The Symbiotic Travelers Ch. 08

The symbiotic Travelers

The Final Solution

BADSAM

It is nearing 6:00 PM, June 23, 1945, James is still working for the Chicago Tribune. He has just finished talking to his syngeneic partner, Yaphet on the phone, to inform her that he would be home a little later than normal. He is putting the finishing touches on an article for tomorrow morning's edition about a few little known facts of the Nazi Régime and the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy.

It's a human interest story he has been working on for a couple of months. He told his extraterrestrial lover that he had to do some research into the Tribune's archives and some other newspapers and make some phone calls in order to make sure he gets factual information. It is a story that he finds hard to believe.

When he first heard about the Holocaust in the Spring of 1942, he ignored it. He didn't believe that anyone could be so evil and filled with hate as to want to kill off entire ethnicities of human beings. He thought the enslavement and genocide of the Jews, Romani (Gypsies), Poles, homosexuals, communists, political dissidents, the elderly and handicapped individuals was just negative propaganda to stir up hatred for the Axis Powers.

However, when the horrors of the attempt to exterminate these people came to full light after the end of the Second World War, everyone was horrorstruck by the revelations of concentration camps, forced labor and the mass murder of those whom Hitler branded as undesirable.

The Führer's decision to rid Europe of everyone of Jewish descent came on December 12, 1941. This was at a secret meeting with numerous German officials attending, including Nazi minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels. Hitler's broader policy later included Gypsies and Poles, communists, political opponents and other "objectionable people" for extermination. The December 12th resolution made it obvious that the principle of systematic murder of Jews in the occupied territories was to be extended to all unacceptable individuals in Germany and Western Europe.

It began as sporadic and brutal discrimination. Different ethnicities were forced to wear different colored badges. For example, anyone of Jewish descent had to wear a yellow star of David sewed onto the outside of their shirt or jacket. Poles had to wear a purple P on a yellow background, Gypsies a brown triangle, homosexual men a pink triangle, political prisoners a red triangle and Jehovah's Witnesses a purple triangle. Other "undesirables" had to wear different types of badges as a form of intolerance and discernment.

The broad system of dehumanization and control soon became wholesale genocide, with the slaughter of men, women and children, even babies in labor encampments and concentration camps, complete with gas chambers and firing squads with mass burials and incinerators.

On January 20, 1942, several leading Nazi officials took part in the Wannsee Conference and provided a "rubber stamp" of Hitler's proposals, plans that were already in place to institute the "Final Solution."

The Final Solution was the official Third Reich code name for what the Führer and other top ranking Nazi officers considered to be the Jewish problem. However, the systematic murder of all Jews was not restricted to just within the German borders. This policy of deliberate and methodical genocide starting across German occupied territories was formulated at the Wannsee Conference held near Berlin by Nazi leadership in January 1942. It saw the indiscriminate massacre of ninety percent of Polish Jews, and two-thirds of the European Jewish population.

On January 25, 1942, the SS chief Heinrich Himmler, the Nazi official responsible for the implementation of the Final Solution, ordered the first Jews of Europe to Auschwitz. One hundred thousand Jewish men and fifty thousand Jewish women and children were deported from Germany to Auschwitz as forced laborers. Three weeks later, on February 15th, Schutzstaffel authorities, i. e., the SS, began killing in cyanide gas chambers many of those who arrived on the transports immediately upon their entry to the complex.

The SS were Schutzstaffel police, German for "Protective Echelon or Protection Squadron." They initially served as Adolf Hitler's personal bodyguards but eventually became one of the most powerful and feared organizations under Heinrich Himmler in all of Nazi Germany.

To solve what the Nazi Régime called the Jewish problem, immediately after the Wannsee Conference, Adolf Eichmann supervised large scale deportations to extermination encampments. He organized the identification, the gathering together, and the transportation of Jews from all over occupied Europe to their final destinations in internment camps throughout Germany and occupied Poland. All Jews were forced to sew a yellow star onto their clothing or the word Jude, the German word for Jew, signifying that they were Jewish.

Those who were sent to concentration camps soon included anyone who Hitler considered inferior. The victims were shipped on "death trains" to centralized extermination zones that were built specifically for their execution. Once there, they were stripped of all their possessions, marched naked into "shower rooms" and gassed with cyanide. Their bodies were then thrown into crematoriums that were intentionally built to hold several corpses.

A practice was established at Auschwitz and Birkenau to tattoo the prisoners with identification numbers on their left forearm. However, those who were sent straight to gas chambers didn't receive any type of tattoo or distinguishing mark. Men, women and children, whole families, were stripped of everything and then ushered naked together into large gas chambers and murdered. In order to prevent resistance and panic, victims were told they were going to take a shower for disinfection.

