I'm not referring to Japan's continued fingers-in-their-ears inability to take a cold hard look at their actions in the Second World War - that's another topic altogether.
What's been nagging me for years now is the revisionistic and belittling attitude many people have towards the Pacific Theater's overall importance in World War II. Namely, I've read a great number of comments describing it as a "side show" or as an "easy war" without providing any backing references. I can't imagine anyone reading a first-hand account of Tarawa or Okinawa and denying that some serious carnage went down there, or walking away thinking that the Marines weren't terribly brave, and just pushed over the Japanese without a fight.
I find it especially frustrating that, considering the number of massive naval battles that took place in the theater, and the importance of the submarine campaign, I've encountered many people on this forum who act like not a single battle of importance happened in the entire Pacific theater between 1941 and 1945. Seriously - Midway, Samar, Savo Island, Guadalcanal, Surigao Strait...nothing "interesting" happened there? I'm starting to feel like myself and a couple of others here are the lone "voices in the woods" when it comes to actively studying the war in the Pacific. More and more, the popular conception is that World War II was fought in the Atlantic, and later between the Americans and the Germans in June 1944 through May 1945, and everything else was "boring."
Maybe I'm just pissed off because my grandfather Herman Bergman was a signals intelligence officer during the war, and was basically left for dead in the Philippines when the war ended because his very existence was a secret. He went off to have 11 children, and never talked about the war much afterwords, but the fact that his contributions to the war effort have never been officially recognized has always been a sore spot for our family. I wonder how many other people have to deal with the frustration and lack of closure involved with having a "forgotten soldier" in their family?
You see that guy in the upper left of this photo? That's my great uncle Thomas Cadder, who was a nose gunner on a B-24 which crashed into the side of a mountain on Luzon. Nobody ever found the wreckage of the plane or the bodies of any of it's crew. It took more than 50 years for his home town to include his name of their World War II memorial. I'm sure all 10 of the men in this picture appreciate the fact they died fighting an easy side show.
And give me a break, people - the American submarine force fought an "easy war" because they suffered a casualty rate of "only" 22 percent? How condescending can a Fighting Keyboardist get?