This is the BBC. Be ready for an anti-American slant. A visit to their website one month showed stories about America’s religious snake handlers and their politics, while a corresponding story on the Muslim view of death and mortality touted that religion’s complex understanding of life.
I also doubt that the 1944 attacks were for “revenge” as the article claims. The attacks were to destroy the Imperial Army and Navy which was in the middle of killing lots of US, UK, Aussie, Canadian, and other Allied soldiers and sailors. They had self-preservation, not revenge, as their motive.
It may be interesting, and I will try to watch it. But I have been burned before by the BBC./
An ex-colleague of mine dove the area. Brought back some great pictures and said that they didn't do it justice.
Also known as the Truk Islands.
I think we are supposed to feel bad about it. I don’t.
Military history ping
Admiral Halsey had a huge billboard that said:
Kill Japs
Kill Japs
Kill More Japs
Just parenthetically - but on a related note - I’ve heard that Truk lagoon is a wonderful place for wreck diving; any Freepers done any SCUBA there and care to report?
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Truk Atoll: February 16-17, 1944
http://www.cv6.org/1944/truk/default.htm
[snip] At the time of the February strikes, then-Lieutenant Ramage was Executive Officer of Big E’s Bombing Squadron 10, then commanded by LCDR Richard Poor. At 0858 on 16 February 1944, Ramage led off Enterprise’s second bomber strike against Truk, followed by another strike that afternoon, and a third attack on 17 February. The assault even continued at night, as Torpedo 10 executed the first night radar-assisted carrier attack in history, accounting for nearly a third of the tonnage of enemy shipping destroyed during the raids! By the end of the attacks, the myth of the “Gibraltar of the Pacific” had been shattered. [end]
I just threw up in my mouth. "Revenge" attacks??? Imperial Japan, unprovoked, perpetrated acts of war against the British, Dutch and French Empires, the Chinese, the people of the South Pacific Islands, and the United States of America. Nobody asked them to do it, nobody provoked them to do it -- they just plain done it, off their own bat.
Then they perpetrated atrocities.
"Revenge??" Hell, they brought War upon themselves. And they got everything that they deserved. Unlike the Nazis, who generally observed the Geneva Conventions (holocaust being a huge and notable exception), the Japs almost universally did not. And, as a result, their armies and civilian populations were exterminated like bugs.
The Axis was an evil that needed to be stomped out. And the Imperial Japanese needed to be stomped out most especially. Is that really "revenge"?
No, that is Pest Control. Much like what we do when we kill rats and vermin in our homes. It was certainly "eradication". But not "revenge".
Bump
The leftists at the BBC might consider the bombing of Dresden by the RAF and Army Air Corps in Feb, 1945, 12 weeks before the unconditional surrender of Germany, an act of revenge for the London Blitz early in the war.
But they get to choose their targets some 60 years later because we helped them defend themselves.
Since you and Dad have dove the Truk Islands...
I suppose you could consider that "revenge" in the sense the whole war was "revenge" for an unprovoked attack on the U.S., but fair minded people who are not anti-American POS's would consider it self-defence against aggression.
I wonder if the Beeb considers the Burma campaign "revenge" for Singapore?