by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n The victory proved the most costly American campaign in the Pacific. Some 50,000 Americans were killed, went missing, or were wounded. The incredible carnage would help persuade the American government to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in hopes of avoiding an even more horrific invasion of the mainland.<\/p>\n Okinawa and the war in the Pacific are back in the news these days with the airing of a ten-part HBO series,\u00a0The Pacific\u00a0<\/em>\u2014 a companion story to the 2001 series\u00a0Band of Brothers<\/em>, which was about the American advance from Normandy across the Rhine into Germany.<\/p>\n But recently, while hyping\u00a0The Pacific<\/em>\u2019s upcoming broadcast, the actor Tom Hanks, co-producer of the fine new series, made some unfortunate \u2014 and ahistorical \u2014 remarks.<\/p>\n \u201cBack in World War II,\u201d Hanks said, \u201cwe viewed the Japanese as \u2018yellow, slant-eyed dogs\u2019 that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different.\u201d<\/p>\n The Pacific war was about far more than being \u201cdifferent.\u201d<\/p>\n 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 \u2014 often fueled by the country\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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 \u2014 or why we were there in the first place.<\/p>\n We entered the war, of course, because of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, which angered Americans even more than Hitler\u2019s aggression in Europe. More than two years of Nazi barbarity had still not provoked the United States to enter the war \u2014 none of our own territory had been attacked, much less in surprise fashion at a time of peace.<\/p>\n Conditions on the battlefield in the Pacific most certainly account for the horror of the war there.<\/p>\n For starters, Japanese militarists had updated the old samurai code of Bushido and grafted it onto a modern, industrial military dictatorship \u2014 brainwashing millions into thinking individual surrender on the battlefield was tantamount to national disgrace. Italian and even fanatical German forces might give up when surrounded, but campaigns in the Pacific ended only when the vast majority of Japanese soldiers were killed or severely wounded.<\/p>\n Logistics for the American force were also strained, given the vast distances across the Pacific. Tropical diseases were like nothing encountered in Europe. While most Americans had heard of Sicily, Italy, and France, most did not know what \u2014 much less where \u2014 a distant Guadalcanal, Peleliu, or Iwo Jima was.<\/p>\n The invasion fleet off Normandy Beach did not have to worry about airborne Nazi suicide bombers, but Kamikaze attacks off Okinawa killed thousands of American seamen.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Given all these obstacles, it now seems incredible that an America that was half-armed in 1941 defeated Japan and utterly destroyed the idea of Japanese militarism in less than four years \u2014 a feat attributable in large part to the amazing courage and expertise of American soldiers.<\/p>\n The war in the Pacific was not about racism or due to the Japanese\u2019s being \u201cdifferent,\u201d nor even due to two nations\u2019 having equally justifiable grievances against each other.<\/p>\n 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 \u2014 some 65 years ago this week.<\/p>\n \u00a92010 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today marks the 65th anniversary of the invasion of Okinawa. by Victor Davis Hanson 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[590],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-s5","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":13414,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/historians-corner-the-firebombing-of-japan-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":1741,"position":0},"title":"Historian’s Corner: The Firebombing of Japan","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 20, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"B-29 Superfortress Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Private Papers Part Two:\u00a0Very Bad Versus Worse Choices? 1) The Japanese Empire, while doomed in Spring 1945, was more than capable of killing thousands of innocents every day the war dragged on. Depending on the nature of particular sources, and how data are compiled\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 10 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 10 comments","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/historians-corner-the-firebombing-of-japan-2\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/B29Bomber-e1621482082162.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/B29Bomber-e1621482082162.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/B29Bomber-e1621482082162.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/B29Bomber-e1621482082162.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4436,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/remembering-okinawa\/","url_meta":{"origin":1741,"position":1},"title":"Remembering Okinawa","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 6, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Dealing with suicide bombers--60 years ago by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Sixty years ago, the United States military invaded Okinawa on April 1, 1945, the last bastion of the Japanese maritime empire that stood in the way of an assault on the mainland. Operation Iceberg was perhaps the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "April 2005"","block_context":{"text":"April 2005","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2005\/april-2005\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4308,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/60-years-later-considering-hiroshima\/","url_meta":{"origin":1741,"position":2},"title":"60 Years Later: Considering Hiroshima","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 5, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online For 60 years the United States has agonized over its unleashing of the world\u2019s first nuclear weapon on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. President Harry Truman\u2019s decision to explode an atomic bomb over an ostensible military target \u2014 the headquarters of the crack\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "August 2005"","block_context":{"text":"August 2005","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2005\/august-2005\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3575,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/introduction-to-e-b-sledges-with-the-old-breed\/","url_meta":{"origin":1741,"position":3},"title":"Introduction to E.B. Sledge’s ‘With the Old Breed’","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 25, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson VDH was asked to do an introduction for a new edition of E.B. Sledge\u2019s\u00a0With the Old Breed, a memoir from the Pacific theater of World War II. \u00a0 Until the millennium arrives and countries cease trying to enslave others, it will be necessary to accept one\u2019s\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "July 2007"","block_context":{"text":"July 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/july-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1781,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/is-tom-hanks-unhinged\/","url_meta":{"origin":1741,"position":4},"title":"Is Tom Hanks Unhinged?","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 13, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Much has been written of the recent Tom Hanks remarks to Douglas Brinkley in a\u00a0Time\u00a0magazine interview about his upcoming HBO series on World War II in the Pacific. Here is the explosive excerpt that is making the rounds today. Back in World War II,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "March 2010"","block_context":{"text":"March 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/march-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9265,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-horrors-of-hiroshima-in-context\/","url_meta":{"origin":1741,"position":5},"title":"The Horrors of Hiroshima in Context","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 25, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online The dropping of two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 remains the only wartime use of nuclear weapons in history. No one knows exactly how many Japanese citizens were killed by the two American\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Europe"","block_context":{"text":"Europe","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1741"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1741"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1742,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1741\/revisions\/1742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}