Less interest in the Pacific?

If you are gonna "print the legend" you still have to print the whole thing and a lot of it starts in 1931 but the Russian Air Force was a contributor in 1937 ........and for a brief view of this I chose to include the gamers and go to one of their sites to get brief accounts so we can include even "gamers" in getting the legend complete. The Pacific Theater cannot be left out if you are intending to be complete and it matters not what may be easier, more accessible, or otherwise more familiar so I will say anyone who leaves out the Pacific is leaving out a most exciting portion of air, land, and sea battles that culminated in WWII. Take a look at this site Air War in China Part I: China Alone 1937-41 « War and Game

 

Victor,

For the most part, I disagree. Historical gaming sites, for the most part, are for the TLDR(Too Long, Didn't Read) crowd, although there are exceptions, www.subsim.com would be one. The forum is quite active and has a very good amount of historical input on submarines.

That being said, if the Sino-Japanese air war is your "pot of tea", I would kindly suggest you check out Hkans Aviation page - Sino-Japanese Air War 1937-45
As you can plainly see, the gaming site barely scratches the surface of the air war in China from 1937-41.

Also, the parent website, Hkans Aviation page - Biplane Fighter Aces from the Second World War contains a lot of fascinating information.

 

If you include the films made during the war, I would say DURING the war, US films were heavily Pacific oriented. After all, t'was them what attacked us! After the war, I think they tilted towards the ETO.

 

Hi there. My Uncle William Forbes Petrie Brodie was a victim of the Suez Maru Atrocity episode of this "side-show" :-( Heather

 

Takao is right....the site I presented does not have detail but it does show there is history to learn about.....very much leading to our eventual involvement in the Pacific.

 

As to the original question, one word: Nazis. There is more focus on the ETO because Nazis are more fascinating to the public and always have been. In movies, they also make more interesting villains and are easier to root against. Just about every movie about the Pacific has had some narrative of honor amongst the Japanese soldiers and/or officers amidst the atrocities. ETO movies find they can dispense with that and just make the Nazis plain old mean.

 

I think it also has a lot to do with the relative ...."hellishness" (just made up a new word! I think...) of the war. In Europe, both sides tried (generally) to follow the Geneva Conventions. There were certain "unwritten" rules of conduct, such as don't shoot at medics or priests, since the other side's might come across your mangled butt on the battlefield some day and you'd hope they'd help you out. Whereas in the Pacific, the Japanese were taught specifically to aim for officers, medics, and comms guys before regular infantry. Also, a GI captured in battle was just as likely to be tortured and desecrated, often within earshot of your friends on the line (I'm reading "Ghost Mountain Boys" right now, they just had that happen on New Guinea), as you were to be sent to rear areas to be questioned and imprisoned. And the prisons.....German POW camps were no picnic, but there were at least rules to be followed, Red Cross visits, food, mail, etc. In Japan, you were nothing. Not even a slave. You were a lump of meat to be wrung dry and thrown away. They opened mines that had been previously shut down due to the dangers. Inadequate (or none at all) safety gear. Food? Only if you worked inhuman shifts, and then only enough to barely survive. Countless books dedicated to those who survived various POW camps and death-ships/transports always talk about how the survivors made their way back to the States, and never talked about their experiences. For sure, somebody who hadn't been there would have no frame of reference to even begin to understand the horrors they went through...most of them tried to forget about it themselves. Its just not something that the rational human mind can wrap itself around, so it just doesn't. So, I guess, society has sorta generally focused on the ETO/MTO, if they even think about the war at all.

Just my $0.002 (adjusted for recession)

 

That's one great book about a feat of physical endurance that should make proud any National Guard unit.

 

I don't know if it's been said in the thread, but my thought is that the European theater affected more "peoples" than the Pacific. Some of Japan was bombed, some of Australia was, the Philippines and a good enough portion of China were occupied. However, most of Europe was a battlefield at some point, and the civilian populations of each nation were more largely affected across the board than in the Pacific. Moreover, the European populations were more likely to spread stories; how many of the occupied villages of Papua New Guinea were likely to have a newspaper or authors writing about their experiences?

I still find the Pacific more interesting though.

 

I'd say that in the WWII era U.S. there was more interest in the Pacific than in the ETO. This lessening of interest occured post war but not immediately post war. In Britain, France and Europe ETO has always held the greatest interest because that was the theater that posed the biggest threat. Churchill even made a number of statements concerning the necessity of keeping the U.S. focused on Europe when the U.S. populace kept returning it's focus to the Pacific. Gromit801 is right, if you look at contemporary American films there was during and immediately post-war a significant bias in favor of the Pacific. How and why this changed I am not sure.

 

Well said USMCPrice!

For us it is more common to learn about the ETO than the PTO(?) That is our part of the history. Normally the kids at school are learning that WW2 was bad and the Nazis worse and there are only 2 things of the Pacific war. The assault on Pearl Harbour and the drop of the two A-bombs. My personal skills to the Pacific War are not zero, but very small.

 

Yes, thats the point Opana! The problem over here is that we have to see ( made by the upper ones of the gouvernment) the war as a bad thing and for the reason we started it, it is not well liked to get deeper into it. The school has to show the kids that there was a thing in 1939 up to 1945 and that was it. No deeper interest. If you want to know more, you have to help yourself. But aware, showing to much interest and talking to loud of it is a bit problematic. We sadly can´t handle this topic in the same free way you can do this!

 

It is allowed to you if you will collect this items and you have the allowance to do so, but it is strictly forbidden to show this in public without a allowance. And such a allowance is only to get if you make a exhibiton to the 3rd Reich with a lot of rules to following. And if you have such a item at home, you should have it in a safe so that no one can see it. We dealed the wrong way with our history. It is good to see it critical but not so like we do it. The next problems are the jewish people. I can guarantee you that if you are talking about the Wehrmacht, SS or whatever in public and it isn´t critical against them, you can get into deep troubles if a jew hears that. I can understand that they aren´t good friends of the 3rd Reich, but the way they want us to deal with them makes all the history more interesting to such idiots like the Neonazis and helps them growing. It is never good to hide a part of history, it happened and we have to work up this part of our history. This is the only way to understand it and to prevent that such a crime will happen again.

 

Yes, it would be better to choose the Roman Imperium or the Napoleonic wars than the WW2!