Quote:
Originally Posted by kyp275
I'd say the Battle of Okinawa did far more to convince the US to use nuclear weapons. Iwo Jima, while certainly one of the more famous battle, was not the deadliest either by ratio(Peleliu) or total numbers (Okinawa).
Also, I'm not so certain a return of WW2-era "samurai ferocity" would really be a good thing. War is an ugly business, no matter how it may be romanticized after the fact. Just look at Okinawa. Those "samurais" used civilians as shields, pillaged and raped the local population, ordered civilians to commit mass suicide in the face of advancing Allied forces, not exactly what I'd call positive traits, and is probably best if it's kept in the history books.
Just like the Allied forces weren't knights in shiny armors, the IJA were hardly the honor-bound samurais in folklore.
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I assume you had never watched Letters From Iwo Jima or read the book it was based on.
General Kuribayashi was a whole different breed from his contemporaries and so were the men under him. AFAIK, General Kuribayashi was ordered to stand and die at Iwo Jima, fighting to the last men.
But Kuribayashi also know Japan was fighting a losing war from the start based on his time in America. The men under him was civillians conscripted quite late in life, most were already fathers.
But a directed order could not be disobeyed, so he devianted a bit from the usual tactics which calls the soldiers to go out with a bang. What did he do, he told the men to evacuate the civillians at Iwo Jima first, had them digged out a vast tunnel network underground and tell them to never give up, don't do suicide attacks and keep fighting till the last breath using hit-and-run attacks.
That's the "Samurai Ferocity" I referring to here. Don't waste your life and defend your homeland tii you drop dead. WWII GIs at Iwo Jima had a immerse respect for surviving Iwo Jima vets.