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STEPHEN ROTH (LONDON, 1943)
on top of each other, their sides caved in, their suspension doors
knocked off. In this shoreline museum of carnage there were
abandoned rolls of barbed wire and smashed bulldozers and big
stacks of thrown away life belts and piles of shells still waiting to
be moved. In the water floated empty liferafts and soldiers'packs
and ration boxes, and mysterious oranges. On the beach lay
snarled rolls of telephone wire and big rolls of matting and stacks
of broken, rusting rifles.
Pyle wrote that on Omaha Beach lay sufficient men and
mechanism for a small war, gone forever. Most bodies had been
cleared off the beach before he arrived but their litter remained.
It extended in a thin little line, just like a highwater mark,
for miles along the beach. This was the strewn personal gear
that would never be needed again...There were socks and shoe
polish, sewing kits, diaries, Bibles and hand grenades. There
were the latest letters from home, with the address on each one
neatly razored out (a security precaution). There were tooth
brushes and razors and snapshots of families back home staring
up at you from the sand. There were pocketbooks, metal mirrors,
extra trousers, and bloody, abandoned shoes. There were
broken-handled shovels, and portable radios smashed almost
beyond recognition, and mine detectors twisted and ruined.
There were tom pistol belts and canvas water buckets, first aid
kits, and jumbled heaps of lifebelts.... Two of the most dominant
items in the beach refuse were cigarettes and writing paper.
Each soldier was issued a carton of cigarettes just before he
started. That day those cartons by the thousands, water-soaked
and spilled out, marked the line of our first savage blow (against
Hitler's 'Fortress Europe).
The strong, swirling tides of the Normandy coastline
shifted the contours of the sandy beach as they moved in and
out. They carried soldiers'bodies out to sea, and later they
returned them. They covered the corpses... with sand, and then
in their whims they uncovered them. As I plowed out over the
wet sand, I walked around what seemed to be a couple of pieces
of driftwood sticking out of the sand. But they weren’t driftwood.
They were a soldier's two feet. He was completely covered
except for his feet; the toes of his Gl shoes pointed toward the
land he had come so far to see, and which he saw so briefly.
Pyle left Europe for the Pacific War in early 1946. He
was initially astounded at the distances. The whole Western
Pacific is (the) battlefield. Whereas distances in Europe are at
most hundreds of miles, out here they are thousands, and there's
nothing inbetween but water. A man can be on an island battle
field, and the next thing behind him is a thousand miles away....
In the Pacific they bring men clear back from the western islands
to Pearl Harbor rest camps — the equivalent of sending an Anzio
beachhead fighter all the way back to Kansas City....It's 3,500
miles from Pearl Harbor to the Marianas, all over water, yet
hundreds of people travel it daily by air as causally as you'd go
to work every morning. An admiral told him that the Pacific War
was like watching a slow-motion picture. You planned (an
operation) for months, then finally the great day came when you
launched your plans and then it was days or weeks before the
attack happened — because it took that long to get there.
Another thing Pyle had to adjust to In the Pacific was a
different attitude toward the Japanese enemy. In Europe we felt
our enemies, horrible and deadly as they were, were still people.
But out here I soon gathered that the Japanese were looked
upon as something inhuman and repulsive; the way some
people feel about cockroaches or mice.
(Japanese-Americans were imprisoned In one of the
most shameful actions committed by the U.S. government.
The authors of On The Edge: A History of America Since World
War 2 [Peter N. Carroll, David D. Lee and David A. Horowitz,
a professor of history at Portland State University] dissect the
government's internment In so-called relocation camps [such
as the famous Manzanar] of 110,000 Japanese-Americans, most
of v4iom lived on the West Coast: Alarmed by Pearl Harbor and
Japanese victories in the Pacific, white Americans focused their
rage on the Japanese-American population. Joum-alists falsely
reported that California Japanese had conspired in the attack on
Pearl Harbor and planned further subversion at home. ..In this
disregard for Japanese rights, racism was no small motive. "It's
a question of whether the white man lives on the Pacific or a
brown man," admitted one farmer anxious to get rid of
Japanese-American competition. The commanding general of
the area, John DeWitt, explained the situation more simply. "A
Jap's a Jap...It makes no difference if he's an American citizen."
[President] Roosevelt responded to public pressure with Exec-
utive Order 9066, which required the internment and relocation
of all Japanese Two thirds of the affected people were Ameri
can citizens by birth....Many of these victims, particularly second
generation Nesei, wished to prove their loyalty by complying with
the order. Others protested vigorously: "Has the Gestapo come
to America? Have we not risen in righteous anger at Hitler's mis
treatment of the Jews? Then, is it not as incongruous that citizen
Americans of Japanese descent should be similarly mistreated
and persecuted?". Forced to sell their property at short notice —
usually to unscrupulous white buyers - the Japanese were herd
ed into detention centers and then relocated into 10 concentra
tion camps in remote, often bleak parts of the country.)
