Victor Davis Hanson: Remembering the Pacific War
[Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and editor, most recently, of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome. © 2010 Tribune Media Services, Inc.]
Sixty-five years ago, on April 1, 1945, the United States Marines, Army, and Navy invaded Okinawa. The ensuing three months of combat resulted in the complete defeat and near destruction of imperial Japanese forces on the island, just 340 miles from the mainland....
Okinawa and the war in the Pacific are back in the news these days with the airing of a ten-part HBO series, The Pacific — a companion story to the 2001 series Band of Brothers, which was about the American advance from Normandy across the Rhine into Germany....
Indeed, before and after the war, race was not a determining factor in American and Japanese relations. In World War I, the two nations were partners against the Germans and Austrians. And during World War II itself, we joined Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, and other Asians to stop Japanese aggression — often fueled by the country’s own particular notion of Japanese racial superiority. In the aftermath of World War II, the Americans helped rebuild Japan and once more were allied with it against the Communist Soviet Union.
And despite the deplorable internment of Japanese nationals and American citizens of Japanese descent during the war, racial difference still does not in itself account for the horror in the Pacific — or why we were there in the first place....
Conditions on the battlefield in the Pacific most certainly account for the horror of the war there....
American tactical bombing, massive artillery barrages, and armor thrusts were often less successful in the Pacific than in Europe, given the dense jungle, rough terrain, and nature of island fighting.
The result was often that combat was reduced to hand-to-hand and small-arms fighting between U.S. Marines and crack Japanese imperial troops, hardened from brutal service in China during the prior decade....
The war in the Pacific was not about racism or due to the Japanese’s being “different,” nor even due to two nations’ having equally justifiable grievances against each other.
Instead, the brutal Pacific war was about ending an expansionary Japanese fascism that sought to destroy all democratic obstacles in its path. And we are indebted today to the relatively few Americans who once stopped it in horrific places like Okinawa — some 65 years ago this week.
Read entire article at National Review Online
Sixty-five years ago, on April 1, 1945, the United States Marines, Army, and Navy invaded Okinawa. The ensuing three months of combat resulted in the complete defeat and near destruction of imperial Japanese forces on the island, just 340 miles from the mainland....
Okinawa and the war in the Pacific are back in the news these days with the airing of a ten-part HBO series, The Pacific — a companion story to the 2001 series Band of Brothers, which was about the American advance from Normandy across the Rhine into Germany....
Indeed, before and after the war, race was not a determining factor in American and Japanese relations. In World War I, the two nations were partners against the Germans and Austrians. And during World War II itself, we joined Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, and other Asians to stop Japanese aggression — often fueled by the country’s own particular notion of Japanese racial superiority. In the aftermath of World War II, the Americans helped rebuild Japan and once more were allied with it against the Communist Soviet Union.
And despite the deplorable internment of Japanese nationals and American citizens of Japanese descent during the war, racial difference still does not in itself account for the horror in the Pacific — or why we were there in the first place....
Conditions on the battlefield in the Pacific most certainly account for the horror of the war there....
American tactical bombing, massive artillery barrages, and armor thrusts were often less successful in the Pacific than in Europe, given the dense jungle, rough terrain, and nature of island fighting.
The result was often that combat was reduced to hand-to-hand and small-arms fighting between U.S. Marines and crack Japanese imperial troops, hardened from brutal service in China during the prior decade....
The war in the Pacific was not about racism or due to the Japanese’s being “different,” nor even due to two nations’ having equally justifiable grievances against each other.
Instead, the brutal Pacific war was about ending an expansionary Japanese fascism that sought to destroy all democratic obstacles in its path. And we are indebted today to the relatively few Americans who once stopped it in horrific places like Okinawa — some 65 years ago this week.