Talk:Battle of Okinawa

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Battle of Okinawa article.
Article policies
This article is within the scope of the following WikiProjects:

Battle of Okinawa was featured on the United States Marine Corps portal as the Selected article.
(1 May 2007 - 1 June 2007)

Contents

[edit] MediaWiki anniversary event

An event in this article is a April 1 selected anniversary (may be in HTML comment).

[edit] Deleted POV statement

I just deleted:

", which never happened due to the controversial decision to use the atomic bomb."

Can we really say this for sure? -- Taku 06:39, Nov 3, 2003 (UTC)

That's the way I always heard it. I used to work with a guy who said the bomb saved his life - he was assigned to the force being prepared to invade Kyushu, which was expected to incur massive casualties. Stan 06:56, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)
But I have heared different from Japanese. I think it is POV to state that as if it were true. -- Taku 07:28, Nov 3, 2003 (UTC)
Even if the Japanese disagree, that's only their POV. The alternatives to invading the bigger islands were dropping the bomb or surrendering. The latter would only be considered after American forces suffered signifcantly more casualties (in other words, after another invasion.) -- M4v3rik 15:25, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)
it could also be called only American POV to state that it was the dropping of the bomb which resulted in surrender, and there are documents and witnesses who say otherwise, and that the Japanese had already offered surrender at least three times before the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima.
On the contary. Without taking a stand on the extremely complex isssues entailed in the decision to drop an atomic bomb on Japan, the fact is that the Japanese War Cabinet refused steadfastly to entertain any notion of surrender, even after being told about the extraordinarily powerful American weapon. Japanese military code of honor, which was one of the strongest in the world, refused to allow such talk, even when the Emperor himself advised in its favor at Cabinet meetings. The Emperor was more concerned with the quality of life of his subjects, while the military acted in accordance with its ancient Honor Code. Even after the atomic bombs were both dropped, the Cabinet did not want to surrender. It was only with the extraordinary broadcast of the Emperor's own voice in Japanese radio, that the decision to surrender to the Allies was rendered palatable. Again, I am not taking any stand on the decision to deploy nuclear weapons against hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. But the facts regarding the Japanese military establishment, here described briefly, surely played a role in Truman's decision. 66.108.4.183 12:56, 9 August 2006 (UTC) Allen Roth

[edit] Buckner

At the end it says that "[Buckner] was the highest ranking American to die during the war." Is that true? Leslie J. McNair was also a lieutenant general; was he junior to Buckner? —wwoods And near the beginning it says "At the very end of the campaign, Buckner was killed by ricocheting shell fragments, becoming one of the most senior US casualties in the entire war." So was he the highest ranking death? Needs to be clarified.

The article is correct in stating that he was the highest ranking American officer killed by enemy fire. General Malin Craig died of natural causes; Lieutenant General Leslie J. McNair was killed by "friendly fire" from American aircraft, and is therefore considered to be the most senior officer killed in action; and Lieutenant General Frank Maxwell Andrews was killed in a plane crash. All were senior to Buckner, but did not die as a result of enemy fire. Hawkeye7 22:16, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Size/detail of article

It's surprising that this is such a short article, considering its historical significance. In particular, I think there should be more on the naval operations, which were epic and attracted a massive wave of kamikaze attacks.Grant65 (Talk) 08:30, May 14, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Naval Operations

I agree with the above - what about the huge naval battle, including the involvement of the British_Pacific_Fleet? SpinnakerMagic July 27 2005

I also agree that there should be more on the naval operations.Brendenhull 13:38, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Civilian casualties

I changed the deaths from 100,000 to 150,000 which is what i have heard repeated in the past in media. I have an academic source below.. what do folk think/does any one have the books for first-hand info? [1] -max rspct 17:33, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Speaking of civilian casualties, why does it say "76,000+ soldiers killed and 27,000 civilians killed, 7,455 surrendered/captured (2,300 Japanese), 150,000+ civilians killed" in the chart under Japanese casualties? --Steven 5:17, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

The current figures do seem rather confused. John Keegan gives the following figures in The Second World War (ISBN 0-7126-7384-2):

  • Japanese:
    • 70,000-160,000 civilians died
    • 7,400 troops captured
    • 110,000 troops died
    • 16 ships lost
    • 7,800 aircraft lost
  • American:
    • 4000 died from army divisions
    • 2938 died from Marine Corps
    • 763 aircraft lost
    • 38 ships lost

-- Ewx

Okay, I changed the table using the above information. But I'm missing the date for the reference -- Steven 00:38, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

I have another book Okinawa 1945- The last Battle of Osprey is well detailed and have more accurate info about the casualties sustained and the Kamikaze attacks in the battle.

I will finish reading it and add the information i have just talked. If you have another book tell me. Miguel

[edit] Citation and POV concerns

Where are the quotes in the "Quotes" section from? Did I miss the citation completely? Also, this article feels a little POV to me, biased in favor of the Americans. Very little is mentioned about the effect of the battle on the land and people of Okinawa and other Ryukyu Islands. Turly-burly 04:29, 3 March 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Naval Warfare and the Yamato

I draw your attention to this section:

"Shortly before the battle, the Japanese battleship Yamato was sunk, by American aircraft, on her trip to Okinawa in the disastrous Operation Ten-Go. The Japanese had a plan to beach Yamato on Okinawa's shore, and to use her as a land battery. Widespread rumors that the ship was only given enough fuel for a one-way trip are false; Feifer debunks this (references)."

That portion is in the section labeled "before April 1st". However, the Yamato was launched on April 6th and sunk on April 7th. In addition, the mention of fuel is misleading... Feifer actually tells less simple story. (the following is from memory, but its recent memory) Those fueling the Yamato were given orders to only give the Yamato fuel for a one-way trip. However, hesisant to secure a death sentence for the largest warship ever built, the fuelers frantically searched all of Kure for fuel, finally managing to get enough fuel from various sources for a return trip for the Yamato. As there is no section on naval warfare, and thus nowhere to place a revised version of the above portion, I am deleting it. Branman515 23:58, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dates of Battle

The dates of Battle (per GlobalSecurity.org):

  • Beginning: "The invasion began on 01 April 1945 when 60,000 troops (two Marine and two Army divisions) landed with little opposition."
  • Ending: "The so called "mopping up" fighting between 23 and 29 June ..."
  • Signing: "The document ending the Battle of Okinawa was signed on what is now Kadena Air Base on 07 September 1945."

