 During the war, however, Hawaii was an important touchstone for the conduct of MG, modeling principles for trainee MGOs. These principles were apparent in Hawaii, where the stated aim was ensuring that the territory’s resources and people were mobilized for defense, which included evacuating women and children and “building fortifications and airfields.”68 But strict enforcement of martial law was MG’s first priority, both to enforce civilian compliance and to identify possible pro-Japanese subversion. The army moved quickly once martial law was declared, following the doctrine in FM 27-5. Civilian government offices and courts were closed, and the press was censored. Military law replaced civilian law and was adjudicated through military tribunals. Habeas corpus was suspended.69 The army also adhered to the manual’s intellectual spirit and imposed additional limits on civil liberties. Blackouts were established and curfews announced; all residents were required to register with MG and thereafter carry identification cards.70 Strict controls were placed over the economy. Green explained to students at Charlottesville that it was necessary to bind workers to their jobs and fix wage scales in order to prevent labor problems. But economic restrictions extended to closing bars and restricting the “sale of all merchandise,” which effectively shut down the local economy. Violations of any restrictions led to military prosecution, and the punishments were harsh.71
But as Green later explained to students at Charlottesville, enforcing order was only part of military governance. He listed nine other issues concerning MG in Hawaii that the trainee officers should also consider in their own operations, including “food problems; control of communications; racial problems; and housing shortages.” Good governance meant attending to the full suite of people’s needs.72 Hawaiian MG was also astonishingly small, “consisting of three officers and four enlisted men,” so the broader concerns of government were handled through existing administrative structures, which demonstrated, Green argued, the feasibility of the minimalist American approach to occupation.73
MG in Hawaii imposed the most far-reaching restrictions on civil liberties ever taken on US soil. In Green’s view, the territory’s “polygot [sic] population” justified this action. Whites were a minority constituting just one-quarter (104,000) of the islands’ 420,000 people. The rest were Hawaiian and Asian, and 159,000 (38 percent) were Japanese by birth or descent.74 That nonwhites outnumbered whites three to one was an uncomfortable reality in racist, 1940s America in which Jim Crow remained law in the South and the US military was segregated. Officers in Hawaii instinctively rejected the idea of interracial harmony, instead regarding racial diversity as such a threat to peace that preventing “riots” and “racial conflict” came before “espionage and sabotage” in Green’s list of priorities after law and order.75
Fear of subversives among Hawaiian Japanese extended from a radicalized worldview. On 8 December 1941, Major General Short announced a special policy regarding alien Japanese aged fourteen and above. He “enjoined [them] to preserve the peace towards the United States and to refrain from crime against the public safety … and … from actual hostility or giving information, aid, or comfort to enemies of the United States.” Assumed to be innately guilty, alien Japanese were considered potential enemies and restricted from possessing firearms, weapons “or similar implements” of other kinds, shortwave radios, transmitting sets, or signal devices. It was also illegal for them to change their residence, travel outside the islands, or write or say anything against the United States, its military, or its government. But suspicion even resided in conciliatory actions, such as the instruction that Japanese Americans be treated with “such friendliness as may be compatible with loyalty and allegiance.” This order allowed non-Japanese US citizens to subjectively evaluate “loyalty and allegiance.”76 Similar logic led to mass internment