_California is a remote Insular Province of the United States--just as much
an island as Hawaii, to all practical intents and purposes. It would be
more easily accessible from Japan by sea, in case of war, than from the
United States by land. It is bounded on the west by the Pacific Ocean, now
nothing more than a large lake in these days of modern steamships. It is
bounded on the east and south by mountain ranges from which a thousand
miles of desert and the Rocky Mountains intervene before the populous
sections of the United States are reached. On the north inaccessible
mountains separate California from the plains and valleys of Oregon. There
are hundreds of places on its coast where an army could be landed. To reach
it from the north, mountains must be crossed. From the east, mountains must
be crossed. From the south, mountains must be crossed. From the west, the
gentle waves of the Pacific, in all ordinary weather, lap the sloping
sands which for nearly a thousand miles tempt a landing on so fair a
shore._
All this is true of Southern California, so far as its inaccessibility from
the east is concerned, but it is more essentially true of the Sacramento
and San Joaquin Valley. There you have a great bowl, fashioned by Nature in
such a way as to open invitingly to the warm and equable winds that come
from the Pacific and the Japan current, while on the north, west, and south
are high mountain ranges that protect from the blizzards that come out of
the north or the hot desert blasts from the south.
This peculiar conformation of the great central valley of California makes
its defense in case of war with any maritime nation a most difficult
problem.
The idea that the Pacific Coast of the United States or the coast of
California can be protected by a navy seems so utterly without foundation
that it is difficult to treat it seriously. Do those who delude themselves
with that mistaken dream recall that Cervera steamed in from the sea and
slipped into Santiago Harbor when practically the whole American Navy was
searching and watching for him?
If England cannot protect two hundred miles of seacoast from the raids of
German battleships, can we protect two thousand miles? Does anyone doubt
that if Germany had been so disposed, and her battleships had been
convoying fast transports laden with soldiers, she easily could have landed
them at Scarborough or anywhere along that part of the English Coast? Does
anyone doubt that Japan could do the same thing anywhere along the Pacific
Coast, particularly when the fact is borne in mind that in the summer,
often for weeks at a time, the Pacific Coast is enveloped in dense fogs
that are almost continuous?
Does anyone question that the instant war was declared Japan would seize
Alaska and the Philippines and the Hawaiian Islands, and cut off all
possibility of our navy operating anywhere except close to our few coaling
stations on the mainland? If so, they should surely read "The Valor of
Ignorance" by Homer Lea, not for the author's opinions, but just to get the
cold hard facts which our national heedlessness makes it so difficult to
get the people of this country to realize.
In "The Valor of Ignorance" the fact is pointed out with the most specific
detail that the number of transports Japan had, when that book was
published--1909--was a transport fleet of 95 steamers with a troop capacity
of 199,526 as against ten American transports. The author makes this
further comment:
"Should Japan embark on these two fleets an average of
two Japanese to the space and tonnage ordinarily deemed
necessary for one American, then the troop capacity on
a single voyage of these fleets would exceed three
hundred thousand officers and men together with their
equipment and supplies. That this would be easily
possible and would work no hardship on the men was
demonstrated by the Japanese winter quarters in
Manchuria during the Russian War."
Is there anyone so blind as to believe that if such an army of invasion was
started from Japan, convoyed by the Japanese navy, that we could find and
destroy that entire navy and then find and destroy ninety-five transports
before they could land their soldiers on the beaches along the peaceful
shores of California, Oregon, and Washington? The greater part of every
year they _are_ peaceful shores. That is why the name Pacific was chosen
for that great ocean.
The unique feature about this whole subject is that while the American
people are utterly indifferent, Japan, in an incredibly short space of
time, has equipped herself with everything needful for such an
invasion,--Navy, Transports, and Soldiers, probably the most perfectly
organized army in the world.
That is the situation of California from the side of the Pacific Ocean.
What is it from the land side?
