Posted on 05/06/2015 1:31:28 PM PDT by Kaslin
Okinawa's ground battle began April 1, 1945, when four American divisions simultaneously assaulted the 65-mile-long island.
With two U.S. Marine and two U.S. Army divisions debarking, the attack was one of the Pacific theater's largest amphibious assaults.
U.S. commanders, however, were planning another Pacific D-Day, one that would far exceed Okinawa and the Philippines' invasions in scope, complexity and -- yes -- casualties.
That would be the war-concluding assault on Japan's home islands. Okinawa's 660 square miles provided America with a big logistics dump and staging area only 350 miles from Kyushu's Southern tip.
Japanese leaders knew defeating the U.S. attack was most unlikely. Okinawa, like Peleliu and Iwo Jima, would be a battle of attrition and a delaying action. Translated, that means a bloodletting to buy time.
Fanaticism served Tokyo's military purposes and strategic diplomatic ends, so everyone expected fierce Japanese resistance on Okinawa. However, the sustained fanaticism in the island's surrounding waters cruelly tested the U.S. Navy. On April 6, hundreds of suicide planes attacked ships supporting the invasion. By June 22, the day fighting on Okinawa officially ceased, Japan had launched 1,465 kamikaze attacks, sinking or severely damaging 30 U.S. warships.
On shore, some 80,000 to 100,000 Japanese manned hardened fortifications. Historians debate the total number of defenders. The Okinawan Home Guard (Boeitai) participated, but to what extent is uncertain: 500,000 civilians lived on the island. Though Tokyo's ruling supremacists regarded Okinawans as low caste, they encouraged them to die for the Emperor, in droves.
That served the diplomatic end. With the European war drawing to a close, Japan's rulers gambled that strategic fanaticism would convince war-wearying America that fighting Japan was too costly. Attention Missouri, New York, Texas -- your soldiers will die for each inch of rock.
The Japanese decided to defend Okinawa in selected sectors. Troops would wait inland. If the kamikazes sank a few supply ships, that might slow the land attack. As U.S. troops approached, Japanese forces would attack then withdraw into the defense system, forcing a bunker-to-bunker fight. Defenders in the South might resist for months in the concentric defense surrounding the town of Shuri.
U.S. troops initially met limited opposition. By April 4, a Marine division had cut across the island. On the same day, U.S. Army units encountered in-depth defenses to the south. The kamikazes hit the fleet; Japanese in the Southern sector launched several vicious attacks. And Okinawa's great bleeding began.
From April 12 to 14, the Japanese attacked along the entire south front. Both sides suffered casualties; the U.S. invasion stalled. On April 30, an Army division had to be withdrawn. Bunker battles had reduced the division to 30 percent strength.
Japanese attacks in early May rattled U.S. forces. However, outside their forts, the Japanese suffered heavy casualties. One assault cost the Japanese 7,000 dead. The Americans employed endless volleys of artillery and on-call air strikes.
Monsoon rains slowed operations in late May. The mud and muck reminded some of WWI's Ypres battlefield. U.S. forces chipped away at the concentric defense. An intense artillery barrage would rake a Japanese bunker; a limited infantry assault would finish the dirty job. Behind the bunkers, GIs found more bunkers, but the defenders were less skilled. Fighting lapsed. On June 22, the Japanese commanders committed ritual suicide.
All told, Okinawa killed 12,500 Americans and wounded approximately 50,000. It was the U.S. Navy's biggest killer, with 4,907 sailor deaths and 4,874 wounded. Japan lost an estimated 75,000 military dead. As for civilians? Estimates run from 50,000 to 110,000.
U.S. president and WWI vet Harry Truman understood Tokyo's strategic message. Over a six-day period during the Meuse-Argonne offensive (September-October 1918), Truman's own division had 1,126 killed and 5,000 wounded. WWI ended a long month later. He didn't want young Americans to bleed for every inch of Japan. And why should 500,000 Japanese die in a lost cause? Well, maybe they wouldn't have to if the A-Bomb project panned out.
This is what it's gonna take for the current one.
