[gentle music]
- Jenny Pederson: My name is Jenny Pederson,
and I am the public programs manager
for the Wisconsin Historical Society.
And I am very excited and happy to welcome you all here today.
A quick note that the opinions or any opinions
expressed today during the presentation
are those of the speaker,
and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the
Wisconsin Historical Society staff members or employees.
But now we get to the matter at hand,
and I am very excited to introduce Mark D. Van Ells,
who is presenting "Red Arrow Across the Pacific:
The 32nd Infantry Division During World War II,"
based on, as I see in some of your hands today,
his recently published book.
Before I hand it over, here is a brief biography of our lecturer.
Mark D. Van Ells is a professor of history
at Queensborough Community College
of the City University of New York.
He received his PhD in history
from the University of Wisconsin-Madison
and is a native of the Badger State.
Van Ells is also the author of To Hear Only Thunder Again:
America's World War II Veterans Come Home,
and America and World War I: A Traveler's Guide.
Please join me in welcoming Mark,
and enjoy the presentation.
- Mark D. Van Ells: Thank you.
I thank you all.
I'd like to start with some thank yous.
First of all, thank you to everyone involved
at the Wisconsin Historical Society
and Wisconsin Public Broadcasting
for making this presentation possible.
And I'd also like to thank all of you
for coming here today.
In Wisconsin today, there are many memorials and reminders
of the 32nd Division,
even if we don't notice them or even recognize them,
but they're all around us.
Here's one, for example,
that might look familiar to many motorists out there.
This is a road sign for the State Highway 32
that runs through the eastern part of the state.
It looks like just about any other highway sign
that you might notice,
except for the red arrows on either side.
And if you look around your own community,
you might find memorials
to members of the Red Arrow Division.
Many communities have a Red Arrow Park
where you might find some more of these memorials.
So they're all around us.
And many of us also have personal connections
to the 32nd Division.
I do myself, for example.
This is my Great Uncle Andrew from Port Washington.
He served in the First World War in the 32nd Division.
Sadly, he was wounded in action
and died two days later in August of 1918.
And I suspect many of you have relatives
who were in the 32nd Division
or one of its successor units at some point.
I see some people even are still active in the 32nd today.
So it's something that's really interwoven
into the fabric of Wisconsin life.
And the 32nd Division had a remarkable record
during the Second World War.
It served almost the entirety
of the American World War II experience,
from before Pearl Harbor
all the way through the occupation of Japan
from 1940 to 1946.
It achieved some very important firsts
in American military history.
This division served more time in combat
than any other U.S. Army division
during the Second World War,
so its record really was quite remarkable.
And yet the memory,
the achievements of the 32nd Division
have been forgotten by many people today,
particularly outside of the Badger State.
Now, I'm a historian.
I study World War II, and in particular,
I study the social and cultural history of the American soldier.
And in my studies,
I noticed that not very much had been written
about the 32nd Division.
So I decided to write the book Red Arrow Across the Pacific
to reintroduce the 32nd division
into our state and America's narrative,
and our experience in the Second World War.
What I want to do today is give a brief overview
of what the 32nd Division did during that conflict.
It might be helpful to start out
with some background information.
The 32nd Division was founded in 1917,
very soon after the United States entered
the First World War,
and it was made up of National Guard soldiers
from Wisconsin and Michigan.
Let's not forget about our friends
across the lake over there.
They were part of the 32nd Division as well.
And the division had a remarkable record
during the First World War as well.
Every time it went up against the Germans,
it managed to pierce German lines.
And it did so so often
that when the division developed a symbol for the division,
they developed the one you see on the screen here,
a red arrow pointing upward with a horizontal bar across,
that horizontal bar that represents the German lines
that they pierced every time.
And from this point on,
the division would be known as the Red Arrow Division.
Now, they came home from the war.
The 1920s was a time
when military affairs were not very popular.
Budgets were oftentimes quite meager,
and the training of the division had sort of,
the readiness of the division had sort of lapsed.
But by the 1930s,
the world started to become a much more dangerous place again.
Japanese expansionism across Asia began to pick up.
