I've read a lot of books about the USMC in WWII (& Korea and Vietnam) over the last couple of years and, overall, I am really impressed with its performance. They fought in some of the fiercest, no-quarter combat of the war (Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Peleilu, Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, to name a few) and despite often taking heavy casualties, they almost always prevailed.
The Japanese, although tough and determined enemies, were cursed with some of the worst tech of the war. Pretty much all of their weapons systems were inferior to the Western equivalent. The Zero was king for a while, but as soon as allied pilots figured out not to get into a turning/climbing fight with it, it lost a lot of its mystique. Later Allied designs like the Hellcat and Corsair were superior. The Yamato super battleship was impressive and would have been superior in most respects in the age of the battle line, but in the era of naval air, it was a dinosaur.
Japanese infantry weapons were generally crap, across the board. The only major exception was their little "knee" mortars, which could generate impressive close-in indirect fire support. They never had enough artillery, their tanks were crap, and most Japanese infantrymen fought with long, unwieldly bolt-action rifles.
It kind of makes one wonder how the Japanese would have fared with better weapons systems and better leadership.
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