When America goes to war, it likes to be on the offensive. “Nobody ever defended anything successfully,” Gen. George S. Patton famously said. “There is only attack and attack and attack some more.”

But for six months after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. military retreated and retreated some more. The U.S. garrison in the Philippines, under Gen. Douglas MacArthur, steadily retreated before the Japanese onslaught that culminated in the surrender at Bataan in May 1942. Isolated outposts at Wake Island and Guam fell, while the decimated and outnumbered U.S. fleet carefully stuck to hit-and-run as America mobilized for total war.

Today, a U.S. Army officer has a warning: In the face of growing Chinese military power, America needs to relearn how to conduct a fighting retreat in the Pacific.

“Fading

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