Week 304 - Okinawa Ends - WW2 - June 22, 1945
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- Опубліковано 27 чер 2024
- Mitsuru Ushijima's forces are defeated and the Battle of Okinawa is officially over. However, since most of the Japanese fought to the death, victory comes at a bloody cost- over 50,000 US casualties and over 100,000 Japanese and also possibly that many Okinawan deaths. The fight on North Borneo continues, there's a raid on Wake Island, and the Japanese powers that be meet to actually discuss making some sort of peace with the Allies.
00:00 INTRO
01:25 TRUMAN AND THE INTERIM COMMITTEE
05:00 BATTLE OF OKINAWA
08:06 THE END OF OKINAWA
13:22 RAID ON WAKE ISLAND
14:23 BATTLE OF NORTH BORNEO
15:33 HIROHITO WANTS PEACE
16:54 CONCLUSION
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Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Marek Kamiński
Community Management: Jake McCluskey
Written by: Indy Neidell
Research by: Indy Neidell
Map animations by: Daniel Weiss
Map research by: Sietse Kenter
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Artwork and color grading by: Mikołaj Uchman
Sound design by: Marek Kamiński
Colorizations by:
Mikołaj Uchman
Carlos Ortega Pereira, BlauColorizations, / blaucolorizations
Julius Jääskeläinen - / jjcolorization
Source literature list: bit.ly/SourcesWW2
Archive footage: Screenocean/Reuters - www.screenocean.com
Soundtracks from Epidemic Sound:
Easy Target - Rannar Sillard
Magnificent March 3 - Johannes Bornlöf
Last Point of Safe Return - Fabien Tell
Heroes Will Fall - Bonnie Grace
Heroes On Horses - Gunnar Johnsén
Rivers Run Red - Christoffer Moe Ditlevsen
Split Decision - Rannar Sillard
At the Front - Phoenix Tail
Call for Action - Jon Bjork
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Where Heroes Come to Die - Hampus Naeselius
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
In just a few days Indy will begin his coverage of the Korean War!
Don't miss it this Tuesday on June 25th, subscribe now: ua-cam.com/channels/vwUmLQ2pC0q3hBpdIkOzwg.html
Love your documentaries I can’t wait for the Korean War but I’d love it if you guys could do the Napoleon war just a suggestion.
I won't miss it
Be there, been with Indy since 1916 the great war.
@@sicily7220 Me too. I am waiting.
Super excited
Stilwell not publicly throwing someone under the bus.... Amazing.
I suppose he spoke from experience here, lol
Can't possibly be real life lol
I guess you could say that despite his previous bad decisions, there's a part of him that's STILL WELL!!........... Ok ,I'll see myself out!
Just privately, huh? 😅
"Wars may start when you want, but do not end when you please."
This quote perfectly describes the island jumping strategy. Battles that were estimated at a week or two lasted for months.
Sounds like Putin and Ukraine
@@johnlynch5117 It's just war to begin with. People get excited to start one, but ending it becomes troublesome. Wars tend to spiral into a monster few imagined it would be. And even *IF* you win the conquest, can you secure the peace? The United States conquered Iraq in 2003. But did not know how to forge peace and security, dealt with a massive insurgency, and ended up withdrawing in 2011 after many people from both sides and in between were dead.
And through all this, Iran, who hated both Iraq and the United States, was laughing her butt off as seeing her enemies wreck each other.
Conflict has a way of spiraling out into monsters that few imagine before the excitement of pressing the "Go to War!" button. I still remember a lot of the jerks here in the United States that were trying to get everyone to support our invasion of Iraq despite all our allies telling us our intelligence was wrong.
What I find really cool is that Simon Buckner (10th army commander) and Douglas MacArthur’s fathers both fought against each other at the same battle during the American civil war: The battle of Chickamagua in 1863
Oh! Wow!
Kinda.. one was a Jr officer and the other was a General
Treason runs deep in the South. The farther South, the deeper it runs.
@@mgway4661how is that "kinda?". Both were there. Both were commanding troops. Both fought...
What did you need them to personally Box in the middle of the battle field for them to have fought on opposite sides of a battle?
Dumb. You aren't the smartest person buddy. Not even fucking close.
His father was also the one who surrendered to Grant at Fort Donelson, where Grant got his nickname “Unconditional Surrender.”
"Our Strategy, our tactics and our equipment were used up to the last and we fought bravely (...), but compared to the overwhelming force of the Enemy, we were nothing."
-Lieutenant General Mitsuru Ushijima, Japanese Commander on Okinawa, in his last message to Tokyo before his seppuku, 22nd of June 1945.
In a way, this perfectly summarizes the Japanese Situation by this point. They can fight like hell, can use every trick in the book and hold out for far longer than should be humanly possible...and in the end, it means absolutely nothing, because the power of the Allies pressing them from all sides is simply overwhelming by now.
Would like to hear more of this general
and thereby thousands of Japanese soldiers are needlessly sacrificed, for the glory of an emperor who saved himself.
@@oldesertguy9616 The majority of the battle was also fought on the southern half of the island, where both then and now, is also where the bulk of the civilian population of Okinawa lives. Caught between two warring armies and occasionaly even deliberately murdered by Japanese troops, they unfortunately died in droves. As many as a third of the island's entire pre-battle population may have perished.
