War Epics on Screen Skip Mass Slaughter of Civilians

[Echo In Light]

In the 2003 documentary "Fog of War" Robert McNamara, who served in World War II under the architect of the bombing campaign, Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay, quoted LeMay's postwar assessment: "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals."

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25405.htm">War Epics on Screen Skip Mass Slaughter of Civilians
By CHARLES BURRESS
Special to The Japan Times

May 09, 2010 "Japan Times" -- SAN FRANCISCO — Does the history diet fed to Americans by Hollywood promote an unhealthy national memory? The latest screen epic about American heroism in World War II — the HBO miniseries "The Pacific" — is clouded by an unintended irony.

Creators Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, who teamed up also on "Band of Brothers" and "Saving Private Ryan," have sought to strengthen the authenticity of Hollywood renderings of World War II. But while such portrayals may give us a keener appreciation of the courage and suffering of U.S. troops on the battlefield, they also add further weight to a lopsided World War II history that leaves the dishonorable part of America's wartime behavior buried deeper in national amnesia.

In what may be added irony, the widely reported premier of "The Pacific" came but four days after the little noticed anniversary of one of the darkest events in American war history — the March 10, 1945, firebombing of Tokyo. The two-volume World War II history "Total War," by Peter Calvocoressi, Guy Wint and John Pritchard, describes the massive napalm attack on Japan's capital as not only "the greatest air offensive in history" but also "deliberate, indiscriminate mass murder."

The raid by B-29 bombers probably ranks as history's largest mass killing of civilians in a short time span. The estimated death toll of 100,000 exceeded the immediate deaths in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima or Nagasaki, or the Dresden firebombing.

"The street was filled with blackened corpses," air raid survivor Haruko Nihei recently told a U.C. Berkeley audience on her first trip to tell her story in America. "There were so many of them that it was hard to walk on the streets."

[wtmusic]

1. Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

Doolittle's raids were sold as revenge for Pearl Harbor and Jimmy was a national hero, but...

The picture gets cloudy after that. Though the civilian death toll was horrendous, sticking up among the decimated wooden houses of Tokyo were blackened drill presses, lathes, and other machinery, used by "civilians" to contribute to the war machine. So "indiscriminate murder" is not entirely accurate.

[Chulanowa]

5. The old "hiding behind civilians" canard

Used to always justify "our" mass murder, but never "theirs" - if it had been the opposite way around, and Japan had reduced Los Angeles to ash and rubble, would it have been justified because of the oil rigs and the propaganda studios and the barracks and the manufacturing plants and the harbor?

Doubtful, you would be calling it "indiscriminate murder"

because that's exactly what a fucking bombing campaign is; indiscriminate murder, terrorism, and destruction. Yes, there may be a military target in there somewhere, but you're dropping napalm bombs across the whole city.

[wtmusic]

7. Again, not that simple.

"Damage to Tokyo's heavy industry was slight until firebombing destroyed much of the light industry that was used as an integral source for small machine parts and time-intensive processes. Firebombing also killed or made homeless many workers who had been taking part in war industry. Over 50% of Tokyo's industry was spread out among residential and commercial neighborhoods; firebombing cut their output in half."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo#B-29_raids

When you can show me that over 50% of Los Angeles' war industry is spread out among residential and commercial neighborhoods, you've got a point.

[Chulanowa]

9. No problem.

Fist off, you need to understand that there is no city or nation on earth that has a clearly delineated "military section" where they keep all the soldiers, all the equipment, all the industries and the like. This is because doing so would be strategically idiotic. You will find no such place anywhere, and so your argument is on shaky ground, anyway. It's in any military's interest to hide its facilities and, foul as it is, losing civilians if those facilities are attacked makes for a great propaganda coup.

Now, as for Los Angeles...

Lockheed and Vega Aircraft companies were both headquartered in Burbank
Consolidated-Vultee Aircraft plant was found in Downey
Long beach supported a lot of refining, and was the major naval base in the area
El Segundo's American Aviation plant built P-51 fighters, A-36 bombers and B-25 Bombers and also had a Douglas Aircraft plant that made air frames and SBD-5 dive bombers for the Navy.
Like Long beach, Huntington Beach had a lot of oil going on, and was a base of operations for the Coast Guard
A GM plant in Southgate produced 500 M-5 light tanks per month
Terminal Island had a major naval base, major oil installations, and a large japanese-American fishing community. it became one of the few places in the continental US where martial law was declared, and all the Japanese were deported to internment camps.
The Van Nuys Army Airfield is, of course, found in Van Nuys.

This is of course just directly war-relevant industry. Torrance had quite a number of oil processing plants (most now consolidated under Exxon, if i remember right) and Hollywood was of course the major point of wartime propaganda. In addition each of these industries was in turn supported by the numerous other industries within the city, and of course, all the workers for the wartime industries that made those industries possible (remember, this was well before automated plants) also lived in the area.

So tell me, tactical wizard that you are. How are you going to strike at the militarily important sites and industries of Los Angeles, which are nestled in civilian areas both for reasons of practicality and camoflauge, do so thoroughly enough to prevent war production in Los Angeles, despite all those industries being decentralized and spread around the entire county, and most importantly, do so without taking out lots of civilians?

It's not possible. Especially with the technology of 70 years ago.

So what you do instead, is just blow up as much of the entire fucking city as you can. In this scenario, there's a binary solution; either you don't bomb at all, or you bomb the fuck out of everything. That second option may have strategic value, but it's still murder and terrorism on a massive scale.

[wtmusic]

12. I live in Burbank, CA

and Lockheed, as well as every other industrial facility you mention, were major industrial complexes - not "nestled" among residential areas as you imply (it was so un-nestled, as a matter of fact, it was covered with thousands of yards of chickenwire and feathers to hide it from enemy bombing raids). Industry has never been deliberately mingled with civilian areas as a protection stratagem in either the US or Japan - in Tokyo it was geographic limitations and manpower shortages which forced industry into the home.

Again, you want to force this into a clean binary solution, and war is never clean.