This information is the basis for a revert of a change of dates to March 23 and June 23. —ERcheck @ 14:37, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually, it was hoped the Yamato could smash it's way through the US fleet's defenses in combination with support from kamikazes and destroy the US carriers before they could escape.

[edit] Sakishima

Does "Sakishima Gunto" refer to the Sakishima Islands?

[edit] "symbolic"?

"the bombs were a powerful symbolic display of American power", in the penultimate paragraph, ignores the fact that if we took the time to build more bombs we could have done vastly more damage than we did (if that is possible), at relatively little cost and very few American casualties. it was only sensible for the Japanese to correctly assume this. David R. Ingham 06:13, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] British Involment and What Ships?

The article does not mention the involment of the British Carrier Force TF-57, and the complex causalties section is gone!!! To made things worse the article itself is not good, it lack of important details considering such a important battle. --Unknown Author.

I have heard that 40 carriers (including 4 from Great Britain and her commonwealth) and 18 battleships were present. If this is so, surely this puts Okinawa as the largest amphibious assault ever. There must be a list of ships somewhere? --Unknown Author

I can't find a page on Wikipedia that lists all of the ships that took part in the invasion. British Pacific Fleet lists the ships from Great Britain and Commonwealth that took part in the overall compaign. http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/battles_okinawa1.html#usnavy gives some information on size of the naval forces present. --Ambulnick (talk) 11:58, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Comment in the article

The following comment was placed in the article. I have moved it to the talk page.

"JaimeHistory Note: A Japanese Army Division in 1945 typically consisted of about 10,000 men. Thus, the above reference to a 100,000 stong 32nd Army consisting of only 3 divisions and 1 independent brigade does not add up. There must have been many other units."

I make no claim as to the validity or invalidity of this comment whatsoever; but it did not belong in the article in its present form. A knowledgeable editor should evaluate it and proceed from there. Nimur 17:24, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] In the Aftermath section

"Other Okinawans were murdered by Japanese to prevent their capture or to steal their food and supplies. Ironically, this was also the first (and only) battle in the war in which the Japanese surrendered by the thousands. And they got horny"

Huh? This is definitely a mistake right? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.167.111.153 (talk • contribs) 2007-03-26T07:07:50 (UTC)

[edit] Japanese 32nd Army

According to historian Antoni Wolny (in his Okinawa, 1945, can be found here in Russian http://militera.lib.ru/h/wolny/index.html), the japanese regulars on the island consisted of 80 thousand men, armed with 27 tanks, 250 aircraft, 400 motor boats with kamikazes, 287 field guns, 126 mortars, 110 anti-tank guns, 223 anti-aircraft guns and 1541 machineguns (medium and heavy). Those forces were to be supported by 4265 aircraft, a battleship, a cruiser and 8 destroyers. With respect, Ko Soi IX 06:02, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Japanese diehards

Weren't there thousands of Japanese who continued to hold out in the tunnels, many were buried alive, and actually hundreds surrendered only after the war ended? --HanzoHattori 10:18, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

On a similar note, something like half of the Japanese prisoners from Okinawa were actually from an auxiliary force of some 20,000 civilian militiamen, not IJA regulars. With that in mind and looking at the numbers from various battles, the only reason there were a relatively large number of Japanese prisoners at Okinawa was because we faced a large Japanese force which would logically result in more prisoners rather than any breakdown in their military discipline. Kensai Max 06:15, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cultural objects missing from Okinawa

A lingering issue with the battle is that the Marines and GIs involved sometimes took as souvenirs cultural objects that, strictly speaking, were taken in violation of international law. (International law permits combattants to take war trophies such as flags and weapons but not personal property.) Given the intensity of the battle one can understand how such mistakes were made. Several years ago it was discovered that the Marine Corps Museum had a ceramic object that turned out to be an ancient burial urn and it was returned to Okinawa.

But since Okinawa cultural history predating its 19th century absorption by Japan was basically devastated by the battle and the decision of the Japanese military to make the site of Shuri castle a major defensive position, the loss of these objects is a continuing concern to the native Okinawans. The Okinawa crown jewels are one of the missing objects.

I suggest working into the article a mention of this issue and that fact that some veterans have voluntarily returned objects other than war trophies to the Okinawa government. However, this is a sensitive issue with some veterans and I am not sure how to say this without offending some.

[edit] Misuse of the term "Pyhrric" victory

Okinawa was not Pyhrric. It was extremely costly but in terms of casualties, the Americans losses were far lower absolutely and relatively to the Japanese ones. A Pyhrric victory cripples the victory's warmaking capacity--the reverse was true. The Americans, however, lacked the *will* to force another such bloodbath. I think this should be relabeled "costly" Allied victory, not "Pyhrric." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.242.22.77 (talk) 05:11, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Right, not a Pyrrhic victory. Wrong about American will to fight. Binksternet 06:50, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. I would go further and say that the Americans, far from lacking the will for another bloodbath, were willing to accept one. Hawkeye7 11:08, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

The Allies were deadly serious about invading Japan after Okinawa - the Allied leadership was willing to accept high casualties if Japan didn't surrender after the atomic bombs. --Nick Dowling 23:48, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Taking 70,000+ trained American soldiers and sailors out of action (KIA/WIA/MIA) to eliminate a comparably-sized enemy garrison that could have been bypassed sounds pretty pyrrhic to me - Okinawa was certainly more costly to the United States in terms of men and materiel than it was to Japan and more importantly delayed the Allied advance by some two months from the original timetable, giving the Japanese precious time to prepare for an invasion of the Home Islands. How many American lives would those two months have meant had we launched Operation Downfall instead of just nuking Japan? More than lives, the result of the battle itself was far from certain - the Olympic landings could have easily been one of the bloodiest disasters in military history. That's the real question as to whether we had un-done ourselves by winning on Okinawa. Kensai Max 20:41, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