Throughout much of occupied Europe, military brothels were established in the concentration camps. They were surrounded by barbed wire fencing for the use by the Wehrmacht and the SS. The brothels were built as barracks, with small individual rooms. Tens of thousands of female prisoners were forced to serve as sex slaves during the occupation of their countries. In Eastern Europe, teenage girls and young women were kidnapped for use by the Wehrmacht for their sexual gratification.

Many of them endured forced hysterectomies, tubal ligation and removal of their ovaries as well as forced abortions, often resulting in their death. The sterilizations were often performed without anesthesia.

If a woman gave birth while in an internment camp, sometimes the baby was declared to be stillborn and then thrown into a bucket of water, drowning them, frequently in front of the mother who had just delivered the infant. Camp SS authorities did not allow mothers to breast feed their babies or even distribute milk or appropriate foods for infants, thus sentencing them to starve to death. Many children were used as test subjects, "guinea pigs" in criminal experiments by Doctor Josef Mengele, the infamous "Angel of Death," who was known for his brutal experiments on twins, babies and other inmates.

The Nazis constructed numerous prison camps, each with satellite facilities. In places such as Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Birkenau, Buchenwald, Dachau and Warsaw, to name some of the more brutal encampments, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children perished. More than 1.1 million people were murdered in Auschwitz alone.

Evidence regarding the mass killing of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, communists, political dissidents, the elderly and handicapped individuals began to reach the Allies soon after these atrocities began. After British intelligence agents broke the Enigma code, the Allies were able to listen in on classified German radio transmissions that described systematic mass murders in Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Ukraine and other places. These descriptions included information on methods, numbers, and locations.

Confirmation of their existence and the atrocities they were committing came in spring 1942 after American journalists, who had been stranded in Germany when the U. S. entered the war, were exchanged for German nationals stranded in the United States.

News also trickled out of occupied Europe through normal government channels. After Poland's defeat by the Nazi Wehrmacht, Polish leaders created a temporary "government in exile" in Britain. In June 1942, they received a secret report from occupied Poland confirming that the Nazi Régime was murdering Jews and other undesirables throughout Western Europe. Many newspapers around the world printed the story.

On December 13, 1942, Edward R. Murrow of the CBS radio network bluntly stated, "What is happening is this. Millions of human beings, most of them Jews, are being gathered up with ruthless efficiency and murdered. The phrase 'concentration camps' is obsolete, as out of date as economic sanctions or non-recognition. It is now possible only to speak of extermination camps."

On June 10, 1944, four days after the Allies landed at Normandy, in the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane, the Nazi SS murdered everyone they found in the area, including non-combatant men, women, and children. They even seized people who were merely passing by the town at the time. The men were ushered into barns where they were shot by a firing squad. Then their bodies were doused with gasoline and set on fire. Innocent women and children, even infants were directed into a church. The doors were locked, and the building was then set on fire. Anyone who attempted to escape the flames through the windows was shot. In all, over 600 civilians were massacred by the Nazi.

An estimate of those murdered by the Third Reich included six million Jews, 500,000 Romani (Gypsies), two million Poles, over three million Soviet prisoners of war, 15,000 homosexuals, five thousand Jehovah's Witnesses. And countless numbers of political prisoners, communists, resistance fighters, clergy, handicapped, elderly and intellectuals were exterminated in the purges, Holocaust and concentration camps. In all, there were approximately 15 million "undesirables" killed by the Nazi Régime.

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But the atrocities of Hitler did not stop at just the murder of innocent people. Working under the Führer's orders, the Nazis orchestrated the systematic pillaging of art and cultural treasures all across occupied Europe. Many Nazi officers appropriated thousands of paintings, sculptures, books, cultural artifacts and jewelry from museums, churches, synagogues and civilians' private collections.

After the war, the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives (MFAA) program located many of these stolen items in castles, warehouses, salt mines and in the homes of Nazi officers where they had been hidden. Upon recovering these treasures, the "Monuments Men" documented and cataloged them, in an attempt to return them to their rightful owners, including museums, religious institutions, families and individuals. This process was painstaking and frequently complicated by the destruction of records and the displacement of people during the war.

Unfortunately, numerous pieces of art were lost during the Second World War, most notably Raphael's Portrait of a Young Man. A remarkable painting some believe to be a self-portrait by the artist himself. It was last seen in the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków, Poland, before it was seized by the Nazis Régime in 1939. Many other works of art were deliberately destroyed by the Third Reich as the army retreated from the advancing Allies. Many pieces of diamond laden silver and gold jewelry stolen from Jews, Poles, Romani and others who were sent to the concentration camps have also never been recovered.