Pyle was awestruck afresh at the war's scale of effort
and materiel. He provides a written snapshot of the teeming
American activity In the Marianas Islands (Saipan, Guam and
Tinian, wrested from the Japanese at great cost to both sides
the previous summer) in February 1945.
Scores of thousands of troops of all kinds were there.
Furious building was going on. Planes arrived on schedule from
all directions as though it were Chicago Airport — coming from
thousands of miles over water. Convoys unloaded unbelievable
tonnage. These islands... will never return to their former placid
life, for we are building on almost every square inch of usable
land. Supplies in staggering quantities were being stacked up
there for future use. You could take your pick of K rations or
lumber or bombs, and you'd find enough there to feed a city,
build one, or blow it up. Fleets based there between engage
ments. Combat troops came there to train; other troops came
back to rest. Great hospitals were set up for our wounded. Pipe
lines criss-crossed the islands. Trucks bumper to bumper dashed
forward as though they were on the Western Front. Oxcart trails
turned almost overnight into four-lane macadam highways for
military traffic.
There was no blackout in the islands. If raiders came
the lights were turned off, but they seldom came anymore. The
Marianas were pretty safe. Great long macadam airstrips were
in operation and others were being laid. The Mananas were the
base for some of our B-29 bomber fleets, and it was growing
and growing and growing. Thousands of square tents, thousands
of curved steel Quonset huts, thousands of huge, permanent
warehouses and office buildings dotted the islands. Lights
burned all night and the roar of planes, the clank of bulldozers
and the clatter of hammers were constant. A strange contrast
to the stillness that dwelt amidst the greenery for so many
centuries. (B-29s from the Marianas flrebombed Japan and
dropped two atomic bombs.)
He wrote about the monotony of life on islands left
behind by the war War everywhere is monotonous in its dread
fulness. But in the Pacific even the niceness of life gets monot
onous. The days are warm and on our established island bases
the food is good, the mail service is fast, there's little danger
from the enemy, and the days go by in their endless sameness
and they drive men nuts. It's sometimes called going "pineapple
crazy"....A man doesn't have to be in the frontlines to have finally
more than he can take without breaking. He can, when isolated
and homesick, have more than he can take of warmth and sun-
COLUMBIA RIVER
MARITIME MUSEUM
VISIT THE MUSHJM SHOP
IN ASTORIA, OREGON
shine and good food and safety — when there's nothing else to
go with it, and no prospect of anything else
Pyle discovered the same sense of isolation and
monotony among seagoing sailors. They were all sick to death
of the ...vast Pacific. I believe they talked even more about
wanting to go home than soldiers in Europe. Their lives really
were empty; they had their work, their movies, and their mail,
and that's just about all they did have. And nothing to look
forward to. They never saw anybody but themselves. They sailed
and sailed and never arrived anywhere; they hadn't even seen a
village for a year Three times they'd been to remote, lifeless
sand bars in the Pacific, and had been allowed to go ashore for
a few hours and sit under palm trees and drink three cans of
beer That's all.
(Not to be forgotten or underplayed is that soldiers,
sailors, Marines and airmen broke down from exposure to the
v'rar's honors. James J. Fahey, in his remarkable and contra
band personal record of his life as a Navy Seaman 1st Class
aboard an American cruiser during World War 2, Pacific War
Diary - which Naval historian [and admiral] Samuel Eliot Mon
son wrote gives the American bluejacket's point o f view about
naval war in the Pacific — described In one entry shellshocked
sailors Wio were transfened aboard his ship: This afternoon
[June 23, 1945] at about 5 p.m. one of the minesweepers pulled
alongside with five shellshock cases. We were bombarding
[Borneo] when it came alongside and every time the guns fired
the poor fellows almost went insane, their nerves were comple
tely shot. If they stayed aboard our ship they could have gone
mad so we had to send them to the tanker where it was out of
range of the noise - four of the men had to be held and the fifth
one had to have two men hold him. He was shaking so much he
could not control himself, he was crying at the same time. His
teeth were chattering like a machinegun. Every time our guns
went off he doubled up and brought the two men to the deck
with him. He wanted to get away from here as quickly as possi
ble and you could not blame him. He might have jumped over
the side. Everyone felt sorry for him. .. They say shock is worse
than getting wounded. These fellows shook all over, it was just
like you put them on a big vibrating machine. Fahey's compas
sion is at odds with Army General George Patton's slap heard
around the world, perhaps the most famous sound of the war,
louder than bombs or gunfire. Patton despised weakness; his
sympathy was not extended towards those who were psycholog
ically damaged by combat. He slapped a battle fatigued soldier
and called him a coward.)
