http://running50.com/april-19th-1945-seeking-the-truth-about-war/
At dawn on morning of April 19th, 1945, my grandfather’s tank battalion was part of a disastrous attack on the first of three Japanese strongholds — Kakazu Ridge. My grandfather was assigned to the 193rd Tank Battalion, which was attached to the 27th Infantry Division. A former New York National Guard unit consisting of just over 16,000 troops, the 27th was put into “floating reserve,” and its primary role in the campaign would be to serve as an occupation garrison once the fighting was over. “In retrospect,” writes one author, the 27th appears to have been a “jinxed outfit.” It was held in low regard at the time not only because of its low numbers, perceived lack of training, and inexperienced officers, but also because it fought poorly at Makin and failed again on Saipan, where its commanders were accused of excessive caution and lack of aggression. “Soldiers moved slowly to keep casualty lists short,” writes author and Marine veteran William Manchester. “Marine’s lunged at the enemy, sometimes at reckless speed, because they knew that until the fighting ended the fleet which had landed them would be vulnerable to enemy attack.”
The plans originally set out by American commanders changed abruptly after it became clear that the Japanese defenders would need to be rooted out — or sealed off — hole by bloody hole. The 27th was pulled from floating reserve and landed on the island April 9th. By the 18th, the 27th joined two other Army infantry divisions — the 96th and the 7th — in an assault of Kakazu Ridge. According to the official history of the 27th, the heavily-defended Kakazu Ridge “stretched two thousand yards across the front and rose two hundred feet in the air. In its near sides were Japanese-occupied pillboxes and about halfway from the cut where Route 1 passed through it and Kakazu Village was a high tower of rock, later to become known as The Pinnacle.” The ridge was of supreme military importance because from that ridge Japanese forces could direct fire on all terrain held by American forces. “As long as the ridge was in enemy hands,” the official history continues, “he could observe troop movement along Route 1, shell CPs and other installations, and make Buzz Bomb Bowl a no-man’s-land by bringing down murderous fire on any movement.”
By this time in the war, American commanders had figured out a two-step process to efficiently and effectively attack and destroy fortified Japanese positions. Step one: “Guns and howitzers battered Japanese cave openings, dugouts, and pill-boxes,” wrote the official Army historians, “forcing enemy gunners back into tunnels for protection and decreasing their fields of fire.” Step two: “Taking advantage of the resulting ‘dead space,’” the historians continue, “infantry and tanks crept up on the most exposed point; the tanks attacked the position point-blank with cannon, machine guns, and flame, while the infantry prevented Japanese ‘close-quarters attack troops’ carrying explosives from closing in on the tanks.”
The “tank-infantry team”, as it was termed, waged the battle, but in the end it was frequently flame and demolition that destroyed the Japanese in their strong-holds. With an apt sense for metaphor, Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., the commander of the 10th Army on Okinawa, called this the “blowtorch and corkscrew” method. Liquid flame was the blowtorch; explosives, the corkscrew.
“The idea that there are rules in warfare,” writes author Sebastian Junger, “and that combatants kill each other according to basic concepts of fairness probably ended for good with the machine gun. A man with a machine gun can conceivably hold off a whole battalion, at least for a while, which changes the whole equation of what it means to be brave in battle.” Indeed, the military tactics employed during the Battle of Okinawa were geared toward maneuvering the enemy into a position where they could, essentially, be massacred from a position of safety.
“It sounds dishonorable,” continues Junger, “only if you imagine that modern war is about honor; it’s not. It’s about winning, which means killing the enemy on the most unequal terms possible.”
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Like clockwork, the new offensive of April 19th began with a barrage of 324 artillery guns, ranging from 105-mm cannon to huge 8-inch howitzers, which were joined by battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. This barrage was followed by napalm, rockets, and bombs that were dropped by 650 Navy and Marine planes. The defenders of the ridge, however, were one step ahead of the American commanders. Instead of playing into the American commanders’ hand, the Japanese waited patiently in relative safety for the artillery barrage and aerial attack to end. They knew to dig in on the reverse slope of the ridge, which shielded them from the most intense fire. Once the firing ceased, they emerged from their caves and rained mortar rounds and grenades upon the infantry troops advancing up the forward slope. Brigadier General Josef Sheetz, who commanded the American artillery, later expressed doubt that his guns had killed even one enemy soldier for every 100 rounds of the 19,000 that were fired that morning.
As the 27th prepared for step two, it became clear to commanders that their tanks would not be able to attack up Kakazu Ridge with the infantry — a yawning gorge in front of the ridge made it impossible for the tanks and infantry to assault together, the way they had been trained. According to one author, “The gorge formed a gigantic natural tank trap that no tracked vehicle could cross.” While the commanders would have ideally paired tank teams with infantry and support them both with artillery, it was decided that Company A of the 193rd — my grandfather’s company — would drive around the western end of Kakazu Ridge and enter Kakazu Village, where it would then link up with the infantry companies that were tasked with attacking and overrunning the ridge itself.
“About the only instance I know of where tanks tried to operate without riflemen in the Pacific,” wrote author and Marine veteran Eugene Sledge, “was a case of army tanks in Okinawa. Predictably, the Japanese knocked out most of those tanks. Marine tanks always operated with riflemen, like a dog with his fleas.”
