November 15, 2021
Bring Back the US Navy's World War II "Can Do" Attitude
Let’s clear away bureaucratic underbrush—and recapture the spirit of the Pacific War.
by James Holmes
Here's What You Need To Remember: And Bobcat is a reminder that every forward naval or military base need not be an elaborate affair like a Yokosuka or Sasebo, home to the U.S. Seventh Fleet. Dispersing infrastructure among many smaller-scale bases bolsters resiliency—helping the fleet ride out an assault on major installations and fight on. Which in the end is what it’s all about.
So I’m reviewing a collection of Pacific War oral histories titled, weirdly enough, The Pacific War Remembered. It’s a reissue of a book first published during the mid-1980s. It consists of compact testimonials from American protagonists in the greatest of all sea wars. And a sprightly read it is.
The book is enlightening in several respects. First, let’s wax philosophical. Transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson maintained that “there is properly no history; only biography.” In other words, history is the sum of the biographies of all the individuals, living or dead, who make up humanity. If Emerson has it right, the more individual stories come to light, the richer and more textured our understanding of the past.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/bring-back-us-navys-world-war-ii-can-do-attitude-196295
