In my previous post about the book The Guns of August, I mention how we learn a lot about World War Two but not World War One in school. However, as far as WWII goes, we learn mostly about the Nazis and the European theater. The only thing we really learn about the Pacific campaign is the reason for it, the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Wanting to know more I learned of this book on Reddit. What I learned is that it was absolutely barbaric and the conditions much worse than of those in Europe. All of war is horrendous but from this book I understand the Pacific campaign was another level of hell entirely. The tropical conditions, constant rain, enormous bugs, were one aspect. But even worse were that the Japanese never gave up, took no prisoners and thus didn’t follow the established traditions of the Europeans. In a European war, when the enemy is surrounded would often surrender. Prisoners of war were not uncommon. But the Japanese on the other hand fought to the last man and were brutal until the end.
The question is often asked if the nuclear bomb could have been avoided. Hundreds of thousands of innocents, mothers, children were instantly wiped from the face of the earth. Some say the bomb was used to scare the Russians as the war was close to ending. But after reading this book I realize that the President had a horrendous choice to make. Given that the Japanese do not surrender, tens of thousands, (maybe hundreds) of American soldiers would have died in trying to take the mainland where every woman and child were taught to fight in these dark times. The Japanese military had run amok simultaneously worshiping the Emperor while putting him aside and doing as they pleased. The Japanese military would have not surrendered and a conventional invasion would have been absolute horror. What a terrible decision to make and either way would put a severe wound on any man’s soul.
As for me, I am tied to Japan through my experience there and through marriage. My grandfather fought the Nazis in World War II. I moved to Japan a year before he passed away and I cannot recall any emotion either way when I told him I was moving to Japan. The only thing I can remember is he was surprised to learn I had to pay for my own plane ticket upon taking a job as an English teacher. I wonder what his reaction would have been had he fought in the Pacific instead of pushing the Nazis out of Italy.
Looking at humanity as a whole, one generation was busy butchering each other while their descendants are enjoying each others cultures, getting married and starting families. Times change and humanity seems like a whimsical, idiotic sort of species extremely susceptible to whatever the zeitgeist of the times feels like putting forward. I feel that once again it comes down to humans being tribal. The airplane was a new invention and the tribes didn’t mix very much except for places like the United States which everyone wanted to get to. Now in the year 2023 international travel is common although still, out of the entire human race a very small percentage does it and for those that do, even fewer are able to speak the language or understand the mentality of the places they are traveling to. Instead they join tour groups, see the major sites then go home. Humans remain very tribal and we’ve got a long way to go in terms of understanding one another.
Here are my notes:
Controversy still rages over the morality of dropping the two atomic bombs that ended the war before the American invasions of Kyushu and Honshu. But we forget that President Truman’s decision was largely predicated on avoiding the nightmare that Marines like E. B. Sledge had just endured on Peleliu and Okinawa. If today Americans in the leisure of a long peace wonder whether our grandfathers were too hasty in their decision to resort to atomic weapons, they forget that many veterans of the Pacific wondered why they had to suffer through an Okinawa when the successful test at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16 came just a few days after the island was declared secure. Surely the carnage on Okinawa could have been delayed till late summer to let such envisioned weapons convince the Japanese of the futility of prolonging the war.
This, I realized, was the difference between war and hunting. When I survived the former, I gave up the latter.
Courage meant overcoming fear and doing one’s duty in the presence of danger, not being unafraid.
Suddenly, I heard a loud voice say clearly and distinctly, “You will survive the war!
But I believed God spoke to me that night on that Peleliu battlefield, and I resolved to make my life amount to something after the war.
I found this fascinating and further proof that life is but an illusion. I believe we live in a reflection of a greater reality that sits just behind the veil separating life and death. Only sometimes, does it make itself known but we have to pay attention. When it does we cannot explain it so often just shrug it off. The author was in an environment where that veil between life and death was extremely thin, ready to be removed at any moment. Therefore, I think what he heard was a message from the other side and I’m thankful he reports it in his book.
Slowly the reality of it all formed in my mind: we were expendable! It was difficult to accept. We come from a nation and a culture that values life and the individual. To find oneself in a situation where your life seems of little value is the ultimate in loneliness. It is a humbling experience.
In the USA we like to believe we as individuals have power, that we are important. But what I’ve learned as I get older is we’re pretty much just pawns for the powerful. In times of war, we’re as the author describes. At work under capitalism we’re tools to increase the wealth of those on top. Yes, an individual can climb to the top but those cases are a drop in the bucket when simple math is done. The 1% owns 32% of the wealth while the bottom 50% hold only 2%. So yes, examples of those climbing to the rank of billionaire are nice stories that help stave off a revolt but the reality is the majority of us work to make others even richer than they already are. Most everyone is expendable in both war and economics.
