In this work Hastings examines an oft overlooked aspect of World War 2, the War in the Pacific. Veterans of that theater for years have had a gripe that their contributions to keeping the world safe for democracy, and the eventual inundation of Starbucks, have not gotten the amount of ink that their ETO brethren have received. Frankly, they're right. The question, though, is why. Sure, there were a butt load more Americans fighting in Europe than in the Pacific. Also, most Americans in 1940 could much more easily trace their roots back to England, Germany, France, etc than the vast watery expanses of the Pacific. Finally, there has always been a certain je ne sais quoi (French for 'where are you going, the battle is the other direction') about the war in Europe. You had the dashing young Americans going to Europe (again) to save the French (again) from the Germans (again) when they could tear themselves away from having sex with English women. Its enough to make Brad Pitt want to star in a revisionist history film as a slightly retarded redneck who appears throughout the movie to be having a stroke. All that aside, there is just as compelling a story to be told about fighting the Japanese, and Hastings does as great job telling it.
I think my favorite part of this book, as a quick aside, was a throw away line Hastings shared from a conversation that two English generals were having. Basically, Sir Lord General Basil Rathbone Duke of Yorkshire Pudding says "Don't you wish we could do it all over again" and Lord General Sir Percy Harvin Earl of Worcestershire Sauce replies (and I'm paraphrasing) "Hell no! What's to say we wouldn't fuck it up even worse the second time?". All kidding aside, that's a pretty good point. I don't know about you, but that's one that your boy Nats had never really thought of. One to grow on....
So anyway, back to the book. The main point that one takes from this excellent work is that the Japanese were unbelievably racist, homicidal, deviant, little pricks in this war. We all know the atrocities the Nazis committed against the Jews, the Poles, the Russians, etc. And we all know what the Russians did to the Poles, the Germans, and frankly to their fellow Russians (look up the word 'paranoid' in the dictionary and there is a picture of Joseph Stalin. Just not in a Russian dictionary...). But if you really want to learn some nasty shit, study what the Japanese did to the Chinese. They were not going to take a back seat to anyone in the race to be the most sadistic bastards of the war.
So I guess the take away from this book is really, the next time some hippy liberal talks about how the US nuked the Japanese because we are racist, you can kick them in the nuts with the assurance that not only are they ignorant of the facts (which those people tend to be as a rule) but also we were saving the Japanese. You read that right. Had the war not ended when it did, in the fashion that it did, not only would we would have had to kill hundreds of thousands of Japanese in ground combat, but the Soviets would have killed millions more. As an added bonus, uncle Joe would have wanted to split Japan into a communist side and a non-communist side, and we saw how well that worked in Korea, Germany, Vietnam, Eastern Europe, etc. To quote Colonel Nathan Jessup 'I'd prefer you just said thank you and went on your way'. Oh yeah, and 'I'm gonna rip out your eyes and piss in your dead skull! You fucked with the wrong Marine!' (That last bit didn't really have anything to do with Hastings' work, I just thought it was a fitting tribute to the men who did all the heavy lifting in the Pacific. Semper Fi!
Nats