One weird casualty of the Battle of Okinawa was the Okinawan black pig, which were masses slaughtered before the battle to prevent resources from falling into American hands. I think they had to import some from Hawaii after the war to restore the breed.
and the Japanese propaganda machine for months had been telling the population the marines were devils. They were cannibals. They were rapists.
Which is rich, considering how the Japanese treated the Chinese and Eurasian prisoners, including hundreds of nuns and nurses when they occupied islands.
Years ago I did a jungle survival course on Borneo. My guide/instructor was from the Dusun headhunters. At night he'd tell me stories from his grandfather who, along with others from the tribe, would hunt the Japanese at night.... Chilling stuff.
The Japanese resorted to eating the locals on Borneo, so I can imagine they were unhappy about it.
Thanks for sharing.
Did he eat bidens uncle? Fess up.
18:20 Missed an opportunity to say "So basically, Stalin be Stalling." :D
at this point, I think we all know that Stalin loves to stall in a lot of situations
That's an awful pun. It deserves bad Marx
Good one. :D
@@rumrunner8019 Ouch.
Think you hit the marx on that one!
"The men performed their roles like actors trapped in a morality play." - George Feifer, "The Battle of Okinawa: The Blood and the Bomb"
Yeah, that about sums up this whole sorry situation.
A side note about Buckner's death is that between his death and Stillwell's arrival, Gen. Roy Geiger temporarily assumed command of the Tenth Army, making him the only Marine General to ever command a field army.
Instead of K rations they got Crayola
@@liammadden7572 Anything is better than K rations!
Death by flamethrower must be a horrific way to die , it was said that this was the only thing the Japanese feared
There was and this was one of the leading ptsd triggers .... fire. I've heard some veterans from the Pacific could bbq
Disclaimer. .i dont remember where i heard that from
If you were in a cave,the flamethrower would also burn all the oxygen in said cave.Unpleasant either way.
@shawnkennedy855 were do you think the Japanese got the idea for the oxygen distoryer
Back in the late 1990s I was on Okinawa while deployed with the US Marines, and while there my unit toured some of the caves and tunnels that were part of the Japanese defenses, including a few that were not open to the general public because they were still loaded with WW2 era munitions. The entrances were quite often blackened from where they had been attacked with flamethrowers.
In your conclusion, you mentioned a special episode chronicling America's war on Japanese shipping. This war was made possible by the successful completion of the US Navy's war against the Bureau of Ordinance's Mark 14 Torpedo and Mark 6 Exploder.
So many times the people in charge don't listen to the end-user. I remember once my guys were complaining about some new laptops being unusable. I had to go to training so I took one with me, to show them they didn't know what they were talking about. Turns out the laptops were practically unusable. I started keeping an open mind to complaints after that. Unfortunately, some people in charge assume they are smarter than the people who are using whichever equipment they are issued, and refuse to even investigate complaints. The Mark 14 Torpedo will always be a classic example of ignoring field reports.
Drachinifel has an _excellent_ video on the Mark 14. And for some good contrast, follow it up with his video on the Japanese Type 93 torpedo. :P
The aerial mine-laying campaign also contributed, with results wildly out of proportion to resources used:
"Operation Starvation sank more ship tonnage in the last six months of the war than the efforts of all other sources combined. The Twentieth Air Force flew 1,529 sorties and laid 12,135 mines in 26 fields on 46 separate missions. Mining demanded only 5.7% of the XXI Bomber Command's total sorties, and only 15 B-29s were lost in the effort. In return, mines sank or damaged 670 ships totaling more than 1,250,000 tons.[2]"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Starvation
@@oldesertguy9616 I use to work in a warehouse during uni. The company I worked for was doing a mass equipment replacement (standardising the fleet of forklifts etc), which was a good thing! They were also changing some of the storage racking and everything. Super, was really needed. I saw the specs they proposed (since we had to just check we were all qualified), totally fine... but I noted that the new forklifts can't reach our existing storage.
No problem! They'll be able to reach the top of the new racking that's going in.
Low and behold, they swapped them over when the forklift staff weren't there. Because our location was the odd one out (our old racking was about twice the height of everyone elses), nobody had actually taken the note seriously-because every other location had a similar (but unfounded) complaint.
So then we had a 2 week delay while the office searched for another forklift to rent for
Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. was the son of confederate general Simon B Buckner Sr. who was a pre war friend of Ulysses S Grant.
Hirohito: "Do everything you can end the war, provided my butt is safe."
Amazing, how many people must die just to try and save their “great leader.” The 40’s were wild.
In the end the bastard got it
@@andresmartinezramos7513 He lived to the ripe old age of 87, dying in 1989.
@@anthonydolan3740 I know, now that I read it back it could be confusing. I meant that he did get what he wanted not that he was killed.
I wonder. The man was still Japanese, raised samurai (even if he was a fish-minder by hobby). I can easily see him giving his life if it meant a good result for his people. Instead he had to live for them.
Indy once again with the elite fits. 10/10 shirt tie vest combo
I believe it's Astrid who is in charge of wardrobe
I don't know how he manages, what with rationing and all
When leaders personal honor is more important than citizens lives. Is why millions more had to die even after Japan knew the war was lost.
