I'm probably better informed about the Pacific part of WW II than most from my generation since my father was involved (164th Infantry - part of the Americal Division - saw action on Guadalcanal, New Guinea, the Philippines, and was part of the Japanese occupation force). That helped generate the interest on my part to read and learn about it. However I believe the 'Baby Boomer' generation is reasonably knowledgeable about WW II since most had parents and teachers that had been involved - and they still did a good job of teaching American history in school. That being said I suspect in general the knowledge of the European war is more common than the Pacific war simply because far fewer Americans were involved in the Pacific than Europe.
The younger generation is a different story - their knowledge of history in general is not as good, and too many have been taught that all war is bad hence the American involvement was bad. I was talking to the teenage daughter of a co-working no long ago - she said something along the line of 'war is horrible, it should be avoided at all costs'. I looked at her and responded that war is indeed unimaginably horrible, but sometimes the alternative is worse and mentioned Nazi genocide as an example. The look she gave me was interesting, but I couldn't tell if a light bulb had gone on, or if she was concluding I was mad.
Just in the last couple days I was reading an article that said the number of college studies majoring in history had dropped dramatically - down nearly 50% in the last 10 years. I really fear for the future - that whole thing about forgetting history means you'll end up repeating it...
BTW SAS, I'm fully aware that the whole thing with the torpedo bombers was an accident - but it was a very fortuitous accident as a result of poor coordination of the attack.