Ah yes, Okinawa. If there was ever a solid reason for nuking Japan and not risking one more American life with an invasion.........................
My father, who served on the USS Bream in the Pacific during WWII, was of the mind that if the US had produced another 50 Gato/Balao class submarines in 1943-1944, we never would have had to invade Okinawa or Iwo Jima for that matter. By mid 1944 Japan was already literally starving to death. After the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the Imperial Navy was finished. And Japan’s merchant fleet was in shambles.
The US Navy was strangling Japan and with the additional subs, the US could have shut down the rest of Japan’s shipping routes. By 1945, our subs were having a hard time finding any large enemy transports...everything Japan needed to carry out war was imported by sea, but as bad as that was, Japan could not feed her people anymore.
If Macarthur hadn’t taken over the Japanese government there would have been mass starvation on a scale measured in the millions.
The according to my father, this was the general feeling throughout the submarine service. All those tens of thousands of lives lost for nothing, because in the end we never did invade mainland Japan.
“The only other American to be awarded two Medals of Honor (for separate engagements) is Marine Smedley Butler.”
You forgot to mention Thomas Ward Custer, who was awarded two MOH during the Civil War. He was the younger brother of George Armstrong Custer, and was killed with him at the Battle of the Little Big Horn on June 25, 1876.