We saw the rise of fascism in Europe,
the regimes of Hitler's Germany,
Mussolini's Italy, in particular.
Japanese militarism had many characteristics
that were similar to European fascism.
And war breaks out in Europe and Asia in the late 1930s.
Now, the United States was not yet involved,
but it looked like we possibly could become involved.
And so, President Roosevelt
wanted to beef up America's military preparedness
and beef up American military forces.
And so, he took a number of steps to do that.
The draft was reintroduced in 1940,
and another step in that process
was to mobilize the National Guard for training.
So the 32nd Division was mobilized in October of 1940.
Here you see some fresh-faced, innocent kids
about to go off into something they can't yet comprehend.
And they went off to Louisiana to do their training,
first at Camp Beauregard, then at Camp Livingston.
Both are located near Alexandria, Louisiana,
in the central part of the state.
Here, they played war games.
Here, they did various fatigue duties as well.
You'll notice the soldiers here peeling potatoes,
not something that was one
of the most popular duties that they did.
And it was also here, by the way,
that the division absorbed draftees.
And these draftees typically came from Wisconsin
and Michigan,
so that Upper Midwestern character of the division held,
at least for a time.
And it was in Louisiana that Pearl Harbor happened.
The Japanese attacked the American naval base
at Pearl Harbor.
The United States enters the Second World War.
And now what had been a play war now becomes the real thing.
The division experienced a lot of reorganization.
A lot of people transferred out.
A lot of other people were brought in.
You start to see the Upper Midwestern character
of the division change a little bit.
A number of officers from Southern states,
for example, were brought into the division.
And it wasn't too long until the 32nd Division was on the move.
Now, originally, the 32nd Division
was destined for Europe.
And so they left Louisiana,
and at first, they went to Fort Devens, Massachusetts,
in preparation for being shipped out to Europe.
But the situation in Asia
was becoming very, very dangerous as well.
The Japanese were expanding all across Asia
and the Pacific.
In early 1942,
American forces are barely holding on in the Philippines
along with Philippine soldiers-- Filipino soldiers as well.
And Australia was under threat from the Japanese,
and Australia was virtually unprotected.
It was exceptionally vulnerable.
Most of Australia's combat units were in the Mediterranean,
fighting alongside the British against Hitler.
But now the Japanese are threatening
their northern shores.
They needed soldiers fast.
And so, the 32nd Division was just about ready to go overseas.
The Australians need help.
And so, Washington basically changed the direction
of the 32nd Division and sent it to the Pacific instead,
which was a very long journey from New England.
First of all, they had to get on trains
and cross the continental United States.
They ended up in San Francisco, where they boarded ships
and then undertook a three-week ocean voyage.
And they eventually landed in Adelaide, Australia,
in May of 1942.
Then they were only there for about two months,
and then they transferred farther north
to the area near Brisbane, Australia,
to a place called Camp Cable.
So in the first six months of 1942,
the Red Arrow Division had already traveled most--
farther than most people would ever do in their entire lives.
It was a very long and very exhausting journey.
Let's talk about the American leadership team.
All due respect to the Australians
who were part of this as well.
Just in the name of brevity and clarity,
we're just going to take a look at the American commanders here.
In charge of what was called
the Southwest Pacific Area was General Douglas MacArthur,
who was one of America's most famous military figures,
somebody with Wisconsin connections,
by the way.
He had been in charge of the defense of the Philippines.
President Roosevelt evacuated him
before he would be captured by the Japanese,
and MacArthur vowed that one day, he would return
to the Philippines.
There were two American infantry divisions in Australia,
the 32nd and the 41st.
They comprised what was known as I Corps or the First Corps,
commanded by General Robert Eichelberger.
And then, in command of the Red Arrow Division
was General Edwin Forrest Harding.
So this is the division's leadership team
as they are in Australia.
And it became pretty clear pretty quickly
that the 32nd Division was destined to go to New Guinea,
a very large island just to the north of Australia.
Here was the situation.
In July of 1942,
the Japanese invaded the northern shore
of the Papuan Peninsula of New Guinea.
That's that far eastern part of the island,
at a place called Buna.
