[csmkersh]

Most, if not all here, have seen Band of Brothers. Excellent movie about the 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to VE Day. It was unusual in that we were able to here from some of the men who spoke briefly of their memories and fellow troopers.

Well, if you want another great Spielberg/Hanks movie see if you can get hold of The Pacific. It follows the 1st Marine Division and its men through war, R&R, more war and finally home. It's about real Marines, we just don't get to meet the real men as we did with Band of Brothers.

If you have Amazon Prime you can stream it for free.

 

[Javlin]

It is good Sam and on my third time of watching the series last week still pulled out more info I did not capture before.I watched it on Amazon Prime a freebie even though I have the discs.The new series I am watching is John Adams also done by HBO and Playtone and is quite excellent thus far on Prime free.

 

[SpecialEd]

The books the series is based on are even better than the series. With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by Eugene Sledge is considered to be one of the finest combat memoirs ever writen and Robert Leckie's Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific is pretty good too though I think Sledge's book stands above and beyond. They also took a little from Red Blood, Black Sand for the John Basilone story.

The book I'm reading now Masters of the Sky about the 8th Air Force "Bomber Boys" is being made into the Hanks/Spielberg or BOB 3.

P.S. it was the 1st Marines.

 

[csmkersh]

If you can read and not get a terrible ache for the men, read of England's bomber war during WWII. Losses of crew and planes often 75% and more.
We were late for the dance. And it still took a Pvt Snuffy with his rifle to win the war - and always will unless you go nuclear.

 

[SpecialEd]

The 8th Air Force had more casualties flying over Europe than the entire Marine Corps in WWII. Think about that.

Yes there were members of America's "Bomber Mafia" and also and especially Britain's Arthur "Bomber" Harris, who were convinced up until the final days of the war that they could bomb the Germans into submission without ever having to send in ground troops.

 

[Diamondback]

Not to mention the pyromaniac psychopath Harris's abject criminal recklessness toward the lives of his personnel... "Join the RAF Bomber Command and torch your buddies in POW camps who were previously shot down" after knowingly ordering RAF bombers designed and outfitted with with marginally-effective defenses. "After all, every ounce toward aircrew safety is one less ounce that can be used to torch their cities..." surprising the bastard even allowed the weight cost for frickin' parachutes.

If it had been my call his neck woulda been stretched at Nuremberg right alongside Hermann Goering's...

 

[Javlin]

The 8th Air Force had more casualties flying over Europe than the entire Marine Corps in WWII. Think about that.

"The Rising Sun"tells just how and why the USA had less causalities if the Japanese had been alittle more efficient in the way they used there resources(men).I think the the Pacific would of been a tougher campaign but with Jap losses sometimes 2X-4X that of American losses a war of nutrition was breathing down their necks.

 

[Diamondback]

One of Japan's fatal mistakes was not rotating combat veterans home periodically to teach and train new inductees. You were out there until either victory or death, with no interest from the idiot brass-hats in taking the lessons learned from your combat experience to make the reinforcements even better.

This is also why Coral Sea and Midway marked the functional death of Japanese carrier aviation... an unprecedented assemblage of NAVAIR talent, thrown into the meatgrinder without the slightest thought of"preserving corporate knowledge." Lucky thing for us, too... it and their lack of emphasis on convoy-protection and ASW were as much their Achilles heel as Mustache Punk's blundering was Germany's.

 

[dfariswheel]

Another cause of Japanese loss was that they didn't bother to try to keep weapons development up.
They depended on Bushido "Spirit" and didn't think anything as common as an Infantry rifle, pistol, or machine gun was all that important.
They got a real shock when they faced the first M1 Rifles and Carbines.
They didn't even bother to develop much of a submachine gun, a prime jungle warfare weapon.

Their tanks were a joke, and they didn't have much of a follow-on to the Type Zero aircraft.
They spent their "dollar" on massive ego-enhancing battle ships they couldn't afford to replace.
After Pearl Harbor, the Japanese would have been able to build two, possibly three large aircraft carriers. That would have bankrupted them and they couldn't have build any more.
By the winter of 1943-44 the US was building a new carrier EVERY MONTH, and was prepared to do so for however many years it took.

There is a line by our former enemies and some here in the US that the only reason America won was because we simply drowned them in a tidal wave of weapons and equipment.
We did, but the real reason we won is because our generals and admirals out outgeneraled theirs, and mainly because the American fighting men simply went toe to toe with their "supermen" and out fought them.
And we did it with fewer casualties then anyone else under similar situations.

70 years on it's hard to consider just what horrible odds the Air Corps faced, but the fact about their losses being higher then the Marines says a lot.
Faced with that, a bunch of kids still climbed into the plane and went to Berlin.

People say we don't make men like that anymore.
Guess again. Look at the kids of Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Marines had a nightmare in the Pacific, but compare that to Falluga and there ain't much difference.

 

[Diamondback]

Also excellent points, DF. There's a very good detailed writeup about that at IJN history site CombinedFleet.com , one I referred to extensively and regularly when I was a historical consultant on a WWII naval miniatures line.

 

[dfariswheel]

As one Marine officer put it, "Bushido Spirit isn't going to stop a 30 caliber bullet".