By late June 1944, when it became increasingly obvious that Germany was going to lose the war, Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler ordered the prisons to be evacuated before the Allied soldiers discovered them. The detainees were then transferred to other internment facilities, further from the advancing Allied lines.

As the crimes of Adolf Hitler against humanity increased and the war turned against Germany, Colonel Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg grew progressively disillusioned by Nazi atrocities. Believing that a devastating defeat would leave his beloved Germany destroyed and divided amongst the Allies, he decided to act. As early as 1942, he began quietly searching for other officers who shared his conviction that the Führer must be eliminated in order for Germany to survive.

On July 20, 1944, Colonel Stauffenberg, along with a group of disheartened Wehrmacht officers attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler and overthrow the Nazi Régime in a daring plot known as Operation Valkyrie. They had originally intended to include Himmler and Hermann W. Göring, Hitler's most loyal supporter and the second most powerful man in the Third Reich, in their assassination plot. But circumstances beyond their control prevented this.

Göring created the Office of the Secret State Police, also known as the Gestapo, which answered directly to him. It could arrest anyone it considered to be a threat to the Nazi Régime and place them in prison indefinitely, frequently in concentration camps. Anyone who even infringed upon Hitler's orders, placed their life at risk. And he also played a prominent role in establishing concentration camps for the "corrective treatment" of political opponents.

After Hitler's assassination, the conspirators hoped to seize control of the German government, make peace with the Allies and put an end to the destruction ravaging Europe.

The July 20th plot was the most meticulously planned assassination attempt against Hitler. The daring plan depended on Stauffenberg using his ability to get close enough to Hitler to kill him with a bomb he had hidden in a briefcase. On the appointed day, he arrived at Hitler's heavily guarded "Wolf's Lair" field headquarters to attend a military strategy meeting. Concealed in his attaché case were two blocks of plastic explosives.

At 12:37 PM, Colonel Stauffenberg entered the conference room carrying the piece of luggage. After making an excuse about receiving an urgent phone call, he hastily left the room at 12:44 PM. Two minutes later a deafening blast ripped through the meeting room.

Three key factors together prevented the Führer's death that day.

1. The briefcase was moved by Colonel Heinz Brandt. He accidentally nudged it, pushing it behind a thick, solid wooden table leg. The leg created a natural blast shield that absorbed much of the explosion.

2. The bomb was insufficiently armed. Colonel Stauffenberg had intended to arm his briefcase with two bombs to guarantee its lethality. However, because of an unanticipated time crunch before the meeting started, he was only able to arm one of the blocks of the explosives.

3. The meeting was relocated. The July 20th meeting was originally supposed to be in Hitler's reinforced concrete bunker. But at the last minute it was switched to a converted military billet with wooden walls and large windows. This allowed the blast pressure to rapidly dissipate rather than magnifying its force in an enclosed space.

Stauffenberg and his conspirators staged their assassination attempt against Hitler, not to save themselves or salvage a lost war, but to reclaim Germany's honor and humanity in the face of unspeakable evil. To quote Colonel Stauffenberg's own poignant words before his execution: "Long live our sacred Germany!" He was executed by firing squad along with three other conspirators a few minutes after midnight on July 21, 1944.

His wife, Countess Nina von Stauffenberg was arrested by the Gestapo and her children were placed in an orphanage. She was sent to the Ravensbruck; a concentration camp exclusively for women and children located in northern Germany. Near the end of the war, she was held there as a hostage. Although her guards had orders to kill her, she was eventually liberated by Allied soldiers and later reunited with her children.

Immediately after the failed coup d'état, the Gestapo began arresting the leaders of the plot. More than 7,000 people were ultimately detained, of which more than 4,900 were executed. Acting on Hitler's orders, in order to prolong their death, some were strangled with piano wire. But not all of them were connected with the plot. The Gestapo, again acting on the Führer's orders, used the occasion to arrest and or kill many individuals they suspected of "sympathizing" with the enemies of the Third Reich.

Yaphet is horrified by what her symbiotic equivalent reveals to her about the atrocities committed by the Nazi Régime. She doesn't understand how someone could be that cruel, that heartless. She asks her consort, "Zlatex, how could a person do those kinds of things to their fellow human being? I know people have differences, different ideologies and beliefs, but to subject innocent women and children, babies even, to such cruelty, such barbarism is atrocious. It's sadistic." She begins to cry.