[Chulanowa]

13. So what, exactly are you arguing?

Your earlier statement was that the mass murder in Tokyo was justified because of the "industry" within the city.

You now want to say things aren't clear cut.

So which is it? Did the people of Tokyo deserve their incineration? If so, the people of Los Angeles would have deserved it as well

[Posteritatis]

27. I think he's arguing that "indiscriminate murder" was actually "slightly discriminate murder"

Something that made some degree of sense in the context of the time, with the tools and weapons available, and with the prevailing mindset on how wars were fought in the thirties and forties, but which still sucked really, really hard and was, at the absolute, utter best, a terrible, ugly necessity.

[wtmusic]

31. ^ what he said

I never said things were clear cut - I'm not the one with the "binary solution" - and I'm not willing to accept that anyone "deserves" to be incinerated.

Bombing Tokyo was not justified; neither was it completely unjustified. I also don't buy that aggressor/defender share equal fault and that (at least from a perspective of the somewhat archaic notion of nationality) a nation doesn't have the right to defend itself.

There are decisions which are made in wartime which you and I will never have to make, where hundreds of thousands of lives could be at stake (not making any decision is a decision too). Sometimes a decision is made to sacrifice thousands of lives so that hundreds of thousands might be saved. That sucks if you're one of the "thousands", but unless you want to argue that 100,000 dead is pretty much the same as 1,000 - that's the reality.

Meanwhile, meanwhile...this is the kind of shit that was going on in China - people being burned and buried alive by the Japanese Imperial Army. Maybe bombing Tokyo prevented even more deaths in southeast Asia, I don't know. All I can do is hope that Roosevelt and Truman had the best knowledge they could have at the time, and were acting for the ultimate good of not just the US but the world.

[Chulanowa]

45. And I return to my original question

Would Japan have been justified ("slightly" or otherwise) in doing the same to Los Angeles? San Francisco? Seattle, Anchorage, Honolulu? If the American war machine could have been stopped, imagine how many innocent Japanese lives could have been saved by preventing such things as the firebombing of Tokyo, or the two atomic bombs.

That's what you tiptoed around the first time, and I imagine you will again - Where "we" are always Justified, ALWAYS, ABSOLUTELY justified, even if we turn out wrong, it was always justified.. .but "they" never would be, because they, of course, are not us.

[wtmusic]

46. No

and the reason is because Japan was the aggressor, and the US had a right to defend itself.

I've never tiptoed around that, and I've never so much as implied that "we" are always, or absolutely justified. So please don't put words in my mouth.

[Chulanowa]

48. Defending itself by totally incinerating Tokyo and Nagasaki and Hiroshima

after having fully routed the Japanese military in the Pacific.

By this point in the war, the intent was not defense of anything, but bloody retribution on one hand, and either totally defeating or totally estroying the japanese people in order to prevent Russia from getting access to the island's markets and resources.

I'm not putting words in your mouth; It's just that you keep coming up with new and differentexplanations as to how we are completely justified for our mass murder of civilians, but the Japanese would not be.

I think it's time to end the US fetishization of World War 2, honestly.

[wtmusic]

49. Japan could have surrendered and stopped the war in a heartbeat

but Hirohito continued, even after the firebombing of Tokyo. Personally, in 20/20 hindsight, I think Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unnecessary - but not much up until then.

Truly bloody retribution would have been annhilating Tokyo and Yokohama with atomic weapons.

[Chulanowa]

51. They tried that.

Their offer was rejected, because they didn't offer unconditional surrender - just nearly unconditional. (the sole condition they asked for was that the Emperor remain seated)

Basic of the story was, the US saw it had victory in the bag, and decided to do some cocksmacking on top of winning a bunch of new pacific provinces for the empire.

[wtmusic]

52. No, they didn't.

"Mokusatsu was employed in the morning edition of the Asahi Shinbun during World War II on July 28, 1945 to designate the attitude assumed by the government to the Potsdam Declaration. This newspaper and others had been quick to announce that the Declaration had been rejected by Japan, probably since the ultimatum (in addition to being transmitted to the Japanese government diplomatically via Swiss intermediaries) was transmitted via radio and airdropped leaflets to the Japanese public. It is questionable whether the Japanese press were acting on reliable government sources when they first announced the Declaration's rejection. Later that day in a press conference, the word was again used by the Premier Kantarō Suzuki to dismiss the Potsdam Declarations as a mere rehash of earlier rejected Allied proposals, and therefore, being of no value, would be killed off by silent contempt (mokusatsu). Suzuki's choice of the term was dictated perhaps more by the need to appease the military, which was hostile to the idea of "unconditional surrender", than to signal anything to the Allies."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mokusatsu

Any inclination of Hirohito to surrender before Nagasaki is completely conjectural - just a few weeks earlier the Allies had liberated Borneo and kamikaze attacks were still sinking American ships.

[DeltaLitProf]

53. If I'm grading this as a paper . . .

. . . you'd be at fault for relying on wikipedia as a source. What is wikipedia's source?

[Confusious]

58. This isn't a paper, this isn't a graduate course

And studies have shown that wikipedia is no worse then, and no better then, Encyclopedia Britannica or others.

As for sources, you could have looked it up, but you thought you might score an easy point.

Toland, John (2003 (1970)). The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945. New York: The Modern Library. ISBN 0-8129-6858-1.

[wtmusic]

63. Some say academics are pompous, arrogant, and self-important

I don't agree, usually.

Since you're new around here and/or have trouble distinguishing an internet discussion from a term paper, let me explain how it works: I make a claim, and if we're in dispute about that claim, I provide a source. If you still disagree, you provide a source which contradicts mine and (hopefully) is a more authoritative one. By that process we arrive at something resembling the truth.

Since you've provided nothing but a snooty gaze down from your ivory tower, I've already been overly generous in my response. But I'll go one step further - that's Wikipedia, with a capital "W". :D

[whathehell]

66. And before dropping the bomb on Hiroshima,

they were warned THREE times!

