Finished watching The Pacific War in Color.

I'd watched WWII in Color, but never watched much about the Pacific War.

What a nightmare!

Couldn't begin to imagine being on a landing craft / Higgins Boat going ashore in some of the situations those young men did. Knowing their chances were slim of surviving.

Navy didn't have it much easier.

I don't recall ever hearing anything positive about the enemy from a PTO vet. Except that they were tough.

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No baby we aint

I wonder how it would have turned out if we didn't drop the atomic bombs?

Really sad how many civilians died, even before we dropped the bombs.

Thank God for Atomic bomb, it sure saved a lot of lives on both sides.

Alot more dead people, including Japanese civilians, on both sides. President Truman likely would have been impeached. Something else to consider - having the bomb in 1945 and not using it in a time of war, how much credibility would the President's 1962 nuclear threat have carried during the Cuban Missile Crisis?

On a lighter note, my grand uncle started at Pearl Harbor, raided the Gilberts, served at Coral Sea, Midway & Guadalcanal and Battle of the Eastern Solomons. Carrier vessels. About 1985 I was working in a Las Vegas casino & chatted with an older guy wearing a "CV-5 Yorktown" hat.
He read my name tag & asked "are you related to, I served on such & such with him ...." I said yes, then he got all teary eyed, could barely speak and said - "your uncle ... always made sure we had enough ... toilet paper"

I figure that's one of those things only an "I was there" kind of guy would say.

If an army marches on their stomach, then surely TP is also required.

Find any publication regarding “ Operation Downfall”. Conservative estimates of Allied casualties were mind numbing.
Having had the pleasure to meet and talk to many Pacific Veterans their collective feeling about japs were summed up by a B-29 pilot. He told us at an air show back in 80’s to “ give me 10 29’s with A bombs and he would “ fix em”. Any Marine would have similar feelings, read Sledges book.

The PTO and the ETO were two separate theaters of operation, with two separate types of enemies in two separate wars. There really wasn’t any relationship between the two Theaters of Operations except that Americans were fighting and dieing.
Recommend “Downfall” by Richard B. Frank for a throught look at the end game.

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"Your other right........."

My Dad was in the largest kamikaze attack of the war. He never talked about it and when my brothers and asked about kamikazes he joked they didn't know how to land the the planes. I found out about him almost being hit by a kamikaze by contacting the National Archives. They shot it down as it was closing quickly.

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I like Ike.

Try to see the Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg Texas,,, very complete history of those battles.

My Dad was in the 1st Marine division, he made landings on Guadalcanal, Peleliu, and New Britain. He was quite the man and lived a life that one could write a book about.
He was a great father and husband and is,in part, why they call it the greatest generation.
Here he is on peleliu in September 1944 and shooting a round of sport clays at 81 with one lung battling lung cancer. Maybe the only battle that he lost.

TP and clean latrines would have been nice at Anzio, but invading soldiers were pinned down on the beaches for as much as weeks before relief...A lot of uniforms were beyond laundering, and a lot of deaths occurred from dysentery before they were able to move inland...Soldiers, medics and forward naval gunnery spotters simply answered nature's call in the uniforms they were wearing......Ben

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Cogito, ergo BOOM!...

Originally the Nimitz Museum, it was named for Admiral Chester Nimitz who was born in Fredericksburg and never saw water any larger than an infrequent mud puddle until joining the Navy...I've visited there three times and always see something new...It's expanded to twice its size since my last visit...

My Uncle Vernon also never saw water any deeper than the Arkansas streams he fished from to help put food on his family's table...He arrived in New Zealand on a larger steel ship, and boarded his home for the duration of the war, a 102' wooden ship capable of a top speed of 10 1/2 knots...It was so small it was never named, only numbered - APc-48...He and the crew set course up the Solomons chain, on to the Gilbert and Marshall Islands, to Guam and Okinawa before final debarking at San Francisco, a journey of over 10,000 nautical miles with oak planking as their only armor, and four 20mm Oerlikons for armament...

I wrote a book about his and other members of my family's unheralded contributions to the war effort...Maybe someday a historian may find it and use it for a minor notation in an expanded treatise of the Pacific War......Ben

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Cogito, ergo BOOM!...

My uncle was in the Philippines. Left behind to hold the line as the army retreated to the Bataan peninsula. He managed to escape into the jungle when he ran out of ammunition. Captured early after arriving in Bataan, while on a hunting expedition to find food, he was one of the longest held POW's of the war. Surviving the death march and starvation, he was then loaded onto a Hell ship and sent to Japan to work as forced laborer. Had to drink his own urine on his luxury cruise to Japan. He had some funny stories to tell.

My soon to be 91 year old Sister recently told me that my brother in law never would eat chocolate, because of the Nutella type chocolate they had during WW II.

Certainly the Greatest Generation.