Zlatex wraps his arms around his syngeneic partner, comforting her. "I don't know, Yaphet. I don't understand it either. But hey! Every dark cloud has a silver lining."

"What do you mean," she asks, wiping the tears from her eyes.

"You remember reading about the Georg von Trapp leaving from Nazi Germany, don't you?"

"Yes, he was a captain in the Austrian Navy. When the Nazi occupied Austria, he was supposed to serve in the German Navy," Yaphet answers.

"While searching the Tribune's archives, I came across an article about him," Zlatex responds.

The story of the von Trapp Family Singers begins with Maria Augusta Kutschera, a young woman who was studying to become a nun. The convent sent her to be a tutor for Georg von Trapp's seven children; he was a widower. Eventually, they fell in love and got married and formed a singing group, performing throughout Europe. They were touring as musicians to make a living.

The whole family was anti-Nazi and wanted nothing to do with Hitler or his Nazi government. When Germany annexed Austria on March 12, 1938, they left under the pretense of going on a concert tour to avoid drawing suspicion. They didn't sneak out of the country. The following June, they took a train from Salzburg to Innsbruck, Austria in broad daylight. At first, they went to Merano, Italy, then London. But in 1939 they settled in Vermont and established the von Trapp Family Lodge.

Yaphet is delighted to hear that someone escaped Hitler's merciless grasp. But she wants her mate to continue.

"Zlatex, tell me about the Japanese too. I don't want to be misinformed. Did they commit any inhumane acts? I believe that it is important to know about what enemy combatants do to each other. It's the only way we can learn about the full brutality of war.

While the Third Reich was busy in Europe, the Japanese were in the Pacific committing atrocities themselves and establishing their own "Final Solution."

Special Imperial Japanese military units conducted experiments on Chinese civilians as well as British, American, and Australian prisoners of war. They were subjected to vivisection surgery, i. e., the cutting of or operation on a living person or animal, usually for physiological or pathological investigation. This included amputations without anesthesia; some were given animal blood transfusions. They were exposed to anthrax, cholera and typhus to determine the effects on human beings. Frostbite experiments were performed to study the effects of extreme cold on human flesh. They were introduced to various biological and chemical weapons, starvation and dehydration in order to study the limits of human endurance and the impact of diseases and injury.

In China, Japanese aviators sprayed fleas carrying plague germs over metropolitan areas, creating bubonic plague epidemics. Japanese soldiers used containers of diseases causing microbes, which were filled with anthrax, cholera, dysentery and typhoid to contaminate reservoirs, rivers and water wells. They handed out food mixed with deadly bacteria to infect hungry Chinese civilians. They even gave chocolate bars filled with anthrax bacteria to the local children.

Many Allied airmen who were captured by the Japanese on land or at sea were executed in accordance with official Japanese policy. Personnel of the Imperial Japanese Army deliberately murdered British, Australian and American servicemen, including several who were beheaded in revenge for American bombing attacks. They used a shinguntŏ sword, mass-produced military versions of the traditional samurai sword, often of inferior quality, as a form of punishment, intimidation, or execution of prisoners of war and civilians, particularly Chinese. However, some higher-ranking officers carried authentic family heirloom samurai swords.

The Imperial Japanese Navy on several occasions, after sinking an Allied ship, killed the survivors who were in lifeboats. Of the airmen in Colonel Doolittle's Raid who were captured by the Japanese, after a mock trial, three were executed by firing squad on October 15, 1942. One airman died in December 1943 of mistreatment and malnutrition while in captivity.

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The Battle of Bataan in the Philippines began on January 7, 1942, and continued until the following April 7th. The Allied prisoners who surrendered were treated to merciless brutality, theft, and even knocking their teeth out to get their gold fillings.

In the Bataan Death March of 1942, 66,000 Filipinos and 10,000 Americans were compelled by the Japanese military to endure a forced march of 106 kilometers, from the Southern tip of the Philippines mainland north to San Fernando. There, they were then taken by train in overcrowded, cramped and unsanitary boxcars farther north to Capas. Next, they walked an additional eleven kilometers to Camp O'Donnell, a former Philippine army training center. Many of the Filipinos and Americans died during the march.

The Death March was characterized by severe physical abuse, including beatings and torture by the Japanese. Any prisoner of war who fell or was caught on the ground was bayoneted or shot. During the Death March, some American and Filipino POWs were beheaded for attempting to escape. Anyone who asked for water, if they asked for mercy or for any infraction, they were shot and killed. Prisoners were randomly beaten with rifle butts, kicked, punched or stabbed with bayonets. Trucks drove over some of those who fell or succumbed to fatigue, and "cleanup crews" bayoneted or shot those too weak to continue.

