The conservative internet today (including American Thinker) is flooded with homages to D-Day, when the Allies were finally able to bring the war to Germany. Although the war lasted another 11 long, bloody months, D-Day was the beginning of the end for the Nazis. Fewer people remember, though, that from June 2-7, 1942, the U.S. Navy fought a horrific battle that marked the beginning of the end for the Japanese Empire, although Japan nevertheless forced another three years of unbelievably brutal fighting across the Pacific.

We all know about the attack on Pearl Harbor, which the Japanese intended would destroy the American fleet and prevent it from participating in a Pacific war. What the Japanese hadn’t counted on was the speed with which America would reconstitute its Navy.

Within months of Pearl Harbor, the Navy returned to active duty almost all the ships that had been attacked. And of course, also within months, America began to build a mighty Arsenal of Democracy that eventually manufactured almost 300,000 aircraft and 10,000 naval vessels during the war.

The moment a torpedo struck the USS Yorktown. Public domain.

The first significant naval engagement for the U.S. was the Battle of the Coral Sea, fought from May 4-8, 1942. The battle was the first naval engagement ever that involved long-distance firing from aircraft carriers, rather than the old tradition of battleships lining up alongside each other and firing broadsides. The battle was inconclusive in some ways, but the U.S. forced the Japanese to turn back, which was a first. Notably, the USS Yorktown, despite taking tremendous damage during the battle, was made seaworthy in weeks, not months.

And then, the U.S. had a problem. The Pacific is an unbelievably vast ocean. In a world without spy satellites, how would they know where the Japanese fleet was?

Thanks to the fact that America had partially broken Japan’s naval code, they knew that a new attack was planned somewhere between Japan and the American coast (and Alaska). What they could not know was that Admiral Yamamoto had selected Midway, a small but important American base, as his next target. It was simply because Admiral Nimitz* made an intelligent guess that it would be Midway that America was able to engage in this all-important battle. (In those days, military decisions were nade by men in the military, not by lawyers in D.C.)

That guess narrowed the target, but it still didn’t say where the Japanese fleet could be found. A reconnaissance force went out hunting and, as their fuel ran low, they saw nothing. However, despite the risk of empty tanks that would drop them into the blue, the pilots just kept flying a little bit more—and they saw the Japanese fleet before them. That’s when the guns started firing.

Eventually, the ships and airplanes were close enough for the real battle to rage for several days. The Yorktown was finally sunk for good. Approximately 307 Americans died, two ships sank, and around 150 airplanes were lost. At Midway commemorations in San Francisco, I had the honor of hearing the tales of some of those survivors, and they were harrowing.

For the Japanese, though, the losses were infinitely greater. They lost five ships, with three more being heavily damaged. They also lost 248 aircraft. Lastly, over 3,000 Japanese men died at that engagement. This marked the beginning of the end for the Japanese. With a small population and limited manufacturing resources, not to mention being without America’s virtually limitless access to oil, the Japanese never could reconstitute their military strength, even as America’s Arsenal of Democracy kept growing.

That Japan was on a downward trajectory didn’t stop the war. The Bushido culture had no room for surrender, so it took another three years and two atomic bombs to stop the fighting. Along the way, over 130,000 Americans died, while Japanese military losses may have exceeded 1.5 million. Both sides were in it to the bitter end, but it was an exceptionally bitter end for the Japanese, who were a “dead country walking” as of June 7, 1942.

Having said that, my sympathy for the Japanese is limited. Japanese Bushido brutality was unparalleled, often exceeding what the Nazis did. The popular memory cares less about what they did, though, because the Nazis industrialized the horrors they committed and did something outside of most comprehension by attempting to annihilate an entire race of people...a race who lived to tell the tale.

While we know about the Bataan death march, POW camps, and battle atrocities, much of what the Japanese did was committed against people who, even when they lived, lacked the capacity to tell their stories. During the 1937 attack on Nanking, the Japanese slaughtered at least 100,000 Chinese civilians, often with Hamas-like ferocity. In Thailand, an estimated 250,000 Thai people who were conscripted to serve the Japanese never came home, having died from disease and abuse. Ultimately, per R.J. Rummel’s analysis, the Japanese slaughtered around 3-10 million people across Asia—Chinese, Korean, Indonesian, Filipino, Thai, etc.

At war’s end, of course, the Japanese were beaten as few losing sides have ever been beaten before. That forced them to abandon their deadly Bushido culture in a way nothing else could. Today, I have nothing but admiration for the Japanese culture, which is exquisitely clean, well-organized, meticulous, beautiful, and gracious. Japan is one of my favorite places to visit.

I mention this because, when a culture becomes a death cult, visiting death upon it may be the only way to save it from itself. You all can take from my statement what you will. As for me, today I remember the brave men who fought at Midway and give thanks for what they did.

• One of the jobs I held while in college was as a medical transcriptionist. My typewriter was centered under a picture of Admiral Nimitz accepting the Japanese surrender. Inscribed on the picture were Nimitz’s handwritten thanks to one of my employers for the good care he’d received.