In honor of VJ Day, I offer a few thoughts on the subject:
From 28-63 million Asians were killed by the Japanese in WWII. The estimate range is due to the steadily increasing Chinese estimates, since 1945, of people killed. Thus America did a lot more than win its war, SHE STOPPOED THE GENOCIDAL KILLING OF ASIANS (an average of 11,000 to 27,000, each day, from 1938 until August, 1945).
Something like 100 naval pilots and submarine skippers sank all 22 Japanese aircraft carriers and nearly 3 million tons of their Merchant Marine, which crippled the Japanese war effort in the Pacific due to lack of trained pilots and ship fuel and avgas. Their Navy had to wait for us to come to them and all U.S. island invasions, until Okinawa, were unopposed by sea and air while their soldiers fought ours while being bombed and strafed by our airplanes and shelled by our ships. At Okinawa, 1900 kamikaze pilots hit 363 of our naval ships and killed almost as many sailors as our army and marine fatalitiess in the land battle.
In the Pacific War, the U.S. Navy and Marines lost fewer than 50,000 killed (less than 0.2% of all WWII combatant fatalities). The Japanese had more men in uniform when they surrendered than Germany ever had at any point in the war.The major factors in our victory, aside the magnificent '100' mentioned above, were: brilliant strategic planning, which borrowed heavily from a War Plan begun in 1898; terrific U.S. Naval Intelligence breakthroughs (and the unfortunate quashing of the Intelligence hero of Midway, CDR. Joe Rochefort, by the jealous Intelligence cadre in Washington); the competence and efficiency of the Seabees in construction and the Navy in logistics support; the juggernaut of American Industry which outproduced the Japanese 4.5:1, in war materiel, by the end of 1943; and, the grit of our fighting men (The Japanese leadership considered American young men "soft" in 1941).
God bless all who served! There will never be another war like WWII in the Pacific.
Don Meyers
donmeyers@charter.net