Even that, apparently wasn't enough, as they didn't surrender until after Nagasaki...According to many, that bombing saved tens of thousands of American lives, an honorable objective considering that the Japanese DID, after all, drag us into the fucking thing.

I'm sorry for the "America Is and Always Has been Guilty" crowd here, but it's simply untrue.

[dionysus]

42. technically, in "total war" as was waged at the time, it would have been legitimate. we wouldn't

have agreed, of course, but all bets were off in WW2. when you're carpet bombing an industrial center,obviously bombs are going to be exploding everywhere.

[wtmusic]

47. If the US was waging total war on Japan in WWII

we would have dropped the bomb on Tokyo and Yokohama (an idea that some favored at the time).

Would Japan have shown the same restraint if they had discovered the bomb, or would they have lain NYC to waste?

[Posteritatis]

78. Tokyo was largely flattened by that point

Nuking it would probably have been redundant.

Also, the US was concerned about making a martyr of the Emperor and turning the entirety of the Home Islands into one gigantic Iwo Jima.

[geardaddy]

82. The US also let the Japanese off fairly easily

from the War Crimes perspective in contrast to the Germans. MacArthur wanted a bulwark against the Chinese Communists.

[dionysus]

89. all i was saying was that if you were working in the war effort, you were a target, not that

we participated in "indiscriminate murder"

[Mendocino]

16. An estimated 250,000 Chinese civilians

were killed by the Japanese in retribution for Chinas involvement in the Doolittle raid.

[proteus_lives]

24. 30 million since 1932.

I have difficulty summoning-up any sympathy for WWII Japan.

[REP]

40. Unit 731, Rape of Nanking, "comfort women," Bataan Death March....

Me too

[geardaddy]

72. Bingo.

And they still teach the revisionist history in their schools that they were the victims in the war on Asia.

[wtmusic]

33. The Japanese were killing Chinese about as fast as they could

before Doolittle ever stepped into the cockpit. So I'm not sure how you know their motive was "retribution".

The Nangking Massacre

[Mendocino]

87. Well I don't "know"since I wasn't there,

I learned this in college history classes over thirty years ago. The prof was Pacific theater marine veteran.

My father was a Lt.jg on an LST.He shipped out in 1944, participating in Leyte, Balikpapan and other battles. He spent the remainder of 1945 and into 1946 after the surrender, convoying occupation troops between Japan, China and the Philippines. He spoke to several Chinese who survived, on how the slaughter in China greatly intensified as the result of the Doolittle raid.

Google- Japanese retribution Doolittle raid. That should provide more than enough sources.

[slampoet]

2. Actually in Episode NINE of The Pacific they finally get around to showing some civilians and .....

...captured Japanese Soldiers on Okinawa. Since they failed to show a single Asian face in a positive way the entire war (except for Okinawa which is the last few months of the war) i wonder what the producers are trying to say.

The film even makes a point of showing ALL shore leave in places where there are only Anglo Women are available (stateside and Austrailia). They make pains to find soldiers whose theaters of war were never in any place where they might have talked to or slept with an Asian person.

[Ex Lurker]

10. The Pacific is not fiction

the source material draws heavily from the memoir of one Eugene Sledge. Australia is where Sledge's unit went on leave. I don't know what your beef is. Would you have HBO send them somewhere else? As for there being so few Asians, virtually no Japanese soldiers surrendered until the very latter stages of the Pacific campaign, and then only a handful. The only Japanese most Marines ever saw were either 1: shooting at them or 2: dead. That's the way it was, and that's the way HBO portrays it. The HBO series portrays the experiences of a line unit of Marines. They would have known little, if anything, about incendiary raids on Tokyo, or much else beyond their immediate bubble of reality.

[Posteritatis]

25. Marines at the thin end of the wedge in the war aren't going to have contemporary views on the enemy

If you object to how the Marines were generally viewing and treating the Japanese over the course of that series, you're more or less objecting to the way things actually were. You would, of course, be right to object to that - the Pacific War was generally marked by less savagery between the combatants than the Eastern Front was, but that isn't saying a hell of a lot.

In any case, given the viewpoints and the fact that the show's trying to portray the direct experiences of a few individuals who saw a large chunk of the worst fighting of that war, I think claiming the producers are trying to drum up anti-Asian sentiment is only slightly less silly than your referring to "Asians" as a monolithic entity in the first place.

Also, the reason you aren't seeing many Japanese captives or civilians over the course of the other episodes is that there generally weren't Japanese captives or civilians in much of the rest of the island campaigns. Okinawa was Japanese home soil and heavily settled, and it was one of the only battles of the war where more than a handful of Japanese soldiers surrendered to Allied forces. There were some of both in other campaigns, but few enough in a lot of the theatres to be rather unusual.

Generally the series is showing what the Marines themselves were seeing and feeling, and the surviving Marines who took part in those campaigns were, like the airborne veterans in Band of Brothers, consulted at length over the production process.

[RamboLiberal]

30. Exactly - one of the benefits of The Pacific

Is many of the books written by and about the Marines just after WWII have been rereleased. I intend on buying a few to read.

With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa - by E.B. Sledge

In his own book, Wartime, Paul Fussell called With the Old Breed "one of the finest memoirs to emerge from any war." John Keegan referred to it in The Second World War as "one of the most arresting documents in war literature." And Studs Terkel was so fascinated with the story he interviewed its author for his book, "The Good War." What has made E.B. Sledge's memoir of his experience fighting in the South Pacific during World War II so devastatingly powerful is its sheer honest simplicity and compassion.