Douglas MacArthur is a walking hypocrite disrespecting Buckner 😭
Your last two words were unnecessary, but a good example.
@@clasdauskas it was tho. Everyone knows MacArthur was a walking hypocrite. Disrespecting Buckner is a huge example
The fact that MacArthur was more than happy to let Unit731 doctors off and work for him as well as other enlisted orchestrators of massacres across Asia go is the reason I dislike him most. He’s the reason Kishimoto survived
@@mikloridden8276 MacArthur, again. Biggest hypocrite and I might add huge jerk. Might add racist for not stopping what happened in Australia (he wasn't over those troops but still could've spoke up against it)
Ahhh... Stilwell and MacArthur. Over the course of this series I have come to really despise those two.
On a side note, Buckner was the highest ranking US officer to be KIA in WW2
The video mentioned the Japanese had very little in the way of artillery but that's how he was killed. And with less than five days left in the battle.
@@dry5555 yes, I just thought they would mention that he was the highest ranking officer to be killed. Other generals were killed on the war, but in accidents or by friendly fire. Buckner was the only one killed by the enemy.
12:33 I actually understand MaCarthur's thinking with regards to Okinawa and the Philippines. The US is invading Okinawa, while the Philippines are being liberated. Regardless of how wrong the US's possession of the Philippines was, they were not formally independent at the time Japan invaded so the US was still responsible for the security of that country and the safety of its people. This is why every inch of the Philippines had to be freed from Japanese control ASAP, no different than if it was Hawaii or California. This same thinking does not apply to Okinawa.
True, during the New Guinea campaign he had no trouble bypassing Japanese strongpoints along the coast.
@@kurttate9446 Pah! He had no chance of taking them. The first few times he tried he had to give up and ask the Australians to do it.
Thats not how commanders are taught how to fight wars. The channel islands and the french channel ports for instance were not attacked at the expense of the drive on Berlin and the destruction of the ability of the German Army to fight. It is notable that MacArthur did not secure the security of the Philippine civilians , if that was his policy, he brought death and destruction to the civilians of Manila.
Yeah, Indy kind of glided over the massive local differences in the two campaigns. One thing to clear a unfriendly island only as much you need to keep advancing, and another to clear a series of islands filled with allied civilians who would otherwise be at the mercy of an enemy that has shown little compunction about treating them horribly.
That being said, clearing Okinawa was the right call. I don't think the TimeGhost guys understand what it would have meant to secure a huge perimeter against infiltrating raids by a fanatical enemy for months on end, or the kind of indirect fire harassment that would led to many US casualties anyway.
@@francesconicoletti2547 The Japanese are responsible for all suffering of the Philippians
That Flash-Gordon sci-fi bomb thing is just a pipe dream. Those poindexters will never make it work.
I agree! Its some conspiracy theory
You see the Americans are getting as delusional as Hitler over his "wonder weapons". Next thing you are telling me in less than 25 years men will walk on the moon. Probably send there by this von Braun chap, surely he will face trial for all this perished KZ prisoners in building the V2 rocket instead of being appointed head of a US agency.
Next you'll be telling UFOs are flying around, filled with little green men!
A sidenote this week on June 17 1945 is that Georg-Wolfgang Feller will become the last recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross award. However, this award was not justified as the award was given more than one month after German President Karl Dönitz had officially ordered all awards to cease.
We covered that a couple days ago on our daily UA-cam post. Very interesting stuff.
-TimeGhost Ambassador
@@WorldWarTwo Oh I didn't know that it was already covered. Shall go and take a look at the post. Thank you for letting us know!
UA-cam makes it easy to miss those posts, I usually end up taking in several days at a time.
-TimeGhost Ambassador
Insane quote at the end about Japan turning back the clock. They had a lot of chances to get away with their conquests until 1941.
"Oooooook-kinowa where the wind comes whistling down the plain..."
Trust Dugout Doug or Vinegar Joe to make a 'sound' tactical assessment.......
Dugout Doug is what my Marine dad called MacArthur. No love lost.
One small side note is the US Medals!!!!!
They made over 100 congressional medals of honor! Two hundred and fifty thousand silver stars about the same number of bronze stars, and over a million purple heat medals! The irony of it is they still handed out those medals beyond desert storm back in 1991!!!!
Because those were surplus from us not invading Japan. Probably didn't have to buy body bags for Vietnam and Korea
Have never found this written down anywhere, so I can't prove it. But when I joined, one of the guys in my squadrons Personnel section worked at the AF level Personnel in the 80's. According to him, and honestly I believe him, it kinda makes sense. In the 80's they had to stop issuing them and order new medals made. By then, if someone earned a Purple Heart, someone would have to spend hours getting it because after decades in old warehouse, most of the medals were ruined by mold, mildew, insects, and rust. He was talking about entire crates just taken out and burned because there was no way to clean them properly. That's also why Desert Storm had the last ones, because those were the last they could find in serviceable condition. Most made for Japan wound up burned, recycled, or otherwise disposed of.
Again, I've seen nothing official, but government warehouses are not known for being climate controlled, and millions of medals just stashed in boxes for forty years would be rather ripe when opened.