That I had seen clearly the pain on his face when my bullets hit him came as a jolt. It suddenly made the war a very personal affair. The expression on that man’s face filled me with shame and then disgust for the war and all the misery it was causing.
I believe this is the natural feeling for doing something unnatural. I believe the Buddhists have it right with their belief not to kill any living thing.
To the noncombatants and those on the periphery of action, the war meant only boredom or occasional excitement; but to those who entered the meat grinder itself, the war was a netherworld of horror from which escape seemed less and less likely as casualties mounted and the fighting dragged on and on. Time had no meaning; life had no meaning. The fierce struggle for survival in the abyss of Peleliu eroded the veneer of civilization and made savages of us all. We existed in an environment totally incomprehensible to men behind the lines—service troops and civilians.
I had previously thought that all the soldiers in an army go to war. What I learned is that a smaller portion actually does the fighting while many others offer support far from the front lines.
As I looked at the stains on the coral, I recalled some of the eloquent phrases of politicians and newsmen about how “gallant” it is for a man to “shed his blood for his country,” and “to give his life’s blood as a sacrifice,” and so on. The words seemed so ridiculous. Only the flies benefited.
When I was a kid I used to watch G.I. Joe and really enjoyed it. I had a toy rifle and my friends and I used to play war. This seems like propaganda and “conditioning” to me now. Having traveled the world, learned other languages and then been outright lied to by leaders such as “weapons of mass destruction” I’ve learned that only on rare occasions is there a just reason for war. Mosts of the time the reasons given are just to increase the power of those at the top. The majority of people will believe anything told to them as we can see very clearly in current times with Fox News. How many times did Fox report they “found” the weapons of mass destruction. An outright lie that caused hundreds of thousands to die. Trump “made the vaccine,” got COVID, got special treatment with top doctors and experimental drugs then turns around, takes off his mask, tells people not to let “COVID control your life,” handcuffs the CDC and thousands die. Yet, people still tune in to Fox News to be told what to believe no matter how many times, or untold suffering it helped spread in the past. Leaders can say anything and get people to kill, and many will continue to blindly and stupidly follow.
None of us would ever be the same after what we had endured. To some degree that is true, of course, of all human experience. But something in me died at Peleliu. Perhaps it was a childish innocence that accepted as faith the claim that man is basically good. Possibly I lost faith that politicians in high places who do not have to endure war’s savagery will ever stop blundering and sending others to endure it.
The stench of death was overpowering. The only way I could bear the monstrous horror of it all was to look upward away from the earthly reality surrounding us, watch the leaden gray clouds go scudding over, and repeat over and over to myself that the situation was unreal—just a nightmare—that I would soon awake and find myself somewhere else. But the ever-present smell of death saturated my nostrils. It was there with every breath I took.
He and his comrades had done their best. “They died gloriously on the field of honor for the emperor,” is what their families would be told. In reality, their lives were wasted on a muddy, stinking slope for no good reason.
I think of the small villages where war committees of women were formed. They would put on a sash and go from house to house telling everyone, especially young men how glorious it will be to fight for the emperor. Then there is the reality. Again, people can be told anything, even in this age of instantaneous knowledge at our fingertips. Times have both changed tremendously and not changed at all. The poor village boys were taught to think how great the war would be, just like Fox News news host saying how much he loves the new killing machine brought into service and if you don’t believe what they say then you’re not a “patriot.”
We were unable to understand their attitudes until we ourselves returned home and tried to comprehend people who griped because America wasn’t perfect, or their coffee wasn’t hot enough, or they had to stand in line and wait for a train or bus.
I imagined Marine dead had risen up and were moving silently about the area. I suppose these were nightmares, and I must have been more asleep than awake, or just dumbfounded by fatigue. Possibly they were hallucinations, but they were strange and horrible. The pattern was always the same. The dead got up slowly out of their waterlogged craters or off the mud and, with stooped shoulders and dragging feet, wandered around aimlessly, their lips moving as though trying to tell me something. I struggled to hear what they were saying. They seemed agonized by pain and despair. I felt they were asking me for help. The most horrible thing was that I felt unable to aid them.
The author calls them hallucinations which they most likely were to a rational mind. But he mentioned that he believes God told him he would survive this war. Perhaps it could be that in an environment like this he might actually be able to see the anguished souls of the recently killed. The religious are so willing to go to church on Sunday and quick to believe in the soul and all the glorious stories that come with it but then refuse to believe one may actually be able to see a soul leaving the body in a horrible environment like this. To be killed so suddenly would cause intense anguish to both the physical mind and I imagine, to the soul as well.
