This source says that estimates are that around 12,000 U.S. civilians died during World War II. Excuse me… WHAT???
By my math, a few dozen civilians died at Pearl Harbor, and … that’s it. What few attacks that took place on American soil were more like terrorist attacks than warfare, and they were limited in scope and success anyway. If thousands of Americans died of starvation/disease stateside because of the war, it escaped my school textbooks.
What am I missing here?
WAG, but I’d posit that lots of US citizen civilians were living in Japan, China, and Europe, and got in the way.
A great many US citizens died in the Philippines, specifically.
12,000 is cited in wikipedia but the source is listed as “BF2” and doesn’t appear in the citations.
Britannica lists 6,000, almost all Merchant Marines
Between Pearl Harbor, almost 6,000 Merchant Marines, Japanese taking US aligned islands in the Pacific, and civilians who happened to be in Europe or Asia and didn’t get out in time, 12,000 seems believable, though I’d want a real cite to be sure.
Are they counting war industries’ fatalities? They did outnumber battlefield deaths in the first year of the war
Yeah, the Merchant Marines are the big factor here. During convoy duty, they were likely at even more risk than the actual Navy personnel, as the transports were the main target of Uboat attacks, and they didn’t have anything much in the way of armor or weapons.
And it took a long, long time before the governments acknowledged their service as being on par with the military. We won WWII via logistics, and without these guys, all of that stuff would have stayed in warehouses in North America.
I wonder how that compares to industrial fatalities before the war.
When I first read the OP’s “around 12,000 U.S. civilians died during World War II,” my initial, possibly smart-ass reaction was: of course they did. You don’t expect people to stop dying (of old age, natural causes, etc.) just because there’s a war going on.
Were there many WWII situations comparable to the RMS Lusitania in World War I killing 1198 people (the owners had the bright idea of carrying a massive amount of munitions along with people–so the Germans attacked)
Counting is always a problem. This talks about internees, but certainly some died in captivity.
According to Dr. Stenger, figures for civilian internees are less solid. He lists 7,300 American civilians as having been interned by Japan, of whom he estimates 1,969 are alive as of January 1, 2002. He also cites an additional 13,000 Amerasians holding American citizenship who hid during this period, but who were never interned; he estimates that 1,528 of those 13,000 Amerasians are still alive as of January 1, 2002. The Office of the Army’s Provost Marshal General, Prisoner of War Division, listed 13,979 American civilian internees (including War, Navy, and Merchant Marine personnel) in its compilation of internees “Formerly Detained by the Japanese Government.” The Center for Internee Rights, Inc. (CFIR), an internee advocacy group, calculates that there were 13,996 civilian internees held by Japan, of which the Center calculated 1,497 to be alive as of January 1, 2000.
It also depends on what gets counted. 54 war correspondents died. Do they count?
My great-great-grandfather died as a civilian in WWI. He was patrolling railroad tunnels to look for saboteurs, and got hit by a train. It wasn’t enemy action, but he was still serving his nation and died in the process.
Did the US have civil employees in their armed forces that were close to combat? What about medical staff (in the forces or working for the Red Cross or some other institution). Are they counted as civilians?
Regarding US citizens who died in the Philippines: many thousands were interned by the Japanese in this camp, and “From January 1942 until March 1945, 390 total deaths from all causes in Santo Tomas were recorded”. I have to say that the number sounds low to me.
Several thousands were transferred from the Santo Tomas Camp in Manila (above) to another camp in the countryside, in Los Baños. The wikipedia article linked below doesn’t give the number of internees at that camp who were killed; it just says that conditions were “hellish” and describes the raid that liberated the camp. I heard a survivor of that camp speak about it; he was an athletic, healthy young man when he was interned but he said that he almost died of starvation and saw many others die there too. I wouldn’t be surprised if hundreds were killed there too.
The camp: Raid on Los Baños - Wikipedia
The survivor I knew, who apparently outlived all the other survivors, dying in 2012 age 96 James Reuter - Wikipedia
And another survivor of that camp, who was the longest-lived US WWI veteran, dying in 2011 age 110:
Frank Buckles - Wikipedia
For example Wake island-
The US Marines lost 49 killed, two missing, and 49 wounded during the 15-day siege, while three US Navy personnel and at least 70 US civilians were killed, including 10 Chamorros, and 12 civilians wounded. 433 US personnel were captured. The Japanese captured all men remaining on the island, the majority of whom were civilian contractors employed by the Morrison-Knudsen Company.[[23]](Battle of Wake Island - Wikipedia)
On 5 October 1943, American naval aircraft from Lexington raided Wake. Two days later, fearing an imminent invasion, Japanese Rear Admiral Shigematsu Sakaibara ordered the execution of the 98 captive American civilian workers who had initially been kept to perform forced labor. They were taken to the northern end of the island, blindfolded and executed with a machine gun. One of the prisoners (whose name has never been discovered) escaped, apparently returning to the site to carve the message “98 US PW 5-10-43” on a large coral rock near where the victims had been hastily buried in a mass grave. The unknown American was recaptured, and Sakaibara personally beheaded him with a katana . The inscription on the rock can still be seen and is a Wake Island landmark.[27]
The number of Western civilians interned by Japanese in WWII is estimated to be 130,000, the majority were Dutch nationals living in NEI.
There were 5 attacks on USA mainland 48 states (were there any on Alaska mainland ? ) but only one caused fatalities, 6 civilians. In Operation Fu-Go in 1944, the Japanese military tried to set America aflame by [floating 9,300 incendiary bombs across the Pacific Ocean. A mother with five children (and she was pregnant) came across one of the Fu-Go bombs on the ground in Oregon and just then it exploded .
With 500,000 POW’S there must have been some deaths which would be by enemy military personnel, but nothing came up in a search. there were some lynchings of prisoners and some accidents that killed POW’s but I didnt find anything about POWs attacking their guards… etc
Civilians went on the Yorktown to the Battle of Midway, to repair the Battle of Coral Sea damage… Maybe they were offloaded before the battle ? Thats just an example of how USA civilians got in the way of WW2 .
Medical staff near the front were almost all inducted, including nurses. Many of the war correspondents and documentarians were as well. There were USO entertainers who were civilians that got close to the front lines, but even some of those were officially members of the military (like casualty Glenn Miller was a major in the Army.)
I think the bulk of that 12,000 must be merchant marine, with the remainder being construction workers on contract with the military overseas, and Americans living abroad in places like the Philippines or China who died during interment.
Nitpick. There is only one US Merchant Marine. The members are merchant mariners or merchant sailors.
Nitpick. There is more than one Merchant Marine.
Yes there are4 other countries that have a merchant marine. But there is only one US merchant Marine.
I’ve been thinking about this topic for days and realized that hundreds or even thousands of Americans in the Philippines were able to avoid internment by various means. Some of them were able to negotiate house arrest arrangements with the Japanese authorities. Others went into hiding, in homes sheltered by family, friends and neighbors, or fled to the mountains, jungles or small remote islands. A number of them (probably numbering in the hundreds) were killed while in hiding or died during the fighting for the liberation of Manila. I’ve heard some of these stories from friends and family members, or read about them in books about WWII.
Others are recorded in this article:
https://www-jstor-org.ncc.idm.oclc.org/stable/24672325?seq=12