The Pacific War

[wood714]

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.

 

[Rudi]

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

 

[wood714]

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.

 

[Old 44 Guy]

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

 

[dsf]

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.

 

[Racer X]

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

 

[Greyman50]

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.

 

[fordson]

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.

 

[7shooter]

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.

 

[PeterJ]

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

 

[SS336]

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.

 

[Truckman]

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

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

 

[Truckman]

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

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

 

[30-30remchester]

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.

 

[Ole Joe Clark]

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

 

[JcMack]

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

 

[crazyphil]

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

 

[THE PILGRIM]

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.

 

[S-W4EVER]

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.

 

[SMSgt]

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.

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.