After victory in Europe, Canada decided only to send volunteers to fight in the war in the Pacific. HMCS Uganda was already in theatre, so the Government suggested that they needed to volunteer again. But most of the sailors chose not to, so the Uganda left to return home. A rather unique story to cover.
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Did any of the crew join the US Navy after the vote?
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Cool post :- thanks for bringing this to our attention
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Monty Python could have made a great sketch on this 
maybe include a watery tart!
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I certainly hope they do.
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The war ended before the Uganda could get back, so we’ll never know if some of them might have wanted to join the USN. The sailors got tagged with being seen as “quitters”, so it is rather unfortunate for them that they could have just waited a few extra weeks and the war would have been over anyway. Of course, they had no way of knowing that.
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Interesting point is how much support from the common soldier was there to invade Japan and go on after years of service? I know this is hard to quantify but I do doubt whether there was a 100% support for invading.
Chew!
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Support for a massive invasion? I think you would have to be insane to support it. But when you have orders it’s another thing entirely to refuse or speak out. I’m sure soldiers were aware of the casualty estimates and after seeing the fight on Okinawa they would be very sober about it.
The Japanese knew where we were going, when it was going to happen. We would have ended up killing millions of Japanese or starving them. There was no good ending here.
The true crazy was the Japanese military.
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ChewbaccaLeader
Interesting point is how much support from the common soldier was there to invade Japan and go on after years of service? I know this is hard to quantify but I do doubt whether there was a 100% support for invading.
Chew!
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A friend of mine in the states many years ago told me about his dad who joined up on Dec 8th 1941 and spent most of the war stationed in Hawaii.(sorry I don’t know what he did there). In October 1944 his dad started running supplies from Hawaii to the front lines of the pacific and did so until he was wounded by friendly fire while delivering supplies to one of the islands near Okinawa.
As he was recuperating in the US mainland he according to my friend was so upset that he would miss the invasion of Mainland Japan due to his injuries because as his dad put it the Japanese were the real enemy to the US. It was something his dad would lament over for years after the war, missing the opportunity to teach the Japanese a lesson.
Even today I still meet second and third generation Americans that have very strong feelings about Japan because of their parents and grandparents and the prejudices of that time.
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