Why is the ETO more popular in hearts and minds than the PTO?

I remember coming back home, after Okinawa, and the same wiseguys were standing on the street corner just as they had been before the war. There were a few less, who had been killed over there, but they were mostly the same knuckleheads, shooting craps and gawking at the young ladies passing by. They were a few years older than me.

They asked me where I had been and I told them I was in the Marines at Peleliu and Okinawa. They had no idea what I was I was talking about...and these guys had been to North Africa and Europe, etc...

So, I said to hell with it and didn't wear my uniform again. I went over to Jamaica Ave. and bought myself a zoot suit and a big floppy hat.

...and it's been that way every since.

Why do you think the war in Europe has always been a theater people have studied more?

sm

 

I wonder if it isn't because most Americans can trace their roots back through Europe, and therefore relate more to the common Western Culture as opposed to the Asiatic culture that very few of us even begin to understand.
Inch for inch though, I think you all had it really bad in the PTO!

 

I would agree with the above post, most Americans trace their ancestory back to Europe, and both can and do more closely "relate" to those cultures. And add to that the "Germany First" policy which put the PTO on the defensive at the beginning and only slowly shifted to the offensive. And again, the battles were fought on remote islands, or in lands so foreign sounding that people didn't even have a clue (generally speaking) where to start looking for them on a map or globe.

They knew where Cologne was, and Frankfort, and Paris, and Alexandria Egypt. But their eyes would glaze over if a person told them their brother or son was MIA/KIA at Tarawa. "Where?"

Sad and unfair, but a reality none the less.

 

I think it also had a bit more to do with the time between fighting that went on in the Pacific. After Pearl Harbor, there was a bit about the Gallent defense of Wake Island, and the Philippenes, but then they too fell and all we had in the news was mostly in regards to naval battles occuring sporaticly somewhere between the Indian Ocean to Hawaii. Combat in Europe was more constant and news in regards to it could be kept up to date much better than that coming from the Pacific, thus capturing the attention of the public in a greater way. Postwar, many films came out about the Pacific War and it's various aspects, but the focus shifted towards Europe and stayed there.

 

I am going to extrapolate on what Sami said and add that there was a greater association, by most Americans, with the European theatre. 1941 a alot of Americans were 1st and 2nd generation immigrants, so most had family they were in contact with in Europe and the names of the places were familiar. Add to that the classic style of the European Campaign: Prolonged land engagements, Strategic bombing, Cold Winters...etc. I think the European campaign was much more related to the average American.

Converesly the Pacific Campaign was exotic and far away with unfamiliar names. The land battles were not the drawn out campigns that were seen in Europe and North Africa. Aside from Okinawa, Iwo Jima, the Phillipines and Guadalcanal most US battles lasted a few weeks and then we moved on to another exotic far away location. The American public didn't fully appreciate the meaning of the words "Island Hopping", Banzai and Amphibious Task Force. The efforts of the Marines at Wake were soon overshadowed by the surrender at Bataan and how quickly the Navy had begun to push the Japanese back.

 

You know, I often thought that it was easier to kill the Japanese man, because they looked, acted and thought much different than us. If I had to kill someone who looked like me, I might have a rougher time doing it.

As it were, I had no problem at all shooting the Japanese. None at all. I didn't feel bad for them and I certainly did not hesitate.
I did not hate the Nips, but I certainly did not like them very much either.

I'm not a military historian by any means, but also, wasn't there more non-combatants, real echelon and support in the Pacific, as opposed to Europe? Because we were spread out over a vast ocean, was the infrastructure (is that a word?) more elaborate in the Pacific. That is to say, most men stationed in the Pacific did not see actual combat; therefore they had nothing to tell coming home?

That's just a shot in the dark.

 

Yet Guadalcanal happened before the invasion of North Africa.

 

You might be onto a little recognized difference between the two theaters, I have seen estimates that put between 6-9 men in support and supply for every trooper in combat in the ETO, and between 10-12 support and supply for every combat soldier in the PTO. Possibly because of the longer supply sea-train and such.

 

That's pretty accurate. Even the Rear Echelon in Europe was subject to air raids and were a lot closer to the front lines, especially in 43-44, in Europe than they were in the Pacific. In Europe the Rear Echelon pretty much followed the land battles and were easily subject to counter assault, i.e. Bastogne, than they were in the Pacific.

The Pacific Campaign required a huge logistics machine over a huge portion of the Eath's surface, from California to Australia without a lot of land mass in between. From what I understand soldiers, sailors and Marines were either in a combat zone or not. Unlike Europe where you could push the enemy off a piece of terrain and they may move back 25 miles, in the Pacific when the Japanese lost an Island they were moved back sometimes thousands of miles.

Guadalcanal and Wake Island are two of the most overlooked battles of the War. Most people see the Doolittle Raid as being the first offensive US action of the War; but, the Marines at Wake sunk 2 Japanese ships, damaged a bunch more and repulsed 2 invasion attempts. The Marines at Wake proved that the Japanese could be beaten and I might add that they did it with M1903 Springfields, M1919 .30 Cal machine guns and left over 8" Coast Defense guns from WW1.

