The war in the Pacific between Imperial Japan and the United States and its Allies was what one historian noted was a ‘war without mercy.” Unlike the war in Western Europe where western nations fought a war of political ideology or the Eastern Front where the Nazis and Soviets fought a war of annihilation the war in the Pacific was a war of opposing cultures and races. It was a tribal war fought on a massive scale. It was a war that pitted culture against culture, the West against the East in a war that pre-figured Samuel Huntington’s “Class of Civilizations.” The Japanese motivated by the spirit of the Samurai, the Code of Bushido and their own understanding of the “Master Race” had embarked on a war of aggression as early as 1942. The west often seeing all oriental races as inferior to Western culture depicted the Japanese as apes and monkeys. The clash of cultures as well as economic and geopolitical factors brought about a war that saw acts of corporate and personal brutality that are hard to imagine to those raised in the liberal Western mindset.
The battles fought and the manner in which the war was waged was even more brutal than the war between the Soviets and Nazi Germany on the Eastern front. The Japanese seldom surrendered and treated their Allied captives as warriors who had dishonored themselves. Likewise most Japanese resisted to the death and the Americans were glad to oblige them that favor.
Adjusting Strategy to Reality: The Pacific War- Why the Japanese Lost
“Revisionist” History and the Rape of Nanking 1937
War Without Mercy: Race, Religion, Ideology and Total War
Tom Hanks on the Pacific War and the Impact of Race in the Pacific War
Five Minutes that Changed History: The Battle of Midway 1022-1027 hours June 4th 1942
Background to “The Pacific” Part One: The Guadalcanal Campaign and the Beginning of Joint Operations
Background on the Pacific Part Two: Guadalcanal the Marines take the Offensive
The Pacific Part Three: Tarawa Paving the Way to Peleliu, Iwo Jima and Okinawa
Background to “The Pacific” Part V: Okinawa
Okinawa: Göttdammerung in the Pacific
One Square Mile of Hell: The Invasion of Tarawa
Lessons in Coalition Warfare: Admiral Ernest King and the British Pacific Fleet
