This is one of the books I wanted to read for quite some time since 2012 when I watched the following two sets of DVDs:
- A documentary, “The War,” which was a seven-episode program by Ken Burns, which originally aired in 2002 on PBS.
- A 10-hour HBO program, “The Pacific,” by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. “The Pacific” originally aired in 2010.
As a native of Japan, who grew up idolizing America, I am drawn to face the reality of what really happened during World War II. Reading this book was emotionally draining, to say the least. Yet, I was so grateful that the author, Eugene Sledge, took the time to write it.
Why was I drawn to his book? It was because, when I watched “The War,” which was partially based on his book, I was struck by how young and innocent he was at the time and how his father, a medical doctor, desperately wanted to keep him from going to war. His character was simply unforgettable. His book, however, hardly mentioned his family background. Instead, it was strictly about what it was like to be in combat, against the Japanese enemies, in the thick of war.
He is brutally honest about how scared he was, what he was thinking every step of the way, and how he was deeply impacted by the war. He describes in great detail about lack of personal hygiene, lack of decent food and clean water, and how you become grateful for something as simple as “a clean pair of socks.”
As time went on in the battle fields, witnessing and constantly being in fear of unimaginable cruelty, invariably, his hatred for the Japanese deepened. After all, in the combat zones, he and his comrades were constantly in a position to kill or be killed. Yet, throughout the entire book, I sensed his inner struggles with his conscience. For instance, he writes, “I had just killed a man at close range. That I had seen clearly the pain on his face when my bullets hit him came as a jolt. It suddenly made the war a very personal affair. The expression on that man’s face filled me with shame and then disgust for the war and all the misery it was causing.” He goes on to write, “Look at me, a member of the 5th Marine Regiment – one of the oldest, finest, and toughest regiments in the Marine Corps – feeling ashamed because I had shot a damned foe before he could throw a grenade at me! I felt like a fool and was thankful my buddies couldn’t read my thoughts.”
I wish I could have met the author in person while he was alive. Despite my country of origin, I have a feeling that he and I would have been able to have a meaningful conversation. I say this because:
- He and I agree on one fundamental aspect of humanity and freedom. He writes, “Until the millennium arrives and countries cease trying to enslave others, it will be necessary to accept one’s responsibilities and to be willing to make sacrifices for one’s country – as my comrades did. As the troops used to say, ‘If the country is good enough to live in, it’s good enough to fight for.’ With privileges goes responsibility.”
- Every time I have the privilege to speak of Japan’s gratitude for America in front of WWII veterans, many of them come up to me afterwards with tears in their eyes and say something along the lines of, “I have hated the Japanese all these years. Now I can let it go. Thank you.”
Just a few of the additional quotes from his book, below, show some of the most gruesome details of war that only those who were there could describe and truly relate.
- “It was uncivilized, as is all war, and was carried out with that particular savagery that characterized the struggle between the Marines and the Japanese. It wasn’t simply souvenir hunting or looting the enemy dead; it was more like Indian warriors taking scalps. While I was removing a bayonet and scabbard from a dead Japanese, I noticed a Marine near me. He wasn’t in our mortar section but had happened by and wanted to get in on the spoils. He came up to me dragging what I assumed to be a corpse. But the Japanese wasn’t dead. He had been wounded severely in the back and couldn’t move his arms; otherwise he would have resisted to his last breath. The Japanese’s mouth glowed with huge gold-crowned teeth, and his captor wanted them. He put the point of his kabar on the base of a tooth and hit the handle with the palm of his hand. Because the Japanese was kicking his feet and thrashing about, the knife point glanced off the tooth and sank deeply into the victim’s mouth. The Marine cursed him and with a slash cut his cheeks open to each ear. He put his foot on the sufferer’s lower jaw and tried again. Blood poured out of the solder’s mouth. He made a gurgling noise and thrashed wildly. I shouted, ‘Put the man out of his misery.’ All I got for an answer was a cussing out. Another Marine ran up, put a bullet in the enemy soldier’s brain, and ended his agony. The scavenger grumbled and continued extracting his prizes undisturbed. Such was the incredible cruelty that decent men could commit when reduced to a brutish existence in their fight for survival amid the violent death, terror, tension, fatigue, and filth that was the infantryman’s war.”
- “As I looked at the stains on the coral, I recalled some of the eloquent phrases of politicians and newsmen about how ‘gallant’ it was for a man to ‘shed his blood for his country,’ and ‘to give his life’s blood as a sacrifice,’ and so on. The words seemed so ridiculous. Only the flies benefited.”
- “It seemed so insane, and I realized that the war was like some sort of disease afflicting man… But there on Okinawa the disease was disrupting a place as pretty as a pastoral painting. I understood then what my grandmother had really meant when she told me as a boy that a blight descended on the land when the South was invaded during the Civil War.”
- “The wounded Japanese subsided into the muddy little ditch. He and his comrades had done their best. ‘They died gloriously on the field of honor for the emperor,’ is what their families would be told. In reality, their lives were wasted on a muddy, stinking slope for no good reason.”
Here is what I found out more about the author.