Now including a new introduction by Paul Fussell, With the Old Breed presents a stirring, personal account of the vitality and bravery of the Marines in the battles at Peleliu and Okinawa. Born in Mobile, Alabama in 1923 and raised on riding, hunting, fishing, and a respect for history and legendary heroes such as George Washington and Daniel Boone, Eugene Bondurant Sledge (later called "Sledgehammer" by his Marine Corps buddies) joined the Marines the year after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and from 1943 to 1946 endured the events recorded in this book. In those years, he passed, often painfully, from innocence to experience.

http://www.amazon.com/Old-Breed-At-Peleliu-Okinawa/dp/0891419063/ref=pd_sim_b_1

Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific by Robert Leckie

Here is one of the most riveting first-person accounts ever to come out of World War II. Robert Leckie enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in January 1942, shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In Helmet for My Pillow we follow his odyssey, from basic training on Parris Island, South Carolina, all the way to the raging battles in the Pacific, where some of the war’s fiercest fighting took place. Recounting his service with the 1st Marine Division and the brutal action on Guadalcanal, New Britain, and Peleliu, Leckie spares no detail of the horrors and sacrifices of war, painting an unvarnished portrait of how real warriors are made, fight, and often die in the defense of their country.

From the live-for-today rowdiness of marines on leave to the terrors of jungle warfare against an enemy determined to fight to the last man, Leckie describes what war is really like when victory can only be measured inch by bloody inch. Woven throughout are Leckie’s hard-won, eloquent, and thoroughly unsentimental meditations on the meaning of war and why we fight. Unparalleled in its immediacy and accuracy, Helmet for My Pillow will leave no reader untouched. This is a book that brings you as close to the mud, the blood, and the experience of war as it is safe to come.

http://www.amazon.com/Helmet-My-Pillow-Parris-Pacific/dp/0553593315/ref=pd_sim_b_1

[Morning Dew]

50. Leckie's Delivered From Evil is excellent.

It's a single volume history of WWII. Well worth the read at around 950 pages.

[RamboLiberal]

86. Thanks - I'll check that one out as well

Two periods of history I love reading about are WWII and the Civil War.

[Morning Dew]

90. Me too!

:)

[Confusious]

59. You have a poor grasp of history during that time, nt

[mistertrickster]

3. Correct. An oft-overlooked effect of the Allies invasion of Normandy was starvation of

thousands of French and Dutch civilians as they were caught between their liberators and the slowly retreating Nazis.

The population of entire towns was decimated.

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. Which continued to after the war, because of a lack of crops being planted during the fighting.

'45 - '46 Dutch civilians were boiling tulip bulbs for food.

[Diclotican]

62. RaleighNCDUer

RaleighNCDUer

And there is where the Marshall help, who managed to keep us europeans alive in the hard times right after world war two.. Withoutht the Marshall help, and the rebuilding of industry and city's all over the western europe right after world war two, the start to a new world, where europe had to rebuild everything from ground up would have taken a longer time than it did... Europe have a lof ot thanks for the fact that US in 1945-48 and forward was given Europe a lot of money (got as loans with no interest, and over 40-50 years to reepaid) and whole factories, industries, tractors, and so on, to rebuild what was bombed down and out.. Not to say that in my country, who was not that hurt by the war, even tho the northen parts was devestaded as the russians, and the germans have tourced everything that could posible burn.. First the russians came to bomb, then the germans blow up everything and was leaving.... And in the end ten of thousands of sivilians had to run soutward to surive, both by scare of the russians, and by force by the germans who dosen't want sivilians there to help the russians in any way... Even tho thousands survived there, in the north, and was liberated by the russians in the winter of 44-45. And by the way, the russians was leaving our country after they had trown the germans south of a line, the forces was more needed other places than there...

But yes, it was a hard life for everyone in europe after world war two, my familiy, have told a few stories about how things was in the years, maybe even a decade after the world.. And compared to many others they at least had a little farm where they could make some food, and have a pig and some chicken to have to food... But it was not a rich farm by any means.. And in any way, it was early on to got to work there.. My foster mother was 16 when she was out working first time.. And have her own "home", in a building who now are a garage for cars... My foster father, who had been out in the war was coming home, and somewhat managed to made a new life after the war.. Even tho he was not the same man as he was before the war - and never really forgot what he had shown in the war...

Diclotican

Diclotican

[whathehell]

6. But that sounds like an unintended consequence.

[mistertrickster]

21. Sure, it was unintended. But the people were just as dead. nt

[Confusious]

60. So we should have just left them in german hands? nt

[mistertrickster]

76. No, I'm just saying that the civilian deaths are ignored in the story of the war. nt

[whathehell]

64. Of course.

but I thought that the subject of this thread was death via the "intentional" slaughter of civillians.

[mistertrickster]

75. I thought it was how war stories leave the civilian deaths out, intentional or not. nt

[whathehell]

88. I don't think so...I think that would go in the "War is Hell" file.

But I think that's a meme we all know and agree with.

[Posteritatis]

26. Obligatory relevant book recommendation:

The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe, by William Hitchcock. It deals primarily with the civilian side of the last years of the war in Europe, with a particular emphasis on the Netherlands.

[tabasco]

8. They miss the slaughter of soldiers, too.

The movie "We Were Soldiers" told the story of the Battle of Ia Drang, but only the first day.

On the second day, an American battalion was decimated.

The book told the story of the whole battle and had the names of all soldiers killed listed inside the cover.

The movie deleted the bloody part of the battle and also the names of those killed after day one, when they scrolled the names at the end of the movie.

Utterly fucking disgusting and Hal Moore should be ashamed to have had any part in that movie.

[tinymontgomery]

14. I meet and had dinner with Bruce Crandall

the helo pilot nicknamed "Snake Shit". I must say he was a great and entertaining guest at my house. I asked him how close the movie was to reality and though they couldn't go though every day he did say it was pretty close to reality. So I can see how others helped out on this. Bruce received the Medal of Honor last March 09. 35 years after the fact. Say what you will but if going into combat I would want some one like Mr. Crandall to have my back.

[tabasco]

18. LOL.

Was Hal Moore leaping over machine gun nests like Mel Gibson?

LMAO.

Congrats to Mr. Crandall for his ultimate award.

[tinymontgomery]

39. Well, maybe he was

I didn't see any civilians in the movie, but I did meet one true courageous man that was there. I not sure I could have done what he was willing to do. I won't say it was to defend the country but it was to save his fellow man. And in battle that is the true test of loyalty.

