Victor Davis Hanson: Remembering Okinawa: Dealing with Suicide Bombers – 60 Years Ago

Jewish World Review ^ | March 31, 2005 | Victor Davis Hanson

[quidnunc]

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 largest combined land-sea operation since Xerxes swept into Greece, involving more troops than at Normandy Beach — 1,600 ships, 183,000 infantry and 12,000 aircraft. More than 110,000 skilled Japanese troops, commanded by the brilliant Gen. Ushijima and buttressed by another 100,000 coerced Okinawan irregulars, were ready for them.

Despite the most terrible naval barrage in history, and an ominous unopposed initial landing, almost everything imaginable then went wrong. The ravaged island was not to be declared secure until July 2 — a little more than a month before the final Japanese surrender.

In just these few weeks before the end of the war, 12,520 Americans were killed — well over twice as many as were lost at the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and in Afghanistan and Iraq combined. In all, more than 33,000 more American s were wounded and missing. Perhaps another 200,000 Japanese soldiers, Okinawan auxiliaries and civilians died in the inferno.

Luminaries were not exempt. The commander of the operation, Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner — the highest-ranking American officer to die in the Pacific — perished. So did the celebrated war correspondent Ernie Pyle. The notorious Isamu Cho, who had sought to overthrow the Japanese civilian government in 1931, committed suicide along with Gen. Ushijimi. Some of the most gripping American war writing — E.B. Sledge's "With the Old Breed" and William Manchester's "Goodbye, Darkness" — grew out of this hell at Okinawa.

-snip-

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FYI

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FYI

[maestro]

Victor Davis Hanson: Remembering Okinawa: Dealing with Suicide Bombers ? 60 Years Ago?

.....NOT to forget 2 nuked 'suicide' cities in Japan.....

.....NOT to forget 2 _____ ________ cities in Saudi Arabia?

/Godzilla religions

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[RAY]

My understanding is that Marines have never been draftees!

[Savage Beast]

History has been recorded.

The Akashic Records have been written.

As long as the written word lasts--and even longer--the people of the world will revere the men who ran headlong into machinegun fire at Okinawa and Normandie--and will recoil in disgust at the soft and decadent modern Western man, with his intellectual and moral vacuity and idiocy, his decadent movies, his endless and stupid "protests" and lawsuits and demands, the mendacity and propaganda that pass for the truthful reporting of information, and the suicidal decadence that threatens Western Civilization like the plague and promises to be far more devastating.

Make no mistake however. Such heroes still live in America and the rest of the West--courageous and clear, both morally and strategically.

Thank God for the men who have saved us and for the men, women, and children of the American Heartland of today! The world needs them now as much as it ever did.

[metesky]

VDH covers this extensively in Ripples of Battle : How Wars of the Past Still Determine How We Fight, How We Live, and How We Think.

The butcher's bill presented at Okinawa is what determined the use of the A-bomb instead of an invasion of the Japanese mainland in which millions would have died.

[TonyInOhio]

My understanding is that Marines have never been draftees!

The USMC did begin drafting recruits in January of 1943.

[Tolik]

    Victor Davis Hanson Ping ! 

       Let me know if you want in or out

[FreedomPoster]

Bingo! Anyone who attacks our use of the A-bomb on the Japanese is displaying their ignorance of events at Okinawa.

The reality is that use of the A-bomb pretty much certainly saved the lives of millions of Japanese, and hundreds of thousands of Americans.

[bitt]

another essay that tells it right.

thanks for the ping....VHD for.....Presidential Advisor?

[wizr]

Thanks. I'm a Boomer and I never heard of this terrible story. Passin' it on.

[PzLdr]

Marines were drafted, in part, during WW II, for sure. Not certain if they were drafted in Korea.

[Valin]

To a hammer every problem is a nail.

[Valin]

Anyone who attacks our use of the A-bomb on the Japanese is displaying their ignorance of events at Okinawa.


Or pretty much anything elseYou have to understand that for those that do this America is never correct on anything.

[ryan71]

I once asked a WWII vet why he went into the Marines. He said while in line for the draft, an official walked down the line and assigned them, "Army, Navy, Marines, Army, Navy, Marines...".

Has anybody else heard that story?

[nosofar]

The butcher's bill presented at Okinawa is what determined the use of the A-bomb instead of an invasion of the Japanese mainland in which millions would have died.

Perhaps it a rather gruesome thought, but I suppose the deaths at Okinawa was actually a good thing if it pevented far worse on the Japanese mainland.

[AZLiberty]

Something in this article made me fantasize about an Al Qaeda version of the New York Times, an Al Jeer-a that would continually harangue the Al Qaeda leadership about all the mistakes they're making in their war against the infidel. It would complain that the "insurgents" have only a tenth as many kills as the infidels, and they've only captured a dozen infidel versus the thousands imprisoned by the other side. It would complain about the poor intelligence that led to the loss of Fallujah, and ineffectual campaign of violance that failed to prevent the Iraqi election.

But no, such traitors would be killed.

[AZLiberty]

Foo. "violance" should be "violins", of course, or maybe "violas".