@@Plaprad I served in the US army and my bronze star is different from most of the guys I had served with like my command Sargent major are different in size and shape from my own and he was in the service for thirty years!
The second place I found out was watching a documentary on the invasion of Japan and the logistics of it was too use and they mentioned the medals at the end of the documentary!?
@@Plaprad
I've also heard that the medals deteriorated to the point that they had to be disposed of. I think it was from Stars and Stripes, back when I was working in the library on a deployment.
This series really gives you a lot of insight into the situations around using the atomic bomb. A lot of people think it was so wrong for us to do that - but the alternative options were equally horrible. I do think it saved lives in the end.
Damn buckner died 4 days before the battle ended 😢
He really was asking for it though..
He was a Racist ... No loss there
@@TerrellThomas1971 Not to rain on your parade, but a huge majority of Americans back then would have been 'racist' by modern lights. And THEIR ancestors would have looked askance at them working with soldiers from a multitude of religions, of having colored troops under arms, etc. Always changing, is America.
@@TerrellThomas1971 kindly stfu. That racist helped beat an Empire that would have outright shot you on sight for fun. As bad as Jim Crow Era USA was ya'll still lived fairly peaceful lives. The Japanese had their entire campaign dedicated to "cleansing" the captured islands. If you were native to those islands you'd be begging Buckner to save you.
Fantastic episode! Thank you, Indy and crew!
Thanks for the comment!
A couple of years ago, a cleaning lady knocked over and broke (great uncle) Henry L. Stimson's globe that had been in the living room of his Woodley residence. I couldn't fix the globe, but I did keep the metal meridian. What thoughts were concocted or explained over that globe in June 1945 one can only guess.
Colonel Harold Roberts, mentioned as being killed in action at 7:58, was a recipient of 3 seperate Navy Crosses for valor in combat. The Navy Cross is the 2nd highest award for valor, after the Medal of Honor, for U.S Navy & Marine Corps personnel. The first was while serving in the US Navy during WW1 where he participated in the battle of Belleau Wood as a Corpsman (a medic) attached to the 5th Marine Regiment, and was in recognition for volunteering to brave machine gun fire by crossing No Man's Land to retrieve wounded men calling for aid.
"Everyone's an expert - including the experts." How true! And even with that in mind, I've accepted your level of expertise for some three years!
Just remember, "An expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing".
@@nicholasconder4703 It's expertise, not amnesia.
The only difference between an expert and a layperson, an expert is wrong with confidence.
Something else I have always found truthful: "A person who is an expert in one field leads them to believe they are experts in many fields".
My great uncle fought in Okinawa he told a story about a time they found a orphanage that still had children in it and they were told to keep advancing but he and a friend stayed behind to escort the kids to safety along the way a Japanese soldier shot my uncle but he was okay because he carried a metal case with his Bible in it and it took the round he saved those kids and kept the case for his medals unfortunately my family didnt care about such things and it was sold at a garage sale
The Japanese requesting permission to medically evacuate their military personnel is interesting. Were there instances where they did the same for the Allies?
No
Highly doubt it.
Unlikely
There were cases, mainly German, where they assisted in picking up crews from sinking ships, and hospital ships in Europe were supposed to be off-limits to attack as they went about their business, but the record is mixed on their safety.
After Buckner was killed on June 18th, command immediately fell upon the senior officer on the scene...who happened to be a Marine. After the "minor problem" re Ralph Smith on Saipan, the Army could not stomach this and moved heaven and earth to get Vinegar Joe to Okinawa as fast as humanly possible...
.
"...Buckner was replaced by Major General Roy Geiger. Upon assuming command, Geiger became the only US Marine to command a numbered army of the US Army in combat; he was relieved five days later by General Joseph Stilwell... The last remnants of Japanese resistance ended on 21 June..." Which is to say, that Stilwell arrived two days after the battle proper was over. Still, the Army broke a time/distance record that would not be surpassed until the era of jet transport... YP
What is Kim Il Sung doing? What are the Koreans doing in this stage of the war?
Resistance to the Japanese.
Kim was in the Soviet 88th separate Rifle Brigade. It saw minimal combat. However he had been active leader in Anti-japanese Guerrilla groups before being chased over the border to USSR in 1940.
The Japanese made extensive use of Koreans as laborers, considering them to have the "broadest backs" of any of the Asian ethnicities. For example, the majority of the Japanese force on Guadalcanal on August 7, 1942 when the Marines went ashore were Korean laborers.
I can tell you what he’s doing now, in 1950: looking over a map of the 38th Parallel, licking his chops…..
In reality or in North Korea's propaganda? If the last, he was shooting kamahamehas at the Japanese!!
I can see MacArthur's position re Phillipines / Okinawa. The Phillipines were a part of America to be liberated: Okinawa was occupied territory.
The Philippines were not part of America; however, MacArthur had been (was?) on their payroll.
What does that have to do with military or for that matter moral objectives ?
@@clasdauskas The Commonwealth of the Philippines was an American territory. It may have been on the road towards independence, but it was American land in 1945. McArthur was pretty fixated on being the Philippine's liberator, because he had been the general to initially fail to defend it. It was personal for him and that probably clouded his judgement.