Once the surviving prisoners arrived at the San Fernando railway station, they were crammed into sweltering, extremely hot metal boxcars for the final trip to Capas. Upon arrival at the Capas train station, they were again forced to walk the final eleven kilometers to Camp O'Donnell. Of the nearly 80,000 POWs in the march, only about 54,000 made it to Camp O'Donnel, some just barely alive.

Japanese war crimes ranged from sexual slavery and massacres of civilians and POWs to chemical and biological experimentation on humans, torture, starvation, and forced labor, to dig graves, build roads, bridges and other structures, all either directly ordered or condoned by the Japanese military and government.

Imperial military officials coerced women to work in combat zone brothels in China, Indochina, and Indonesia. They were dragged from their homes and forced into performing sex acts at military brothels; some even before they were old enough to have started menstruation. One ten year old Indonesian girl was daily raped for two months by Japanese soldiers.

It has been estimated that over 200,000 young women and girls were repeatedly raped by Japanese soldiers "night after night." They called them "Comfort Women." But the term was just a euphemism for sex slave. The women were not given a choice; they were forced to participate in the sex acts.

Noncombatant British, Australian and American women were also imprisoned by the Japanese during the war, especially after the Fall of the Philippines Islands in 1942. These women, such as military and civilian Allied female nurses, were held in Japanese POW camps. Although there are records of sexual abuse and violence perpetrated against them, these occurrences were not part of the organized "Comfort Women" system. Hence, while it is true that Allied women experienced sexual violence and exploitation during the war, it was not a widespread, state sanctioned practice like it was for other women in countries under Japanese occupation.

"Because Earthlings indiscriminately slaughter and rape their men, women and children is another reason why I don't want either of us to get involved in their wars," Yaphet says to her syngeneic partner.

"I totally agree with you Yaphet," Zlatex answers her. "I don't know what I would do if someone raped you."

"Zlatex, there is nothing you could do. You can't resort to vigilantism; it's wrong, never solves anything and only makes criminals of those who participate in it. To say nothing of the fact that those who choose vigilante acts, prove that they are arrogant, ignorant fools, who are no better than those whom they condemn."

"I would report it to the police. You can be sure of that."

"Many women don't report it," she interrupts her partner. "They don't want the shame and stigma that many misinformed individuals, for some unexplained reason, have placed upon the victims of rape. I don't know why they do that. It's not the victim's fault."

"It's never the victim's fault," Zlatex adds. "I don't want to talk about this anymore. It's late, let's go to bed. I want to make love to you."

"Why don't we shower together first, my love?" Yaphet gives her symbiotic equivalent a coy, sexy smile. "I love it when you bathe me. It gets me hot and wanting you to spank the cheeks of my naked ass. Then we can make love while lathering each other's nude bodies and again when we get into bed."

"I'm all for that, my lovely nymph. I relish the feeling of warm water splashing down on us while I'm deep inside you. Go get the shower ready; I'll get a spanking paddle from among our sex toys. After we have sex in bed, I want us to perform oral sex on each other."

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It is Saturday August 4, 1945, the two alien travelers are again living in Boston. Yaphet is amazed at the changes that have taken place since they were here 170 years ago in 1775. They have been living here for three weeks. Zlatex heard that the Boston Globe newspaper was looking for a writer for its Metro section, someone who knew the history of the United States. The two syngeneic beings talked it over between themselves and decided to move back to Boston. It is the second week James has been working for the paper; Julia is working part time at a local bakery shop baking bread, cakes and cookies.

One of the first things they did, after renting an apartment and plugging in SAM, the Simplified Automatic Mainframe computer, into an electrical outlet, was to go see if Pierre's Liberty Tavern was still there; under different management of course. It wasn't, but then they really didn't expect it to be there. Now, there is an all girls' school located on the lot, Girls' Latin School, a college preparatory academy.

They were both glad to see that; happy that the land upon which the academy is located had been turned into something constructive and not into something to aid in the continuation of war.

It is Sunday 6:45 PM, August 5, 1945, Zlatex has been inside Yaphet for nearly four hours making love, using several different positions, giving both of them numerous orgasms. Their naked bodies are drenched with sweat. Her cheeks are red and raw from the spankings he has administered to her. His back is streaked with claw marks from her scratching him. The ringing telephone interrupts the intercourse of the two extraterrestrials. As Zlatex gets out of bed to answer the phone, his consort cries out, "Tell whoever it is that you're busy. I want you to spank me some more and impale me again."

