The fighting at Okinawa in mid-1945 was reaching a breaking point for the restless
US Marines, and sanity was going out the door. Almost two months of bitter battle under mud,
rain, blood, uninterrupted Japanese artillery barrages and mortar strikes
were taking their toll on the leathernecks. 20-year-old Marine Private Eugene Sledge watched
as the Japanese soldiers launched continuous kamikaze attacks with swords unsheathed when
they were cornered and knew there was no way out. Sledge had also witnessed how his fellow Marines
had turned into beasts who resorted to the same grisly tactics employed by the Japanese military.
With every push the Marines made towards conquering the island, they seemed to be
losing some of their humanity. Still, the fight had to go on; the war’s outcome depended on it…
Operation Iceberg
The iconic picture of the Marines raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi had given a
tremendous boost to the country's morale, and the military was making the most out of it.
When the US Marines finally captured the island of Iwo Jima on March 16,
1945, Admiral Raymond Spruance, the fifth fleet commander, was already en route to the Ryukyus
Islands, southwest of the main Japanese islands. Spruance’s objective was no easy task. He was to
assemble the largest amphibious assault force of the war to capture the island of Okinawa
and remove the last obstacle between the Allied forces and mainland Japan.
The gruesome island-hopping campaigns of the Pacific Theater were coming to
an end once and for all, and Spruance had to muster all the naval power he could get.
Japanese resistance, both at sea and land, was expected to be relentless,
and Spruance needed to gather a combined force of more than 350,000 naval personnel and 1,600 ships.
The capture of Okinawa was codenamed Operation Iceberg. If the American forces accomplished
their objective and secured the airfields on the island, including the Kadena Air Base,
they could finally begin their bombing raids over Tokyo and other major Japanese cities.
Okinawa was also essential for the execution of Operation Downfall,
the invasion of the Japanese home islands.
Besides naval personnel, it was also pivotal to assemble a specific ground force to take
the island by force, and the 10th Army was subsequently created with this purpose.
The 10th Army was a cross-branch force composed of the Army’s 7th,
27th, 77th, and 96th divisions, and commanded by Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner.
Meanwhile, the 1st, 2nd, and 6th Marine divisions were led by Major General Roy. S. Geiger.
Ultimately, more than 180,000 men comprised the 10th Army, which also had its own Tactical Air
Force made up of a joint Army and Marine command. Shifting Japanese Tactics
Lieutenant General Mitsuru Ushijima’s 100,000-strong 32nd Army
was pitched against the American ground force. Nevertheless, the Imperial Army was now a
shadow of its former past, just like the Navy. The Japanese soldiers knew the war was lost,
and their morale was not as high as before. Only 67,000 men were professional soldiers, while some
9,000 were Imperial Navy sailors and the remaining 40,000 were rear militia known as Boeitai.
These men were drafted by local Ryukyuan people who had little to no training or weaponry,
and most were only interested in fighting for their loved ones, families, and small towns.
The Imperial Army had taken a step further and forced over 1,800 boys between the
ages of 14 and 18 to volunteer for combat. Propaganda had made the population believe
that the Americans were cruel beasts who were after elderly men,
women, children, and babies without remorse. This fear mobilized thousands of civilians
who had no other way to fight the enemy or who faced execution by the Imperial Army.
Ushijima and his officers knew the war was as good as lost, but their main objective was to make the
Americans suffer for every inch of land they’d taken. Their new tactic was attrition-based and
called to inflict as much damage as possible to drain the enemy of its precious resources.
Following the deep defense tactics employed at Peleliu and Iwo Jima,
the men of the Ushijima 32nd Army would not fight the US on the beaches. Instead, they would retreat
into a vast network of tunnels and caves to protect themselves from the naval artillery
and bombs, and would let the enemy get close and personal before mounting ambitious counterattacks.
The Imperial Navy also had a dangerous trick on its sleeve:
the mass use of kamikazes or suicide pilots.
A Strange Landing
The Navy’s Task Force 58 reached Okinawa on March 23,
1945, and immediately began bombarding the island to soften up the Japanese
defenses for the upcoming landings. The task force made up of destroyers,
carriers, and other Navy ships was joined by the British Task Force 57 to attack enemy positions.
Between March 24 and 31, Okinawa was raced by the Allied naval artillery
and the bombing runs of American aircraft. The US forces also secured Keise Shima,
a small group of islets six miles off Okinawa, and Japanese air opposition was minimal.
Still, one day before L-day, a Marine officer told his fellow leathernecks: (QUOTE)
“This is expected to be the costliest amphibious campaign of the war. You should expect 80 to
85 percent casualties on the beach.” It was Easter morning when the men
went aboard their LVTs and approached the decimated shores of Okinawa by the hundreds.
Surprisingly, there was little to no resistance at all, and the 1st and 6th Marine divisions,
with the cooperation of the 7th, 27th, and 96th Army divisions, quickly jumped off their landing
craft and secured the southwest coast of Okinawa. By the end of the day, over 75,000 troops had
established a beachhead and secured locations in what was initially expected to take three days.