@@clasdauskas They were literally an American territory...people born in the Philippines at that time were Americans by birth. They had been for several decades since we won it from Spain.
@@francesconicoletti2547 Strategically it is debatable how valuable the Philippines really were, but morally those people being liberated were Americans being set free from Japanese brutality. On top of that MacArthur was the one who dropped the ball and lost the Philippines in the first place, as others have pointed out, and he wanted to personally live up to his promise of "I will return..."
Another great episode! Thanks!
Thanks for watching!
@@WorldWarTwoit has truly been a long journey as a kid I was really invested in WW2 but all I known was D-Day and pacific thank you and the crew I learn almost all of the history I’m glad I was here to listen.
Such Quality work, Week after week ... I salute you guy's !
We try our best!
Read with the old breed buy Eugene Sledge a great book by a great man❤
amazing storytelling as always!
Glad you enjoyed!
I find it rich that Douglas MacArthur of all people would criticize someone for carrying out an unnecessary and symbolic military operation.
Exceptional Episode!!!
My grandfather was stationed on Okinawa in 1962 as a paratrooper in the 82nd airborne division and got to photograph a replica of the gate to Shuri castle. He always loved learning about World War Two, especially the Pacific theater. He unfortunately passed away last month and was never able to watch this amazing series, he also would have liked the upcoming Korean War series as he was stationed in Korea too. Keep up the great work!
My Great Uncle, Otho Wayne Bishop, was in the 96th Infantry Division. Cannon Company, 381st Infantry.
Thanks for sharing.
I was wondering what you guys were gonna do when the first one ended. Great to see you guys continuing the hard work
Thanks, hope you will enjoy the next content as well.
-TimeGhost Ambassador
Thank you for all your amazing content :)
And thank you for watching.
Credit to the Americans for making many adaptations in strategy for Okinawa (many more flamethrower tanks, etc) as the battle COULD have gone differently had they had approached it in a really old-school way. It was difficult enough as it was…
Flamethrower is a unit of measure in the us customary system.
I thought 7000 times a unit I'm not familiar with doesn't really help. No idea how long an infantry flamethrower works.
@@kingblondie7075 Apparently a gallon is ~4.5 litres. So about 60.000 litres of fuel?
@@kingblondie7075 Like ten seconds or so IIRC.
I just hate the metric system. I like the sound of Gallons and inches and miles and feet. I just really really hate the metric system. I just like the imperial system much better. And that's in my opinion.
@@Plaprad Thanks, that makes some sense. Even going by film I've seen I can guess 7000 times that is a lot of heat. Nicer to have understandable units.
My Cousin took the final post war surrender of Japanese troops that were on Okinawa that were in hiding post war. He was ibnthe OSS and spent most of the war learning Japanese.
I believe that Ambassador Saito in Moscow was the only principle on the Japanese side who knew that unconditional surrender was the only option facing his country. However, even the "doves" in the Japanese War Cabinet found this unacceptable.
And yet the Japanese War plan was better than the German one. The Japanese understood the magnitude of their undertaking. The Germans did not.
It was General Buckner’s father who surrendered to Grant at Fort Doneslon, earning Grant the nickname Unconditional Surrender Grant.
Thanks!
Thank you very much for the superchat!
Another great episode!
Glad you enjoyed!
time to stock up for the big push on kyushu
That will be hard fought it would seem, an enemy that is entrenched and expecting you.
@@RedbadofFrisia But you have a secret weapon! Will it work though? To make sure, you have to test it! *Music starts playing and title screen comes on
Hopefully this channel covers the landings the way they did D-Day.
I, too, was always curious why the Americans decided to take the entirety of Okinawa, rather than take the section to the Shuri Line, or Yake-dake ridge and then dig in. They used that strategy at Bougainville in the Solomons, and it worked extremely well. As long as the Japanese long-range artillery was incapable of hitting the airfields, why bother advancing? There may have been a sound reason for continuing the battle, but I have never understood it or seen anyone explain why the whole island had to be taken.
Quote Spike Milligan: Army logic is like this, if something doesn't work, keep doing it till it does.
You could make that criticism of the whole US war effort in the Pacific.
@@eamonreidy9534 Not so. There were plenty of Japanese held islands that were bypassed and ended the war to the rear of the line of advancement through the Pacific. It was the basis of the Central Pacific strategy.
@kurttate9446 the original poster was asking about taking the entirety of islands, not taking all islands. I understand your confusion though.
could be leaving such a strong and determined foe still on the island was not seen as sound. sure they could dig in but that takes soldiers that can be better deployed elsewhere. they don't know how much food the japanese have stocked up down south, how many are left. If they have a cave system to sneak behind enemy lines. Them wanting the island clear as it is their last staging area they want before taking on the main islands. A LOT of allies will need to go or pass through the island. It being worrying having alot of fanatical dug in japanese on the same island as your major rallying point, bombing out the japanese having mixed results overall, Etc. also"we started it might as well finish it" kind of thinking. the above could be some potential thoughts. Plus looking back we have hindsight, back then we weren't there in headquarters or on the ground. it's hard to say.
"The only thing worse than a battle lost is a battle won."