[RamboLiberal]

22. Problem is in a movie like this you can't fit in all that is in the book

And until the ending where they Hollywooded it I thought We Were Soldiers did a damn fine job including showing the side of the NVA and it's general and troops.

The movie was following Hal Moore's troops - and it was brutal to the deaths and casualties they suffered. I'll never forget the Napalm scene.

If I'm remembering my reading of the book correctly the American battalion that was decimated was another unit of American troops, not Moore's unit. Since the movie was following Moore as a central point character it wouldn't have made sense to go off to the other unit.

BTW I highly recommend Moore & Galloway's follow-up book where they travel to Vietnam to meet those they fought. We Are Soldiers Still; A Journey Back to the Battlefields of Vietnam.

Starred Review. It would be a monumental task for Moore and Galloway to top their classic 1992 memoir, We Were Soldiers Once... and Young. But they come close in this sterling sequel, which tells the backstory of two of the Vietnam War's bloodiest battles (in which Moore participated as a lieutenant colonel), their first book and a 1993 ABC-TV documentary that brought them back to the battlefield. Moore's strong first-person voice reviews the basics of the November 1965 battles, part of the 34-day Battle of the Ia Drang Valley. Among other things, Moore and Galloway (who covered the battle for UPI) offer portraits of two former enemy commanders, generals Nguyen Huu An and Chu Huy Man, whom the authors met—and bonded with—nearly three decades after the battle. This book proves again that Moore is an exceptionally thoughtful, compassionate and courageous leader (he was one of a handful of army officers who studied the history of the Vietnam wars before he arrived) and a strong voice for reconciliation and for honoring the men with whom he served. 16 pages of b&w photos. (Aug. 19) ""
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved."

From Booklist
The authors of We Were Soldiers Once and Young (1992) here powerfully recount their return to the battlefields of the first book. They visited both landing zones for the deadly battle of the Ia Drang Valley and spent a night on the battlefield of Dien Bien Phu, haunted by a previous generation of ghosts of both sides and part of the experience of North Vietnamese veterans, too. The latter survivors, like their American counterparts, belong to a diminishing band, yet Moore and Galloway managed to interview some of Moore’s counterparts or their widows and children and found a curiosity about how matters looked from the other side equal to theirs. Scenery, memories, and the current state of Vietnam are all vividly depicted, but the most powerful writing comes in the epilogue’s tribute to two departed Ia Drang comrades, one a platoon commander who died saving lives on 9/11, the other career officer Moore’s wife of 55 years. If, as Moore says, there are no noble wars, there is a lot of nobility among the warriors. --Roland Green

http://www.amazon.com/We-Are-Soldiers-Still-Battlefields/dp/0061147761

[pinboy3niner]

41. Exactly--the filmmakers had to narrow the scope . . .

. . . and focusing on Moore's 1/7 and the battle for LZ X-Ray (the first half of the book) was the obvious way to do it.

The second action, at LZ Albany, occurred after Moore's 1/7 was extracted from X-Ray and involved a sister battalion (2/7). It would take another whole movie to tell that story.

Right after the "We Were Soldiers" book came out, The 1st Cav was having a reunion in D.C. over Veterans' Day, and I went there to try to find anyone who had known a friend of mine who'd been KIA in the Ia Drang during the leadup to X-Ray. I met Moore and Galloway briefly, but spent most of my time with two other X-Ray survivors--Ernie Savage, who'd inherited command of the "Lost Platoon" that was cut off outsdide Moore's perimeter, and "Doc" Lose, the platoon's medic, who was put in by the survivors for the MoH for saving so many of the Lost Platoon's severely wounded (I believe Lose was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, instead). I also found two men who were with my friend when he was killed, and I was able to put them in touch with his niece (it was the first time she had a chance to hear from men who served with her uncle and were at his side when he died).

I think Moore and Galloway's book remains the best non-fiction battle account from the Vietnam War. Credit for the exceptional writing goes mostly to Galloway, who was with Moore's battalion at X-Ray as a correspondent for UPI. (And, in a rare honor for a civilian, Galloway was awarded the Bronze Star for Valor for his role in the battle.)

Ed.: Damn typos again!

[Rex]

11. Now now, we don't want to disturb people too much.

[malaise]

15. True just in case it was going to be repeated

in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and anywhere else they choose.

[Rex]

19. Well what would happen if people watching these shows started

identifying with the people they see getting ripped to bits indiscriminately? The established order will not make the mistake they made with Vietnam - all current wars are controlled areas not open to reporters or journalists.

[htuttle]

17. The rationalization for inflicting mass civilian casualties is often 'Look what you made me do'

Nobody would argue that the civilians of Imperial Japan, or 1990's Iraq for that matter, had much say in what they were forced to do. So the blame for their deaths is usually shifted to the enemy leader in power who is giving the orders. In other word's it was Hirohito's fault the citizens of Nagasaki and Hiroshima 'had to' be killed, not ours. The deaths of civilians during the invasion and occupation of Iraq are supposed to be laid at the feet of Saddam Hussein, not us.

I'm don't buy that line of reasoning anymore. Especially after Iraq. I wonder whether more humans didn't die during the two atomic attacks on Japan than would have died had the war gone on longer. I'm quite certain that more humans died as a result of the US invasion of Iraq than would have died if Hussein had stayed in power.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

20. It's very disappointing.

I haven't been so upset since Gone With the Wind failed to accurately dramatize the battle of the Monitor vs. the Merrimack.

[tkmorris]

56. You are a flibbertigibbet

[Echo In Light]

23. Books on the subject: Operation Hollywood

Hollywood War Machine: U.S. Militarism and Popular Culture:
http://www.amazon.com/Hollywood-War-Machine-Militarism-Popular/dp/1594512981/ref=pd_sim_b_1

From a reviewer:

"The authors succeed in demonstrating how Hollywood has consistently produced movies that have overwhelmingly promoted a celebratory but uncritical perspective on U.S. military aggression, helping us understand how the American public has come to accept imperialism as a just cause and, by extension, how the decline of meaningful democratic debate about the U.S.' relationship with the world community has come about."