He glances over his shoulder and gives her a sly, sexy smile as he walks naked into the living room of their new apartment. It's his editor at the Boston Globe. James has turned in a story that he has written about the U. S. war in the Pacific. His editor wants to him to make some minor changes in the story; it's going to be on page one of tomorrow morning's edition. It's going to be alongside a story about the bombing of Hiroshima. A half an hour ago the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city at 8:15 AM Hiroshima time, August 6, 1945, which was 6:15 PM August 5, 1945, Boston time.

His story starts with the U. S. landing at Guadalcanal, August 7, 1942. The battle was fought mainly by the U. S. Marine Corps until February 9, 1943.

It was the first major land assault by Allied forces against the Japanese Empire. It marked the Allies' transition from primarily defensive operations in the Pacific to offensive maneuvers. It also allowed the Allies to gain a strategic initiative in the Pacific Theatre by giving them a place from where they would be able to launch an attack on other Japanese forces in the Pacific.

Nineteen thousand Marines landed on the island in an amphibious attack, surprising the two thousand Japanese defenders, who were not expecting the conflict. At first, there was little resistance, but as the campaign continued, the Japanese Army and Navy fought back with reinforcements of over 35,000 soldiers. Eventually, over 19,000 Japanese died and 38 ships were sunk; about 7,100 Americans died and 29 ships were sunk, including the aircraft carrier USS Hornet.

On October 26, 1942, in the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, the Hornet suffered devastating damage from Japanese air attacks with bombs and torpedoes. The U. S. Navy tried to save her, but it soon became obvious that she could not be salvaged. Her captain ordered the crew to abandon the ship. She was then scuttled to prevent her from falling into enemy hands.

The Allied Guadalcanal campaign put a halt to the Japanese expansion attempts in the Pacific Theatre and placed the Allies in a position of superiority. It was the beginning of a series of successful beach landings.

By December 1942, it was obvious that Japan was going to lose Guadalcanal campaign. This would be a strategic blow to the Japanese Empire; it was also a psychological victory. The Allies had beaten Japan's best naval, land and air defenses. After Guadalcanal, the Allies viewed the eventual outcome of the war in the Pacific with heightened optimism.

During 1943, the Allies made significant gains in the Pacific, island hopping in several amphibious assaults. They were able to capture the New Georgia island group in June, July and August, and establish bases in the Northern Solomon Islands, at Rabaul on New Britain in November and at the Tarawa atoll in the Gilbert Islands.

The four day Battle of Tarawa, November 20-23, 1943, was a crucial operation in securing the Pacific Theatre. It was marked by many casualties on both sides of the campaign. The U. S. began by seizing the Japanese held island of Betio in the Tarawa atoll, which had been heavily fortified with coastal guns.

The 18,000 U. S. Marines who landed there expected an easy victory. But their landing crafts got stuck on the coral reefs that surround the island. In desperation, the Marines waded through waist deep water, hundreds of meters from the shore, while being assaulted by enemy machinegun fire. However, after fierce resistance from the 4,500 Japanese defenders, the Marines finally captured the island after a bloody, 76 hour battle in which both sides suffered heavy casualties.

After two days of heavy Naval barrage, on June 15, 1944, the U. S. 2nd and 4th U. S. Marine Divisions landed on the southwest coast of the island of Saipan. The next day the 27th U. S. Army Infantry Division came ashore on the southeast side of the island.

The last organized resistance of the Japanese came when they mounted a mass suicide attack on July 6th and 7th. More than 3,000 soldiers participated in the gyokusai assault, Japanese for breaking the jewels. The U. S. forces called it the banzai attack from their battle cry, Tenno heika banzai, long live the emperor, as they charged the Allies.

Many of the Japanese military leaders and troops who did not die chose suicide over surrender. This choice was based on the warrior's Bushido code, which forbade surrender to the enemy.

More than 28,000 Japanese were killed in the battle for Saipan; American casualties were almost 3,500. With the American victory, the Allies began the final phases of the war against the Japanese Empire.

By July 9th, the island of Saipan and the central Marianas islands were secured, placing the mainland of Japan itself within the range of the B-29 Superfortress bombers.

During the Battle of Leyte Gulf, from October 23-26, 1944, Japanese began their use of Kamikaze Zero fighters, meaning "Divine Wind." These were suicide assaults by indoctrinated and specially trained pilots, who were led to believe that they were serving a divinely inspired purpose of defending their homeland and protecting their Emperor, who was looked upon as a deity. They were taught that by sacrificing themselves, their missions were an effective strategy that would ensure final victory for Japan, and they would bestow great honor upon their families. The Kamikaze pilots were promised spiritual immortality, and their deaths were the supreme expression of patriotism and loyalty to their Emperor.