Arthur Wellesley, Aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo, 1815.
Truman made the only decision he could have made. Whether history ultimately says it was the correct decision is a different issue.
As much as I acknowledge that McArthur was probably a massive glory-hound, his thinking when it comes to taking all of the Phillipines can be excused as those islands were under a Japanese occupation that was notably brutal, whereas Okinawa was Japanese territory and the civillians there were their own citizens. So, yeah, the pipe chewer has a good point
Finishing up that book right now.
Indy said 'goodbye' again?!?
For the second week in a row!
This is a record (I am almost postive).
☮
There's a number of isolated Japanese island garrisons out there even at this stage of WWII that the US just bypassed like Wake. Remember Rabaul? There was a massive garrison there of army and navy personnel. The original American plan was to assault and seize Rabaul, but it was deemed too big and troublesome to do. So Rabaul, as with other places, was isolated from the rest of the Japanese Empire. Like the Wake island garrison, they were subject to repeated aerial bombings as Allied squadrons are flying "milk run" attacks for newly arrived aviators to get some combat experience.
A major problem for these isolated garrisons was supply, i.e. food. These guys can wither off and die. But Rabaul was different. It was big enough and a lot of the Japanese personnel were former farmers. Up to this time in history, farming was a common background many had. So the military had a bunch of their men turn to farming for the garrison to sustain itself. They did this pretty well and remained in decent condition by the time the Aussies came over to accept the surrender of the garrison. There were more Japanese forces that were stuck in Rabaul than there were defenders at Okinawa. The Australians reported that when they took over, the Japanese garrison at Rabaul were functioning like a small, independent nation.
👍👍outstanding history reporting
Thank you!
-TimeGhost Ambassador
how did the Japanese ask permission to get a hospital ship to Wake? Did they just call up the USN ?
Perhaps through a neutral third party.
No neutral parties anywhere near Wake though.
Basically must have been over open radio.
Or carrier pigeon...
@@MrNicoJac Radio communication was the standard for the day, or encrypted telegraph data if a line had been established. Wake likely had radio communication with Japan and from there a neutral third party may have been the diplomatic route of communication between them and the US.
@@ToddSauve
Well, I meant turning on a basic/regional radio set, and having that one guy on the entire island who happened to learn a bit of English decades ago try to get a hold of a radio operator on a US ship sailing by in the general area.
I somehow doubt Tokyo would have cared about 1k injured enough to pass it through neutral embassies, with all the "die in honor of the emperor" stuff....
@@MrNicoJac It is hard to know, isn't it? The Allies generally respected a hospital facility, but the Japanese murdered many hospitalized wounded if they overran an Allied medical care facility. The whole thing is odd to me. Why should the Japanese have even expected mercy from those they virtually never showed mercy to?
Thank you.
Thanks TG
Thank you for watching.
My Granpa Jozef is about to enter the chat (Or Manchuria with the Soviet forces) He joined the fight late in the war, but saw action againts the Japanese in the final months of the war.
I just noticed the map behind Indy still has German territory in red. If the last occupied land was given up that map should have no red on it by now.
If you notice at the top the map is titled "ww2 1945" this is the world as it was in January 1945 it's not updating live. I also find it a bit confusing sometimes
Dendricklystable is correct, it is not updated in real time.
An American soldier once described the flame thrower as..."The Japanese soldiers shriveled up like bacon on a hot skillet." The effect on one's mind must have been horrific.
Are you going to update the map behind you especially for Europe? Looking forwards to Korea next week. Have the site saved to favorites already.
At some point in the future yes we will. When? Unsure, we just finished building the set for Korea and have been focusing on getting that right so it'll still be awhile till it gets changed.
12:18 "Everyone's an expert, and that includes the experts." Love that line! 🙃
U guys are awesome
Thank you, so are you!
After 304 episodes I have to ask, was the war worth it?
80,000,000 dead and the majority of Europeans living under totalitarian rule AFTER the war.
Was it worth it? No.
Was it necessary? Yes.
Because without this war ALL Europeans would live under totalitarianism and way more would have to suffer!
The thing I don't get about all the revisionist historians who claimed that the Soviets invading Manchuria convinced the Japanese to surrender. They say that the Soviet invasion is what convinced them that they couldn't use the Soviets to negotiate peace. And that's true but doesn't it also confirm that the Japanese had already decided to surrender before the Soviet invasion and thus the Soviets were not the reason they surrendered?
I think that many people tend to forget that the invasion in of itself did not cause the surrender, but rather the political implications of said invasion. Notice how at the end of this episode, Indy talkd about how the Soviets stalled on opening any negotiations with the Japanese as they intended to extend their sphere of influence into Manchuria and Korea.
Japa weren’t afraid of the Soviets
conditional vs unconditional surrender tho
@@tomhenry897 They were. The defeat of Khalkhin Gol had prompted the Japanese back in 1939 to persue a treaty with the Soviets, as they considered the Soviets as a genuine threat to their empire
@extrahistory8956 it also convinced them that they couldn't get the oil they needed by attacking to the north; they would have to go south instead to get it. Thus eventually leading to the attack on Pearl Harbor
Also, in late-May elements of the 509th Composite Bomb Group began arriving on Tinian in the Marianas, with the final personnel and equipment arriving last week. They begin to prepare for a special type of bombing mission...
