I haven’t been getting out much. I have been drawing with Band of brothers on in the background. If you are an American who has any access to t.v. or films you have seen so damn many stories about D-Day you’re about ready to build a time machine and go back and shoot Hitler as a baby just so they will stop telling more. The war in Europe has been told and retold, but only a tiny fraction of WWII stories are about the war in the pacific. It is an after thought. There are two reasons for this. One- it was gory and horrific on a scale that even the war in Europe was not. and TWO- it raises a lot of questions. Uncomfortable questions. Questions that conspiracy theorists love to ask, like why in the blue hell was the war in the pacific a secondary priority when Japan was the country who attacked us in the first place?
I don’t have the answers, and the questions won’t be answered, but the war in the pacific was a GD amazing example of good old American ingenuity and ” oh it’s on? okay…get ready to die by any means at our disposal.”
Enter Douglas MacArthur, a veteran of WWI who during a smoke filled attack on a hill was the ONLY man left alive. The ONLY MAN LEFT. That should clue you into the badass/destiny filled life of the good general.
MacArthur lived on the island of manilla when Japan decided any floating hunk of mud between Japan and California belonged to them. They blew the crap out of his Island home…and sealed their fate. MacArthur was put in charge of the pacific forces…to a certain extent. The U.S. decided Hitler was the main threat to humanity and so Mac was given a pittance as far as troops and supplies. No ships to speak of, no aircraft carriers, just a small amount of troops and a ” we’ll take this more seriously after Hitler is dead.”.
Did I mention Manilla? Mac took it seriously right from jump street. And if blowing the crap out of his home wasn’t enough, they also captured a good number of U.S. troops and marched them to death ( see batten death march) Hitler needed to die, no doubt about it, but the Japans maniac Tojo was no f’n good either. He slaughtered Chinese civilians by the millions and used bulldozers to plow over them alive or dead. His forces were brutal and in some cases psychotic in their treatment of captured troops and civilians all across the pacific ocean.
Did you see the last season of The Walking Dead? Did you see the part where Bob had his leg cut of and eaten? well that wasn’t some ingenious Hollywood creation. that was what the Japanese where doing to captured U.S. pilots. They would keep their troops fed by eating U.S. solders piece by piece so they wouldn’t have to worry about the meat going bad in the pacific climate. Hitler was a crazy A-hole but here are no accounts of Nazi cannibalism as policy.
Mac was given no aircraft carriers. So…how do you get from Hawaii to Japan and screw a colt 45 into Tojo’s ear with no ships? You “island hop”. This was the term used for Mac attacking , and conquering an Island, building a GD air airport, then flying troops to the next island, conquering it and building a GD airport and flying to the next island..rinse , repeat ALL THE WAY TO F*CKING JAPAN. This guy was going to see Tojo n his knees if he had to swim there with a knife in his mouth. While general Eisenhower’s “strategy” for D-Day was to, more or, less flood the beaches with more troops than the Nazi’s had bullets, Mac’s plan was an actual plan. He learned the enemy , learned the tactics, learned the obstacles and learned how to overcome them. Eisenhower was a good general and got then job done. But MacArthur was a genius. Ike had the advantage and used it properly. MacArthur was at a disadvantage and overcame it. He was 75% of the way to Japan with no help by the time Ike, with the bulk of the backing of the U.S.A.’s resources , along with England AND Russia managed to topple Germany.
Every Island was a little different in geography and layout, every Island was defended differently, and on every island Japan had the advantage. MacArthur had no F*cks to give. Every single Island that was between Hawaii and Japan was going to have a U.S flag planted on it and if you didn’t like it you were going to be in the business end of a flame thrower. You may have heard his quote “I shall return” after being ordered to leave his troops by the president as they were being overrun early in the war. Well he did return, and he brought a while lot of pissed off G.I.’s with him.
On august 1945 Japan surrendered after the U.S. dropped two nuclear bombs on it, Much has been made since them about whether or not the U.s. went to far. The fact that we had to drop a second bomb should be all the intel you need to sleep comfortably in knowing we did had needed to be done.. We evaporated one of their cities and their a-hole leader STILL wouldn’t give up the ghost until we dropped a second bomb.
So…and here is where MacArthur’s genius come to the forefront of human history. Japan surrenders to Mac. Mac then parades the “emperor” thought the streets. The emperor was thought to be some god like entity, much like the turd who currently rules North Korea. He marched him through the streets so the citizens could see that he was not a God and that they committed horrific acts and where bombed into the stone age because they believed the insane ramblings of a mere mortal. Rather than have the guy killed, he made him hang around and admit he wasn’t a god and they should listen to whatever the scary American tells them to.
“When someone asks you if you’re a god…you say yes!”
unless that person is MacArthur because he’ll dress you like his butler…and then make you his butler.
and then make you face your countrymen dressed as his butler and explain that you got them all bombed into the stone age because you believe too much of your own bullshit.
Quite a rude awakening. Mac then hung around and oversaw the creation of a new Japanese democracy. He stuck around and made sure the Japanese people would get with the program, Elect leaders based on qualifications and not birthright or divine intervention. The parading of Tojo through town was a jarring enough insight that they gave democracy are honest try, and Japan…a country that had been ruled by one “god” after another and been an overall pain in the balls to humanity since we discovered fire, took to capitalism on and gave us video games, cheap electronics and weird cartoons and has been more or less a benefit to mankind ever since. and while Akira and tentacle porn reminds us all that Japan’s history is rooted in despicable horrific sh*t , you can thank MacArthur that they use that ingrained horror to make a few bucks instead of using it to bulldoze innocent women and children and spear babies with bayonets.
then
now
The future is fluid of course, ISIS just recently decided to grab some Japanese people to behead. One can only wonder who long before the Pokemon plastic crap factories start churning out something more nefarious for export in response.
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