Well, welcome to war, Ms Maslin! As long as YOU are safe and comfortable at home, it really doesn't matter what happens "over there", does it? Read "With the Old Breed", or any of several dozen books and articles that were punlished soon after the war. Then think about what the world would look like had we lost it.
By the way, there was a very good article published in THE ATLANTIC by a Pacific War veteran around 1955 (I have it here somewhere, I'll try to find a link- but you can check the archives- the title was something like "What Kind of War did we REALLY fight in the Pacific". Pulled no punches, glossed over nothing (except that I don't recall that it mentioned a lot about the extreme cruelty of the Japanese to conquered people...)
I can't find that ATLANTIC article- and the old archives are all "pay-per-view" now. I downloaded it a couple of years ago, but it is at home. Anyway, just believe that if Janet Maslin read it, she would probably faint! (I wonder if she read "The Rape of Nanking"?)