Provocations on Policymakers, Casualty Aversion and Post-Heroic Warfare

Abstract

The island of I wo Jima is a mere eight square miles in area. Capturing the island from the Japanese in the Second World War took the Americans just over one month and cost them almost seven thousand dead. Yet the capture of I wo Jima was just one of a number of bloody battles in the Pacific Campaign, which of course was itself just one part of the American war effort.¹ All told, the United States lost just over 400,000 in the four years of its involvement in the Second World War. Yet the conventional wisdom is that rather than expressing outrage at the human toll and demanding a quick end to the war, Americans rallied round the war effort.²