Ya gotta love Marines

 

I personally think it never was, certainly not on this very forum. maybe coverage in the 60-70's was prone to ETO, not anymore

 

I would also like to add that the rapidity that the Nazi war machine overran all those familiar family places really made the threat a lot more real.

The fact that Japan was a little tiny Island compared to the US I wonder if the average person here really took the Japonese seriously. Even after Pearl Harbor and the Philipines, the war was way out in the Pacific on little islands that noone had ever heard of before. With the gov'nt taking a "the PTO can wait" attitude I wonder if people minimized the actual threat that was posed?
Military men facing the prospect of going to the PTO probably took it very seriously, but I wonder about the average everyday civilian on the street?

 

I don't think the average civilian knew much about what was happening in the Pacific, until about the time of Iwo Jima. Except maybe for those people living in California. I think they had a much keener interest than let's say New York.

 

the papers of the time never did say much till latter years also the limited Allies as to countries taking part in the PTO comparing the number of Allies going up against the little Austrian and baldy. the interest was there that is fact, both Fathers served in the Pacific, whether we got up to date info of course was a matter of chance

 

"Why do you think the war in Europe has always been a theater people have studied more?"

The ETO is much smaller than the PTO for one thing. The Pacific was immense and terra (aqua) incognito to the American public then.

In the 40s the world was still a big place, but as others have pointed out US folks at least knew where the UK, France, and Germany where located. The old countries. Pearl Harbor, Wake, Midway, Peleliu were places most of the US had never heard of before.

I know a lot is made about the D-Day logistics in Normandy, but there were several island assaults in the PTO that were as large or even larger than the ETO D-Day ops.
The Germans were part of Western civilization and I think the Allies viewed the Germans (very much like ourselves) with more favorable eye than when looking at the Japanese (alien). The carnage of battle in the Pacific fought in horrendous hell-like conditions I think was far greater than in Europe...The European battles were costly for American lives but the Pacific was worse. Hence, the public tended to be more interested in the less bloody aspect of the two theaters.

Regardless of the Theater of Ops, the Allied troops performed in an exemplary manner!

 

would be good to compare the available resources-as to texts written on the PTO of the time and post war to ETO books. there probably is quite a wide margin.

 

Most people know the names and words of Hitler, Holocaust, Nazis, and Europe. A typical kid at my highschool thinks of WW2 as "That time we killed nazis cause they killed jews, in Europe, and I think they dropped an atom bomb somewhere." My school hardly even focused on the war, let alone the pacific. The combat thing is probably a factor too. Wayyyy more guys saw action over in Europe, while in the Pacific guys saw probably more, violent things in a shorter time, but the casualty rates were higher and there were less people to relate to that they could talk about it with. Run on sentence I know, but More guys in Europe that saw combat with lower casualty rates= More stories and acknoledgement, Less guys in Pacific with higher casualty rates= Less stories and acknoldgement. Just look at the combat memiors books published; you can find dozens of ETO accounts, but maybe only 5 really good PTO ones. I can't even find a Pacific veteran around my place, but there's a couple of guys who were over in Europe.

 

I asked a friend who is majoring in US History at a very popular University and I asked him what he thought of the Rape of Nanking, or the atrocities committed against US POWs in the Pacific war and he looked at me like I was drunk.
I told him that WWII started in Asia (for all intents and purposes) in the mid 1930s when Japan attacked Korea and China. He said I didn't know what I was talking about and that I needed to study my history better. That might lead us to the beginning of this topic. Hitler was running around building his NAZI party and master race around the same time Japan was taking over east Asia. Nobody remebers that, but they remeber when Hitler was stealing the rights away from people for political/religious/racial reasons. The Japanese did the same in Asia, they enslaved everyone they conquered.
And most of all, 20 years earlier Europe was being shredded by WWI!

 

I think everybody has made some valid points. I was sitting here thinking, that as a kid in the 1960s, and a teenager in the 1970s, my exposure to WWII movies probably leaned more toward the PTO than the ETO. I could rattle off many of the classic movies about the Pacific, that I think then outnumber their counterparts in Europe. I remember having no exposure to the war in Russia at all, until later. It was for personal reasons, being that my father served in the ETO that my leanings toward that theater developed. When you examine period newspapers, and news-reel film, I think the coverage was pretty balanced globally. Not long ago, an academic military history professor, and author claimed that the European conflict is all tapped out, meaning that whatever could be studied about that theater of war has already been covered (some truth there, but I doubt if "everything" has been learned about the ETO), whereas, according to him, many topics about the war in the Pacific have yet to be learned.

Greg C.

 

What five good memoirs would those be?

I hope that's a legitimate question. I think the best book written about the PTO so far is "The Naked and The Dead." And that was written in 1948!! Not a memoir, but based upon what Mailer went through.