re: On this date in 1945....

The Armys fair but they can’t compare to Marine Corps infantry

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When you factor in all the wounded and missing, the casualty figures climb to about 500,000 combined casualties for the battle. And all of that to take an island just 70 miles in length.

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The battle for mainland Japan would have been out right genocide. The entire island would just be covered in bodies. People cry about 75,000 people dying. They have no clue what an invasion would have looked like. The devil himself would have cried.

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In many ways the Pacific theater was more brutal than the fighting in Europe.


It wasn’t even close

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Not to be a WWII nerd but...

1. China lost nearly 15M people at the hands of the Japanese occupiers second only to the Soviet Union's 20M

Average casualty rates for U.S. ground combat units

Killed in action
Pacific: 1.78
European: .36

Wounded in action
Pacific: 5.50
Europe: 1.74

Missing in action
Pacific: .17
Europe: .06

Total
Pacific: 7.45
Europe: 2.16

Disease, POW atrocities, Kamikazes, and the brutal hand to hand fighting all make the Pacific theatre on or about the same level of brutality.

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Another 100,000 to 150,000 Japanese civilians were killed in the crossfire.

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That's one way to put it. American troops did not always behave the way we would have liked, but Japanese forces went out of their way to cause harm to the civilians on the island:

1. Executing civilians who hid food (from them)

2. Executing civilians who spoke the native Okinawan language (to cut down on spying)

3. Using Okinawan civilians as human shields (ironically, a tactic that would have had no effect if reversed onto Japanese forces)

4. Ordering (and enforcing) civilians to commit mass suicide

5. Mass rapes of Okinawan women by Japanese soldiers

"Crossfire" sounds pretty generic and unavoidable. Yes, American troops picked up the practice of shooting up houses, but it is generally accepted that this was largely because of #3 above and actual civilian resistance encountered. There were also reports of U.S. troops raping Okinawan women, but nothing like the numbers on the Japanese side.

Greatdaddy fought at Okinawa. I never got to meet him but reading about the battle all these years later gives me a greater respect for what kind of man he must have been. I'm sure everyone on that god-forsaken rock saw things they never spoke of and tried their best to forget. They really were the Greatest Generation.

Can imagine the casualties had we fought a land war on the primary Japanese Islands

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Greatdaddy fought at Okinawa

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my uncle was there, he hit the trifecta in WWII - Guadalcanal, Iwo, and Okinawa, in all I had 7 uncles in the military during WWII

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Can imagine the casualties had we fought a land war on the primary Japanese Islands

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And imagine if Stalin took the northern half of Japan in a conventional war. There would be a second Rocket Man in the region.

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And all of that to take an island just 70 miles in length.

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It's more staggering to think of it in terms of square miles.

The entire island is 466 sq. mi.

That's equivalent to roughly the size of a US city (Nashville, Tennessee).

I had a friend that drov3 an lsd at Okinawa.

He was returningnonce back to the ship and he was loaded with barrels of oil that were taken from th e japanese... the captain had the crew oil the decks of the ship...

He said it said turned out to be fish oil, and when the sun came out the ship began to stink.. and the other sailors were0 passed at Jimmy for bringing the oil back.

He mentioned something about bones in jars and vases on the island.