And then the Japanese undertook a march across the island,
through the jungles, across the mountains,
heading for the port of Port Moresby,
which was the Australian colonial capital
and the only functioning port on the island.
And the Japanese made remarkable progress at first.
They got within about 30 miles of Port Moresby.
The Japan-- I'm sorry, the Australians
brought in as many of their soldiers as they could,
but they still needed help.
And General MacArthur ordered the 32nd Division
to head to New Guinea to help out the Australians.
The first Red Arrow soldiers flew into Port Moresby
in September of 1942.
This is the first time ever in American military history
American soldiers flew into a combat zone.
The 128th Infantry Regiment made up mostly of Wisconsin soldiers,
it also flew to New Guinea.
The 126th Infantry Regiment made up mostly of Michigan soldiers,
they took the boat, and it took them much longer to get there.
And the 127th Infantry Regiment,
the third of the three infantry regiments in the division,
it stayed behind in reserve at this time.
So the Red Arrow was about to go into battle.
But it was remarkably unprepared for what lay ahead,
as was the entire nation, I suppose.
But the 32nd Division had lots of challenges it had to face.
It had inadequate training and inadequate equipment.
The division had been trained to fight in Europe,
and once it got to Australia,
its training really didn't change very much.
As Eichelberger later complained,
it was more of the same.
They really didn't have any specialized jungle training,
didn't really have any
specialized jungle equipment, either,
no jungle boots, jungle fatigues, these sorts of things.
It was standard issue U.S. Army gear.
The fact that the division was constantly on the move
also hindered its training.
It really didn't stay in one place
for longer than maybe two months,
which made it difficult
to really become adequately prepared for the fight.
Questionable leadership,
and I think it's fair to say at all levels.
Regular Army officers were very suspicious
of the capabilities and qualifications
of National Guard officers, and many, in fact,
had been purged from the division in the months prior.
But many of the officers that were brought in
were reserve officers
who really were not very experienced, either.
And I think we can also point a finger at General MacArthur
as well, who had basically been driven from the Philippines
and was obsessed with getting back to them.
MacArthur is famous for craving headlines,
and he was famous for his outsized ego.
He wanted to win a victory before the Marines
and the Navy could do it at Guadalcanal,
a battle that was going on at the same time.
He wanted to beat them to the punch.
And so, he perhaps--
And he also never went to the battlefield itself.
He commanded from behind.
He never went to see the conditions
in which the soldiers were fighting.
And some derisively referred to him as Dugout Doug,
because he never got that close to the front.
So if we're gonna question the leadership of the division,
it's not just the National Guard officers.
I think there were many other problems
that the division faced.
Another big problem was poor intelligence.
The Allies really had no idea
how many Japanese they were facing.
And they consistently underestimated
how many Japanese were at Buna
and what their fighting capabilities might be.
They expected to go in there and walk over the Japanese.
And as we'll see in a minute,
that's not what happened.
Very little naval support.
The Navy, as I noted before,
was busy fighting in Guadalcanal.
They did not have much to spare,
and they really didn't care to help out MacArthur
very much anyway.
So this would not be one of those amphibious landings
that you oftentimes hear and read about in the Pacific.
This particular battle would be quite different.
The Red Arrow would have to approach the Japanese by land.
And as we'll see, that was an unusually difficult proposition.
Now, as for the Red Arrow soldiers themselves,
they were very, very confident.
They believed themselves to be well trained and ready to go.
But they were inexperienced.
Very few had ever been shot at before.
And things didn't go the way many had anticipated.
In addition to fighting the Japanese,
they were also fighting the jungle, the environment.
New Guinea is an island that is covered with very lush jungles,
very thick vegetation.
Many Red Arrow soldiers from Wisconsin and Michigan
were experienced hunters, experienced in the woods,
but had never seen anything quite like this before.
Average daytime temperatures were about 90 degrees
with, as you can imagine, great humidity.
I know we're having a pretty hot summer.
Just imagine that going on all the time.
That's basically what New Guinea was like.
And if it wasn't thick jungles,
there were sometimes very high mountains
that had to be crossed.
There were swamps that were filled not only with crocodiles,
but what really got the Red Arrow was the little mosquito,
which carried malaria, which can make one enormously sick.