Hollywood, the Pentagon and Washington: The Movies and National Security from World War II to the Present Day:
http://www.amazon.com/Hollywood-Pentagon-Washington-National-Security/dp/1843311712/ref=pd_sim_b_2

Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies:
http://www.amazon.com/Operation-Hollywood-Pentagon-Shapes-Censors/dp/1591021820#noop

"We may think that the content of American movies is free from government interference, but in fact, the Pentagon has been telling filmmakers what to say-and what not to say-for decades."

Review from Mother Jones - Operation Hollywood:
How the Pentagon bullies movie producers into showing the U.S. military in the best possible light.
— By Jeff Fleischer

To keep the Pentagon happy, some Hollywood producers have been known to turn villains into heroes, remove central characters, change politically sensitive settings, or add military rescues to movies that require none. There are no bad guys in the military. No fraternization between officers and enlisted troops. No drinking or drugs. No struggles against bigotry. The military and the president can’t look bad (though the State Department and Canada can).

“The only thing Hollywood likes more than a good movie is a good deal,” David Robb explains, and that’s why the producers of films like “Top Gun,” “Stripes” and “The Great Santini” have altered their scripts to accommodate Pentagon requests. In exchange, they get inexpensive access to the military locations, vehicles, troops and gear they need to make their movies.

During his years as a journalist for Daily Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, Robb heard about a quid-pro-quo agreement between the Pentagon and Hollywood studios, and decided to investigate. He combed through thousands of Pentagon documents, and interviewed dozens of screenwriters, producers and military officials. The result is his new book, "Operation Hollywood."

Robb talked with MotherJones.com about deal-making that defines the relationship between Hollywood and the Pentagon.

MotherJones.com: How far back does collaboration between the U.S. military and Hollywood go?

David Robb: The current approval process was established right after World War II. Before that, the Pentagon used to help producers, but it wasn’t very formalized, like it is now. They helped producers going back to at least 1927. The very first movie that won an Oscar, “Wings,” -- even that got military assistance.

MJ.com: What steps does a producer take to get assistance from the military? How does the process work?

DR: The first thing you have to do is send in a request for assistance, telling them what you want pretty specifically -- ships, tanks, planes, bases, forts, submarines, troops -- and when you want this material available. Then you have to send five copies of the script to the Pentagon, and they give it to the affected service branches -- Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard. Then you wait and see if they like your script or not. If they like it, they’ll help you; if they don’t, they won’t. Almost always, they’ll make you make changes to the military depictions. And you have to make the changes that they ask for, or negotiate some kind of compromise, or you don’t get the stuff.

So then you finally get the approval, after you change your script to mollify the military, put some stuff in about how great it is to be in the military. Then when you go to shoot the film, you have to have what I call a “military minder” -- but what they call a “technical advisor” -- someone from the military on the set to make sure you shoot the film the way you agreed to. Normally in the filmmaking process, script changes are made all the time; if something isn’t working, they look at the rushes, and say, “let’s change this.” Well, if you want to change something that has to do with the military depictions, you’ve got to negotiate with them again. And they can say, “No, you can’t change it, this is the deal you agreed to.” As one of the technical advisors, Maj. David Georgi of the Army, said to me, “If they don’t do what I say, I take my toys and go away.”

After the film is completed, you have to prescreen the film for the Pentagon brass. So before it’s shown to the public, you have to show your movie to the generals and admirals, which I think any American should find objectionable -- that their movies are being prescreened by the military.

More:
http://motherjones.com/politics/2004/09/operation-hollywood

[RamboLiberal]

28. Haven't seen The Pacific though I'm reading the book

I don't have HBO so I'll wait till they release on DVD. What they are doing here is following several characters in the Marines. They are not following the Air Corp units responsible for the firebombings and then ultimately for the atomic bombs.

The book added in a Naval aviator so we could follow the pivotal carrier battles including Midway.

Marines didn't see the civilian death toll till Okinawa.

We see history told here from an American POV. I grew up in the fifties/sixties when the American effort was worshipped and there were many WWII vets we all knew including our parents & grandparents. I was into young adulthood before I even began to read and see info on the horrendous losses by the Russian people and troops. They probably are more responsible for the defeat of the Nazis than the American/British/French & other allies efforts.

It was also in the sixties that I read Hiroshima and Martin Caidin's accounts of the firebombing of Tokyo. Horrendous of course.

Some here though on DU seem to forget the brutility on all sides of WWII. The Nazis and Imperial Japan were certainly brutal to civilian populations in their paths. The Nazis bombed the civilians in England, Russia, Netherlands, Poland, France and other European countries. And I'm certain if the Japanese or the Nazis had the wherewithal they would have bombed the U.S. mainland.

I know from just my family how brutally the war touched them (there is an uncle who died in the Air Corp I never met). Every town and city lost men in the war. I found the uncle who died old HS yearbooks. The 1943-45 were heartbreaking in the number of graduates who didn't come home from the European or Pacific theater.

If you were an American soldier or family member at home at that time you would've been cheering the shortening of the war by the bombing campaigns in both Germany & Japan. That's the way it was at the time.

We are lucky in this country. Not since the Civil War have we suffered civilian casualties on our soil. Which is probably one big reason why many in this country went over the edge when 9-11 happened and in the years following.

Like Band of Brothers the HBO series The Pacific is telling the story through the eyes of individual soldiers and marines. It is not meant to tell the grand history of the war. And it is certainly telling the story through an American POV.

[Posteritatis]

29. The series is excellent, if very hard to watch at points

Of course, for a show like that it should be.