If Japan contemplated an invasion of our territory, how many are there who
realize that just five dynamite bombs exploded in the right places would
block a tunnel on every one of the railroads leading into the Sacramento
and San Joaquin Valley?
The California and Oregon from the north.
The Southern Pacific from the south.
The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, the Central Pacific and the Western
Pacific from the east.
Blow up one tunnel on each line and do the job thoroughly and well as the
Japanese would do it,--that's the Japanese way,--and it would be weeks and
perhaps months before one single train could be got in or out of
California.
We may rest assured also that the Japanese, when they undertook that job,
would not stop with blowing up one tunnel. They would blow up a dozen on
every one of the railroads mentioned, and bridges and culverts and
trestles. With a little dynamite, mixed with the reckless daring of the
Japanese, California could be made inaccessible to an army from the east,
except by sea, for a longer time than it would take to transport an army
from Asia to America.
No doubt the idea will occur to some that soldiers could be transported
from the Atlantic Coast to California through the Panama Canal in time to
meet such an emergency. But what would we transport them in? We have no
ships. And it is no sure thing that the Japanese would not get the Panama
Canal blown up and stop that channel of transportation, if war was begun
between them and the United States. It would require nothing more desperate
to accomplish it than we know the Japanese are ready for at any time the
opportunity offered--nothing more desperate than Hobson's feat at Santiago.
The Japanese are a farsighted people and war with them is an exact science.
They master every detail in advance. They proved that in their war with
Russia. There can be no doubt--not because they have any hostile intentions
towards the United States, but merely because it is a part of the duty of
their professional military scientists--that the plans are now made in the
war office at Tokio, for every detail of the whole project outlined above
for dynamiting every railroad into California and blowing up the Panama
Canal, in the event of war between the United States and Japan. And it is
quite probable that the men are detailed for the job and the dynamite
carefully stored away with which to do the job, if the necessity arose for
it.
_The Japanese do not want a war with the United States._
Neither did they want a war with Russia. But it is a part of their religion
to be prepared for war. It is the thorough Japanese way. Their way is not
our way. They take no chances. We do nothing else but take chances. Because
what we are doing or have done for national defense is as nothing.
All we spend on our navy is wasted, so far as any possible trouble with
Japan is concerned. If war came, it would come like the eruption of Mont
Pelee, so unexpectedly and quickly that escape was impossible. The people
of the United States, if we have a war with Japan, will awaken some morning
and read in all their morning papers that the Panama Canal has been blown
up, and that tunnels on all the railroads into California and the Colorado
River Bridges at Yuma and Needles have been blown up; that the 50,000 or
more Japanese soldiers in California have mobilized and intrenched
themselves in impregnable positions in the mountains of the coast range
near the ocean; that Japanese steamers have landed 10,000 more Japanese
soldiers to reenforce the 50,000 already in California; that those same
steamers have brought arms, ammunition, field artillery, aeroplanes, and a
complete equipment for a field campaign by this Japanese army of 60,000
men; that those Japanese steamers have landed at some entirely unfortified
roadstead in California: Bodega Bay or Tomales Bay or Purissima or
Pescadero or Santa Cruz or Monterey or Port Harford or any one of a dozen
other places where they could land between San Diego and Point Arena.
The Japanese making this landing would within two days make a junction with
the Japanese already in California. Then an army of occupation of 60,000
veteran soldiers is in military control of the Sacramento and San Joaquin
Valley.
How surprised the good people would be who have been so anxious to get
enough of the "inferior people" who are willing to do "squat labor" for
the American _owners of the country_, which had just been taken away from
them by the Japanese. Does it make any American proud to contemplate that
the whole situation above outlined is not only possible but that it is the
exact thing that would happen if we had a war with Japan?