Indy said “bye” to his friend for once!
The difference between Okinawa and Philipines is obvious. America had obligations to fullfill to Philipino nation, they promised them protection and independence. And they didn't owe anything to Okinawians.
Ya. That was Douglass pride
Okinawawians are Japanese
The Philippines are n
@@tomhenry897 tell thst to the okinawians
The Reason is Dugout Doug's Ego. He got his Butt whipped and lost his entire Army to the Japanese. He had to waste thousands of more lives trying to get his revenge.
@@tomhenry897 Okinawans are actually a seperate ethnic group from mainland Japanese, and during this era they still primarily spoke the Okinawan language. They're are someone closely tied culturally, in the same way as say Irish and Scottish people are both Celts, but they were not the same people. Okinawa was originally part of a seperate nation, the Ryukyu Kingdom, which was vassalized by Japan in the 17th century (after an invasion) and then formally annexed at the end of the 19th century.
This is an important point because the Okinawan people were treated as second class citizens at best by the Japanese, were often distrusted by the Japanese army, and sometimes during the course of the battle were even murdered if seen associating with American troops (like getting food), for fear that they were collaborating with the enemy.
Today most Okinawans are assimilated and their language is dying out, preserved mostly by the very elderly, but there are still some political tensions at times with mainland Japanese & accusations of not being treated fairly by Tokyo.
thanks indy and crew see you soon in our nxt journey the korean war
See you soon.
To think when this series started I was still a boy in love with my highschool sweetheart, those were the days
Thanks for going on this journey with us! Hope to see you at Korea.
@@WorldWarTwo I’ve been watching since 1915, I’m not stopping now
Stalin moved much more aggressively in planning for post-war politics than either Truman or Churchill. I remember being told by a teacher decades ago that the Soviet Union was the only major player in WWII to get significant territorial gains when it ended.
To be fair, they were already working on that before the war.
And now Stalins Union no longer exists
Then again, the other winning players were essentially defending the empires they already had, and had no interest in expanding their directly controlled territories. The Soviets had been longing for at least the borders of the old Russian Empire, if not a Europe-wide revolution, since like 1919. The recent German invasion only pressed home the strategical necessity of a buffer zone in Eastern Europe.
Great work and thank you for all you do!
Thank you!
As June comes near its end, the Japanese have taken serval heavy blows. As the Allies have began the process of recapturing lost territory such as the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Burma, Borneo, Brunei, and the Philippines. All the while, the Allies have taken Japanese territory of Iwo Jima and Okinawa and have reign supreme over Japanese air and sea space. Meanwhile, the Japanese foothold on mainland China is becoming increasingly weakened whilst the Chinese have become increasingly stronger and are willing to strike at the Japanese once and for all. All the while, the Japanese hope the Soviets will be their coup de grace, but the Soviets sense blood and will strike back at Manchuria. The Japanese will learn you cannot fight the entire world and if they are willing to fight, they will die for this is Total War. What will this mean? Will the Japanese surrender? Will the Allies have to be forced to invade the Japanese islands? Or will the new secret bomb be enough to end the war? I do not know. All I know is many more people will die. Godspeed.
I'm glad you discussed the questionable strategy on Okinawa. I've also been wondering for the past month why the US needed to push down the whole island, rather than just secure the airfields and isolate the Japanese in the south.
The only argument I can think of is that an indefinite campaign, which would require naval support for much longer, would expose the Navy to a longer period of Kamikaze attacks and associated casualties. However, given the complete collapse of Japanese air forces, and their crippling lack of fuel, I doubt they would have been able to mount many more kamikaze attacks than they did, even had the fleet been there for several more months.
Copy pasted from another comment:
The only thing I can come up with is that Okinawa had a _sizeable_ garrison.
And as we've seen in a lot of the island fighting, in an era without true assault rifles, a _massive_ bayonet charge at night _will_ overrun a front line.
Even machine guns overheat, if the enemy truly does not care about his own losses...
So it follows logically that leaving tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers alive, who are still armed and totally able to take their time carefully planning a night assault as well as ensuring that guns and ammo and bayonets are thoroughly distributed amongst them, is an absolute recipe for disaster.
And that does not even take into account that they could be doing small infiltration raids every single night.
And your defenders get bored and fall asleep on quiet parts of the front.
And you still need to feed and supply all of those defenders through shitty ports with ships that are fairly predictable to hit with kamikazes.
The only way I could see a partial clear up work, is if there's a piece of geography that you can turn into no man's land.
You'd need a mile of clear views, with neither cover nor concealment. And a lot of massive search lights to keep it as defendable by night as during the day.
And even then you'd _still_ need multiple defense lines of interlocking and mutually covering machine guns, backed up by heavy artillery.
So, in the end, I suppose it comes down to picking a familiar bad over an unfamiliar possibly-better?
And I can sorta see why you wouldn't want to yield the initiative to the enemy.
(but that's just my best guess - and personally I'd have preferred to keep all the naval assets in use, so multiple naval invasions behind the front line might have been a great way to dilute Japanese forces or at least overload the chain of command - and every Japanese killed by naval bombardment instead of infantry would probably save American lives)
Once the Big Blue Fleet was deployed in '43, Wake and Marcus islands became live targets for new airgroups deployed on carriers.