The objective of the campaign was not to destroy the Japanese garrison but to establish an air and naval base close to Japan from which operations against the Japanese home islands could be supported. In this, the value of Okinawa exceeded all hope. The alternatives, the invasion of Formosa or the establishment of an enclave on Chinese mainland, were considered long and hard and ultimately rejected as being more costly. The campaign on Okinawa cost the Japanese more men and material than the Allies. The outcome was never in doubt. The Japanese had no means of reinforcing their garrison; while the Americans could always reinforce. Therefore, it was only a matter of time before the Japanese garrison was destroyed; the only issue was how much the Japanese garrison could extract in payment for the islands. The Allies remained committed to invading Japan, and again the outcome would never have been in doubt. Hawkeye7 03:21, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Spoken like Douglas MacArthur himself. That's the kind of bravado that would have killed a million Americans on Kyushu and Honshu and led to articles on Wikipedia on the present state of the Imperial Japanese military. 128.153.211.154 16:28, 9 November 2007 (UTC) (Kensai Max here)

[edit] Estimates of Civilian Casualties

It seems that the extremely wide ranges given for estimates of civilian casualties needs some substantiation if this article is to truly be useful on the subject. Given that the civilian casualties are estimated to be almost thirty times the U.S. military casualties, one has to wonder what the situation was that generated so many deaths (it's just not really addressed in the article, as written). 76.103.155.148 02:11, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] References cleanup

Some of the sections in this article aren't as well-referenced as other sections are, and there's at least one parenthetical citation. --健次(derumi)talk 16:34, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Buckner

From my readings there seems to be some controversy over Buckner's service in Okinawa. It appears that many of his subordinates during the Battle of Okinawa felt Buckner was not fit to command, and that excessive causalities on both sides resulted. Surprisingly, in his memoirs, General Douglas MacArthur also stated the same about other battles as U.S. forces moved toward Okinawa and Japan. Has anyone analyzed the end of the Pacific War from this perspective?

Note: there was also a eugenics program in Japan that targeted individuals with inferior genetics. This may be important if we take a closer look at the fact that the genocide that took place in Okinawa cleared out the poorest of the Okinawans. Coincidence? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.2.138.203 (talk) 07:59, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Regarding the recent Atrocity additions

"... to believe that U.S. soldiers were barbarians who committed horrible atrocities (such as the U.S. practice of mutilating the dead), killed their families and themselves to avoid capture."

The above sentence doesn't seem to follow any sort of sense. "(such as the U.S. practice of mutilating the dead)" appears to have been added in, rather arbitrarily, in an attempt to make the article less favorable to an American POV. But one can only guess as to why families would kill themselves because Americans would... mutilate their dead bodies.

Also, I'm having difficulty finding any sources for the supposed mass rape of the Okinawan population by American soldiers, outside of that single citation. One would think that 10,000 women raped, by American forces, would have press widely and readily accessible. I'm also having difficulty finding sources (aside from the same single citation) for the "general practice" of rape against Japanese women by American forces. Perhaps I'm simply looking in the wrong places but, if so, this is certainly a well-kept secret. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.121.178.166 (talk) 09:16, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, if you'd read the article in question you'd have seen the following sentence: Hoyt in "Japan’s war: the great Pacific conflict" argues that the allied practice of mutilating the Japanese dead and taking pieces of them home was exploited by Japanese propaganda very effectively, and "contributed to a preference to death over surrender and occupation, shown, for example, in the mass civilian suicides on Saipan and Okinawa after the Allied landings". Personally I don't find it at all difficult to imagine that if you have an enemy where this is "picture of the week" in one of the largest periodicals, a Congressman gives his president a letter-opener carved out of human bone etc, it would be quite easy for the local Japanese press to convince the population that the enemy was completely barbaric, perhaps leading the civilians to believe that it would be better to die by their own hand rather than wait for the enemy to kill them his way. Certainly Japanese conscripts had little hope for survival[2],[3]
As for the rapes, the source (A HNET review of a book by Peter Schrijvers) seems reliable to me (who inserted it). Other historians who have investigated American rapes of Japanese are Yuki Tanaka and John Dower. You can also check Joanna Bourke, An Intimate history of Killing, London, Granta Books, 1999, p. 354.
The rapes are no secret, it's rather that people probably prefer to read sanitized fairytales about the greatest generation such as those penned by Stephen Ambrose. There's no profit in writing about the darker side of war, and can be bad for the career. There are many myths that people don't want shattered. [4], [5], [6], [7],[8], [9], [10], [11]
The history of American rapes in Europe was not even possible to publish in the U.S.(Taken by Force by J. Robert Lilly). But I suppose that as the last veterans die off there will be less need to protect their image, and more historians will start investigating such topics. Cheers--Stor stark7 Talk 23:01, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

It's lucky that Sweden wasn't subjected to the terror of American rape and occupation, isn't it? After all, neutrality allowed the Swedes to get rich supplying the Reich with raw materials right up until 1945. It's so much nicer to sit on the sidelines and pontificate afterward rather than getting involved in the ugliness that is war.169.253.4.21 (talk) 22:16, 29 April 2008 (UTC)TexxasFinn