“I am the harvest of man’s stupidity. I am the fruit of the holocaust. I prayed like you to survive, but look at me now. It is over for us who are dead, but you must struggle, and will carry the memories all your life. People back home will wonder why you can’t forget.”
Just his mind or an actual message from the deceased?
Earlier in the morning Company A, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines had attacked eastward into the ruins of Shuri Castle and had raised the Confederate flag. When we learned that the flag of the Confederacy had been hoisted over the very heart and soul of Japanese resistance, all of us Southerners cheered loudly. The Yankees among us grumbled, and the Westerners didn’t know what to do.
The legacy of the Civil War continues to this day. Now in 2023 we’ve got army bases being renamed from Confederate generals and Confederate statues being taken down. It is a wound in this country that has never fully, and may never, heal. The Confederacy lost. Its reason for being was to keep slavery. It is time to move on.
In disgust, I drove the spade into the soil, scooped out the insects, and threw them down the front of the ridge. The next stroke of the spade unearthed buttons and scraps of cloth from a Japanese army jacket buried in the mud—and another mass of maggots. I kept on doggedly. With the next thrust, metal hit the breastbone of a rotting Japanese corpse. I gazed down in horror and disbelief as the metal scraped a clean track through the mud along the dirty whitish bone and cartilage with ribs attached. The shovel skidded into the rotting abdomen with a squishing sound. The odor nearly overwhelmed me as I rocked back on my heels. I began choking and gagging as I yelled in desperation, “I can’t dig in here! There’s a dead Nip here!” The NCO came over, looked down at my problem and at me, and growled, “You heard him; he said put the holes five yards apart.” “How the hell can I dig a foxhole through a dead Nip?” I protested. Just then Duke came along the ridge and said, “What’s the matter, Sledgehammer?” I pointed to the partially exhumed corpse. Duke immediately told the NCO to have me dig in a little to the side away from the rotting remains. I thanked Duke and glared at the NCO.
Absolute horror. To those in wartime, it was simply a rotting corpse. But it was also somebody’s son, who was loved and loved in turn. They were cared for, grew and unfortunately lived in a dark time that sent them to an early death. Nobody will ever know who that living, breathing person was. Even in 2023, the Japanese government keeps those records tightly sealed. One day I hope to learn where the relatives of my in-laws fought and died so I may go there and pray for them. Yes, Japan was the aggressor in the conflict, but it is human and it is right to feel compassion for those who suffered.
On 4 June we moved rapidly southward through open country in a torrential rain. Although the opposition was sporadic, we still had to check out all houses, huts, and former Japanese emplacements. While searching a small hut, I came across an old Okinawan woman seated on the floor just inside the doorway. Taking no chances, I held my Thompson ready and motioned to her to get up and come out. She remained on the floor but bowed her old gray head and held her gnarled hands toward me, palms down, to show the tattoos on the backs of her hands indicating she was Okinawan. “No Nippon,” she said slowly, shaking her head as she looked up at me with a weary expression that bespoke of much physical pain. She then opened her ragged blue kimono and pointed to a wound in the lower left side of her abdomen. It was an old wound, probably caused by shell or bomb fragments. It was an awful sight. A large area around the scabbed-over gash was discolored and terribly infected with gangrene. I gasped in dismay. I guessed that such a severe infection in the abdominal region was surely fatal. The old woman closed her kimono. She reached up gently, took the muzzle of my Tommy, and slowly moved it so as to direct it between her eyes. She then released the weapon’s barrel and motioned vigorously for me to pull the trigger. Oh no, I thought, this old soul is in such agony she actually wants me to put her out of her misery. I lifted my Tommy, slung it over my shoulder, shook my head, and said “no” to her. Then I stepped back and yelled for a corpsman.
The book goes on to say another serviceman went in after him and killed the old lady as requested. The author was furious. Was it Stalin who said the death of one is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic. Imagine this woman before the war, going about her life, raising children, enjoying her short time on this planet. And then this description is given to us, just an old sick woman who was killed, one among many. Humans are so disappointing. We like to think of ourselves as the most advanced and bask in our station as the top species on Earth. The reality is we are primitive with a long way to go.
War is brutish, inglorious, and a terrible waste. Combat leaves an indelible mark on those who are forced to endure it. The only redeeming factors were my comrades’ incredible bravery and their devotion to each other. Marine Corps training taught us to kill efficiently and to try to survive. But it also taught us loyalty to each other—and love. That esprit de corps sustained us. Until the millenium arrives and countries cease trying to enslave others, it will be necessary to accept one’s responsibilities and to be willing to make sacrifices for one’s country—as my comrades did. As the troops used to say, “If the country is good enough to live in, it’s good enough to fight for.” With privilege goes responsibility.
