Victor Davis Hanson, with cohost Sami Winc, analyzes the election results and pays tribute to those who participated in the Meuse-Argonne offensive, the battle of Okinawa, and the fire bombing of Tokyo.
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Victor Davis Hanson, with cohost Sami Winc, analyzes the election results and pays tribute to those who participated in the Meuse-Argonne offensive, the battle of Okinawa, and the fire bombing of Tokyo.
Victor,…you have honored your name. Thank you
I thought Victor hyped the red wave a lot. He is the only commenter I listen to. Now he blamed others for setting high expectations. I still think Republicans did well. Never bought into the hype. I enjoy Victor’s take on history, war, human nature, and grifters. Please talk about the Mcfailures? It is quite catchy. Thanks Matt for that.
A great comeback Victor as the first part of the podcast had me wondering if you were suffering serious long COVID but once you got to your area of expertise, whatever was slowing you down during the election analysis was gone.
I particularly loved the Okinawa analysis as my father was on a destroyer during that assault and his younger brother was a Marine on Oki. Fortunately both of them survived the war and once the battle on Oki was over, they were able to meet up for a short lived reunion.
Sorry for the loss of your namesake in that war.
A kamikaze missed my father’s destroyer (DD660) but uncle Dutch was KIA over in Europe (pap’s older half brother).
Your mother’s analysis regarding those men who fought in WWII was very interesting to me and brought back some memories of my father from when I was growing up. Thank you very much for sharing that.
Mr. Hanson,
Your discussion about the Battle of Okinawa and your namesake was fascinating. My wife’s Uncle was part of the 6th Marine Division and lost his life in the battle on April 9th, 1945. We visit his grave every Veterans Day and the local VFW hall is named in his honor. I have an Uncle on my mothers side that was wounded in the Philippines and myself served on the U.S.S. Reed FFG-30, the 4th ship to bear that name with it’s predecessor sunk near Leyte Gulf. I did several deployments on that ship and we always brought aboard survivors to ride from Hawaii back to home. Several of them were present at the Pearl Harbor attack and had a lot of stories to share. Thank you for telling/sharing these stories and reminding us all of the sacrifices that makes our country what it is today.
Victor, thank you for sharing the stories about your family’s World War II heroes, and heroes they truly are. It was inspirational. No doubt, it may be especially difficult to share the story of your namesake and his death on Okinawa. Regards, Ted
Thanks for mentioning The Great War! My great grandfather was with Pershing from chasing Pancho Via to the end of WWI. He was hit with mustard gas and lived in pain to the end of his days. His wife was a nurse and kept up an extensive correspondence with her brother and his buddy who was a french soldier who was sweet on her. My Grandmother made sure to show us all his things and retell all the stories until we could pass them on. Grandma lost all her cousins in WWII at Anzio and her husband and all four of his brothers served in Korea and came back. My other grand uncle was wounded in the Philippines. His brother trained marines down South and his wife was a nurse. Thus for our immigrant community contributions to the wars.
The U.S. didn’t fail to provide M1911A1 .45 caliber pistols because we couldn’t make them. They didn’t provide them to the junior grades because the .45 was and is an inaccurate weapon over any distance. Pistols are the T/O (table of organization) weapon for officers as a self-defense weapon because they aren’t supposed to be in the business of killing enemy. They are supposed to be directing others to kill enemy with rifles and other weapons. More junior soldiers’/Marines’ T/O weapon is a rifle capable of killing at longer distances. Tankers would have pistols for the self-defense purpose. Interestingly enough, officers started looking to get carbines for battle at the end of Vietnam and thereafter. Carbines started being officially issued to officers up to lieutenant colonel (at least in the Marine Corps) sometime during the Gulf War as far as I remember.
I believe you contradicted yourself a bit regarding Okinawa. At first you said that it didn’t make sense to attack the Ryukus since we were testing the ‘Bomb’ (a top secret testing that we weren’t about to broadcast to the world by foregoing the obvious alternate strategy of invasion). Then you explained that Curtis LeMay or similar leader wanted Okinawa so as to be able to fly B-29s back and forth to the Japanese home islands.
I was an Air Force Reserve officer on active duty from mid-1959 to mid-1963. I participated in the AFROTC summer camp in 1957 where we fired rifles, the grease gun and fired and field-stripped the .45. I must have qualified with the .45 two or three times, but in June, 1963 I failed. Fortunately, they allowed me to try again with what looked like a .38 ‘police special,’ and I passed. I had no idea the .45 was an inaccurate weapon over any distance — ‘just thought I was a bad shot.
An aside: I was stationed at Clark AB in the Philippines in 1961-1963. One of the extra duties of lieutenants in those days was civilian paymaster. ‘Seems to me the payroll was over 120,000 pesos. The communist Huks were still active in the nearby mountains and had robbed the payroll on base a couple of years before I got there. Therefore, in addition to the payroll, and a .50 caliber machine gun loaded on the back of a flatbed truck, I was issued a .45 to help fight off the Huks should they attack. I hoped the man with the machine gun was a better shot than I was, but we weren’t tested that payday.
I would like to comment about possibly why Dr. Hanson’s father worked very hard to accommodate Japanese-Americans despite fighting the Japanese – it was because he understood that they were Americans and wanted people to know that he fought the Empire of Japan and not the Japanese people. I am an ethic Okinawan, Japanese-American from Hawaii and my father was a Japanese Language interpreter in the U.S. Army Military Intelligence Service during WW2. He told me that when he was training at Fort Snelling, Minnesota that he went to many German and Scandinavian family homes for Sunday dinner as guests while stationed there. I asked him why they did that and he said that they wanted to let the J.A.s know that they were same people; Americans who immigrated to the U.S. from elsewhere for a better life, who loved their new land and were willing to die for it.
It might be worth mentioning for historical purposes that Stacey Abrams received fewer votes than Raphael Warnock, something I did not expect.
* “An Homage”