And by the time the Red Arrow Division
got out of the Buna area,
nearly every single member would be infected with malaria.
So it wasn't just the battlefield injuries
that got people.
There were a number of tropical diseases
that also affected the division's fighting abilities.
New Guinea was also a logistical nightmare.
This was an island with virtually no roads,
no port facilities beyond Port Moresby.
And so, how do you get supplies to the battlefront
to meet the Japanese?
That was a very difficult proposition.
They had a fleet of small ships
that carried supplies up the northern Papuan coast.
You see some pictures here.
They could not carry very much equipment.
They typically had to operate at night,
because the Japanese would attack these small ships
during the day.
So you could imagine not only is it a very long
and difficult march to the battlefield,
but it's gonna be very difficult to get food,
supplies, ammunition, heavy weapons,
these sorts of things up to the battlefield
where it really counted.
Now, the Papua New Guinean population
played a significant role in the battle.
The eastern half of New Guinea
was basically an Australian colony,
and the Australians mobilized Papua New Guinean peoples
for labor details.
There were some combat soldiers, as well,
but mostly for labor details.
And this labor was oftentimes coerced,
and discipline was very harsh.
But the Allied effort depended on them.
It was Papua New Guineans
who built most of the roads and ports
that Allied engineers begin to construct.
They oftentimes served as guides on the island.
And as you see in the photograph here,
they evacuated wounded soldiers as well.
American G.I.s of the Red Arrow Division,
in fact, oftentimes developed a very affectionate attitude
towards Papua New Guineans,
because they were so important to their fight.
If you're a wounded soldier, and Papua New Guinean carriers
are evacuating you, you think they're pretty good, right?
So you can see where that affection would come from.
All right, so let's go back to the maps here,
and let's see what the situation is here.
Now it's November of 1942.
And Allied forces are beginning
to approach the Japanese strong points along the coast.
And the Japanese were concentrated
in three pockets along the coast.
On the far west was a pocket around the village of Gona.
This would be where Australian soldiers would be tasked
with trying to reduce it.
In the center was a pocket around Sanananda.
This was largely an Australian operation,
although there was a battalion of Red Arrow soldiers
from the 126th Infantry Regiment
who assisted the Australians at Sanananda.
The Red Arrow Division under Harding,
its task was to reduce the pocket on the far eastern end
of Japanese holdings around Buna itself.
And the map on the right here shows a close-up
of what this Buna pocket looked like.
On the far east of the Buna pocket
was a coconut plantation called the Duropa Plantation,
along the coast.
On the far western end of the pocket
was a little village called Buna Village,
and not too far from there
was a spot called the Buna Government Station,
which American forces incorrectly
but repeatedly referred to as the Buna Mission.
And between these two points were impenetrable swamps.
And the Japanese had been there for a while,
and they prepared their defenses very, very carefully.
And American forces finally move in in late November of 1942.
This is the first real combat that the division experienced.
That first combat is oftentimes referred to
as a baptism of fire.
And that is traumatic for nearly every soldier
who's ever been in a war.
To some degree,
no amount of training is going to prepare you for what happens
when real bullets come screeching in.
But given the handicaps
that the 32nd Division faced that we talked about earlier,
this baptism of fire
was probably more traumatic than most.
Here, again, these very confident American GIs
who were told that there were probably no more
than 2,000 disease-ridden Japanese soldiers at Buna.
The number was much higher, and many were,
many Japanese were battle experienced.
They expected to walk in and not have too much trouble.
And what they experienced was something very, very different.
Now, the Americans attacked in two places.
On the eastern part, this was known as the Warren front.
American forces attacked on November 19
across this Duropa Plantation.
And then on November 21 in the west,
in what was known as the Urbana front,
more American forces attack.
And they were shocked at what real war was actually like.
This was the end of their innocence.
This was not a war game.
If you're shot in a war game,
you go back into it a few hours later.
This was played for keeps.
And it was a tremendous psychological shock
for the members of the 32nd Division.
Here, for example, is what one soldier, Roy Campbell,
from the 128th Infantry Regiment,
here's how he described his baptism of fire.
