Naval Gazing 11: The Ill-Named Pacific War

[AndyC]

Discuss @Thande 's latest article here

 

[Thande]

Thanks Andy.

Even pushing to a longer wordcount than ever before, I'm conscious that this is only a light-touch study of one of the biggest and most complex wars in history - I've emphasised the earlier battle explanations for that reason, and left discussion of how much it affected later US military attitudes (as opposed to pop culture) for a later article.

 

[Death's Companion]

This was a very nice summary. Surprised how much you managed to cover in so little space.

 

[Thande]

This was a very nice summary. Surprised how much you managed to cover in so little space.

Thanks Deaths, I knew it would be the most challenging one to do.

 

[Makemakean]

The Taiping Rebellion similarly is a rather unfortunate name, seeing Taiping means "Heavenly Peace". Allegedly, the reason why Kyoto is today called Kyoto and not by its original name, Heian, is because by the 15th century, after various warlords and their samurais had repeatedly occupied and destroyed the city in their massively complex games of thrones, they sort of felt it was too dark to continue to refer to the city by the name of "tranquility and peace".

 

[Bonniecanuck]

I may have personal biases here, but there's something worth recognising about the tragedy that is the Battle of Hong Kong. Two whole battalions each of Canadians and Indians sent overseas to join the paltry garrison as nothing more than a morale booster and diversion by Churchill, in an environment they're utterly unfamiliar with with little time to acclimate to, and still fought desperately trying to hold the line while the British turned tail and ran. And after that being among the first Western Allied victims of Japanese wartime brutality, bearing witness to massacres of field hospitals set up in secondary schools (see the St. Stephen's College Massacre) and having possibly the longest experience of non-Chinese or non-Soviet POWs of the torturous experience of internment under Japan. And all of it being for nothing as Malaya and Singapore fell anyway. Not to mention the fact that only until recently, awareness of the battle was very sparse even where it took place.

The bright side from that last bit is that there are young Hong Kong historians and reenactors who have breathed new life into bringing knowledge of the battle into the light once again over the last couple of years.