Ordinary Marines (Oct. 2006)

This article is about Guadalcanal.

The article starts off by talking about Major General Kiyotake Kawaguchi, the Japanese commander, and his forces assault against Marine positions. On August 20th, 1942, the Japanese assault resulted in 777 of 916 Japanese becoming casualties. Another attempt by 3,000 Japanese ended pretty much the same way.

As do other articles, this one has many details on the fighting. One thing I found particularly interesting was a reference to finding some wounded Japanese, and the order was given that they should be shot. The article also has a very gruesome/moving (depending on one's point of view) large picture of dead Japanese troops.

Another reference is made to various villages that were burnt and destroyed by retreating Japanese forces.

The article is another one which refers to the banzai charges that the Japanese often used. These were largely based on the idea of dying for the Emperor, and the honor of fighting for Japan, but, at least in my opinion, they were almost always an incredibly stupid form of attack, almost always resulting in the obliteration of the attacking Japanese forces with relatively little actual damage to American lines.

This was the standard approach of the Japanese leaders, though. On Iwo Jima, Kuribayashi, on the other hand, was strongly against these type of attacks until the very end of the fighting. He preferred to have live soldiers fighting and taking as many Americans with them as they could rather than losing a large number of men at one time for very little, if any, actual gain.

It's all very interesting from a cultural perspective, how totally different the two sides in the war fought.

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