Quote, "Men fell all around, many mortally wounded;
"some with legs riddled with bullets sank to the ground
"crying and moaning.
"The guns kept firing,
and many of those who had fallen were hit again, killing them."
It was just something that these soldiers were not prepared for.
They faced very formidable Japanese fortifications.
As I noted before, they had been there a while.
They prepared the battlefield well.
Here, for example, is a photograph
of a well-camouflaged Japanese bunker.
They were typically covered with vegetation.
They were very, very difficult to spot.
If you look at this photograph closely,
you can see an American soldier in there.
But he's very difficult to see.
These were the kinds of fortifications
that the Red Arrow faced.
Not only were they not expecting it,
but they really didn't have the weapons
to be able to punch through.
They were lightly armed: mortars, machine guns, rifles.
There were no tanks.
There, in fact, was very little artillery
which could be used to break up fortifications like this.
There were attempts to use air power,
but coordination between ground and air forces,
it's already very, very difficult,
and especially in an environment like this
where it's very difficult to see what's going on,
that didn't go very well, either.
So Red Arrow forces kept attacking,
but they marked their advances in mere yards
and were not advancing very quickly,
and were not advancing very--
They were not advancing quickly enough
for General MacArthur either,
who not only became very angry at General Harding
for not moving fast enough,
he also seemed to have a grudge against the 32nd Division,
which, after all, was a National Guard division,
and MacArthur was a regular Army officer.
He complained particularly about the officers
of the 32nd Division.
And here again, he never went forward
to see what the situation was.
He's back at headquarters looking at a map,
and he wants them to move faster.
He calls up General Eichelberger.
He sends him to Buna to relieve General Harding
and take command of the battlefield.
And here's the infamous quote that MacArthur gave.
He told Eichelberger,
quote, "Take Buna or don't come back alive."
Now, maybe that's a sign of steeliness,
but it might also suggest a casual attitude
towards casualties as well.
So that remark can be interpreted, I suppose,
in many different ways.
But Eichelberger does go to the front, and he relieves Harding.
And now, it's up to Eichelberger
to try to break through Japanese defenses.
And by the time we get to December of 1942,
we do start to make some progress.
American forces, the GIs of the Red Arrow Division,
they learned about jungle warfare the hard way.
After weeks of trying to punch through those lines,
they begin to understand how to attack a Japanese bunker,
how to camouflage themselves properly on the battlefield.
And I should note that there were some members
of the division who did have some combat experience,
which turned out to be absolutely critical.
One of the most interesting members of the 32nd Division
was someone named Herman Bottcher.
Now, he was born in Germany.
He had become involved in Germany's communist movement,
fighting fascism in the 1920s.
He left Germany.
He eventually settles in the United States.
Then he volunteers to fight fascism
during the Spanish Civil War.
So he had gained some combat experience in Spain.
He then came back to the United States,
and very shortly after Pearl Harbor,
he shows up at a U.S. Army recruiting office.
He becomes a sergeant in the 32nd Division,
and on December the 5th of 1942,
he leads a group of men through Japanese lines.
They manage to punch a hole in those Japanese lines.
He leads them to the coast.
He basically separates Buna village from Buna Mission.
This is a spot that becomes known as Bottcher's Corner.
And he separates these two important strong points
in the Japanese lines, right?
So here's maybe the most notable example
of how the Red Arrow Division began to make progress
on the battlefield.
The arrival of the 127th Infantry Division,
which up until this time had been held in reserve,
this also greatly bolsters the 32nd Division at Buna.
These are fresh troops
who can now be deployed on the battlefield.
Logistics begin to improve as well.
Over time, engineers were able to build port facilities.
They built a complex of airstrips
which could be used to bring in equipment,
could be used to bring out wounded soldiers,
and they also built roads through the jungle
to connect all these various places
and connect them with the front as well.
So now the Red Arrow Division can bring in more supplies
and more troops at this very, very critical moment.
So all these sorts of things
are beginning to turn the tide of the battle at Buna.
But I think what was really the critical moment
is when Australian tanks finally arrived.
Now that the supply line is improved,
they can bring the tanks up.