Dear TexxasFinn, I do not understand your comment. Yes, I'm glad women and girls in Sweden were spared the fate of being subjected to rapists. Surely you must agree? In fact it was very close that the Allied invasion plans would have made Sweden into a battle-field: Sweden_during_World_War_II#Potential_Allied_invasion. You seem to have a few misconceptions here, that perhaps I can cure. Sweden did not "get rich" during the war. All it did was keep its industry intact. In fact, after the war, when the U.S. shut down the German industry the Swedish economy was as harmed as everybody else's in Europe was through loosing its main and key trading partner.[12],[13] I'm glad the Americans thanks to the Communists changed their mind after a few years. Lets hope not too many starved to death in Europe because of it. It was by in the 50's and 60's being able to supply products and materials that were needed to rebuild Germany and the rest of Europe that Sweden (temporarily) got rich. Also, you seem to imply that Sweden should have joined the Allies? Why? True, we bowed to whoever were strongest, when the Germans were winning we aided the Germans, but when the Allies were winning we aided the Allies. We traded with all, and spied for the Allies. After the war we extradited Baltic refugees to the nice Allie from the East, to be shot immediately or if lucky sent to Gulag. But again why should we have joined the Allies? As far as we could tell it was a resource war, Japan needed resources, primarily oil, the U.S. and the European countries were in control of that oil through their forces of occupation/colonial troops. Hell, after the war the Dutch even spent half of their Marshall plan aid on troops to try to reconquer Indonesia with it oilfields. Why should Sweden side with such Imperialists? True, in Europe the Nazis were began killing the Jews on a massive scale during the war, so perhaps morally we should have done more. But how much of that was known? Before the war even the U.S. refused Jewish refugees, so who would have expected such crimes? As far as Sweden was concerned I expect it was seen as just another imperialist war for access to oil, other resources and trading markets. Personally I think the way for the Germans to win without a war would have been to seed the Allied occupied/colonized territories with arms for the liberation movements, i.e most of Africa, the Pacific, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, India etc and then sit back and see its enemies bleed to death trying to keep their Empires. But that's just my theory. The only thing Sweden did wrong was not helping Finland. But then the Swedish socialists had dismantled the armed forces prior to the war. Our mobile infantry used bikes...Our airforce consisted of some Italian models that had a tendency to loose their wings when in flight...--Stor stark7 Speak 14:41, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

The part about rape is ridiculously biased. The 10,000 figure and the quote about the prevalence of rape are attributed to a single unnamed "academic." And it doesn't mention the fact that there are no official records of mass rape. To make it NPOV it should mention that there is no offical record but there is anecdotally evidence of the occurrence of rape supported by the story of the three marines. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Boombastastic (talk • contribs) 14:04, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Really?!? If you'd read the NYT article, you'd know that "One possible explanation for why the United States military says it has no record of any rapes is that few if any Okinawan women reported being attacked out of fear and embarrassment, and that those who did were ignored by the United States military police, the historians said. Moreover, there has never been a large-scale effort to determine the real extent of such crimes." It would not simply be enough to state just a lack of records. But, if you'd bothered to read the book pages available you'd never even made this comment. By the way, I don't know if he did the original research, but if you'd checked the references used in the article you'd see that it is attributed to Peter Schrijvers[14] in "The GI War against Japan: American Soldiers in Asia and the Pacific during World War II".[15]--Stor stark7 Speak 14:21, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
It'd be fine with me if you want to add a sentence explaining why there might be a lack of records. And I did read those pages before I made the edit and it also states that there are no official records. The new paragraph is more NPOV. It states that there are no official records but there are many stories that rape may have happened and even gives an example of one such story. Boombastastic (talk) 16:10, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
I've done so, and I've also reinserted some of the surreptitiously deleted information. If you are unhappy with the topic of the included information, please find sources contradicting it and insert them, do not simply delete or change the contents of sourced information.--Stor stark7 Speak 17:03, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
I know the 10,000 figure comes from Peter Schrijvers book but he credits the claim to "one Okinawan historian" who is unnamed and unreferenced. It's unreliable. I haven't found any other estimates of how many rapes occured and 10,000 is a pretty large number to put up from an unreliable source. Boombastastic (talk) 17:14, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
It is only you who says that the number is unreliable. Peter Schrijvers aparently does not think it is unreliable, and that is the way Wikipedia works, we use the facts and analysis that scholars have made. We are not allowed to make judgements. Schrijvers judgement is as follows ""The estimate of one Okinawan historian for the entire three-month period of the campaign exceeds 10,000. A figure that does not seem unlikely when one realizes that during the first 10 days of the occupation of Japan there were 1,336 reported cases of rape of Japanese women by American soldiers in Kanagawa prefecture alone" (p. 212)." So he analyzes the analysis, and comes to the conclusion that it is sound. Also, it is not only Schrijvers who notes the 10,000 estimate, the NYT also uses the 10,000 victims number. If you really insist I think I can dig up the name of the historian, but quite frankly I don't see the relevance wasting my time that way.--Stor stark7 Speak 17:32, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Frankly, Stor stark7, it might be more useful if the text for this article was completely scrapped and purged of all of the speculation and thinly-veiled commentary and unverified single-source-originated fact claims in order for the article to be completely started over from scratch. I am 198.252.8.202, and it was not until now that I realized for the first time just how much of an emotional investment you have made in this article. I would really like to work with you, along with anyone else, in improving this article-not work against you-and with your cooperation, I am confident that we can all work together to achieve this common purpose. However, what I am reading on this page, in combination with your selection of source material, leads me to believe that we immediately face two major concerns.

First, the ability to cite a single source which makes a unique claim as to fact does not in any way mean that therefore you have now proven that the "fact" is true, and that now it is justified to include this new "fact" in a serious encyclopedia article. All fact claims must be verified from multiple sources (preferably 3 to 5 sources, depending on the situation, although this is not always possible) in order to warrant inclusion in an encyclopedia entry. If I bought a book, and the book also contained footnotes and a bibliography, can you understand how unacceptable it would be if each claim as to fact throughout the book only had one source in order to back the claim up with some kind of verification? In all honesty, you need to understand that single-source verification is unacceptable if you are going to write a high-quality article for any encyclopedia.

Second, please remind yourself from time to time that not one of us "owns" any Wikipedia entry, or any part of any article, for that matter-I don't mean to offend you or anyone else by making this statement, and I understand that you have somewhere around three years of experience here. I have patiently read all of the notes that you have entered in regard to this page, and I have even followed a few of the reference links which you have so graciously provided (thank you for being so conscientious as to share all of these links which you have collected for our benefit), but when I read all of this material, not only did I become concerned with your editorial attitude toward this project even more, it has now become apparent that you have introduced several more problems into this article which did not exist before, which I will address to everyone's attention here. I do not, as you said above, surreptitiously delete information, but I will not tolerate POV corruption of any article, no matter how accidental it is, and I will not automatically assume that anyone who biases an article in any direction is doing so deliberately, because unconscious decisions to tilt an article away from NPOV really do get made.