Have a blessed day,

Leon

The Germans, Russians, Japanese and even Italians created world wide chaos from the 1920's through the 1940's in their attempts to invade and occupy other countries and enslave their people. The Axis and their supporters like Vichy France created the ever increasing violence that had to be met and finally surpassed by the Allies. Germans still complain about Dresden and the Japs about the "bomb". Look at the damage and human suffering the Axis has done.

Research Starters: Worldwide Deaths in World War II | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans

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SOS USA

The battle of Midway was the turning point in the Pacific War. I liked the
old movie better than the new one.

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In Omnia Paratus

My Buddy Frank was one of the Navy F4F pilots who deployed to
Guadalcanal.
He told a tale about taking turns with a Thompson guarding the creek where they took baths.
There were possible a few left over enemy there, but the real threat was Crocodiles.
They had developed a taste for human flesh.

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NRA LIFE MEMBER

When I was a kid (in a small town in Texas) it seemed like most of the men were Military veterans. The older men were WW1 vets, everyone’s Dad was a WW2 vet (including my Uncle) my Dad was a Korean War vet, and a lot of guys in their twenties were Vietnam War vets (including another Uncle).

My football coach had a knee that would lock up sometimes. I knew a man at work that had a shrapnel scar on the right side of his stomach, got it at Anzio. He said the water there was red...

I’ve come to the conclusion there was no truly safe place to serve in WW2.

Probably not so much a taste for humans as seeing an easy meal.

My dad was a WWII Seabee and ended up the war on Saipan and Tinian. I did not find out until shortly before his death that he had done all the surveying for the atomic bomb pits on Tinian. Of course he didn't know at the time what it was all for.

When you consider just the 14,000+ training fatalities that occurred during AAF and Navy flight training during the war, you have a point that there were few, if any, safe places to serve during the war.

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"Your other right........."

I once had an employee working for me who spent the war as an enlisted yeoman in a Navy Finance office in Cleveland. According to him the whole war was one big orgy with an endless supply of lonely WAVE and civilian female office workers.

"Thank God for Atomic bomb, it sure saved a lot of lives on both sides."

At least back then. In the long run, who knows? Perhaps the best single work on that topic is "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes. Sort of a combination textbook on nuclear physics and a treatise examining how and why the bomb came to be and how and why the decision to use it was made.

Great series.

One set of facts that I've never seen quoted in the number of lives the atomic bombs saved were the number of lives they saved by preventing Russia from invading Europe after the war. The Russians were behind us in bomb tech as well as delivery tech, and our action in Japan gave them reason to believe that we would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons again if we felt the situation called for it, which the invasion of Europe certainly would have done. It is impossible to estimate the number of lives saved, but it has to have equaled if not surpassed the estimates for those saved in ending WWII early.

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So many S&W's, so few funds!!

My Uncle "Eddie" (mom's brother) was an Ensign on a Navy LST off Okinawa. He told me not only did the Japanese use kamikaze planes they also use kamikaze boats. They had to keep a lookout for them especially at night.

My uncle Fred (dad's brother) was a member of Underwater Demolition Team #4. Was awarded the Bronze Star for his team's work clearing the beach and underwater obstacles under heavy mortar and machine gun fire during the invasion of Guam. The team also participated in several other landings afterwards.

My Dad was an 18 year old seaman on LST 335 preparing to go through the Panama Canal for the invasion of Japan when the war ended. (LST 335 was involved in the D-Day invasion.) Dad left high school and enlisted the day he turned 18 in November of 1944. His mom (my grandmother) wouldn't sign for him when he was 17 as she had already lost her oldest son and had 4 others in the service. Pictures of my Uncle Fred and my Dad (the one who looks like a kid!). Dad later served in combat in Korea when his army reserve unit was called to active duty.

Yes - the atomic bomb saved many lives on both sides by preventing an invasion of the home islands that was scheduled in the Fall / Winter of 1945.

When I was a kid it seemed that all the dad's of my friends in the neighborhood had served during WWII.

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Some guys lucked out like my uncle Joe. He was in the Army Air Corp and
stationed in India loading planes with supply for China.

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Only difference Fool/Mule-ears

I had an uncle who served in both WWI and WWII. He joined the Navy at age 16 in 1917 (lied about his age), stayed in afterwards, was in the Asiatic Fleet, stationed in China as a salvage diver until the Japanese invasion of China, remained in service clear through WWII, retired from active duty after WWII as a Warrant Officer, then went to work for the Navy as a civilian until he retired in the early 1960s. He died in the mid-1970s. A true Navy lifer, but I never knew exactly what he did all that time. I tried once to access his records, but his were destroyed in the great St. Louis military records storage facility fire in 1973.

My Uncle came up on Normandy and my Dad was in the Pacific. Neither would talk about it much.

I was drafted in 1969.

Without the Bomb, I probably wouldnt be typing this.

Many, many of us would not be here if not for the A bombs. My Dad served in Italy and had orders for the Pacific when the bombs were dropped. Big difference between the war in N Africa, the Med and Europe was the enemy looked like us And many US servicemen were immigrants from Germany. There was a “ understanding” existing whereas the war in the Pacific the enemy looked different and their culture was not understood, let alone liked. There was a Marine Division that took No jap prisoners after their first battle against the japs.