Kamikaze pilots were not taught how to land their aircraft because their mission was intended to be a one way suicide attack. Their goal was to fly their airplanes, loaded with bombs, straight into Allied naval craft, exploding upon impact. This was a desperate, Final Solution strategy of the Japanese military leaders. Confronted with increasingly hopeless expectations of turning the tide of battle, they hoped these types of assaults would inflict significant damage on Allied naval forces, in the vain belief that the Allies would sue for peace.

On October 25, 1944, the aircraft carrier USS St. Lo became the first major warship to sink as the result of a Kamikaze attack. The U. S. also lost an escort carrier and three destroyers. The Australians lost one heavy cruiser.

The Kamikaze attacks of Leyte Gulf caused significant losses to Allied ships and naval personnel, but they did not change the final outcome of the war.

The Battle of Iwo Jima, from February 19th to March 26, 1945, was one of the bloodiest in the history of the Marine Corps as well as a costly victory for the United States. It also offered proof that Japanese were willing to "fight to the last man," to ensure victory.

The small volcanic island is dotted with hundreds of caves; Mount Suribachi lies at its southern tip. The U. S. intelligence had reported only 13,000 Japanese defenders were on the island.

Seventy thousand Marines from the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Marine divisions, stormed the beaches. Before the Marines launched their amphibious landing, the island was shelled by battleships. However, three days of Naval bombardment were hampered by poor weather. This, plus the island's defensive construction, did little to soften up the Japanese.

At the time of the battle for the island, there were two airfields in the middle of the island, with a third airfield to the north still under construction. The Japanese built hundreds of reinforced concrete pillboxes, bunkers, and machinegun and artillery positions for aboveground coverage, many of which were so well fortified that only a direct hit from the largest guns on a battleship could do any significant damage. They also utilized the many volcanic caves and constructed numerous tunnels where their infantry hid until the Americans advanced close enough to be decimated by coordinated artillery and machinegun fire.

Japanese soldiers battered the Marines daily with artillery fire and mortar bombardment. But the U. S. Marines continued to press forward on land. Finally, on February 23rd they secured Mount Suribachi, where they twice raised the American flag, the moment being captured in an iconic photograph as a symbol of victory.

On February 27th the 3rd Marine Division, mounted a massive, coordinated assault that broke through the Japanese position and overran the hills next to the unfinished airfield. However, intense fighting continued on Hill 382, a rise that the Marines called "the Meat Grinder." From their defensive positions, the Japanese fired on the Marines continuously, until they began using flamethrowers to burn out every possible Japanese defender.

The U. S. declared Iwo Jima secure on March 16, 1945.

However, American forces spent several weeks marching through the island's thick jungles. They found and captured many Japanese soldiers. They were also frequently forced to kill "holdouts" who refused to surrender and continued fighting until March 26 when there were none left.

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The lessons learned in the Battle of Iwo Jima served as a guideline for U. S. forces in the Battle of Okinawa, as well as for the future planned invasion of the mainland of Japan.

The Battle of Okinawa was from April 1st to June 22, 1945. On Easter Sunday, the U. S. forces launched an amphibious assault against the island. They landed on Okinawa's beaches virtually unopposed. The Allies wanted to use the air base on the island for the eventual invasion of the Japanese homeland, about 550 kilometers away.

After the initial landings, a fierce counter offensive by the Japanese erupted on the southern tip of the island, particularly at key defensive positions. The Japanese forces began massive Kamikaze attacks, targeting U. S. naval vessels, causing considerable damage and casualties.

In a final attempt to prevent the Allies from capturing Okinawa and winning the war, the Imperial Japanese Army conscripted schoolboys aged from 14 to 17 years as an Iron and Blood Imperial Corps. This mobilization was instituted by a dictate of the Ministry of the Army, not by law. Military authorities ordered grade schools to force their students to "volunteer" to be frontline soldiers. About half of them were killed, including many in suicide bomb attacks with bombs strapped to their bodies against tanks, armored vehicles and artillery positions.

By that time, the Japanese high command knew that they couldn't win the war; that's why they conscripted children to do their dirty work, another "Final Solution" to induce the Allies to sue for peace.

Okinawan civilians also suffered, with thousands killed or forced to commit suicide under Japanese orders. The Japanese officials and their soldiers told them that American Marines would kill them and eat them. To avoid this, they had to commit Hari Kari, an act of the samurai code of honor (Bushido) which was ritual suicide by disembowelment. They did this to avoid capture. They saw it as a way to die with honor rather than live with the shame of becoming eaten as a prisoner of war.

