The truth can be a paintul thing. Individual initiative and fate not well executed and thoughtful plans,saved the day in WWII and elsewhere at an astounding rate - D Day is a frightening example.
Excellent read.

Actually, there were, even in those days, plenty of people who did not see any reason for going to war with Japan. Check out the study of Theodore Geisel's editorial cartoons in the book "Dr Suess Goes to War" by Richard H Minear. IIRC, even as late as April, 1942, there were letters to the editor questioning the war effort, and Geisel's cartoons addressed that reluctance.

The US military is one of the world's largest socialist organizations,

Who can be surprised by their serial fuck-ups?

I was eight on Dec. 7th, 1941. We clustered around the RCA radio in our house and listened to the news. My two brothers (ages 12 and 5) and I didn't exactly know what it all meant. But we knew it was serious and our lives were going to change. In our small village of 700 people all able bodied men under 30 left to join up. Our father left to help build the Sand Point Naval Station in Idaho and later to build the Kaiser steel mill in Salt lake City. That lead eventually to our parents' divorce.

We lived in a small mountain town where air crews in training at Lowry Air Force base would come for R&R. Mostly they road horse back and drank (actually quite a lot) at the local bar. The last ones we saw were headed for Saipan and Tinian to fly B-29s over Japan.

We collected scrap paper, cardboard, tin foil, cans, rubber bands, bacon grease, and every bit of scrap metal we could find laying around anywhere. Every week or two a truck would haul our collection efforts away to Denver, which at that time was a six hour drive away.

Our only news was on the radio and at the weekend movie where they ran a movietone news on the war effort. Gasoline, tires, meat, butter, and many other things were rationed. Few complained. Most everybody pitched in. My brothers and I knew that if the war lasted long enough, we would be leaving for the military. There was never any question about it in our minds, It was what you did.

I remember VJ Day. We all cheered. People danced in the streets. Cars honked their horns all day long. There was a tremendous sense of jubilation.

It was a different sort of childhood than one has today, but I treasure the lessons I learned and miss the spirit of cooperation and pulling together that is sadly lacking in our world today.

Jimmy - Exact same story 2,000 miles east in central IN, except my Dad came by where another kid and I were playing and told us about it. I was 10 at the time. Probably the same all over the country, except perhaps for certain parts of NYC.

I believe that I along with almost every other American citizen am a sheep. I need the dogs to keep me safe from harm by the wolves who are abroad in the world. I don't think I want to know what the dogs do. Really I don't - because if I did I would need to consider more deeply what it means to be a loving human being.

I don't know if there is a good, reasonable answer to war reporting. Do we wish to win or do we wish to lose or do we wish to just draw it out into a long conflict. Those seem to be the answers.

I would rather win, let the strong who are called to defend me do so with all their courage, strength, and might.

When they have won, I will ask for forgiveness from my God for them and for me.

Just as a for instance, there were several significant (four) naval battles off Guadalcanal in 1942 (two of which the US Navy got beaten badly), and the details of those battles were a long time coming to public knowledge. One battle was something of a tactical defeat but a strategic victory (we drove off the large Japanese surface force). Even the Japanese were not sure of all the outcomes of these battles, and publishing the details would actually aid the enemy. The US Navy actually lost more men at sea off Guadalcanal than the Marines and Army lost on the ground on that island.

Yes, military history of all nations is full of screw ups. There were a lot by the US Army, Army Air Force, US Navy and Marines in WWII, and only later after the war was won has history and scholarship revealed some of the worst mistakes, mistakes that cost a lot of lives.

Yet, our enemies did much worse, and even their own leadership refused to believe the true intelligence that their own people told them. The Germans, Japanese, and Russians all made COLOSSAL mistakes in WWII, which literally cost millions of lives. War is full of tragedy and waste.

Most of the young men in my father's high school class all went to war in 1942. Some of them never came home. I wonder how today's teenagers would grasp that grim fact?

WWII was a "great" victory. My father told me how disillusioned he was after he came home at the end of the war. A lot of vets were; they had seen great efforts, losses of friends and lot more. And then the peace seemed bungled in many ways, from the view of veterans who had served. There was a phrase that some of the soldiers in "Band of Brothers" used for what they hoped for after the war for America; kind as Christ and stronger than Hell. So there would not be another war like that one again.

War is a terrible thing. It's best to always remember that.

What an exhausting screed. Sandlin evidently can't make up his mind on how he feels about the Allies winning WWII.

The reason for that, as has been pointed out already in this thread, is that he's too young to understand what it means to have enemies: a Baby Boomer weaned on the Cultural Marxist confusion. I presume he's in his 60's, but it's apparent he's unlikely to grow up.

Exactly, Rob. I made it almost all the way through, and then he decided that the atom bomb was a line too far, after we had already burned Tokyo to the ground and killed more people in that raid.

"They soon invented a ritual to be performed as soon as they were fitted with their new uniforms. They'd rush out to photographers' studios and document the occasion for their proud families. The mantels and nightstands of America were strewn with these relics -- soldiers posed with quiet dignity against a studio backdrop, half turning to face the camera with an expression both grave and proud." --Taylor

I have one of these--not a photo, but a chalk rendering on a metal plate, carefully preserved--of my great-uncle John Simpkins (1920-2000). Soft-faced, but steely-eyed. The eyes are identical to those of the man I knew much later--a black man who served in a segregated armed forces of that day.

It is one of my greatest treasures.

I grew up in a house with one of those, Baldi - the only image I was allowed of the father I never knew.

Somehow his essential sweetness came through, even in the tinted portrait of a 26-year-old private. I never saw a picture of him angry, even in the photos I finally found in my mother's trunk when she passed 50 years later.

The true story of the First Wave at Omaha Beach.

The story that is never, ever told:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1960/11/first-wave-at-omaha-beach/303365/

Here's a good PDF: "Thank God for the Atomic Bomb"

http://crossroads.alexanderpiela.com/files/Fussell_Thank_God_AB.pdf

A strictly military view of the planning of "Operation Downfall" i.e. The invasion and conquest of Japan which would have cost literally tens of millions of lives, close to a million of which would have been Allied lives.

http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/MacArthur%20Reports/MacArthur%20V1/ch13.htm

Also, anyone who wants to know about widespread Soviet influences in our own government, up to and including probable Soviet agent Harry Hopkins' profound influence on our sainted FDR (may they both burn in hell and be ass-raped by Muhammad throughout eternity), and how we sold our souls to Stalin should buy and read Diana West's wonderful book, "American Betrayal" and watch her u-tube videos.

I dare you to watch her videos and not come away with an entirely new perspective on WWII.

Charles Lindbergh speech, September 11, 1941

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54ozdotStW8