While there I self-toured their final redoubt in the south - the walls in the radio room/cave were heavily pock-marked from the grenades they let loose on themselves.
Pretty interesting little island.
The battle for Okinawa showed that any invasion of the home islands of Japan would have turned into a horrible bloodbath, even if the Americans had superior firepower. It was this battle that convinced the Americans to use the atomic bomb on Japan, if only to force Japan's quick unconditional surrender.
Kamikaze planes, kamikaze ships, banzai charges, the last ebb of Japanese naval and air power — a mere prelude to what would have been a year or two of ground-based house to house hill to hill combat over every inch of the home islands — made using nuclear weapons an easy decision. By the time the first nuke was dropped, over 40 Japanese cities had been incinerated by conventional incendiary bombing. And it still took a second nuke to coax them to surrender. Meanwhile, the rest of the Japanese occupied east was hoping we had more nukes and that Japan wouldn’t surrender. :’)
My father lasted on the island from April 1 until May 15, 45 days. He was then wounded seriously enough, to be taken to Honolulu.
USMC amphibious tank driver. Enlisted at age 17 and rode a bus to Billings, then train to San Diego.
Discharged before 20th birthday, thanks to Truman’s wisdom and humanitarianism.
Yet the actor Tom Hanks stated that the war against the Japanese was because we were racists.
You would think that Hanks with all the research that was done for that series he produced would know better but I guess not.
The 1930’s and W.W. II with Japan was not some kind of black and white situation. If anyone was racist it was the Japanese and their utter disdain and treatment of the Chinese and the Koreans. Hanks better go back and study the Pacific War again he flunked the first time around.
My uncle Leon was right there with him. He took a bullet in the leg.
Semper Fi
“I’m always worried about using the word ‘victory,’ because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur,”-— Obama
Like most people I was familiar with some aspects of Okinawa. I knew about the Kamikazes, that Ernie Pyle was killed there and that a general also died.
However a recent show on TV gave a detailed account of the battle and it was much more brutal than I would have guessed. Right up there with Iwo Jima.
They interviewed a woman who was a 16 year old Japanese girl during the battle. The Japanese forced her to work in an underground hospital and she recounted how cruel the Japanese soldiers were. She said the Americans treated her much better.
It really does make one understand our reluctance to invade Japan if there were any other choice.
The wisdom of using the bomb seems self-evident to me, but after all these years and all the information about Japanese preparations, probable resistance and demonstrated fanaticism, the discussion continues...
The blame-America-first crowd remains unconvinced, and I imagine always will be, perhaps for generations to come...
My Dad was a 19-year old sailor on board a destroyer that supported the landing with shore bombardment, and he said he’d never seen such ferocious shelling...He and his shipmates had not been officially told but understood the invasion of the Japanese main islands was next and dreaded this inevitable battle to come...
He told us the news of the atom bombings was greated with more relief than joy from the understanding they’d be spared the grim task of invasion...
Dad went on to participate in forces that occupied Japan after surrender, and the preparations were astonishing to the GIs...Even women and small children were prepared to resist with improvised weapons...
The carnage would have been staggering...Had Operation Olympic (Kyushu invasion) and Operation Coronet(Honshu Main Island invasion) proceeded from Oct 45 into 1946 as planned, US casualties were anticipated to exceed 1,000,000 with unknown millions of dead Japanese...
I might never have been born, so I think it was a good trade-off...
After a tour in the ETO, my father was flying B-26 missions out of Okinawa even while the Army and Marines were slogging in the mud to clear out the remaining Japanese. His last mission was dropping leaflets that told the Japanese their time was up and something very big was going to hit them if they didn’t surrender immediately. Less than a week later, the first bomb was dropped.
The two A-bomb drops saved a million American lives and probably 2 million Japanese lives.
My FIL got in late in the European campaign - crossing the Rhine under fire with the 87th Infantry Division.
He is still alive at 95 years old and doesn’t even recognize his own children. But to this day, if you ask him about the war, he thanks Truman for dropping the bombs. He was on a troop train heading for the West Coast when it ended.
They all knew it would be a slaughter if we had to invade the Japanese mainland.
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