Soldiers for defense? We could not get them there in time, and we cannot
maintain a soldier in idleness in a barracks in California for every
Japanese who is industriously earning his living in a potato field, doing
"squat labor" and thinking the while that he wishes his country would make
it possible, as she could so easily do, for him to own a potato patch
himself. Let no one imagine he is not thinking about it. The Japanese are a
farsighted and subtle people, with brains four thousand years old.
And with this army of occupation of 60,000 Japanese veterans in possession
of the great central valley of California, what would the Japanese do with
our coast fortifications and the big guns that cost so much money and were
designed to riddle Japanese battleships miles at sea?
Why, the Japanese would just laugh at them. They would not be worth taking.
If they thought they were they would take them, just as they took Port
Arthur and Tsing Tau. But they would not try to do that until they had
landed a couple of hundred thousand more veteran Japanese troops on the
Pacific Coast. Then they would take our coast fortifications from the land
side not so much by storm as by _swarm_.
What would the California Militia be doing all this time?
_It is better not to dwell on unpleasant subjects._
Most probably they would be defending San Francisco or Sacramento from
invasion while the Japs were intrenching themselves in the appropriate
places to control every pass across the Siskiyous or the Sierras or the
Tehachapi Mountains, making it impossible to get across those mountains
with an army, even though the army could first be got across the deserts to
the mountains.
In winter the Siskiyous and the Sierras would be made impassible by
Nature's snow and ice and avalanches, without any other defenses being
built by the Japanese.
But one of the first things the Japanese would do would be to organize a
force of aeroplane scouts with bombs to swoop out and down from their
mountain aeries and dynamite culverts and bridges on every railroad
approaching the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valley. They could make it
impossible to keep open railroad communication in any way other than by an
adequate force to repel an aeroplane attack stationed at every bridge and
culvert across a thousand miles of desert. Once the bridges across the
Colorado River at the Needles and Yuma were blown up, the Southern Pacific
and Santa Fe would be out of commission for months.
What it would mean to get an army across the mountains into the great
central valley of California cannot be appreciated by anyone who is
unfamiliar with the stupendous canyons and chasms and the towering peaks of
the Siskiyou and Sierra Nevada Mountains. Those who toiled over them with
the Donner party could have told the tale to those who calculate on scaling
those mountains with an army in the face of Japanese batteries defending
every pass. It would be a task greater than the capture of Port Arthur to
capture one pass and get it away from the Japanese after we had got into
motion and started in with the job of reconquering California.
The difficulty of getting an American army into Southern California after
the Japanese had once occupied it, is described by Homer Lea in "The Valor
of Ignorance" in the following warning words:
"Entrance into southern California is gained by three
passes--the San Jacinto, Cajon and Saugus, while access
to the San Joaquin Valley and central California is by
the Tehachapi. It is in control of these passes that
determines Japanese supremacy on the southern flank of
the Pacific coast, and it is in their adaptability to
defence that determines the true strategic value of
southern California to the Japanese.
"Los Angeles forms the main centre of these three
passes, and lies within three hours by rail of each of
them, while San Bernardino, forming the immediate base
of forces defending Cajon and San Jacinto passes, is
within one hour by rail of both passes.
"The mountain-chains encompassing the inhabited regions
of southern California might be compared to a great
wall thousands of feet in height, within whose
enclosures are those fertile regions which have made
the name of this state synonymous with all that is
abundant in nature. These mountains, rugged and
inaccessible to armies from the desert side, form an
impregnable barrier except by the three gateways
mentioned.
"Standing upon Mt. San Gorgonio or San Antonio one can
look westward and southward down upon an endless
succession of cultivated fields, towns and hamlets,
orchards, vineyards and orange groves; upon wealth
amounting to hundreds of millions; upon as fair and
luxuriant a region as is ever given man to contemplate;
a region wherein shall be based the Japanese forces
defending these passes. To the north and east across
the top of this mountain-wall are forests, innumerable
streams, and abundance of forage. But suddenly at the
outward rim all vegetation ceases; there is a drop--the
desert begins.
