http://vimeo.com/5645171 This is an excellent video of how the people felt in Hawaii on the day the Japanese surrendered. The leftists on here wouldn't give the soldiers any kind of welcome home these days. They would rather spit on them.
Todays leftist aren't created from world war 2, that was justified we were attacked, but those unneccessary conservative sponsored wars in vietnam, iraq, etc...
I opened this thread to pay my respects then to see that you posted crapass hate-flame ... unbelievable.
My grandfather on my father's side was in the 8th Australian Division. It surrendered when Singapore fell and he spent the rest of the war as a POW in Changi. My other grandfather was a flight instructor in the Royal Australian Air Force and never saw combat, which he hated. He apparently requested to be transferred multiple times but was told that flight instructors were too valuable to send into combat.
Until the day he died he would cross the street if he saw a Japanese person. He never forgave them as a people. Australian POWs had around a 40% mortality rate as guests of the Emperor.
Wow, that is sad. But the US certainly does have Australia to thank, it's them who covered the jungles early in the war, due to lack of Jungle training in the US army.
Many of those Australian soldiers didn't have any training beyond marching in formation. Many went into the jungles of New Guinea never having shot a firearm before in their life. The first time they fired one was at a Japanese soldier.
With lessons learnt from WW2 Australia set up jungle training for future wars. When Vietnam rolled around Australian soldiers were considered highly trained in both jungle warfare and counter insurgency, so much so that high ranking Americans considered either sending American officers bound for Vietnam to Australia for further training or place them in Australian units for a short time. Both ideas fell through though due to the whole, "USA NUMBER ONE!" bullcrap. Those officers ended up getting sanctioned for their crazy ideas. However, when Australian soldiers went to New Guinea they did so with not only little training, but wearing desert camo.
FYI- the US Army was present in the Philippines at the onset of hostilities. The Army also assisted the Marines on Guadalcanal in our first large amphibious operation of the Pacific war. My old boss was an Army combat engineer who got shot in the gut by a Japanese machine-gunner on Saipan, while assisting the USMC. The Army fought in New Guinea, the capture of the Philippines, and on Okinawa. _
Yeah, the Australians had their push there, but you can't deny the US major pushes espicially later on.
I don't deny it. However, that was because MacArthur, jealous of Australian successes in New Guinea, purposely shut Australian forces out of later operations as he was more worried about his name in the history books than winning the war.