It took the Japanese until very late in the war, WAY too late to figure out that Banzai charges just allowed the Marines and Army to kill them faster.
After Guadalcanal there was no excuse for the Japanese not to know that we weren't going to run, crying like babies when they made a Banzai charge, displaying lots of "Spirit".

Just read today that the new Japanese government is composed of what are basically Fascist who deny everything they did during the war.
They claim the war was not Japans fault, there was no Rape of Nanking, no "comfort women", and no Death March, etc. etc. etc
They want to re-deify the Emperor as God, allow the army to go to war if needed, and force the people to obey the leaders of the country.
In other words, back to 1939.

 

[TommyGunn]

Just read today that the new Japanese government is composed of what are basically Fascist who deny everything they did during the war.
They claim the war was not Japans fault, there was no Rape of Nanking, no "comfort women", and no Death March, etc. etc. etc
They want to re-deify the Emperor as God, allow the army to go to war if needed, and force the people to obey the leaders of the country.
In other words, back to 1939.

My father did extensive business with the Japanese from the 1960s through his retirement in the mid 1980s, and became pretty familiar with many of their attitudes during that time ..... and, how they felt about WW2.
The Japanese never assumed (or accepted) responsibility for what they did in the war, and many of their childrens' school textbooks have given it little if any attention.
Some individual Japanese did, for sure, but it is as if there is a cultural blind spot about the second world war --- especially the nastier elements ...the "March to Bataan," the treatment of POWs, the grotesgue "medical experiments" that many were subjected to, and other things.
The Germans did, even outlawing the Nazi Party. Some Germans have a .... "sore spot" with regards that era; having spoken to a few in my lifetime I know it is a subject that is very touchy.
But the Japanese .... very different.
"They claim the war was not Japans fault, there was no Rape of Nanking, no "comfort women", and no Death March, etc. etc."... yes....the current government may be emphasizing this "denial" .... but trust me, it's hardly new. More pronounced maybe, but it is 70 years old.

 

[Diamondback]

TG, I know what you mean about them being touchy--I have a very close (as in, "if we weren't both spoken for would gladly put ring on finger and knock up at first opportunity" close) young lady friend from over there who can't wait to finish her degree, relocate somewhere else and renounce her German citizenship and heritage, though I think she's taking it a little too personally. Show me a culture that doesn't have some big black marks on its history, and I'll show you a propaganda-film version of their history...

 

[csmkersh]

The mother of 2 of my grand daughters had a picture of her grandfather in her parents' home. He was an SS officer.

Germans near the Bergen-Belson death camp knew of it but treated it as a tourist attraction for us Yanks.

Then there was our treatment of Japanese Americans in California. We interned them in places like Manzanar and stole their businesses and farms while many of their sons fought and died for this country.

 

[CaptainGyro]

Then there was our treatment of Japanese Americans in California. We interned them in places like Manzanar and stole their businesses and farms while many of their sons fought and died for this country.

This is common knowledge, and modern revisionism has, of course, chalked it up to racism. However, Japan had attacked American soil both at Pearl Harbor and in the Aleutians, and early in the war there was fear of an invasion of the west coast and that ethnic Japanese might join with the invaders. In hindsight this may seem farfetched, but it didn't in the uncertain days following Pearl Harbor.

When the threat of invasion was deemed insignificant, Roosevelt withdrew the internment order well before the end of the war.

 

[TommyGunn]

Another thing that led to the Japanese internment was misunderstood intelligence reports. In those days the F. B. I. did the work the CIA is now tasked with.
The Japanese Americans that were interred had all come over from a period in Japan's history before it became imperialistic and expansionistic, and had become loyal Americans; they considered themselves first and foremost Americans.
However, in South America, there were many Japanese who worked in various businesses who had come later, and indeed many were espionage & intelligence agents. The F. B. I. knew about this....but failed to differentiate between them, and Japanese Americans.
It wasn't all about racism. But make no mistake racism definatly was there -- on both sides, and one only need look at the period propoganda art of buck-toothed Japanese with Coke bottle glasses to realize that.

 

[csmkersh]

At the time, I lived in Burbank and Mom worked at Lockheed. Across from us was a 100 acre plus vegetable farm owned and run by Japanese. They took the time to try to teach me to work a mule and a single shovel plow. Anyway, they were working the field when I went to school one morning and gone when I got home. Someone stole the farm for taxes while they were at Manzanar. They never came home.

 

[TommyGunn]

Sadly, that isn't the only time that happened. It was one of .....thousands.

 

[WaltGraham]

Yep, that should have been rectified. I would have gotten on board some restitution for those folks...

The current batch of crybaby race hustlers... not so much.

 

[Javlin]

At the time, I lived in Burbank and Mom worked at Lockheed. Across from us was a 100 acre plus vegetable farm owned and run by Japanese. They took the time to try to teach me to work a mule and a single shovel plow. Anyway, they were working the field when I went to school one morning and gone when I got home. Someone stole the farm for taxes while they were at Manzanar. They never came home.

Damn Sam you gotta be pushing 80+ :thumbsup: can I call you pops I am 55