"The Mojave is not a desert in the ordinary sense of
the word, but a region with all the characteristics of
other lands, only here Nature is dead or in the last
struggle against death. Its hills are volcanic scoria
and cinders, its plains bleak with red dust; its
meadows covered with a desiccated and seared
vegetation; its springs, sweet with arsenic, are
rimmed, not by verdure, but with the bones of beast and
man. Its gaunt forests of yucca bristle and twist in
its winds and brazen gloom. Its mountains, abrupt and
bare as sun-dried skulls, are broken with canyons that
are furnaces and gorges that are catacombs. Man has
taken cognizance of this deadness in his nomenclature.
There are Coffin Mountains, Funeral Ranges, Death
Valleys, Dead Men's Canyons, dead beds of lava, dead
lakes, and dead seas. All here is dead. This is the
ossuary of Nature; yet American armies must traverse it
and be based upon it whenever they undertake to regain
southern California. To attack these fortified places
from the desert side is a military undertaking pregnant
with greater difficulties than any ever attempted in
all the wars of the world."
Now after so easily taking California away from us because we stolidly
refused, like the English people, to heed repeated warnings, what would the
Japanese do? Southern California they would simply occupy with a military
force and continue to occupy it. Its irrigable lands in the coast basin are
already all reclaimed and densely populated.
_The Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys would be the paradise that they
would develop into a new Japan._
Already we have shown how they could duplicate the 12,500,000 acres of
irrigated and cultivated land in Japan in the drainage Basin of the
Colorado River.
They could do it again in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys in
California. There are 12,500,000 acres of the richest land in the world in
those valleys and within two years after they had taken possession of it
they would have several million Japanese reclaiming and cultivating it.
They would bring their people over as fast as all the steamers of Japan
could carry them. And long before we had got real good and ready to
reconquer California they would have peopled its great central valley with
a dense Japanese population who would fight us, the original owners of the
country, to defend their homes from invasion.
_What should the United States do to prevent all this?_
It should _immediately_, with just the same energy and expedition that it
would act if an invading Armada had actually sailed from Japan, buy 100,000
acres of land in the San Joaquin Valley that can be irrigated from the
Calaveras River and from the Calaveras Reservoir if it were built. It
should subdivide that tract into one acre Homecrofts and put 100,000
Homecroft Reservists on it. It should go to work and build, right now and
without any dilly-dallying or delay, the Calaveras Reservoir. Those 100,000
Homecroft Reservists should be set to work to build the Calaveras Reservoir
and the irrigation system necessary to irrigate that particular Homecroft
Reserve tract, and all the works necessary to protect the entire delta of
the San Joaquin River from overflow and protect the channel of the river
and broaden it below Stockton--"open the neck of the bottle" as they say in
that locality.
The government should go over onto the west side of the Sacramento Valley
and buy another 100,000 acres, and subdivide it into one acre Homecrofts
and enlist another corps of 100,000 Homecroft Reservists and put them on
that land. Then it should set them to work to build a great wasteway, to
temporarily carry off the flood waters of the Sacramento River--one that
will not split the Sacramento River but that will safeguard Sacramento from
that catastrophe. That work should be continued until it is finished.
Another 100,000 acres in the neighborhood of Fresno should be likewise
bought and another 100,000 Homecroft Reservists enlisted and located on it.
They should be set to work to open a navigable waterway to Fresno and dig a
great drainage canal that would also be a navigable canal, from Suisun Bay
to Tulare Lake.
Another 100,000 acres in the upper end of the west side of the Sacramento
Valley should be acquired and settled with 100,000 Homecrofters who would
work on the construction of the Iron Canyon Reservoir and other reservoirs
on the Sacramento River and its tributaries, and on a great main line West
Side Canal from the Sacramento River to the Straits of Carquinez.
Another 100,000 acres on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley should be
acquired and settled with 100,000 Homecrofters who would work on the
construction of the lower section of the West Side Canal from the Straits
of Carquinez to the lower end of the San Joaquin Valley.
