US Marine Corps - The Black Vault

234 Amphibians Came To Conquer
amounted to a modification, was given to the phrase in Rainbow Five which
read:
Operations of United States forces in other theaters [than the European
theater] will be conducted in such a manner as to facilitate that [European]
effort.
The clarification was accomplished despite the similarity strong statement
in the British drafted paragraph in the ARCADIA document which read:
. . . it should be a cardinal principle of American-British strategy that only
the minimum of force necessary for the safeguarding of vital interests in other
theaters should be diverted from operations against Germany.”
These two paragraphs might be literally interpreted to establish a barbed
wire fence against any offensive efforts by the United States Navy in the
Pacific.
Clarification was essential to make indisputable the Naval Planners’ posi-
tion that “facilitating operations against Germany” required that vital interests
in the Far East Area must be safeguarded.
The Combined Chiefs of Staff, after stating the “cardinal principle” of
their future strategy, set forth six essential features of this grand strategy.
They then prescribed 18 supporting measures to be taken in 1942 to further
its various aspects. Only the last of the six essential features and the last of
the 18 supporting measures related exclusively to the Pacific.
The Combined Chiefs modified, in effect, their “cardinal principle” a bit
by stating one subordinate task so that it was more to the liking of those in
the United States Navy, who were anxious to try to stop the Japanese before
they controlled the whole Pacific Ocean south of the equator. This modification
was contained in subparagraph 4(f) of the Grand Strategy document,
which read:
Maintaining only such positions in the Eastern Theatre {British term for the
Far East Area] as will safeguard vital interests (See paragtwpb 18) and denying
to Japm access to raw materials vital to her continuous war effort, while
we are concentrating on the defeat of Germany.
The “see paragraph 18” and the phrase following, italicized above, appear
as additions to the original British draft. Paragraph 18 in the original draft,
was important to the United States Navy point of view since it had the
sentence: “Secondly, points of vantage from which an offensive against Japan
can eventually be developed must be secured.” “
u Ibid., para. 3.
mIbid., para. 18.