(1) I also have read the work of author Edwin P. Hoyt in the past, but I hope you understand that, while he does work with original documents, Hoyt does not do much, if any, original research because, instead of being a professional historian, Hoyt is a writer of popular military history (among other things) who has deliberately sought out the general public as his intended target audience, as opposed to being a writer of monographs intended for reading by other professional historians. I raise this issue because you may have misunderstood his reference to the small number of Japanese who were willing to surrender on Saipan and Okinawa. General history authors (that is, those authors who intend to write history for the general audience) advance opinions-they do not engage in technical historical data analysis.

I am afraid that you have not taken into account alternate causes for why so few Japanese surrendered. When did you take into account the military code of bushido (or, for that matter, the mores of Japanese society, which would have determined how civilians would have treated any veteran who had surrendered to the Allies upon their return), the intended purpose of which is to make surrender nearly impossible, and always dishonorable? When considering the content of Edwin Hoyt's book, exactly where did you see proof that far greater numbers of Japanese troops had, in fact, been willing to surrender at earlier stages of the war? What stage of the Pacific War would that be? Would it be the Solomons campaign, for instance-from Guadalcanal on? No luck there. What about operations in the Marshall Islands? What about the amphibious operations in the Gilberts? The general fact is that the Allies had to wait until the end of WWII in order to see the greatest numbers of Japanese troop surrenders, and you have apparently not noticed this fact.
This is not a failure of Edwin Hoyt's stated opinions; this is a failure of your historical analysis. You have committed the error of invoking the fallacy of the single cause (falsely attributing the low numbers of Japanese personnel who were willing to surrender, rather than die, to the prospect of having their corpses mutilated and having Americans take any of their bones that had been exposed to the elements and were easy to recover as war trophies), and if Hoyt's book had firmly established that, instead of surrendering in greater and greater numbers at the end of the war, Japanese troops were giving up in fewer and fewer numbers, then why didn't you add that new information to Battle of Okinawa by directly quoting from his book verbatim? Is it because Edwin Hoyt never said anything like what you are claiming about American brutality in his book?

(2) Exactly how did you establish for the purposes of this encyclopedia the freedom from bias, the credibility, the competence, or even the basic professional honesty of university social sciences professor Dr. Peter Schrijvers? The normal way to establish the credibility of an expert is to see how many of that expert's fact claims are upheld by independent, alternate sources. You actually stated above that the reason for which you choose to cite the H-Net review of Peter Schrijvers' book as unbiased evidence which is appropriate for inclusion in Wikipedia is that it "seems reliable to me (who inserted it)".

What exactly does that statement mean? I can't make any sense out of that sentence. Since when does the Wikipedia statement "Encyclopedic content must be verifiable" mean that you can insert any claim into an article that you can find that will prop up a point of view that you think should be included in that article because it "seems reliable to me"? Since when are social sciences websites unbiased-or even claim to be unbiased?
In the H-Net review of his book, it is clearly explained that most of the information in Peter Schrijvers' book comes from secondary sources-so exactly how did you expect, for the purposes of this article, to hold Schrijvers accountable for the credibility of these other sources? This review also makes it clear that Schrijvers never claims to have any other source for the unique claim that over 10,000 Okinawans were victimized in American mass rapes during combat besides "one Okinawan historian," who is quoted anonymously! What do you think the word verifiable means? The word is supposed to mean provable from more than one source, all of which in and of themselves are known quantities of reliability and credibility, and none of which only quote from one another. It should concern me, and you, and anyone else that these American mass rapes have never been reported or even claimed by any Japanese government agency, any organ of the UN, any NGO individual or group, any organization of professional military historians, or, for that matter, any other Okinawan historian-any one of which has a strong, ideological, vested interest in doing whatever it may take in order to reveal this truth to the world, and confirm its authenticity.
This is the kind of problem that you make for everyone else who wishes to read an accurate encyclopedia article dealing with the invasion of Okinawa. Not only do you not improve the accuracy of the article, but, by insisting on including information that is only claimed by a single, anonymous source, you instead sabotage the credibility of the entire entry in one shot. Excuses don't cut it. It was not the responsibility of Peter Schrijvers, or the responsibility of "one Okinawan historian" to make sure that their historical data was verified well enough for inclusion in Wikipedia, but it was your responsibility to verify it, and you refused to attempt to verify the mass rape claim before entering it into the article because, frankly, you enjoyed the report too much to leave it out of Wikipedia. This is exactly why single-source-verified fact claims always fail the WP:V test.

(3) You have stated that books written by authors Yuki Tanaka, John Dower, and Joanna Bourke will also back up the claim that over 10,000 Okinawans were mass-raped by American combat personnel during the duration of the battle on their island. Now, if that was really true, then why did you fail to directly quote at length from all of these books, word-for-word, exactly what these authors say about Americans mass-raping 10,000 Okinawan citizens during combat? Is it because these authors never made such a claim in these books? Could it be because one or more than one of these authors has never even addressed the Battle of Okinawa, much less the War in the Pacific in any respect?

(4) You have also stated that author J. Robert Lilly is another one of the authors who will verify that Americans raped 10,000 Okinawans during the invasion and capture of the island. Now, leaving aside for the time being that his book is totally irrelevant to your claims about Okinawa because the book deals with Europe, not Japan, if his book really says all that you claim it says, then why haven't you made this massive improvement to the quality of this article by including this new information and by directly quoting from Lilly's book at length, verbatim, exactly what it says about the propensity of Americans to engage in mass rape of thousands of victims at one time? Could it be that you cannot quote from this book either because Lilly also will not support your mass rape claim?