Renowned American journalist and war correspondent Ernie Pyle wrote: (QUOTE) “The carnage that
is almost inevitable on an invasion was wonderfully and beautifully not there.”
The Marines believed the Japanese had given up defending the island, but they were wrong. On
April 6, the Japanese Army and Navy launched a surprise attack with extraordinary force.
The US Navy vs. The Kamikazes
As soon as the US Army and the Marines began to penetrate the island’s inner sectors,
hell broke loose. Japanese pillboxes lit up with
accurate machine-gun fire, while hidden mortar and artillery positions began to tear apart the
columns of advancing GIs and leathernecks. The men immediately went on the defensive
and gave way for the armored Shermans and flamethrower units to force the Japanese out
of their concealed position. Meanwhile, the air support experienced difficulties when the Imperial
Navy executed an overwhelming attack on the skies, which were now filled with the engine noises
of over 400 Japanese fighters that took off from Kyushu and went straight for the American vessels.
Instead of assuming a bomber formation against the decks of Navy carriers and destroyers, the
Japanese kamikazes made the ultimate sacrifice and went into a dive directly towards the warships.
Between April 6 and the first week of June, the desperate Japanese would launch 10 Kikusuis or
large-scale attacks to decimate the American and British ships. Over 158 Allied ships would
be damaged, and more than 20 would be sunk at the cost of more than 1,000 enemy fighters destroyed
by anti-aircraft fire and dogfight encounters. Vice Admiral C.R. Brown would summarize the
fear that sailors experienced when watching the kamikazes in action: (QUOTE) “There was a hypnotic
fascination to the sight so alien to our Western philosophy. We watched each plunging kamikaze with
the detached horror of one witnessing a terrible spectacle rather than as the intended victim. We
forgot self for the moment as we groped hopelessly for the thought of that other man up there.”
The Imperial Navy soon launched Operation Ten-Go, a surprise attack comprising 10 warships,
including the world's largest, heaviest, and most powerful battleship ever assembled: the Yamato.
As the strike force led by Admiral Seiichi Itō approached Okinawa, it was spotted by Navy
submarines, leading to a brief but crucial battle between fighters from each side.
Three hundred Navy fighters and torpedo bombers approached the Ten-Go force and put the massive
Yamato out of commission in less than three hours. By the end of the encounter, Yamato and four
Japanese destroyers had been sunk along with Admiral Itō and 3,600 Japanese sailors.
The Madness of Okinawa
Little more than a month into the battle, ground combat in Okinawa had turned into
a living nightmare for the infantry and the armored units. In addition,
torrential rains barely stopped and left the fighting men soaked in mud in their foxholes.
Eugene Sledge, a young Marine from the 5th Marine Regiment,
witnessed how many of his buddies were consumed by the thought of going back into the meat grinder.
The sight of witnessing such desperation increased the hatred the Americans felt for the Japanese,
as the enemy had fulfilled its promise to make them pay for every inch of land they had taken.
The Japanese warriors were firmly dug in, and only flamethrowers could force them out. Close quarters
combat was incessant, and those who were not hit by grenades and gunfire were consumed by flames.
As the Marines and Army soldiers pushed forward into the island's heart, resistance stiffened.
Then, on April 21, the Army secured le Shima. Ernie Pyle was riding a Jeep with
an Army officer on that fateful day when a concealed machine-gun nest opened fire
and hit them. This loss highly affected the Army’s morale, but the men kept pushing forward.
A few days later, the GIs stumbled upon the Maeda Escarpment, a hellish place baptized as Hacksaw
Ridge. Young medic Desmond Doss, a conscientious objector who had been deemed a coward for refusing
to carry a pistol, proved his worth as a brave element who saved dozens of lives.
As several soldiers fell wounded in the craters created by the enemy artillery, Doss attended
to them without paying attention to the hostile shelling in his way. One after another, Doss took
his brothers in arms to safety, and would be later awarded the Medal of Honor for his commitment to
saving as many lives as possible. The End
By May, most of the island had fallen under the control of the American forces,
who had resisted several Japanese offensives.
The failed counterattacks forced Ushijima’s forces to retreat beyond the Shuri Line,
an eight-mile defensive position stretched from the east to the west coast of Okinawa.
Ferocious firefights broke out near the convoluted ridges of the beautiful and ancient Shuri Castle,
where Japanese artillery found easy prey on the Marines attacking from the low ground.
Then, after being supported by artillery fired from USS Mississippi, the Marines were finally
able to climb over the rubble parapets of Shuri Castle and plant the American flag.
On June 18, General Simon Bolivar Buckner lost his life while monitoring his troops after Japanese
artillery fire destroyed his observation post, making him the highest-ranking US officer to
fall down to enemy fire during the entire war. Two days later, when resistance was futile,
General Ushijima committed seppuku instead of surrendering to the Americans.
Scattered resistance across the island was slowly quieted down during the following days,
and even though the cost of victory was extremely high, the island was conquered by June 30.
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