Chapter 51

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.

"I'm sorry, Captain Austin," Lieutenant Sanderson even sounded contrite. "They're British." As if that explained it all. And it did.

American tourists are referred to as the Ugly Americans ... but at least we go home. The fucking Pommys show up ... stomp all over Aussie feelings ... and STAY. (stolen from an email from a rude Australian.) (Thank you Mark)

It's like Texans; just across the Texas-Oklahoma border ... on the northern side ... there's a bar. The men's shitter has three usable urinals; they are marked OKIES. There's one urinal right up against the ceiling; TEXANS.

Texans in Texas are wonderful people. Take them out of Texas and they become the ugly Texans ... and mostly they go home.

Brits aren't like that ... they stay.

They have lovely sayings;

"We're British ... do it our way." and,

"There's the British way and the wrong way."

Not to mention, "We have been a country much longer than you..."

Don't feel to badly, Australia, to the Brits, the US is still the colonies.

It seems the British heard about our gifts to the Australians; the Widgeon, the spare engines, the special tools, still in the crate. Along with the Elco PT boat, and it's accouterments and THEY want to know ALL ... and WE are going to tell them ... or else.

The stockpiling of mass amounts of equipment was the forerunner to the expected invasion of Japan. The intelligence community was forecasting the Japanese would defend their homeland to the last man, woman and child. By the time victory was obtained, the island nation would have no occupants. The United States would have to fight from the landing in the south to the beaches of the north ... It was should to be over by 1950. The United States was expecting a million casualties ... one in every two Allied soldiers would be dead. It is doubtful that the British would participate.

Documented Prisoners taken by or surrendered to the American military by year:

1942: 1,167.

1943: 1,064.

1944: 5,122.

1945: 12,19.

Japanese Military dead from 1941 to 1945 in the Pacific, 1,555,308.

The number of Japanese soldiers, sailors, and airmen who surrendered was limited by the Japanese military indoctrinating its personnel to fight to the death, Allied personnel often being unwilling to take prisoners, and many Japanese soldiers believing that those who surrendered would be killed by their captors.

Western Allied governments and senior military commanders directed that Japanese POWs be treated in accordance with relevant international conventions. In practice though, many front-line soldiers were unwilling to accept the surrender of Japanese personnel due to a combination of racist attitudes and reports of atrocities conducted against Allied troops.

A campaign launched in 1944 to encourage prisoner-taking was partially successful, and the number of prisoners taken increased significantly in the last year of the war.

Japanese POWs often believed that by surrendering they had broken all ties with Japan, and many provided intelligence to the Allies. The prisoners taken by the western Allies were held in generally good conditions in camps located in Australia, New Zealand, India and the United States. (Researched from Wikipedia and many other sources).

The Pacific island hopping used up enormous amounts of war materiel. The invasion could only be worse. Then Truman authorized the Bomb. The United States only had two ... but the Japanese didn't know that. The possibility of city after city being turned into radioactive rubble decided the Emperor's eventual suit for peace ... unconditional surrender. We would NOT negotiate.