(5) I swear I don't understand why you thought that it would be a good idea to quote a story printed by the New York Times which dealt with the discovery of the remains of three Americans on Okinawa. First, your initial problem is that the NYT article obtains the 10,000 Okinawans mass-raped figure from the Peter Schrijvers book-so you have accomplished exactly nothing by quoting this newspaper because you cannot claim that you now have two sources for the 10,000 mass-raped, since you only have the one source that you started out with. Second, when you tried to justify why you really have no documentation for the claim that American troops engaged in mass rape, you quoted from the NYT article, beginning with the words "One possible explanation for why the United States military says it has no record of any rapes is that few if any Okinawan women reported being attacked out of fear and embarrassment, and that those who did were ignored by the United States military police..." The weasel words "One possible explanation" should be the tip-off for everyone who has always been opposed to the inclusion of speculation in Wikipedia. This quote proves not only that the New York Times never had any solid leads that would prove American mass rape, but also that no one responsible for this story ever did any actual reporting of their own in order to nail down this claim one way or the other. Third, newspapers should only be quoted as sources of then-current events information, since newspapers are such notoriously bad sources for historical data-but, then, you should already know that. Fourth, if you must quote from a newspaper, you must look for a non-partisan newspaper, and in case you did not know, the NYT has had an extremely leftist, anti-Pentagon, anti-military bias for decades, from the ownership level all the way down the totem pole of the newspaper workforce.

Unless the subject of an encyclopedia article is the very bias in question, and unless the information to be included in the article deals with that exact bias, it is never justifiable to insert biased information or information from biased sources into that encyclopedia article, or for that matter any other encyclopedia entry.

(6) Thank you for providing the Google Books link. Do you have any non-biased information sources? I read that book page, and I already see two major problems with the credibility of this source. First, it clearly says that all of the present-day, anecdotal reports of rape at the hands of Americans have been collected by "Okinawan Women Act Against Military Violence," a self-described feminist group-and, as anyone can infer from the very nature of the ideology of feminism, this is also an anti-military, anti-American biased group as well, since there is no such thing as pro-war or pro-military feminism, and since there is no such thing as pro-American feminist ideology, either. Second, if you think so well of this particular book, and if you think this particular book will also help prove that Americans mass-raped over 10,000 Okinawan citizens, then why didn't you edit Battle_of_Okinawa to include direct, word-for-word quotations at length from this book that say exactly that American troops mass-raped over 10,000 Okinawans during this battle? Is it because this book, like all of the other books that you have cited, does not say what you want it to say?

Third (and this is the big problem with your editorial judgement), what this book page says at the bottom is that in the first 5 years of the American occupation of Okinawa, 76 murders or murder-rapes are known to have been reported at the time that these crimes would have been committed. Here's the point: the exact same personal shame that those victims who were able to survive would have felt over being raped would have also have been felt by the over 10,000 victims who were supposedly mass-raped by American forces. So how do you explain the huge discrepancy between 10,000 and 76? The number 76 means that, if taken on average, 15.2 murders or murder-rapes were committed each year of the first 5 years of American occupation. Even while ignoring the fact that murder is being included along with rape, the U.S. occupation force can never be so much smaller than the invasion force that the discrepancy between 10,000 and 15.2 per year can be explained away by the size of the occupation force. Just what did you expect Wikipedia readers to conclude once they read your "improved" version of this article? Did you expect everyone to agree that American military personnel mass-raped over 10,000 innocent Okinawans in less than 5 months, and then decided to start budgeting themselves by rationing themselves down to just 15.2 murders or murder-rapes each year for 5 years?

(7) You dismissed the legitimate criticism of a fellow editor by saying, up above on this page, "It is only you who says that the number is unreliable. Peter Schrijvers aparently does not think it is unreliable, and that is the way Wikipedia works, we use the facts and analysis that scholars have made. We are not allowed to make judgements." What you apparently don't understand is that 1) no single expert or author-Lord, liar or lunatic-can be the sole basis for any Wikipedia entry that must be cross-referenced and confirmed, 2) Wikipedia rules, in fact, require all editors to "make judgements" in order to avoid violating anyone's copyright protections, in order to make sure that all data entered is verifiable, with reference to how accurately you type data into the article, making sure slander, libel, and defamation of character are all avoided, etc., etc. It seems possible that you might believe that acquiring a second source, a third source, or, heaven forbid, an actual fourth or fifth source is nothing more than an unproductive waste of your time-after all, you did say above on this page "quite frankly I don't see the relevance of wasting my time that way." You have already "made the judgement" that only one source is sufficient in order to include an unproven allegation even though the "source" is, in reality, anonymous. We all need to make dead sure that this kind of unproven allegation is kept out of Wikipedia until it can be proven through unbiased, independent sources. 198.252.8.202 Talk

