According to U.S. law, if a military service member commits mutiny, attempts mutiny or even fails to report a mutiny, that person “shall be punished by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct.”
According to U.S. history, however, if tens of thousands of military service members commit mutiny en masse, they won’t be punished at all. In fact, the president just might capitulate to their demands.
That’s more or less what happened in the aftermath of the Second World War.
Veterans have often wielded outsize political influence — catered to as voters, recruited as candidates and rewarded with government benefits — and the number of veteran advocacy groups has exploded in recent years. But few times have they flexed their political muscle as they did in 1946, when huge numbers of the very fighters who had just defeated the Axis powers directly challenged their commanders with a demand to return home and, miraculously, won.
The story began just after the war concluded with Japan’s surrender in August 1945. That same month, threatened with left-wing independence movements in its far-flung overseas territories and across Asia, the U.S. government decided that rather than fully demobilize the military, it would maintain a troop force of 2.5 million.
That did not go over well with the soldiers’ families, who bombarded their congressional representatives with photos of children missing their fathers and pairs of baby shoes with tags reading “Bring Daddy home.” Washington relented, and soldiers packed their bags, until President Harry S. Truman panicked at the “dangerous speed” of demobilization and ordered a slowdown in January 1946.
Now it was the troops’ turn to put up a fight.
The first protests took place in the Philippines, a U.S. colony that had suffered untold repression and slaughter in the 50 years since Spain handed it over in the Spanish-American War. During World War II, the United States had fought to end a brutal occupation by the Japanese. Then, more than 20,000 American soldiers marched in Manila, demanding to return home.