ahh, so maybe the Borneo Olympic team may hold grudges against Team GB....

In 1945, the Pacific War between the Empire of Japan and the Allies of World War II had entered its fourth year. World War II was not winding down. Instead, the fighting was being prosecuted with ever-increasing fury. Of the 1.25 million battle casualties incurred by the United States in World War II, nearly one million occurred in the twelve month period from June 1944 to June 1945. December 1944 saw American battle casualties hit an all-time monthly high of 88,000 as a result of the German Ardennes Offensive.[2]

In the Pacific during this period, the Allies captured the Mariana and Palau Islands,[3] returned to the Philippines,[4] and invaded Borneo.[5] The policy of bypassing Japanese forces was abandoned. In order to free troops for use elsewhere, offensives were undertaken to reduce the Japanese forces remaining in Bougainville, New Guinea and the Philippines.[6] In April 1945, American forces had landed on Okinawa, where heavy fighting would continue until June. Along the way, the ratio of Japanese deaths to American casualties dropped from 5 to 1 in the Philippines to 2 to 1 on Okinawa.[2]

Posted By: Cheltenham_Canary on August 6th 2012 at 16:27:56

Message Thread

Reply to Message

In order to add a post to the WotB Message Board you must be a registered WotB user.

If you are not yet registered then please visit the registration page. You should ensure that their browser is setup to accept cookies.

Log in