  • Your entry is very long and confusing. First, let me recomend that you get a proper user name, to make it easier to communicate with you and judge whether your edits are vandalism or not. Or is it you who stated that Stephen Ambrose was stabbed to death with a banana?[16] Funny, but not very encyclopedic. Further, stating that I am Swedish in your edit summaries is rather superfluous and bad taste. Are you implying that Swedish people are somehow inferior when it comes to editing? Further before declaring your opinion on what types of content are allowed in encyclopedias, please read what types of contents are allowed here, please read the policies, such as Wikipedia:NPOV and Wikipedia:Verifiability.
  • If Hoyt makes an analysis based on a synthesis of works performed by others, that is perfectly acceptable here. Further, Hoyt was referring to civilian suicides, something you seem to confuse with Japanese soldiers reluctance to surrender.
  • Credibility, Please, again, read up on policies before editing and arguing. We are not here to establish the ultimate "truth", we are only here to state what the different scholars say, sometimes they contradict each other, and then we state that. It is not up to us to judge who is "right".
  • Calling me a liar: What I wrote was: Other historians who have investigated American rapes of Japanese are Yuki Tanaka and John Dower. You can also check Joanna Bourke, An Intimate history of Killing, London, Granta Books, 1999, p. 354.they are referred to as sources for the rapes in the Pacific, in the book on rapes on the western front by Lilly, which I hold in my hand right now. As for Tanaka, if you'd bothered reading the sources in the text, you'd see that one of Tanakas books is used already[17]
  • You are lying: Sorry, but this I must state so bluntly, I cant even give you the credit for miss-understanding my text. You wrote this You have also stated that author J. Robert Lilly is another one of the authors who will verify that Americans raped 10,000 Okinawans during the invasion and capture of the island.. I have never ever done so. Please don't lie, at least not so openly.
  • "your initial problem is that the NYT article obtains the 10,000 Okinawans mass-raped figure from the Peter Schrijvers book" Peter Schrijvers book was published in 2002. the NYT article was published in 2000. Enough said.
  • "the NYT has had an extremely leftist, anti-Pentagon, anti-military bias for decades, from the ownership level all the way down the totem pole of the newspaper workforce." Funny, I don't see that in The New York Times or Criticism of The New York Times. Please discuss your theories there.
  • "Okinawan Women Act Against Military Violence" Please don't falsify the sources, the book uses many other sources than the feminists, not that I in any way agree with you that they are inegilible because they are [SIC] "as anyone can infer from the very nature of the ideology of feminism, this is also an anti-military, anti-American biased group as well, since there is no such thing as pro-war or pro-military feminism, and since there is no such thing as pro-American feminist ideology, either.". Let me give you a non-feminist quote from the same book. Okinawan historian Oshiro Masayasu (former director of the Okinawa Prefectural Historical Archives) writes based on several years of research:
Soon after the US marines landed, all the women of a village on Motobu Peninsula fell into the hands of American soldiers. At the time, there were only women, children and old people in the village, as all the young men had been mobilized for the war. Soon after landing, the marines "mopped up" the entire village, but found no signs of Japanese forces. Taking advantage of the situation, they started "hunting for women" in broad daylight and those who were hiding in the village or nearby air raid shelters were dragged out one after another.[1]
  • Another quote: The following two books, with some pages available from Google Books, tell of continuing rapes during the years of Allied occupation. Voices from the Japanese Women's Movement The Making of Black Revolutionaries The first book speaks of Japanese women being raped in the fields and in the U.S. military bases. The later book tells the experience of a black soldier of the forces of occupation, a few years into the occupation.
The saddest thing was that some of the brothers also called the Okinawans gooks. They adopted the superior attitude of the american white man and they, too, though thought they were better than the Okinawans. They, too, did some of the things the whites did, especially to the women of Okinawa. Not so much, but enough to open my eyes.
There came a night when several men in my barracks whent out and brough back an elderly woman from a nearby village. They pulled a train on her, passing her from one bunk to another.
How could you put that gun to that womans head and then rape her like the white soldiers were doing all over the island of okinawa? When you heard about what the white soldiers were doing, how could you not think of slavery and what the man did to our women? How could you adopt the white man's way? How could you go out and kill brown men by day and rape brown women at night? How could you?
  • Interesting math you did regarding the numbers of rape. It never struck you that the possibility to report rapes occurring during a combat campaign, and opportunities for reporting rape afterwards when fighting is no longer ongoing can be quite different? Intresting also that you take the official rape figures at face value as the "truth".
  • Again, please read up on wikipedia policy, I'm sure once you've grasped it you will be able to make constructive contributions. A respectable scholar has given the 10,000 Japanese source his blessing as accurate. It has in the past been used by other sources such as the NYT so it is obviously a well known estimate. If it is false, or some scholar feels it to be in error then I'm sure you can find a source that states so, in which case we can introduce such for balance. But what we can not do is remove it because you feel the source is "un-american" or such.
  • Surrendering Japanese. Since you obviously are confused as to what refers to civilians, and what refers to soldiers, I will make this brief:
Niall Fergusson: "it was not only the fear of disciplinary action or of dishonor that deterred German and Japanese soldiers from surrendering. More important for most soldiers was the perception that prisoners would be killed by the enemy anyway, and so one might as well fight on." (He is referring to Germans on the Eastern front, by the way). This is from "Prisoner Taking and Prisoner Killing in the Age of Total War: Towards a Political Economy of Military Defeat", War in History, 2004, 11 (2): p.176.
  • I also recommend that you read the section I introduced below, should be enough sources there for you to convince you of the prevalence of prisoner killing. It was the trophy hunting that helped scare the civilians enough to suicide. Knowing that nice white women had table ornaments like this, and that this was so accepted that it was "picture of the week" in Life Magazine, led them to think that the Americans were horrible monsters, and that is was better to be dead than in their hands. The soldiers simply fought on because they knew there was no point in trying to surrender, they knew they would be killed by the Americans anyway if they tried to surrender. It was only late in the war that the leadership managed to stop the U.S. soldiers "take no prisoners" policy, since it was interfering with intelligence gathering.--Stor stark7 Speak 15:46, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Please note that there is a dedicated article on this topic at American mutilation of Japanese war dead - which is primarily authored by Stor stark7 using the sources (and some of the same text, I think) used in this article - and any comments on or additions to that article or the discussion on its talk page are welcome. Nick Dowling (talk) 02:21, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Prisoner Killing

Allied soldiers in Pacific and Asian theatres were guilty of the same "cruelty and callous disregard for civilized norms" as Japanese soldiers, according to historian Jeff Kingston, referring to the treatment of POWs, among other issues.[2] Kingston quoted documentary film makers Jonathan Lewis and Ben Steele, who said: "the impression of the war as a history of Japanese savagery alone has been eroded by the growing body of evidence of Allied brutality. The issue here is less whether the two sides were as bad as each other, but whether they had more in common than was ever thought at the time..."[3]

A prominent authority on the social history of the Pacific War, John W. Dower, states that "[b]y the final years of the war against Japan, a truly vicious cycle had developed in which the Japanese reluctance to surrender had meshed horrifically with Allied disinterest in taking prisoners."[4] Dower suggests that most Japanese personnel were told that they would be "killed or tortured" if they fell into Allied hands and, as a consequence, most of those faced with defeat on the battlefield fought to the death or committed suicide.[5] And while it was "not official policy" for Allied personnel to take no prisoners, "over wide reaches of the Asian battleground it was everyday practice."[6]

