My Dad In The War: The Japanese (Part Two)

Part Two

 
     In addition to this, all through the war the Japanese had no plan on how to defend the empire it had so recently conquered. The Philippines were taken over by the Japanese from the Americans, and then lost it back to Allied (American) forces.
     If they had any strategy at all, it was to make the price of victory so high, the Americans would tire of the war and seek to negotiate instead, leaving them with many of their conquests. And although Americans were getting tired of the war, they were still determined to fight until the very end, and so they went forward with their plan to invade the Japanese homeland.
     America felt Japan could be successfully invaded and defeated, but they knew it would be at a great cost. Like in the islands of Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima and Okinawa, the war would have to won foxhole by foxhole, tunnel by tunnel, and cave by cave. The Japanese would have to be defeated man to man, and that would be no easy task.
     Many soldiers who had seen the pre-invasion bombing of those islands had said to each other, "nothing could live through that," only to find that their enemy was still alive. It was an enemy who was willing to suffer any sacrifice, including the ultimate one. Living in caves and tunnels, the Japanese were reduced to licking each other's sweat to stay hydrated, eating raw insects for sustenance... but they'd still come out fighting.
     But, as General George Patton once said, you don't win a war by dying for your country, you win a war by making sure the enemy dies for his country. Still, these victories weren't without their adversity.
     Japanese soldiers would often emerge from a cave with his hands up--naked, except for a loincloth--and when his enemy (American soldiers) came close, they would reach under their loincloth, snatch out a grenade, pull the pin, and throw it at them.
     In Europe, medics generally weren't shot at while performing their duty. In the Pacific, a corpsman quickly learned to get rid of his Red Cross armbands and insignia because the Japanese made them prime targets. Going back to the ingenuity of the American soldier, they soon began painting only a green cross with no white circle to camouflage the fact that they were medics. For the same reason, ranking soldiers learned to not wear their stripes or bars on their uniforms.
     In the end, what made the difference was what the competing armies fought for. While the Japanese fought for their Emperor, the Americans fought for each other and for their families back home.

 

 

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