[MicaelS]

32. Once again the poor, innocent, Japanese

The Japanese were just as bad as the Nazis. But too many people weep tears for the “victims" of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and now the firebombing of Tokyo, as if the Japanese did nothing to start the war in Asia. The Chinese suffered between 20-35 million casualties during the Japanese invasion of China (1937-1945). The Japanese forced Korean women into sexual slavery as “comfort women” in field brothels where the women were forced to sexually service as many as 70 Japanese soldiers a day. In other words these women were raped 70 times a day for years on end. Everywhere the Japanese conquered, they acted like barbarians toward Allied POWS and civilians. The Japanese beat, starved, tortured and executed men and women. They used living human beings as living test subjects in their infamous biological warfare Unit 731.

My opinion has always been that if the bomb has been available 6-12 months sooner, or the war lasted 6-12 months longer, then Berlin would have been the first target. Those who now condemn the use of the atomic bombs on Japan would not have said a thing about their use on Germany. Their attitude would have been that the dirty Fascists got what they deserved. Those scientists who worked on the bomb (many of the Jewish refugees from Hitler) did not seem to develop any scruples until it was clear that Germany would no longer be the target. They knew for a fact that Berlin, and its civilians would certainly be the main target. They certainly didn’t have any concerns about German civilians being killed when Germany was the potential target.

Why don't you do some research and read about how the Chinese, Koreans, and OTHER Asians feel about what they Japanese did to them, as opposed to what happened to the Japanese?

People these days find it easy to take some moral high-ground when they are not involved in a war to the knife for the future of civilization. Hindsight is easy.

And the Japanese are still considered victims....:nopity:

[RamboLiberal]

34. Very good synopsis of the brutality of the Japanese military

I do think if the bomb had been dropped on Berlin there are those here who would decry it as well. I've seen people decry here the firebombing of Dresden & Hamburg.

The atomic bombs & the firebombs of WWII were horrible weapons but you do have to put their use in the context of the time and the war which was horrendous on a world wide scale.

To this day it is hard to wrap your mind around the brutality of the time and how much of the planet were drawn in to this war.

[Confusious]

61. One of the top NAZIs said about dresden and hamburg

"If it had gone on for a week, the war would have been over"

[BakedAtAMileHigh]

68. so we should have killed every German citizen to end the war?

Awesome.

[MicaelS]

69. If needs must, then yes.

What do think all those Jews, Poles, Gypsies murdered in the camps and so on would have said? What about the 25 million Russians killed? Or all the other people murdered and enslaved by Hitler? None of those people don't count?

Was it only German and Japanese civilians that mattered?

The Nazis were executing more people in the concentration camps in the last 18 months of the war, than they had in the first 4 1/2 years of the war, because they had perfected the mechanical means of the Holocaust. How many Jews, Poles, Gypsies, homosexuals and others might have been saved if the war in Europe had ended 6-18 months sooner?

When a country starts a war, what happens to the people of that country is their own fault, not the fault of the people they attack. Or does only apply to the modern day US, and not to the German people of that time?

[BakedAtAMileHigh]

73. Awesome!

Thanks for clearing that up for me. You are a psychopath! :)

[Confusious]

84. Didn't say that

put down the pipe, pick up a book, learn how to read.

On the other side, the Germans and the Japanese were ready to fight to the last man, woman and child. We didn't want that, and luckily, cooler heads on their side prevailed.

[Codeine]

55. +10

Revisionism for the sake of proving one's liberal bona fides is quite distasteful.

[BakedAtAMileHigh]

67. Jesus Christ, What Terrible Idiocy; Were All Those Children Guilty Too?

You are justifying civilian deaths through the actions of their military. This is foul. How about all the children killed, were they guilty too?

Your excuses for slaughter are disgusting.

[MicaelS]

70. What about the all the civilians killed by the German, Japanese

And Italians? Or don't they matter?

[BakedAtAMileHigh]

74. what the fuck does that have to do with ANYTHING?

So if their soldiers kill civilians it is OK for our soldiers to kill civilians? TOTAL FUCKING INSANITY. WE ARE LIVING ON THE PLANET OF THE APES.

[Lurks Often]

83. So what is your solution?

Here is the criteria:
1. Bombing accuracy is mediocre at best, horrendous at worst, with no guarantee of hitting within 100 yards of what you are aiming at.
2. Your enemy has put the machines & other equipment necessary to build those items needed for war in among it's civilians
3. The enemy has no interest in negotiating or surrendering and is governed by militaristic fanatics
4. The longer the war goes on, the more people on both sides will die.

I'm interested in seeing what solution you come up with.


Innocent people ALWAYS die in war and it only takes one side to make war. The human race has been killing each other since the dawn of time and sadly I don't see that changing in our lifetimes.

[mistertrickster]

77. I taught in Chongqing, China, the war time capital in the 80's to drs. who had lived through

occupation. They applauded the A bomb drops with no hesitation.

I think it's unfair of us to judge the generation that was attacked at Pearl Harbor and were fighting bitterly island by island.

No matter how we see it NOW, I'm sure we would have all been for the use of the bomb THEN. I know I would have been.

[geardaddy]

81. That is my experience.

I lived in Beijing for a year, also lived in Taiwan for four years (my ex-father-in-law lived under Japanese occupation in Taiwan) and most if not all Chinese I talked to thought the A bombs were justified.

In college, I dated a Korean-American, and until that time I was of the mind that the A bombs were bad news. Her parents lived through the Japanese occupation during WWII in Korea and she told me she was glad the Japanese were the targets.

[Hippo_Tron]

35. I've always found the notion of "rules of war" to be ridiculous

The rules are that you do everything to win (including killing civilians when it's convenient) and when you win you get to make the rules. Yes the Allies committed a great deal of atrocities during World War II. War is atrocious and the idea of "just war" is nonsense. I'm certainly glad we won as I'd hate the thought of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan running the world, but war is still horrendous.

[MicaelS]

36. General Curtis LeMay, the architect of the bombing of Japan

Always said he felt he would have tried as a War Criminal if the US had lost.

[wtmusic]

37. LeMay was wrong

He would have been shot without a trial (kind of why we were bombing Japan in the first place).

[wtmusic]

38. You don't seem like the "turn Iraq into a parking lot" type

but we both know the US could have defeated Iraq without a single American casualty - and at very little expense as well.