Allied soldiers in the Pacific often deliberately killed Japanese soldiers who had surrendered. According to Richard Aldrich, who has published a study of the diaries kept by United States and Australian soldiers, they sometimes massacred prisoners of war.[7] Dower states that in "many instances ... Japanese who did become prisoners were killed on the spot or en route to prison compounds."[8] According to Aldrich it was common practice for US troops not to take prisoners.[9] This analysis is supported by British historian Niall Fergusson,[10] who also says that, in 1943, "a secret [U. S.] intelligence report noted that only the promise of ice cream and three days leave would ... induce American troops not to kill surrendering Japanese."[11]

Fergusson states such practices played a role in the ratio of Japanese prisoners to dead being 1:100 in late 1944. That same year, efforts were taken by Allied high commanders to suppress "take no prisoners" attitudes,[12] among their own personnel (as these were affecting intelligence gathering) and to encourage Japanese soldiers to surrender. Fergusson adds that measures by Allied commanders to improve the ratio of Japanese prisoners to Japanese dead, resulted in it reaching 1:7, by mid-1945. Nevertheless, taking no prisoners was still standard practice among U. S. troops at the Battle of Okinawa, in April–June 1945.[13]

Ulrich Straus, a US Japanologist, suggests that frontline troops intensely hated Japanese military personnel and were "not easily persuaded" to take or protect prisoners, as they believed that Allied personnel who surrendered, got "no mercy" from the Japanese.[14] Allied soldiers believed that Japanese soldiers were inclined to feign surrender, in order to make surprise attacks.[15] Therefore, according to Straus, "[s]enior officers opposed the taking of prisoners[,] on the grounds that it needlessly exposed American troops to risks..."[16] When prisoners nevertheless were taken, many times these were shot during transport because "it was too much bother to take [them] in".[17]

Fergusson suggests that "it was not only the fear of disciplinary action or of dishonor that deterred German and Japanese soldiers from surrendering. More important for most soldiers was the perception that prisoners would be killed by the enemy anyway, and so one might as well fight on."[18]

U. S. historian James J. Weingartner attributes the very low number of Japanese in U.S. POW compounds to two important factors, a Japanese reluctance to surrender and a widespread American "conviction that the Japanese were "animals" or "subhuman'" and unworthy of the normal treatment accorded to POWs.[19] The latter reason is supported by Fergusson, who says that "Allied troops often saw the Japanese in the same way that Germans regarded Russians [sic] — as Untermenschen."[20]

Weingartner attributes the very low numbers of POWs in U. S. compounds to a widespread conviction among Americans, "that the Japanese were 'animals' or 'subhuman'".[21] According to Weingartner, many U.S. troops regarded fighting the Japanese as more like hunting inhuman animals than a war.[22]

[edit] Possible contradictory statement

This statement, For the first time in the Pacific War, the Japanese had ample time to dig elaborate fortifications, much as they had on Iwo Jima, and they also had large numbers of tanks and artillery pieces, doesn't make much sense to me. Could it be the first time in the Pacific War if it was how they acted earlier on Iwo Jima? Also, the Iwo Jima link there goes to the article about the island itself, not the battle - I think it would be better to link to the actual Battle of Iwo Jima article. Tanthalas39 (talk) 21:51, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Generally wretched quality of military history entries

I find wholesale near-plagiarism, obvious opinions, ramshackle presentation. Most of this content seems to have been regurgitated by a History Channel addict. Is there anything to be done about this? I contribute to physics articles where the standards are MUCH higher. As a great lover of military history, I find it lamentable that the quality of these offerings is so uniformly poor.

-drl Antimatter33 (talk) 12:56, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

>Is there anything to be done about this?
Yes, you can improve it. :-)   Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 20:05, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Operation name

There is no mention of the Operation name in the main text - I believe it was known as Operation Iceberg. That should be rectified I think. Gatoclass (talk) 16:21, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Operation Iceberg redirects to this article, so I've added ", also known as Operation Iceberg", which is in keeping with the use of codenames on pages such as Normandy Landings --Ambulnick (talk) 11:04, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "75,000-140,000 civilians dead"?

WWII in Color documentary states 150,000. --84.234.60.154 (talk) 07:41, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Japanese photos?

Is there really no more photos of Japanese than exploding yamato, dead or surrendered soldiers? There are quite lot pictures of Americans, like helping orphans, aircraft firing rockets... Pictures are good but I think should be more Japanese pictures too. Ofcourse I am not certain that there exists any. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kuhlfürst (talk • contribs) 16:55, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Should the Battle of Iwo Jima be merged witht this article?

I mean they're both the most important pacific battles in US history, and they happened one after the other, so, why not?--66.229.133.74 (talk) 19:57, 16 May 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Reply

No, Iwo Jima is a separate battle in a different area of the Pacific. It is a major battle so it deserves its own section. It was a different operation anyway so there is even less reason to merge these articles. Besides, merging articles over a certain length just makes it harder to find what you want in a section. BernhardFischbein (talk) 14:03, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Constant Information?

I'm not saying you're wrong, or anything like that. At all, actually. But... When I added up the total of "casualties lost" in paragraph 2, line 5, the sum was 219,000.

"Casualties totaled more than 38,000 Americans wounded and 12,000 killed or missing, more than 107,000 Japanese and Okinawan conscripts killed, and perhaps 100,000 Okinawan civilians who perished in the battle."

Please, add it up for yourself.

This is where I get confused. When I added up the numer of "casualties lost" in pararaph 4, line 6, I only got about 152,000. Add the last "hundreds of thousands", and the data is still uneven.

"The battle has one of the highest casualties: the Japanese lost over 90,000 troops, and the Allies (mostly United States) suffered nearly 50,000 casualties, with over 12,000 killed in action. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed, wounded or attempted suicide."

You see, I'm giving this terribly important speech soon and the professer is an unbelievable hard[explicit]. I'm just trying to get my data straight so he doesn't pull out the whip again... *whimper*

75.164.202.223 (talk) 00:21, 3 June 2008 (UTC)Sine Nomine