Nearly 80 years after ‘Hacksaw Ridge,’ a new regiment of Marines armed with anti-ship missiles will help protect Japan from China.

(Originally published Jan. 12 in “What in the World’) The U.S. will boost its support of Japan against threats from China by stationing a special U.S. Marine regiment in Okinawa that can fire anti-ship missiles at Chinese vessels should they launch an attack on Taiwan or Japan’s southernmost islands. During exercises designed to protest a visit to Taipei by former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Chinese maneuvers suggested it would launch missiles against U.S. bases in Japan and South Korea while using its navy to blockade Taiwan.

Japan in December committed to paying $2 billion for hundreds of Raytheon’s Tomahawk cruise missiles capable of striking targets in China or North Korea as part of plans to bolster its own military capabilities, including a doubling of its defense spending.

History buffs will recall that Okinawa was the site of the bloodiest Pacific battle in World War II, when in April 1945 U.S. troops took the island after an 82-day battle that cost the lives of 50,000 Americans and as many as 117,000 Japanese. The battle is the subject of the Oscar-winning film “Hacksaw Ridge.” One of the objectives of the invasion was to take and use the Japanese airbase a few kilometers north of Hacksaw Ridge at Kadena to stage the invasion of mainland Japan.

U.S. fighters and bombers still operate out of Kadena 77 years later. The U.S. also built an airfield seven kilometers away at Futenma, which first hosted the Air Force, then the Navy and finally the Marines. But locals have long opposed the base and former U.S. President Bill Clinton promised in 1996 to close it. Ever since, Washington and Tokyo have been planning to move the Marines elsewhere on the island or even to Guam. But China’s increasingly aggressive maneuvers around Taiwan and Japan’s Senkaku Islands, while making Okinawans increasingly concerned about becoming a target for Chinese missiles, have only reinforced the island’s importance to regional defense.

Select Ukrainian troops, meanwhile, will travel to Fort Sill in Oklahoma to learn how to use the Raytheon Patriot missile-defense battery headed to Ukraine as part of U.S. President Joe Biden’s Christmas package.

Not to be left out of the mad dash to supply Ukraine with more weapons, Canada will donate $303 million of Raytheon’s Nasams (National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System) to Ukraine to help it shoot down missiles and drones.