I’ve written before about my wife’s grandad-after the philippines campaign was over he was literally rehearsing for the invasion of Japan when the bomb was dropped.

I believe the bomb saved untold numbers of lives on both sides.

There was an old guy, recently passed away, at my church who was a WWII vet. He got his parents to sign for him when he was seventeen. He went to the Pacific and fought on Okinawa. When Oki was secured his unit boarded ships and stood off the coast of Japan waiting for the word to land. He said that they got classes every day about what to expect and their first sergeant told them that ninety percent of them would be killed almost as soon as they landed. They got word that we had dropped a bomb on Japan that killed thousands of people. A few days later Japan surrendered and his unit went to Korea to accept the surrender of the Japanese there. Like most WWII guys he was most interesting to talk to. I later learned that he spoke to me about his WWII experiences because he learned that I was a vet with mud on my boots. Most people in the congregation did not know he was in WWII.

I believe the Japanese taught their troops the same thing about non Japanese and their cultures.

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SOS USA

Correct, they considered the Koreans and Chinese to be sub-human...Solomon Island natives were lower than jungle apes to the ruling Japanese......Ben

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Cogito, ergo BOOM!...

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This is an interesting piece of the collection.

One of my uncles enlisted in the Navy at age 16 in 1944, was a torpedoman on the USS Jenkins (DD447). He related the story to me that is told in the link, where his ship struck a mine, stranding them bow down on the bottom inside a Jap held harbor in the Southwest Pacific, and all the other ships in the force left the harbor, leaving the Jenkins to spend the night alone, stranded on the bottom. He told me about a chief volunteering to put on diving gear and go into the oil soaked, flooded compartments and seal them off, and when he told me the chief received a Silver Star for his bravery, he became choked up and tears streamed down his face. Unc was just 17 years old when the event happened.
The attached picture was taken from a cruiser which came back into the harbor the next day. You can see the damage to the hull by the forward stack. I marvel that my favorite uncle is somewhere among all those guys on the deck in that picture.
http://destroyerhistory.org/fletcher....asp?pid=44704

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There never would have been a Hiroshima, had there never been a Pearl Harbor.

Estimates for Allied dead in a successfull invasion of Japan were over 1 million.

The one thing which makes me madder 'n 'ell is the US giving back to Japan the islands of Oka and Iwo. Those are two we should have kept and made a part of our overseas territories.

My Father used to ride around in one of the Higgins boats. Wouldn't discuss it other than to say it was a nightmare. He didn't talk to me for three months after I bought a Japanese car. Even after that, if I went over I had to park it in the street. "Twilight of the Gods" describes some of it. USN and 2nd Marine Div.

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Foster Positivity.

I knew a vet who described people jumping from cliffs to their death because they feared how brutal the Americans were . One that he never got over was a young pregnant woman whose baby was expelled by the force of hitting the water.

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I like Ike.

There is an excellent book about the difference in ETO and PTO, “ The World Within War”, forget the author. Packed up with most of my reference books.

When VJ day happened my Dad was a newly minted 2LT waiting in France, near the port of Marseille, to be shipped east for the invasion of Japan. He'd been in the ETO since June 1944 and to his later regret applied for a France based OCS shake & bake course & commission.
He later had 7 children and numerous GK's & GGK's. He spent 37 yrs with the NYPD including his WW2 yrs and a recall for Korea.
I have no sympathy whatsoever with the current vogue to blame Harry Truman for using Atomic bombs against Japanese civilian targets. His responsibility was to Americans, not the Japanese. He did what was necessary to limit American casualties and end the war. Case closed.

Friend of mine in MVPA and I were talking yesterday, his daughter is a school teacher in N. Va. in a liberal town. She took her class to Air and Space museum and was looking at the Enola Gay when another teacher and her class came up. Other teacher told her class that dropping the A Bomb on the japs was the worst thing the US ever did. Buddies daughter ask her about the other teachers parents and grandparents. Other teacher said her grandfather was in WWII. Buddies teacher then told her She most likely would Not Have been Born as so many US troops would have been killed invading Japan. Other teacher shut up.

I was in my 20's before I realized a reference to folks from the islands of Japan had three syllables and not one ....

FWIW, in my 30+ years in Japan, while the atomic bomb anniversaries are always somberly remembered, on the TV news and onsite, every summer, not once did I hear, publicly or privately, the US criticized for dropping them.

They are remembered in Japan as historical examples of the folly, tragedy and horror of war.

My father was a Marine on Okinawa when the bombs fell. He credited them with saving his life. As others have said, I would not be here without them.

I had a Japanese history professor in grad school who believed that the atomic bombs, because they were so extraordinary as to be near supernatural in their destructive power, gave the Japanese an honorable reason to quit. His theory was that regardless of how brave, loyal or persevering the Japanese felt they had to be, the bombs were not something that humans could withstand.