The Battle of Okinawa was the fiercest and bloodiest in the Pacific Theatre, with approximately 50,000 Allied and 100,000 Japanese casualties, including local Okinawan civilians who were conscripted into the Japanese Army or coerced to commit suicide.

After nearly three months of insensitive combat, Allied forces secured the island on June 22, 1945. The conflict demonstrated the overwhelming effectiveness of Kamikaze assaults, and the firm resolve of Japanese to fight to the last man.

The high cost in both lives and resources made U. S. leaders reconsider an invasion of mainland Japan. It also led to the decision to use atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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On August 6, 1945, a U. S. B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, dropped an atomic bomb, named Little Boy, on Hiroshima at 8:15 in the morning, local time.

Several days prior to this, on July 26, the Allies issued their "Final Solution," an ultimatum in the Potsdam Declaration, which outlined the terms of the unconditional submission of the Empire of Japan. It warned of "prompt and utter destruction" if the Japanese refused to admit defeat. The Japanese high command rejected the ultimatum, which led to the bombing.

The United States knew of the total destructive power of an atomic bomb. One was tested on July 16th in the desert of Alamogordo, New Mexico. This was part of the Manhattan Project, which developed the first atomic bombs.

On the afternoon of August 6th, President Harry S. Truman again called for the Japanese to surrender. Three days later, the Japanese leadership was still deliberating on whether to surrender after the Hiroshima bombing.

On August 9, 1945, another B-29 bomber, the Bockscar, dropped a second atomic bomb, named Fat Man, on Nagasaki at 11:02 in the morning, local time.

Over 200,000 men, women, children and infant babies were instantly incinerated in the blasts. In the weeks and months that followed, tens of thousands of others died in the aftermath, of burns and radiation poisoning.

The capitulation of the Empire of Japan in the Second World War was announced by Emperor Hirohito on August 15, 1945. This was after the U. S. informed the Japanese that a third bomb would be dropped on Tokyo if they did not stop their war effort; the Allies "Final Solution." The Japanese formally signed surrender papers on September 2, 1945, World War II was over.

Yaphet cries uncontrollably at hearing the news of the bombing of the two Japanese cities. Again, Zlatex puts his arms around his symbiotic consort and comforts her.

She continues to cry into his shoulder and says, "Think of all the innocent men, women and children, the harmless babies and the newborn infants, who died in those explosions. The Allies should have thought of them before dropping those terrible bombs."

She then asks rhetorically, "Wasn't there alternatives to dropping the atomic bombs?"

Zlatex tells her that there probably were other options, but President Truman and the military high command in Washington, D. C. didn't think of them or care about them.

The U. S. could have bombed the Imperial Palace with conventional bombs, just like the Doolittle Raid. The Japanese considered the emperor to be a deity. If they saw that Emperor Hirohito's life was in danger, then they might have negotiated some kind of peaceful end to the war.

If that didn't work, then they could show films to Japanese high command of the first atomic bombs exploded in New Mexico, making sure Emperor Hirohito also saw the film. This might have persuaded them to surrender.

They could have dropped an atomic bomb in the center of Tokyo Bay where it would be visible from the Imperial Palace, or the larger Sagami Bay which is just about forty kilometers southwest of Tokyo. Again, after notifying the Japanese high command. Detonating this type of bomb over these large bodies of water would have demonstrated their effectiveness with minimum number of casualties, especially if it were exploded in the air, and very close to the water. Unlike surface blasts, air blasts produce almost no local fallout upon detonation.

They could have dropped an atomic bomb on a Pacific barren uninhabited island after notifying the Japanese military command as to where and when, so they could view its destructive aftermath.

If the Japanese still refused to surrender, they could have dropped an atomic bomb on Truk (Chuuk) Island, a purely military target. Chuuk Lagoon was the Empire of Japan's main naval base in the South Pacific Theatre during World War II. A bomb dropped there would have killed far fewer innocent civilians.

They could have tried to put up a naval blockade around the Japanese mainland, letting nothing in or out of the island; just like they did with the Channel Islands. The Allies had already proved that they "owned the skies and the seas." While it is true that this, and the conventional bombing of the Imperial Palace, would have cost more American lives lost, it would save the lives of innocent Japanese women, children, infants and men who were too old to fight.

Finally, the Japanese leadership was still deliberating on whether to surrender after the Hiroshima bombing. Couldn't the Allies, particularly the U. S. leadership, try to determine how their deliberations were progressing before dropping a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki?

The United States government was not totally innocent of the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese; it instigated the attack. Nor is that government totally blameless for bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki; alternative methods of ending the war were available.

To be continued...