Deanimator
Member
There are several good novels about the invasion of Japan, including "Light as a Feather" and "The Burning Mountain". As I recall, "The Burning Mountain" begins with the gassing of Kyushu by the United States.
Three movies I'd like to see are:
A large budget movie about the Battle of Nomonhan in Mongolia between Japan and the Soviet Union in 1939. It was a huge and protracted battle in which the maps were so bad and the terrain so featureless that the Japanese never really knew where they were, even in the middle of attacks. The Japanese violated virtually every elementary principle of modern warfare, and were stomped into the ground by the Soviets like an angry Cape Buffalo. It was where Zhukov first made a name for himself. Every basic ROTC text should have what the Japanese did bullet-pointed, with the explanation "Do EXACTLY the OPPOSITE of this and you'll NEVER lose." I'd use a surreal approach like in "Apocalypse Now" to capture the sheer incompetence and irrationality of the Japanese approach to the battle, the first in history in which significant numbers of Japanese troops threw down their weapons and surrendered.
A movie about Black troops who served under French command in WWI. The US wouldn't deploy Black combat units, but sent Black troops to French units after Pershing couldn't take their badgering for replacements any more. Black units served with distinction under French command. An interesting postscript would be the 1919 Chicago race riot. Black doughboys armed themselves from the National Guard armories and defended their neighborhoods with armed force.
A movie about Black troops in Italy in WWII. They were horribly ill-led and often tasked to perform Japanese style suicidal attacks which accomplished little. Instead of whining about how Clint Eastwood didn't invent Black combat units on Iwo Jima, Spike Lee should make THIS movie... if he thinks he's up to it.
