Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - *PREVIEW* The Battle of Eniwetok

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

In 1942 the US Pacific campaign wound up creating the circumstances for a tank engagement on a tiny atoll in the middle of the ocean. It was the origin of the expression 'the two-thousand yard stare,' a battle that probably didn't need to happen but still wound up happening, and it involved a lot of carnage amid exactly zero shade. So, of course we were going to talk about it. Get the whole episode on Patreon here! https://www.patreon.com/posts/137945399 LIVESTREAM TICKETS FOR OCT 4TH https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/livestream-lions-led-by-donkeys-podcast-live-in-glasgow-4th-october-2025-tickets-1532091008449 CHECK OUT THE MERCH STORE: www.llbdpodcast.com/

Are you familiar with the battleline with talk? No. See, that's interesting because you probably are, but for one simple thing, and that is a single picture, this one. Oh, the thousand yards stair, yeah. The famous Marine thousand yards stair picture,

which will be the cover of our episode, so listeners can see what we're talking about. Right. That comes from this battle. Does not have a happy ending. We'll talk about that later. That's probably the only reason anybody is vaguely familiar

with this battle. When I saw the name, the title of the episode in the link for the recording session, I thought I was like, that almost thought I was, oh, is this Dutch history? And then I was like, no, that sounds like something like Austronesian or Melanesian. So it's like, I bet you this is one of those island campaigns. But no, I've never heard

of it. For starters, Unwitaka is an Atoll. And it was known to the Japanese by the very, very catchy name, Brown Island. I don't know why I find that so delightful but I do I like it living and dying for

Brown Island like a Primus live album It's a tiny little coral speck of the Marshall Islands that measures less than two and a half miles of land it's broken up into 30 different smaller islands though for

really the context of this episode only three of which are important because they were made use by the Japanese for military purposes and Aetol is a ring of of small islands with a lagoon in the middle we're lagoon maxing

well also one of the important things about atolls and why people live on them in these societies is that typically because of the increased salinity of the lagoon because of evaporation it creates when rainfalls fresh water collects in like a lens on top of the saltwater

in the lagoon and so you can have a source of fresh water as so long as it's not like an extended drought period and so yeah people did society you know the Pacific islanders did live in these places but they are quite austere and harsh environments. And the lagoon is a protected body of land, so fishing is quite easy

in it, things like that. If you drove from one end of Einwataki, if it's in a straight line, which it's not, but if you drove from one end to the other, cover maybe 50 miles lengthwise, it's almost entirely flat. It's mostly open coral with few

sparsely dotted trees and bushes. Almost all of them on the island of Einwatak itself. One of the islands, which has the same name is the Atoll. And effectively find yourself in a gigantic coral crater in the middle of the Pacific. And it's like, all you need is some kind of weird metal sculpture. And it's the setting of Michael Crichton's sphere.

Like, it's just, it's a strange environment. It's a strange ecosystem. Put it that way. And there's a good reason why, despite being settled by humans about a thousand years ago, the population never really increased over a couple of a hundred people. I wonder why it's a ring in the middle of the fucking Pacific Ocean. It could only support so much life and for that reason alone

it was pretty much completely ignored by Europeans all the way up until the 1800s between original settlement and the 1800s maybe a dozen ships ended up there at one point another none of them stayed

and the reason why I'm drawing the line at the 1800s because that's where the German Empire appears and in 1885 they claim the entire Marshall Islands typically it's because of Guamon or other kinds of stuff that collects over time

that they got phosphates from that was specific to other islands and the marshals but for Einwatok just nothing there The German Empire wanted to get in

the colonization game in the Pacific struck a deal with the British to split things nicely amongst themselves and the Germans move in they don't really do anything to Einwatok

the German Imperial Project the Pacific is mostly phosphates and guano but failing that recalling stations for their fleet It's one of the reasons why, for example, Phosphate, they wanted to take over Nauru, which we did do a bonus episode about a long time ago. It's a deeply cursed island. It really is.

Yeah. I just love the idea of the Germans are like, well, this does seem like both environment mentally and socioculturally a place where you can just be naked all the time. So it's perfect for us. Yeah, we really need to bring in some schlager and everything will be fine. Yeah, it's like the main German export to the central and south Pacific was fry. Curipo culture. Getting vulkish on the adole. Bringing my canoe around to my neighboring island and I hear Oompa music for some reason.

