Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945 (The Pacific War Trilogy Book 3)

by Ian W. Toll

In 1945, the oldest Japanese could still summon early childhood memories of life in the Tokugawa Shogunate, when the nation was ruled by samurai who wore suits of lacquered armor and fought with swords and spears.

Not surprisingly, personnel on the exhumation details suffered high rates of the syndrome that would later be called post-traumatic stress disorder.

According to one authoritative estimate, total American combat deaths in the Pacific were 111,606, a figure that included 31,157 officers and enlisted men of the U.S. Navy. Most of the latter would sleep forever in Davy Jones’ Locker, beyond the reach of the exhumation details, with no grave marker but an eternally monotonous blue seascape.99

A rigid formula determined the order of priority for discharge. Servicemen with the highest number of “points” were the first to ship out. Points were allocated for a range of variables, including age, length of service, time overseas, number of days in combat, and the number and type of decorations a man had received. Additional points were assigned to married men, and still more to fathers, with a certain number for each dependent child.

All were informed of their rights and benefits under the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act—the “GI Bill.” Those who mustered out received their discharge papers and a train or bus ticket home.

As legions of social historians have observed, the Second World War was a slingshot for second-wave feminism.

In 1946, there were more than 4.3 divorces and annulments per 1,000 persons—the highest rate recorded up to that year, which would not be surpassed until the mid-1970s.125

In the American South, especially, in a culture that valued military service, former black soldiers represented a peculiar challenge to the regime of racial oppression.

Even in the ostensibly more enlightened North, black veterans were systematically denied the full benefits of the GI Bill. Mainstream colleges would not admit them, at least not in great numbers, and historically black colleges could not expand rapidly enough to accommodate the sudden upsurge in demand. Vanishingly few home loans were extended to black veterans.