The Duropa Plantation was a great place
for an armored attack.
And on December the 18th of 1942,
Australian tanks move forward.
And progress now begins to go much more rapidly.
These tanks could go through those Japanese bunkers
and trenches in a way
that ordinary infantry could not.
And so, now the Red Arrow Division is taking more
and more ground, and not only on the Warren front,
but also on the Urbana front in the west as well.
The strength of the Red Arrow Division is growing at a time
when the Japanese are beginning to run out of supplies.
They cannot bring in reinforcements.
Their position is deteriorating,
while that of the Red Arrow Division is only improving.
So around Christmastime towards New Year's of 1942,
the Red Arrow Division gains the upper hand
and the last Japanese strong point at Buna, at Buna Mission,
it falls to American forces on January 2 of 1943.
That Buna pocket has now been eliminated.
The Gona Pocket had already been eliminated by this time,
so that just left the Japanese position at Sanananda.
Now, this was largely an Australian operation.
There were some soldiers from the 41st Division
who were fighting now with the Australians,
and the 127th Infantry Regiment was also involved in this,
moving westward along the coast to link up with the Australians.
They eventually do, and on January 22 of 1943,
the battle in Papua was officially concluded,
and it was concluded with an Allied victory.
And that, of course, means it was concluded
with a Red Arrow victory as well.
And the Battle of Guadalcanal ends a few weeks after this.
So the Red Arrow won the first land victory
against the Japanese during the Second World War,
if not just by a matter of weeks.
And this should have been a great moment
for the Red Arrow Division.
Certainly, the Marine Corps gained a lot of accolades
for its defeat of the Japanese at Guadalcanal.
But for the 32nd Division at Buna, it was different.
In MacArthur's headquarters,
there was still a lot of bitterness
towards the 32nd Division, and there was the sense
that the 32nd Division had somehow failed at Buna.
Now, not everybody in MacArthur's headquarters
held this view.
One person who did not was General Eichelberger,
who was there.
And here's what Eichelberger wrote in his memoirs
about these rumors about the 32nd Division.
Quote, "A great deal has been said
"and whispered about the 32nd Division
"and much of it makes no sense.
"The 32nd, which 'failed' at Buna,
"was the same 32nd that won the victory there.
No one else did."
So again, this might have been a great moment
for the Red Arrow Division,
but its victory there was somehow sullied,
I guess one might say, tragically.
Now, for the soldiers themselves,
they were proud of having won,
and they were glad to have survived.
Here's what one soldier said,
James Myers, of the 128th Infantry Regiment.
Quote, "We fought the Japanese.
"We fought the jungle, we fought the rain and mud,
"the insects, the swamps, and the disease--
and we won."
So that was certainly the sentiment
among Red Arrow soldiers themselves.
While MacArthur might not have been pleased,
the Red Arrow itself was very proud of its victory.
Now, at this point, the Red Arrow left the battlefield
for about a year for rest and refitting.
The division got a new commander,
General William H. Gill,
who had a reputation as a very tough disciplinarian,
and I should also note,
not a particularly popular figure among Red Arrow soldiers.
Their training intensified quite dramatically,
now informed by their experience at Buna.
32nd Division soldiers oftentimes said,
"We wrote the book on jungle warfare."
And they really weren't that far off.
Those hard lessons that they learned,
the Army learned them as well,
and applied them through much more rigorous training.
Replacements begin to arrive to replace
many of those lost at Buna through casualties or disease.
There was some national press,
a few features in Life magazine, for example.
That was a big deal back in the 1940s.
Even a visit from the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt,
while they were in Australia.
And one more thing here to note as well.
Rotations home began in early 1944.
By early 1944,
many Red Arrow soldiers had been overseas for two years
and had been in uniform even longer than that.
And so, the Army finally began a process
of rotating soldiers home.
So this is now when many of the old,
original members of the Red Arrow Division,
those who can remember Camp Beauregard or Camp Livingston,
this is when many of them begin to leave.
The character of the 32nd Division changes from one
that was originally composed of soldiers from the Upper Midwest
to now a division that was composed of soldiers
from all across the country, from every state.
