Today, April 1, is the anniversary of the start of the bloody but decisive WWII Battle of Okinawa. Meanwhile, American forces continue to strike Iranian regime targets. What do these two conflicts have in common? Primarily, both of them were/are directed against genocidal dictatorships willing to commit any atrocity to achieve global domination.
And since we are indeed currently fighting against a regime that is as dedicated to terrorism and defeat of America as the Japanese empire once was, we should require nothing less of the Iranian regime than we did of the Japanese — namely, unconditional surrender.
The Japanese imperial regime slaughtered more civilians (up to 10 million) than the Nazis did during WWII and were infamous for the grotesque tortures and excruciating deaths they invented for prisoners. From the Bataan Death March to the Rape of Nanking to the Sook Ching, Changjiao, and Parit Sulong Massacres, the Japanese imperial army left a trail of corpses behind that much of Asia has not forgotten up to the present day.
Thai-Burma Railway Museum: each spike represents 500 people killed by the imperial Japanese during WWII pic.twitter.com/3FlU0ADkz6
— Catherine Salgado (@CatSalgado32) July 26, 2025
That was the genocidal regime against which our brave American troops fought in the Battle of Okinawa. The Japanese soldiers there as in other battles proved that they would truly rather fight to the last man and even commit suicide than willingly surrender a square foot of territory to the Americans.
From the National WWII Museum:
On April 1, 1945, more than 60,000 soldiers and marines of the US Tenth Army stormed ashore at Okinawa, in the final island battle before an invasion of mainland Japan. After a largely unopposed initial advance, US forces soon encountered a network of Japanese inland defenses. Savage fighting erupted at the island’s southern end. Heavy rains and rugged terrain impeded easy movement, and natural defensive positions covered the island. A vicious land, sea, and air battle raged for nearly three months. Like the bloodshed on Iwo Jima, Okinawa’s savagery forecast a terrible death toll in the anticipated invasion of Japan’s home islands.
In fact, the projected casualties from a land invasion of Japan were so high that the U.S. was still awarding Purple Hearts manufactured for that invasion 75 years later. Fortunately, America had the atom bomb, a life-saving master weapon. Otherwise, the nightmare the Americans on Okinawa experienced would have dragged on for God knows how long.
Related: Vietnam Veterans Day: Underappreciated Heroism
Fast forward to 2026, and U.S. troops are striking the Islamic regime of Iran, which has been killing Americans directly or through terror proxies for almost five decades. The Iranian regime is the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world and recently slaughtered between 30,000 and 40,000 of its own Persian people who protested domestic tyranny.
Exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi listed just a handful of murdered protestors' names at Liberty University this week:
Sina — 17 years old — who went out with his family to demand freedom, and was shot in the street, never to return home. Rubina — a young student who dreamed of studying fashion in Milan — whose family searched through rows of bodies just to find her. Borna — who said, ‘If I don’t go, nothing will change.’ He chose to go. And he was killed for it. Kimia — 17 years old — shot in the chest by the very forces meant to protect her. Two brothers — Rasoul and Reza — who stood side by side in protest and were both shot dead in the street together. And Bahar — three years old… killed not in war, not on a battlefield, but by tear gas in her own country.
The Iranian regime also backed the Oct. 7 atrocities in Israel, when Hamas jihadis burned alive and beheaded babies, performed the most grotesque rapes, gunned down or kidnapped entire families, and gleefully filmed themselves doing it. So far, 13 Americans have died in Operation Epic Fury, along with dozens of civilians in neighboring countries, especially in Israel.
From the imperial Japanese to the modern Iranian regime, genocidal dictatorships have been existential threats to our great nation. But now as then, heroic Americans have stepped up to defend our nation and crush the bloodthirsty tyrants.
