Reaction to With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa

REACTION ON THE OLD BREED
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Introduction
The book “On the Old Breed” is written of the first-person account by Eugene Sledge describing his experience during and after the military war of the 1st marine division in Japan. The narration comprises of the notes taken in memory of the experiences in the Warfield. The story of Sledge offers an overriding sense of tragedies thus creating a need and desire for change in the nature of man. The experience narrated is based on the marine infantry combat operation in the Pacific theater that took place during the Second World War. During this period, Sledge grew his military experience in the battlefield, equipping him with vast experience that changed his views toward the Japanese, leaving him with tragic emotional effects that dominated his desire to participate in war. Sledge’s conviction appears to be shared by many other military personnel’s experiences during their time in service as discussed herein.
Sledge was among the marine militants who were highly affiliated with the defeat of Japan, having played a part in the island fighting. At the age of nineteen, Eugene Sledge romanticized war due to the interesting stories he used to hear from the veterans of war from the village he was born and raised. He never knew the impacts of war until the time he was recruited in the military and participated in a tragic war between the Americans and the Japanese. Through his narration, Sledge testified that the experience of war is not friendly and the impacts may affect a person throughout his/her life. “The Pacific ground theater of World War II from Guadalcanal to Okinawa that nearly consumed Sledge, as it did to thousands of American youths, was no dream, but a nightmare unlike any other fighting in the nation’s wartime history”. According to Sledge, most of the wars were fueled by political, cultural, and racial conflicts among the parties through the affiliated brutish and primitive hatred.[Eugene B. Sledge, With the Old Breed: The World War Two Pacific Classic (New York: Random House, 2010)]
The Pacific ground theater World War II triggered a change of how Sledge among other U.S. militants used to view the Japanese. The Japanese were considered to be obsessive in the fight causing more trouble for the American troops. “The awfulness was not just that the fanatic nature of the Japanese resistance meant that American’s depression-era draftee were usually forced to kill rather than wound and capture their enemy”. The Japanese militants were not strong in the fight, but they resisted defeat leading to the perish of almost an entire garrison on the island. Sedge could view the Japanese garrisons as the major hindrance to the effort made by the American militants to reach the Philippines. The Japanese remained strong and consistent with a positive mindset of winning despite the terrific experiences of the American militant attacks.[Sledge, short title]
The end of the war between the two conflicting nations left a terrifying state of the participants from both sides of the divide. The Japanese lost most of their soldiers and civilia...