The Pacific, ep. 9: Okinawa
Mar. 14th, 2023 03:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerEpisode 9 of The Pacific, "Okinawa", follows very much in the footsteps of the previous episode, "Iwo Jima". Historically the two campaigns were pretty much one right after the other. Each entailed weeks of pitched battles.
Brutal combat has been the norm across this series. In Okinawa it reaches a new level of brutality. American soldiers are shocked and dismayed to see Japanese soldiers using the local civilian population as human shields... and worse, as human bombs.
Eugene Sledge is the main viewpoint character in this episode. Sledge, previously the mild mannered new recruit from a genteel family in Mobile, Alabama is now the grizzled combat veteran showing the newer recruits how to survive in brutal combat. The new level of brutality really gets to him, though; particularly seeing civilians exploited as human shields.
The episode ends about 6 weeks after the Battle of Okinawa is concluded. The Marines still on the island are climbing up on trucks to be sent somewhere else. An officer tells them, "They dropped some new kind of bomb" that destroyed an entire city. That would be the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945.
BTW, some historians hold that the brutality of combat, and the Japanese Army ethos never to surrender, seen on Okinawa influenced American military leaders to drop the bombs. Prior to those bombs the plan had been to use Okinawa's harbor and airfield as an critical launching point for an assault on the Island of Japan that would involve 3,000,000 US soldiers.
Brutal combat has been the norm across this series. In Okinawa it reaches a new level of brutality. American soldiers are shocked and dismayed to see Japanese soldiers using the local civilian population as human shields... and worse, as human bombs.
Eugene Sledge is the main viewpoint character in this episode. Sledge, previously the mild mannered new recruit from a genteel family in Mobile, Alabama is now the grizzled combat veteran showing the newer recruits how to survive in brutal combat. The new level of brutality really gets to him, though; particularly seeing civilians exploited as human shields.
The episode ends about 6 weeks after the Battle of Okinawa is concluded. The Marines still on the island are climbing up on trucks to be sent somewhere else. An officer tells them, "They dropped some new kind of bomb" that destroyed an entire city. That would be the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945.
BTW, some historians hold that the brutality of combat, and the Japanese Army ethos never to surrender, seen on Okinawa influenced American military leaders to drop the bombs. Prior to those bombs the plan had been to use Okinawa's harbor and airfield as an critical launching point for an assault on the Island of Japan that would involve 3,000,000 US soldiers.
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Date: 2023-03-15 11:22 pm (UTC)They were still awarding those medals in the 1990s...