KirinMan
後輩
- 23 Jan 2007
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I am glad that at least the English never shot a single Japanese. Thank heavens for this!!
Umm I think you may need to check up on your history a bit here. While the British did not have a large force in the Pacific during WWII there were definitely British Combatants and POW's during the war.
http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/British_Pacific_Fleet
That is a link to the British Pacific Fleet in WWII and they participated in a number of campaigns and battles as well.
This is a quote from Wikipedia about Britian's active service in the Pacific War.
Major actions in which the fleet was involved included the Jan 1945 carrier airstrikes on Japanese strategic oil targets in Palembang, Sumatra. These highly successful raids reduced oil production for the Japanese Navy. Later, in March 1945 in support of the invasion of Okinawa it had sole responsibility for operations in the Sakishima Islands. Its role was to suppress Japanese air activity, using gunfire and air attack, at potential Kamikaze staging airfields that would otherwise be a threat to U.S. Navy vessels operating at Okinawa. The carriers were subject to heavy and repeated kamikaze attacks, but because of their armoured flight decks, the British aircraft carriers proved highly resistant (unlike their U.S. counterparts), and returned to action relatively quickly. Subsequent studies, however, showed that serious damage had occurred to the ships' structure and modernisation was uneconomic.
In April 1945, the British 4th Submarine Flotilla was transferred to the major Allied submarine base at Fremantle, Western Australia, as part of BPF. Its most notable success in this period was the sinking of the heavy cuiser Ashigara, on June 8, 1945 in Banka Strait, off Sumatra, by HMS Trenchant and HMS Stygian. In July 1945 in the Singapore area, British midget submarine XE3 sank Japanese heavy cruiser Takao which settled to the bottom at it's berth and never went to sea again.
Battleships and aircraft from the fleet also attacked the Japanese home islands. The battleship King George V bombarded factories and other installations in the Tokyo area; meanwhile carrier strikes were carried out against land and harbor targets including, notably, the putting out of action of a Japanese escort carrier by British naval aircraft. The BPF would also have played a major part in a proposed invasion of the Japanese home islands, known as Operation Downfall, which was cancelled after Japan surrendered. The last naval air action in WWII was on VJ-Day when British carrier aircraft shot down Japanese Zero fighters.
Lt Robert Hampton Gray, a Canadian naval airman who piloted a Vought Corsair with No. 1841 Squadron FAA on HMS Formidable, was awarded the Victoria Cross, following his death in an attack on a Japanese destroyer at Onagawa Wan, Japan, on August 9, 1945.
Fighter squadrons from the fleet claimed a total of 112.5 Japanese aircraft shot down. No. 1844 Squadron FAA (flying Hellcats) was the top-scoring squadron, with 28 claims.
British Pacific Fleet - Wikipedia
Also please dont forget the Battle of Singapore early on in the war, the thousands also that died there and the thousands that died as POW's as well.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/remembrance/veterans/japan_pows.shtml
I am surprised a bit that you and Goldiegirl were unaware of this fact of history. The British suffered in some ways more than other allies in the Pacific purely because of the amount of time many were held in capativity. Many Japanese have made reconcilliation trips to England to express their sorrow over their treatment of the British held in the camps. It was also a very nasty, unthinkable existance that many of the British lived through that were held there.