At 7:40 AM, 30 Army tanks — including one driven by my grandfather — and 105-mm M7 self-propelled howitzers started out in groups of three and four in column formation, supported by the 27th Infantry Division. An intense artillery and mortar barrage courtesy of the Japanese 272nd Independent Infantry Battalion soon halted the advancing infantry. Undaunted, the unsupported tanks pushed on, losing three tanks to mines and road hazards almost immediately.
Soon thereafter, the tanks — now isolated and exposed — stumbled into an ambush set by the Japanese 22nd Independent Antitank Gun Battalion. Lost in a maze of unmapped roads and trails, the leading tanks missed their turnoff and began to take fire from 47-mm antitank guns concealed to the left of the trail, on the edge of Nishibaru Ridge. Four tanks were quickly destroyed with 16 shots. “We could hear the radio messages from the tanks,” remembers one officer. “It was heartrending to listen to their agonized pleas for assistance as they became cut off, isolated, and under constant attack.”
Before Okinawa, the Sherman tank had operated with near impunity throughout the Pacific. It’s armor, however, was no match for the Japanese 47-mm antitank guns used on Okinawa. They could make a Sherman look like what one author described as a “hunk of Swiss cheese.” The crews operating these tanks — many of whom were fresh out of boot camp — quickly came to realize that being killed or maimed at any moment was as much a part of life as breathing.
The remaining tanks then scurried down the road, looking for a faint track that was to lead them into Kakazu Village. The tanks, guided by company commander Captain Harry R. McAmick, missed the track, lost another tank to antitank fire, and then in error took a trail further south. They then began, according to one historian, “working over enemy positions encountered…in the relatively flat country to the east of Kakazu.” It wasn’t long thereafter that Captain McAmick began to realize that the road they were on would not get them to Kakazu Village. To correct his mistake, he retraced his steps back to the main route and moved north toward the American lines. Within minutes, he found the trail they were originally looking for and led his vehicles down into Kakazu Village, arriving shortly after 10:00 AM.
For over three hours, the tanks roamed back and forth through the village, basting enemy fortifications and gun emplacements. As the official history of the 27th Infantry Division notes, from shortly after 10:00 AM until 1:30 PM, “Captain McAmick’s tanks occupied the village, moving up and down the streets and blasting everything in sight while waiting for the infantry units to come over the ridge and join them. In this absolutely unsupported tank action, the whole village of Kakazu was utterly destroyed and the remnants of Japanese forces were either killed or fled.”
At the same time, however, the Japanese were preparing to counter the American advancement. Attacking with “mines, 47-mm Model 1 antitank guns, artillery, and suicide squads,” the Japanese wreaked havoc upon the unsupported tanks. “Suicide squads first blinded the tank crews with hand-thrown Model 94 smoke candles,” wrote historian Gordon L. Rottman, “kept them buttoned up with Model 97 grenades and small-arms fire, and flung 22-pound satchel charges beneath the tanks. Hand-placed magnetic demolition charges were also used — their one and a half pounds of TNT could penetrate a Sherman tank’s side and top armor.”
Once a tank was disabled, the Japanese “swarmed over [them]…forcing the hatches open and grenading the crews.” All told, 14 tanks were destroyed or disabled in and around Kakazu Village.
None of the resources I’ve consulted report how many casualties the 193rd took that morning. The Operations Report only lists the number of casualties for the entire battle: 7 officers (2 killed in action) and 56 enlisted men (18 killed in action). “The proportion of men killed or seriously wounded to those slightly wounded was much greater than commonly found in foot troops,” writes Lt. Col. John L. Behrns, the commander of the 193rd. “Only two (2) cases of battle fatigue occurred,” he adds, which seems low considering the fact that there were 26,221 reported cases of “neuropsychiatric, ‘non-battle’ casualties” during the three months American forces fought on Okinawa — more than in any previous battle in the Pacific Theater.
In the meantime, the rifle companies of the 27th that were assaulting Kakazu Ridge were being repelled by heavy resistance. As the official history of the 27th notes, “Every man who attempted to get over the ridge and into Kakazu was shot down or drew several mortar shells.” By late afternoon, the infantry still had not reached the crest of the ridge.
At around 1:30 PM, once it became clear to commanders that the infantry was not going to be able to reconnect with the tanks, the surviving tank crews received orders to return to the American lines. “Of the thirty tanks that had maneuvered around the left end of Kakazu Ridge in the morning,” wrote Army historians, “only eight returned in the afternoon.”
The loss of 22 tanks on April 19th, 1945, was the greatest suffered by American armor during the entire Pacific War.
Five days later, the Japanese commander in charge of those dug into Kakazu Ridge realized that their position had become untenable. Under cover of darkness, the Japanese forces relinquished their positions as part of an orderly withdrawal to their next main system of defensive fortifications — the Naha-Shuri-Yonabaru Line. While indisputably an American victory, the battle for Kakazu Ridge took a heavy toll on American forces, many of whom were only then beginning to realize how hard they would have to fight for every bloody inch of that island.
