Tarawa And The Myth Of Japanese Surrender

Most of you have never heard of Tarawa. Infact, I'll bet almost none of you have. Only hard core WW II history buffs will know its name. But you'll soon understand its connection to the present day state of our country and our national security. We'll get to that a little later. For now, I want to tell you that today Tarawa is part of the tiny Pacific Island nation of Kirbati, a collection of peaceful, beautiful coral atolls that are home to something on the order of 30,000 natives and somewhat tenuous connections to the larger world, with its defense and many of its affairs managed as a friendly courtesy by countries like New Zealand and Australia. Back then, in November, 1943, it was a critical stepping stone on the American march to the Japanese mainland. America's efforts to secure necessary landing, take off and resupply areas for their bombing campaign of mainland Japan necessitated taking Tarawa. I'll only tell you now that that small piece of real estate, defended by about 5,000 dug in and heavily armed Japanese soldiers, blasted for days by a naval armada and besieged by a total military force of 35,000 American Marines and sailors, took at least three days to secure and cost the lives of some 1,000 American Marines and resulted in over 3,000 American wounded. The Japanese fought almost to the last man. In the end, only about 17 of approximately 5,000 were taken alive. You can read more about the battle at http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/tarawa.htm

Now I'll tell you why we're talking about this today. First, it is an important chapter in American military heroism, and it needs to be told, not just because their triumph and sacrifice deserves to be publically remembered, but because we live in an age where our media and the liberal establishment routinely malign and undermine our armed forces every chance they get. In so doing, they weaken our will to fight and our ability to defend ourselves. We need to remember what these brave soldiers accomplished (and in coming posts, what our brave soldiers today accomplish) because it is right, it is proper and it is necessary to maintaining our national will and ability to defend ourselves.

Another point I want to make: Historical revisionists, in their relentless efforts to weaken our resolve and erode our willingness to use military force where necessary, like to suggest that dropping the atom bomb on Japan was unnecessary, that they could have been persuaded to surrender, and that the public fears of a horrendously bloody invasion of the Japanese mainland in 1945 were grossly exaggerated.

To those people, who have an agenda and are neither amenable to reason nor open to the truth, I don't have alot to say. They already know what they're doing and why. To those who remember, or who are too young to remember and may waver in the face of this negative media campaign, I give you the Marine experience at Tarawa. Ask any of the guys who waded ashore in a hail of machine gun bullets, grenades, mortar fire and anti-tank shells and who buried over a thousand of their buddies and carried home 3,000 more wounded, if they think the Japanese could be persuaded through conventional means to abandon their credo of fighting to the last man. Ask the Marines who crawled, inch by inch for three miles and more, through barbed wire, mine fields and sniper nests, who at the end captured only 17 Japanese survivors, most of them too wounded to fight anymore, if they thought the Japanese would be easily vanquished in a land invasion of the Japanese homeland. And ask their wives and kids back home, who would be getting their husbands, fathers, sons and brothers home in a casket or a wheel chair, if not at Tarawa, then certainly after an invasion of the Japanese mainland, if they believed it was better to mount a conventional land invasion of Japan as opposed to dropping the bomb.

The moral of our story:

Ignore the left.

Thank our men and women in uniform, past and present, for your freedom.

And give them your support.