It was a truly national division now.
Now, in 1944, the Army and the Navy
begin a process of leapfrogging across the Pacific,
bypassing Japanese strong points,
trying to get as close to Japan as quickly as they could.
And the Red Arrow Division certainly participated
in this leapfrogging campaign as well,
in some fairly minor engagements in 1944.
In January of '44, for example,
Red Arrow soldiers took a place called Saidor
on the North New Guinea coast.
They took an airfield, helped to establish a naval base,
but were unable to prevent thousands of Japanese soldiers
from bypassing them to Japanese strong points further west.
Then in April of 1944,
Red Arrow forces invade a place called Aitape.
Here, too, this was about an airfield
which the 32nd Division protected,
and they held off a very stiff Japanese counterattack
in July of 1944,
but once again, held their ground.
But these were fairly minor engagements.
But by late 1944 and early 1945,
the Red Arrow Division is back in some major engagements,
major engagements that once again bring the division
to the brink of collapse.
In October of 1944,
General MacArthur finally realizes his dream
of beginning to liberate the Philippines,
and American forces invade the island of Leyte
in the central Philippines in October.
In November of 1944, the Red Arrow Division is sent to Leyte,
and they fight mostly along the northern coast of the island
at a place called Breakneck Ridge.
Now, just the name itself implies
that the fighting was very, very difficult.
Here again, the Japanese managed to barricade themselves
behind very formidable fortifications,
and Red Arrow soldiers had to go in there
and reduce those fortifications.
It was very, very tough fighting.
Progress was slow,
once again, a little too slow for General MacArthur,
who still seemed to be carrying a grudge
against the 32nd Division.
Here's what Eichelberger recorded in his diary.
Quote, "Big Chief says 32nd had never been any good."
Now, I should note
that MacArthur had already declared victory,
and so the continuing fight here kind of made him look bad.
And we know about his desire for publicity.
But again, that grudge against the 32nd Division resurfaces.
In fact, the 32nd Division
had taken some very crucial territory
through the mountains and unlocked the door
for other American divisions to move forward
and take a very important port town on the island.
But once again,
the division did not get recognition from the top.
And then, with just a few weeks' rest, in January of 1945,
the 32nd Division was sent to another island
in the Philippines.
This was the island of Luzon,
the largest and most important of the Philippine islands,
and it fought a very grueling campaign along a pathway
through the mountains that was known as the Villa Verde Trail.
This had been blazed by a Spanish priest in the 1800s
to preach the gospel to the peoples of the island.
It was little more than a footpath.
This is what the Red Arrow Division was tasked with taking.
You can probably figure out what's gonna happen here.
The Japanese once again build very formidable fortifications,
and it's yet another grueling campaign.
Every hill in this particular mountain pass
was the scene of very vicious fighting.
Japanese who had dug themselves into caves
had to be rooted out.
This really heavy fighting went from March through May of 1945.
Enormous casualties.
In particular,
there was an increase in psychological casualties.
There were still some members of the division
who could remember Buna, who had been in combat for many years,
who had been gone for four years,
had been through many battles.
And some began
to suffer the psychological consequences of that.
But here again, yet another Red Arrow victory.
And when we talk about the Villa Verde Trail,
I think we also have to talk about the engineers
who took what was little more than a footpath
and turned it into a roadway
capable of sustaining combat traffic:
tanks, self-propelled guns, ambulances,
all the things that the Red Arrow would need
to continue the fight on the Villa Verde Trail.
And as I noted, by May of 1945,
this fight had been concluded as well.
For the last months of the war,
there was minor fighting that occurred in northern Luzon,
as the Red Arrow and other American divisions
slowly reduced the area held by the Japanese.
Even after the Japanese announced their intention
to surrender on August 15 of 1945,
some Japanese forces continued to fight.
So note, the first American division
to fight the Japanese in the Pacific was still fighting,
even after the Japanese announced their intention
to surrender.
Now, commanding Japanese forces in the Philippines
was General Yamashita Tomoyuki.
He negotiates his surrender,
and he finally gives himself up to the Red Arrow Division
on the same day Japan surrendered,
September 2 of 1945.