There is such a thing as a just war, it's not clean and it's not neat, but it's our moral obligation to do the best we can.

[Hippo_Tron]

54. If there weren't consequences to using nuclear weapons, I'm sure we would have

Again, I think the whole notion of "rules of war" and of a "just war" is a joke. Rules of war are unenforceable unless the person violating them loses, and even then the victor can try them for atrocities they didn't commit as well so really they have no incentive to play by any rules. Any restraint that the United States has used in either the Iraq or Afghanistan war in terms of killing civilians is not because we're morally committed to a "just war" but because we've somehow calculated that we need to use restraint in order to get people to like us.

What amazes me is that people act all surprised and outraged at the fact that we're detaining people indefinitely without trial or that we're targeting people with drones and killing lots of civilians in the process. This is the kind of shit that happens and has always happened when you are at war. When you are at war, you can pretty much do whatever the fuck you want in order to win the war. If people want to end these sorts of things then they need to end the war, period. We need to get over the notion that we're going to fight a "just" war on terror or fight a "just" war in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

[wtmusic]

80. We didn't nuke Iraq because of fallout?

What consequences are you referring to?

"We need to use restraint in order to get people to like us." And why would they like us? Because people anywhere in the world recognize that wanton slaughter, shooting unarmed civilians, and torturing prisoners is more "wrong" than soldiers with guns going at each other. The Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Charter, which are very real (although sometimes ignored) are just a codification of these ideas which go back to the Old Testament.

Laws which are not always enforceable are not rendered worthless because of it.

[kgnu_fan]

43. ALL WAR sacrifices civilians - Then and Now and forever

Study true history of domination and greed that cause a project called "War", and we will truly see its methods. If we are truly living in the "democratic" society, we would have known the truth, we would have abolished all war long time ago....

That is why "history" is hidden and NOT taught well in the most brutal imperial countries, including USA. We have been taught a lot of "military speak" and propaganda of "Just War". We have believed them.

[MellowDem]

79. The world isn't a democracy...

so it's hard to abolish all war when you have militaristic dictators who could give a shit about some democratic society's striving for world peace. However, wars between democracies are much rarer and conventional warfare between nations is practically extinct, even if internal struggles continue. You can thank nuclear weapons for some of that and the spread of democracy to many countries as well.

[Old Troop]

44. My father, a WWII infantryman in the Pacific, almost never spoke

of what he had seen or done. He talked of great times in Australia before he went to New Guinea and of the monkey he had for awhile. It was only after his death that I read his letters home and saw the pictures he took. One picture showed the torso of a Japanese soldier -- the bottom half was missing. The reverse of the pic said "another GOOD Jap". He described in a letter the reduction of Ft drum n Manila harbor. Fleet fuelers pumped diesel into an opening and then set it afire. My father wrote that you could hear the screams all over Manila Bay. At the time he wrote the letter he didn't seem the least bit disturbed. After the war he was the gentlest and most caring man you could imagine. At his funeral, I kept being told what a good and decent man he was. As a combat infantry veteran myself, I can tell you that what you are at war and what you are at home can be very different.

[Confusious]

57. Don't feel sorry at all

nanking: bataan: wake island: prisoner camps

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre

[neverforget]

65. Of all the people killed in WW2, 58% were Allied civilians, 4% Axis civilians,

25% Allied military and 13% Axis military. The Allies, specifically the Chinese and Soviets, suffered far more casualties than the Japanese and Germans did.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

[MrScorpio]

71. Slaughterhouse Five was the exception, not the rule. nt

[spin]

85. Japanese war crimes ...

The historian Chalmers Johnson has written that:

It may be pointless to try to establish which World War Two Axis aggressor, Germany or Japan, was the more brutal to the peoples it victimised. The Germans killed six million Jews and 20 million Russians ; the Japanese slaughtered as many as 30 million Filipinos, Malays, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Indonesians and Burmese, at least 23 million of them ethnic Chinese. Both nations looted the countries they conquered on a monumental scale, though Japan plundered more, over a longer period, than the Nazis. Both conquerors enslaved millions and exploited them as forced labourers—and, in the case of the Japanese, as prostitutes for front-line troops. If you were a Nazi prisoner of war from Britain, America, Australia, New Zealand or Canada (but not Russia) you faced a 4% chance of not surviving the war; the death rate for Allied POWs held by the Japanese was nearly 30%.<23>

***snip***

R. J. Rummel, a professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, states that between 1937 and 1945, the Japanese military murdered from nearly 3,000,000 to over 10,000,000 people, most likely 6,000,000 Chinese, Indonesians, Koreans, Filipinos, and Indochinese, among others, including Western prisoners of war. "This democide was due to a morally bankrupt political and military strategy, military expediency and custom, and national culture."<28> According to Rummel, in China alone, during 1937-45, approximately 3.9 million Chinese were killed, mostly civilians, as a direct result of the Japanese operations and 10.2 millions in the course of the war.<29> The most infamous incident during this period was the Nanking Massacre of 1937-38, when, according to the findings of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the Japanese Army massacred as many as 300,000 civilians and prisoners of war, although the accepted figure is somewhere in the hundreds of thousands.<30> A similar crime was the Changjiao massacre. In Southeast Asia, the Manila massacre, resulted in the deaths of 100,000 civilians in the Philippines and in the Sook Ching massacre, between 25,000 and 50,000 ethnic Chinese in Singapore were taken to beaches and massacred. There were numerous other massacres of civilians e.g. the Kalagong massacre.

Historian Mitsuyoshi Himeta reports that a "Three Alls Policy" (Sankō Sakusen) was implemented in China from 1942 to 1945 and was in itself responsible for the deaths of "more than 2.7 million" Chinese civilians. This scorched earth strategy, sanctioned by Hirohito himself, directed Japanese forces to "Kill All, Burn All, and Loot All."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes

The Japanese suffered in WWII but their the actions of their government and soldiers were far from laudatory.

Karma is a bitch.

[JCMach1]

91. +1