Ernie Pyle participated In the Invasion of Okinawa, the
last campaign of World War 2 and the largest sea, land and air
assault In history: over 1,200 ships canying more than 180,000
soldiers and Marines. He was in the first wave of landing craft
wth Marines on Easter Sunday, April 1, 1945:
An hour and a half before H-hour at Okinawa, our vast
fleet began its final, mighty bombardment of the shore with its
big guns. They had been at it for a week, but this was a concen
tration whose fury hadn't been approached before. The power of
the thing was ghastly. Great sheets of flame flashed out from a
battery of guns, gray-brownish smoke puffed up in a huge cloud,
then the crash of sound and concussion carried across the water
and hit you. Multiply that by hundreds and you had bedlam. Now
and then the smoke from a battlewagon would come out in a
smoke ring, an enormous one 20 or 30 feet across, and float
upward with perfect symmetry. Then came our carrier planes
diving on the beaches, and torpedo planes, carrying heavy
bombs and incendiaries that spread deep-red flame. Smoke
and dust rose up from the shore, thousands of feet high, until
finally the land was completely veiled. Bombs and strafing
machineguns and roaring engines mingled with the crash of
naval bombardment and seemed to drown out all existence.
The ghastly concussion set up vibrations in the air — a sort of
flutter - which pained and pounded the ears as though with
invisible drumsticks. During all this time the waves of assault
craft were forming up behind us.
The water was a turmoil of movement: dispatch and
control boats running about, LSMs and LSTs moving slowly
forward to their unloading areas, motor torpedo boats dashing
around as guides. Even the destroyers moved majestically
across the fleet as they closed up for the bombardment of the
shore. . . (The) first wave (of assault craft) consisted solely of
heavy guns on amphibious tanks which were to get ashore and
blast out the pillboxes on the beaches. One minute behind them
came the second wave - the first of our foot troops. After that,
waves came ashore at about 10 minute intervals. Wave 6 was on
its way before Wave 1 ever hit the beach. Wave 15 was moving
up before Wave 6 got to the beach. That's the way it went.
The way It went for Ernie Pyle was that his life ended a
little more than two weeks after Invasion day. The Little Man's
Little Man' was killed by a Japanese sniper on the Island of
le Shima just off Okinawa on April 18, six days after President
Franklin Roosevelt died (and three years to the day since Jimmy
Doolittle's carrier launched B-25 raid on Tokyo, the first Ameri
can bombing of Japan). An Associated Press dispatch reported,
Ernie Pyle, war correspondent, beloved by his coworkers, GIs
and generals alike, was killed by a Japanese bullet through his
left temple this morning. Soldiers erected a sign where he died:
On this spct the 77th Infantry Division lost a buddy, Ernie Pyle.
George Felfer w ote of the battle of Okinawa In his book
Tennozan (the name of a place In Japan where a 16th century
Japanese ruler staked his fate on a single battle and which has
come to mean any decisive struggle):
Okinawa was the site of the largest land-sea-air battle in
history. Apart from a few sorties elsewhere, the entire Japanese
kamikaze effort of the war was directed against the American
armada, also the largest in history, situated off the Okinawan
coast. This caused the Navy greater casualties than in any
previous engagement in either the Atlantic or the Pacific. The
agony and carnage were even greater on land, where the
Japanese defenders were better fortified and armed than
anywhere else in the Pacific. More than twice the number of
casualties were killed on Okinawa than on Guadalcanal and
two Jima combined (over 72,000, including 12,000 killed and
missing). . . . American casualties were a small part of the overall
loss. The Japanese story, essentially untold in America, is more
gruesome. And the immense Japanese suffering was minor
compared to that of Okinawa Itself, a once independent kingdom
of gentle farmers and traders who had maintained no arms what
ever for centuries before Japan swallowed them in 1879. ...The
greatest suffering was bome by this peace-loving homeland,
which ended in rubble and ash. Its cultural heritage almost totally
obliterated ..The civilian tragedy on Okinawa exceeded that of
Hiroshima in every way, including the number o f noncombatants
killed. At least 150,000 of them died, even more horribly than
those seared and slaughtered under the mushroom cloud, with
weeks to witness their children's mutilation by "the typhoon of
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