And that was the end of the Second World War,
and the Red Arrow Division was in the field
up until the very last day.
And after the war,
Yamashita was interrogated by his American captors.
And he had something to say about the 32nd Division.
This is what General Walter Krueger wrote in his memoirs.
Quote, "General Yamashita indicated
"that he considered the 32nd Division the best
his troops encountered on both Leyte and Luzon."
So while General MacArthur might not have been very impressed,
the Japanese were very impressed.
And I suppose in a war,
that's what really matters most of all, right?
So you see that disconnect there.
Then after all of that,
several months of occupation duty in Japan
until the division was finally demobilized in February of 1946,
almost six years to the day
from when it was first mobilized back in the fall of 1940.
Eleven members of the Red Arrow Division
received the Medal of Honor,
America's highest decoration for valor.
These are the first two, both Wisconsin soldiers.
Both received their Medal of Honor for actions at Buna
around Christmastime of 1942, both posthumously.
Elmer Burr of Neenah threw himself on a grenade
to protect those around him.
Kenneth Gruennert of Helenville in Jefferson County,
a high school football star,
skillfully threw grenades into a Japanese bunker
until he was finally shot down.
And there were nine other members of the division
who would eventually receive the country's highest decoration.
The human toll on the Red Arrow Division was significant.
Here are some facts and figures.
More than 1,600 killed.
That was the highest
of any American division in the Pacific.
More than 2,000 other battle-related deaths,
those who die of wounds, disease, accidents,
these sorts of things.
Second highest in the Pacific.
More than 5,600 wounded.
That was third highest in the Pacific.
The worst was Buna,
where if you account for deaths, injuries, disease, accidents,
neuropsychiatric casualties,
the casualty rate at Buna was a smidge under 90%,
so virtually no member of the division
came out of that particular battle unscathed.
It was quite a horrendous experience for many
in the division.
Some superlatives for the division,
as I noted before, 654 days in combat,
more than any other U.S. Army division,
and so far as I can tell,
more than any other division-sized unit in all
of the American military during the Second World War.
The first to fly into a combat zone,
and the first to defeat the Japanese in battle.
So, as I noted at the beginning,
a remarkable record that has oftentimes been forgotten
eighty years later.
Now, the members of the Red Arrow Division were,
in fact, remarkably proud of their achievements
and accomplishments.
Anyone who questioned those accomplishments,
them was fightin' words.
Here, for example, is a quote from a Red Arrow member
who wrote an article in the Saturday Evening Post.
Quote, "They're quick to take issue, by force if necessary,
"with anyone who challenges the Red Arrow's impressive array
"of claims to top Pacific battle honors.
"Barroom brawls are on record
as a result of conflicting claims."
A pride instilled not only by their experiences,
but probably accentuated by the disrespect
that they sometimes received from their own commanders.
Now, this year marks the 80th end of--
80th anniversary of World War II's end.
And we Americans today oftentimes remember
World War II very fondly.
We sometimes talk about the "Good War,"
and we talk about the "Greatest Generation."
And this is an event in American history
that's oftentimes mythologized.
It's almost become sort of a sacred event
in American history.
America triumphs over evil.
There seem to be a lot of national unity and purpose
that sometimes escaped us in later years.
And I sometimes fear we remember the war too sentimentally.
Nostalgia and history are not quite the same thing.
Nostalgia is sort of a fond remembrance of the past.
History is oftentimes more stubborn and difficult.
Yes, there were a lot of great things
about the Second World War.
We did defeat some remarkably brutal regimes.
Those who served were very, very proud to do it.
But we also need to remember what it was like
for those soldiers who were sent in there to fight.
We can't think of our World War II ancestors
as somehow supermen
who were destined for victory, like in a movie.
These were real people who came from communities
like the ones that we all came from,
who had to learn real hard,
who sometimes suffered enormous hardship.
Many never came home.
Victory wasn't inevitable.
A lot of people really worked hard for it,
and few worked harder than the Red Arrow Division.
Now, if you'd like to learn more, not to be a pitchman,
but here's some information about my book.
Otherwise, I would like to thank you all
very much for coming today.
[audience applauding]