Yeah, they're harnessing the salinity of the lagoon to season their sausage, you know. Eventually, World War I happens and the German Empire in the Pacific largely falls into the hands of the Japanese under what was eventually known as the South Seas mandate. But again, Japan pretty much leaves Einwatok alone. Really not a whole lot they could do. Japan does horrific things and the rest of the South Seas mandate. We've talked about those before. They really just liked randomly showing up

and beheading people with swords like katanas and shit. Like you hear a lot of this lives. The Japanese took over ex-native Italy or ex-colonial outposts or missionary stations are 55 people beheaded with huge swords. They're rolling a dice, which on the dice says behead enslaved.

Word I'm not going to say to bring the vibes down and then like secret fourth thing. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Legitimately super villains in the Pacific. But Aynwatok, again, largely ignored. Japan doesn't even really displace its population because there isn't much of one to speak of the first place, but also because they don't really see a reason to need to.

They don't really want to use this Atoll for anything. And Aynwatok pretty much is ignored until the beginning of World War II. And even after that, in the grand scheme of the various islands that we've talked about, Inmatok might have been one of the few Japanese Pacific islands to just be able to ignore the war. If it was not for one thing, Japan eventually built an airfield on one of its islands. This is a tiny airfield. There's no large garrison to go with it. It's pretty much just a gas station for Japanese planes flying further east.

Very few defenses are put up, nothing very hard or large. very few ground personnel are left there. It sounds like a pretty great place to be stationed if you happen to have the misfortune of being of the Japanese military in World War II. Just sit in this inhospitable atoll that hates your existence and maybe you won't die horribly. I mean, you'll probably catch a tropical disease

or something that you're not prepared for. Yeah. But then again, it's like basically the summarized version of everyone else's experience the Japanese military elsewhere is the eclipse episode from Berserk. So it's like what you got by comparison And it's good.

Fuck me. Except the demons are the shapes of American aircraft carriers. Yeah, exactly. The bailet makes the face of Porky Pigs.

That's all, folks. I'm just imagining Chester Nimitz says Griffith now and it's fucking me up. I've been watching it on YouTube and because of my fucking IP address

I keep getting the French dub, which is interesting. But watching Berserk in French is just surreal. I'm sorry. I've been thinking a lot about bailists. I've been thinking a lot about Band of the Hawk or La Monty Foucault.

Fucking French geats. Guts. Did he be it? That's serious. Oh, God. That makes the whole thing turn to comedy. But it's actually funny because there's so much of like the ministerial intrigue and scheming viziers and shit.

And so like translated that into like really, really like sycophantic court French actually makes sense. Like it's, there's things about it. Well, it's kind of set in. fake Japanese envisioned Europe, so it kind of works. But yeah, it's, it's, I'm sorry, it is La Pond de Focon. I love it. Then in 1943, the Gilbert Islands also held by Japan were taken back by the United States in a horrific battle that we've talked about in pieces, you know, battles like the Battle of Tarawa, Macon, and with the sole purpose of reinforcing America's position for an eventual invasion of the

marshals. At that point, it was decided Invitak would need to become a Japanese strong point. Another rock in an attempt to break the oncoming American wave sweeping through Japan like so many berserk porky pigs. Jesus Christ, I'm just trying

to, you're just horrible daffy duck with just like, fucking weird corkscrew ducts in. I love, Katara Mir is insane, kind of like a horrific monsters with the shape of animals or insects that still retain enough of a human visage to be like really, really

disconcerting. Like, you'd apply that to the Looney Tunes cast. And it's just like... And it's just like... In World War II? I mean, conodically, the Loonitudes were involved in the war effort. That is established. Yeah, no, absolutely. Because Donald Duck was Hitler

at one point. Yeah, exactly. Also, RIP to our good friend of the show. Entorum. RIP, buddy. The go. The goat. Or if you're in French, the Goot. actually I saw somebody saying

using goaded in but the English sense but in France and they said it gottesque no I hate that I hate that so much the guy in the Academy French is like trying to decide how do we translate the goat

I hate it so the Japanese sent over the first amphibious brigade under the command of Colonel Yoshima Nishida to hold the atoll this is not exactly crack brigade of troops, however. DeShita and his men were reservists.

They were garrisoned troops far away from the front line in the Japanese puppet state of Manchuko. So they were not exactly psyched to get these orders. Now imagine going from Manchuko to surprise or going to the tropics with no trading or medicine.

This is a loot box full of disease. This actually does kind of happen. Sometimes when random Americans join the military, I think they're going to go to your normal military place. And they're like, You're going to fucking Diego Garcia. And he's just like, oh, well, I get to recreate the Battle of Einwatok somehow. With my bowels.