Are there any French Troops or Naval Forces fighting the Japanese in the Pacific? Were there any plans for France to re-invade Indochina?
Roosevelt was totally opposed to letting the French retake their former colony of French Indochina. But he died in April, 1945 and the US state department tall foreheads saw letting the French back in as a way of ensuring their cooperation with the US in the future. The French in Vietnam during WW2 were under the command of Vichy.
You can find more information by searching about the Corps Léger d'Intervention (CLI).
Flamethrower tanks must have been one of the most terrifying weapons to experience during the war: hulking behemoths spewing charring flames. If they could have flown they would basically have been dragons.
Good that you mentioned the Australians in Borneo. At the time & even today liberating Borneo it's thought that it was a waste of time & resources. Prime Minister Curtain wanted Australia to be noticed on the world stage for after the war so the Battles of Tarakan, Labuan, and Balikpapan to him was necessary even though the US had Japan on the run but he died 5 July 1945. The operation was undertaken largely for political reasons.
So what's the verdict of this channel on strategic bombing? I wrote a paper in college on this two years ago, and i asked about the topic on a video in then-1943. What's the final judgement on its effectiveness?
A modest remark on the _EPIC!!!_ WWII series as a whole, and not just this episode: Indie & Sparti, your delivery - both - is amazing, spot on, brilliant! in getting the message across which the whole Timeghost team behind the scenes wants to convey. I humbly salute this 'tour de force' by all of you and look forward to a continuation _into_ the Korean War. My deepest gratitude, Jeroen
Thank you very much for the lovely comment Jeroen, it's much appreciated by the team. Hope to see you around during Korea!
We all know what we want after the WWII series come to end:The 100 years war - week by week!
Operation Speedy Resolution!! Woo!!
😂😂
116 years
I think year by year would be feasible with weekly episodes
Problem…the Hundred Year War is full of lulls and is a tad repetitive… I propose the calamitous Thirty Year war (1618-1648) one of the most important and devastating conflicts in European history… dragging in practically the whole of Europe including Sweden and depopulating parts of Germany by up to 40%. And yet it is hardly known about by most people who aren’t history buffs…
Admiral christie - in charge of development of torpedoes , covering up defects and blaming submariners for the torpedo's failures!!!!
7:54 How did he ended up there? I know he got kicked out of China but I didn't know he ended up in Okinawa.
12:34 You know, there's something ironic about these two telling others that they shouldn't have tried to take the 'whole island'.
But then again, they would know.
Actually MacArthur allowed the Japanese to retreat into northern Luzon and New Guinea rather than face them in heated battles. Those forces became useless and eventually surrendered at the end of the war. MacArthur's criticism was correct and not inconsistent with his strategy elsewhere.
20:03 -> Quit game, reload earlier save
What's the song playing at 7:30?
Could somebody get me a source on that 60 meter extension for the crocodile shermans I cannot find anything online... maybe I'm looking up the wrong things but I couldn't find anything on a quick search
The book by B. E. Kleber and D. Birdsell titled "The Chemical Warfare Service: Chemicals in Combat," published in 1966 by the US Army's Center for Military History, describes the use of flamethrower extensions on Okinawa on page 587:
"On 10 June naval gunfire, artillery, and tanks pounded the cliffs, but the 7th Infantry Division advancing upon Hill 95 met accurate machine gun and sniper fire from at least 500 Japanese deployed in depth in that section of the escarpment. Five flame tanks then maneuvered into position and burned off the cover to the approaches to Hill 95. Finally, two skeleton companies of infantry struggled to the top only to be pinned down by enemy fire from farther up the ridge. The commanding officer and two men of Company C, 713th Tank Battalion, scaled the ridge to within thirty yards of the enemy position, pulling a 100-foot fire hose after them. From this point they burned out the defenders who were then slain by the infantry.
The next day the attack was resumed. At one point a section of tanks and flame tanks attacked a 500-yard frontage of the escarpment, driving the Japanese from their position and cutting them down with machine gun fire. Several days later two flame tanks came to the front lines and an extension hose was hauled up a 50-foot high section of the escarpment by means of a rope. The flame, hurled over the far edge, was blown by the wind into the caves on the reverse slope. By moving the hose from one flame tank to another the men destroyed ammunition dumps, fortified positions, and a large number of Japanese troops."
Why did so many senior American officers die so late in the battle? This seems strange.
Artillery is addressed to "whom it may concern".
Perhaps the Emperor would push for peace after all. Curious how the Soviets are essentially shooing away any prospects for peace. I mean... who else is gonna have to occupy Manchuria in that case? Certainly not the Japanese
So. . . The Chair moves that we cover up the misplaced Great Lakes. 😉
It looks like an Equirectangular projection, the first on Wikipedia's list of map projections
At the southernmost point of Okinawa, where the fighting ended, is a place called Peace Prayer Park. It is where many Japanese and Okinawans jumped to their deaths rather than being captured. The names of all those who are known to have died in the battle (military and civilian, no matter the nationality) are inscribed on stones. New names are added as they are identified.