The government should not stop there. It should, as soon as the necessary
legislative machinery can be evolved, go into the extreme southern end of
the San Joaquin Valley and acquire 500,000 acres of land for a Homecroft
Reserve of 500,000 families. It should build the works necessary to bring
the water to irrigate this land from the Sacramento River by the great
main-line canal from the river to the straits of Carquinez. Those straits
should be crossed on a viaduct and the canal carried on down the west side
of the valley, starting at an elevation high enough to cover the land to be
irrigated in the lower valley. The increased value of the million acres
would cover the entire cost of the works. Additional revenue could be
earned by the furnishing of water to other lands under the canal in the
Sacramento and also in the San Joaquin Valley.
The cooperation of the State of California would be gladly extended and
complete plans carried out for the reclamation of the San Joaquin Valley by
a great canal on the east side of the valley heading in the Sacramento
River near Redding, or at the Iron Canyon, and extending to the extreme
southern end of the valley, as recommended by the Commission appointed by
General Grant when President of the United States. That Commission was
composed of General Alexander, Colonel Mendel, and Professor Davidson,
three of the most eminent engineers and scientists of those days.
An aggregate area of 12,500,000 acres would, as the result of this policy,
be reclaimed and settled in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys. Having
created a dense population ourselves in that country there would be no
unoccupied land to tempt the Japanese. And with 1,000,000 Homecroft
Reservists ready at any time to meet and repel an invasion, our occupancy
of the country would be assured forever.
There would not be room left for many Japanese immigrants, and if some of
them did come they would be in such a hopeless minority that no danger
would result from their being here. No condition could then be imagined in
the future that would create a possibility of Japan, even with all the
countless millions of China combined with her, being able to land on the
Pacific Coast an army large enough to stand a moment against a Homecroft
Reserve of a million soldiers from the Colorado River Valley and another
million from the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys.
Whether it would be advisable to establish other Homecroft Reserves in
Oregon and Washington would depend largely on the attitude of mind of the
people of those States. If a few connecting railroad lines were built,
troops could be transported by railroads running north across Southern
California and Nevada to a connection with the railroads running down the
Columbia River to Portland. These railroads would all be east of the
mountains until they connected with the Columbia River Railroad and would
be free from danger of being destroyed by the blowing up of tunnels.
Of course it is a remote contingency that such a thing should ever become
necessary, but if it ever did, the Canadian border could be defended with
troops brought north through Nevada and Utah from the Colorado River Valley
to great concentration camps at Chehalis and Spokane, in Washington, Havre
in Montana, and Williston in North Dakota. As a matter of military
precaution, the necessary connecting links should be built as military
railroads, if nothing else,--such links as from Yuma to Cadiz, Pioche to
Ely, Tonopah to Austin, Indian Springs to Eureka, and from Battle Mountain
or Winnemucca as well as from Cobre on the Central Pacific line north to a
connection with the Oregon Short Line. The ease with which these
connections could be made, and the facility, in that event, with which
troops from the Colorado River Valley could be transported to any point in
North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington, or Oregon, as well as their
[Illustration: Map showing Routes of Railway Transportation to
Concentration Centers for Troops of the Reserves for the defense of the
North Pacific Coast and Northern Boundary of the United States: 1, Albany;
2, Chehalis; 3, Spokane; 4, Havre; 5, Williston.]
proximity when at home in the Colorado Valley, to any point where they
might be needed along the Mexican border or in Southern California,
emphasizes the advantages of the Colorado River Valley as a location for
the first great Homecroft Reserve force of 1,000,000 men, supplemented by
another force of an equal number of men in the Sacramento and San Joaquin
Valleys in California. Once that was done, the question of the defense of
the Pacific Coast would be settled for all time, so long as this Homecroft
Reserve force was maintained and kept always in readiness for immediate
service.