[Verginius Rufus]

The landings on Okinawa started on April 1, 1945, after the Iwo Jima campaign.

[ken5050]

You are of course correct, however my comment referred to the dropping of the atomic bombs..Okinawa would have been available by then as an emergency landing field. Trinity occurred on July 16th, 1945, by which time both Iwo and Okinawa were secured, and being used as bases for our aircraft. I suspect that 99.9% of planners for the Pacific war had NO idea that we were working on an a-bomb...let alone that it would work..

That was the point of my post..some are now attempting to justify/rationalize the decision to invade Iwo on the basis of that alone. I don't know if it's plausible. We need much more archival research. What I long felt was an acceptable reason...the use as an emergency field fore the bombers to/from Japan, has somewhat now been discredited..