Posted on 04/01/2018 8:30:33 PM PDT by BBell
As we celebrate Easter Sunday and the Jewish Passover, we should keep in our prayers and remembrances the many Americans who fought and sacrificed during that same time 73 years ago in the Battle of Okinawa.
The event was Operation Iceberg. It was the bloodiest battle and the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific Theater of World War II.
On Easter Sunday, April 1, 1945, the Navy’s Fifth Fleet under Admiral Raymond Spruance attacked the Japanese-held island. They were joined by a British, Canadian, New Zealand, and Australian naval task force and more than 180,000 Army soldiers and Marines. This was the final push toward invading mainland Japan and putting an end to the war.
Military planners considered the capture of Okinawa and its airfields to be a crucial and necessary precondition for the invasion of the Japanese mainland.
Were the U.S. to invade Japan, estimates of potential American casualties were upward of 1.7 to 4 million, with between 400,000 and 800,000 deaths. The Battle of Okinawa only served to raise those estimates, as had the recent brutal battle for Iwo Jima, where U.S. casualties numbered 26,000 over five weeks of fighting. Only a few hundred Japanese had been captured out of the 21,000 troops who fought to the death.
Those expected casualties were the major reason for President Harry Truman’s decision to use the atomic bomb.
The Japanese military knew that Okinawa was their last stand in the Pacific. As a result, they fixed 77,000 troops on the island under the command of Lt. Gen. Mitsuru Ushijima, along with a 20,000-strong Okinawan militia. The Japanese forces even included 1,800 middle school boys conscripted into the “Blood and Iron Corps.”
The American invasion started with a massive seven-day naval bombardment of the landing beaches, where heavy resistance from the Japanese forces was expected. That prelanding bombardment included tens of thousands of artillery shells, rockets, mortar shells, and napalm attacks.
The Japanese allowed American troops to land unopposed on Easter Sunday and to move inland with nominal resistance. Japanese troops had been ordered not to fire on the American landing because Ushijima wanted to lure the American forces into a trap he had laid for them in what became known as the Naha-Shuri-Yonabaru Defense Line in southern Okinawa, a rugged terrain riddled with fortified pillboxes, gun emplacements, tunnels, and caves.
The Japanese also sent the battleship Yamato on a one-way suicide mission to Okinawa, but it was spotted by Allied submarines and sunk (along with a cruiser and four enemy destroyers) by American pilots, downing nearly the entire crew of over 2,300.
The far more dangerous attacks on the Allied fleet were by dense waves of suicide Kamikazes diving their planes into ships. The Fifth Fleet lost 36 ships in the Battle of Okinawa and suffered damage to another 368 ships. Almost 5,000 U.S. sailors and pilots were killed and almost as many were wounded, with over 700 Allied planes being shot down. It was the biggest naval loss of the war.
On Okinawa, Americans fought ferocious battles on almost every defended hilltop. Torrential rains turned the island into a sea of mud that bogged down tanks, trucks, and other heavy equipment.
The most infamous hilltop was Hacksaw Ridge, a 400-foot cliff on the Maeda Escarpment that was depicted in a 2016 movie about Cpl. Desmond T. Doss. Doss was a Seventh-Day Adventist and conscientious objector who became a combat medic. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for rescuing 75 wounded soldiers at Hacksaw Ridge.
In almost every fight on Okinawa, American troops fought for every foot of ground in hand-to-hand combat against fanatical Japanese troops who often took their own lives rather than surrendering. That eventually included Ushijima and his chief of staff who committed seppuku on June 22. It was Ushijima who had ordered his troops to “fight to the death.”
With his suicide, the Battle of Okinawa was effectively over.
The Battle of Okinawa was the deadliest fight of the Pacific island campaign. The Japanese knew they could not win. Their purpose was simply to make the battle as costly as possible to the Americans and to hold them off as long as possible, allowing Japan to prepare for the defense of their home islands. Thus, Japanese commanders considered all their forces and the residents of Okinawa totally expendable.
Americans incurred almost 50,000 casualties on Okinawa, including over 12,000 dead. Those killed included the American commander, Lt. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner, who was killed by enemy artillery fire just four days before the battle ended, making him the highest-ranking U.S. officer killed during the entire war.
Ernie Pyle, the famous war correspondent, was also killed when he was shot by a sniper on a small island northwest of Okinawa. In addition to Doss, six other Americans who fought in the battle received the Medal of Honor, our nation’s highest award for bravery under fire.
But the Japanese losses were much greater. Only 7,400 Japanese soldiers survived—90 percent of Japanese troops on the island fought to the death. Almost 150,000 Okinawan civilians were killed, amounting to one-third of the prewar population. Many were used as human shields by Japanese troops. Others threw themselves and their families off cliffs on the southern part of Okinawa in mass suicides after the Japanese convinced them that the Americans would kill or rape anyone they captured.
Ironically enough, it was Japanese troops who engaged in mass rapes of Okinawan women during the battle.
The bloody, ferocious battle for Okinawa lasted 82 days and left the island a “vast field of mud, lead, decay, and maggots” according to Ted Tsukiyama’s “Battle of Okinawa.” Almost every building on the island was destroyed.
Truman’s decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August ended the war and all Japanese resistance, thereby preventing the enormous American casualties that would have resulted from a land invasion of Japan.
On Easter Sunday, American Christians will celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which marks the triumph of good over evil, sin, and death. At the same time during Passover, Jewish Americans will celebrate their liberation from slavery in ancient Egypt. Those celebrations are profound and deeply significant.
But we should also pause to remember the Americans and their allies who, 73 years ago, fought and died during Easter and Passover to preserve our freedom and end a brutal war started by a ruthless military dictatorship intent on enslaving the people it conquered.
We and the world owe them more than we can ever repay.
My dad knew a guy who was on the Bunker Hill.
That was some horrendous duty. Dad was awarded the Purple Heart when he was hit by a sniper on Okinawa. Fortunately, the sniper's aim wasn't perfect.
Dickie O’Brian - Medford , MA. Rest in Peace.
“He might have been a Democrat, but I still have to give some thanks to Harry Truman for dropping those bombs”
Old school democrat not remotely like our current understanding of the term.
When I said "there"....I was referring to the So. Pacific...
No worries...!!
I will find it and read it....
Recommended reading:
“Killing Ground on Okinawa: The Battle for Sugar Loaf Hill,” written by James Hallas.
One of the the deadliest single battles in Marine Corps history - 1,656 Marines dead and another 7,429 wounded during the 12 day siege to take Sugar Loaf Hill.
Pictures of Sugar Loaf Hill, about 50-feet in height and 300 yards in length:
“Things turned much worse for urban Japanese starting in February 1945 when Curtis LeMay began low-level (more accurate), concentrated firebombing of major Japanese cities.”
I was surprised to learn that the bomb sighting was useless for high level bombing due to the air currents over Japan.
Low level bombing was the best way to be accurate with the bomb load.
It didn’t hurt that many houses in Japan were traditional bamboo and burned to the ground in minutes.
Pilots/crew reported the heat was so intense over the target area they saw screen doors floating at 10,000 feet. The turbulence was mind boggling...
I have a picture of the original memorial to Pyle. My dad took it for the Battalion newspaper.
“Pilots/crew reported the heat was so intense over the target area they saw screen doors floating at 10,000 feet. The turbulence was mind boggling...”
Made Dresden look like a campfire?
A neighbor of mine was in the occupation forces in Japan right after the surrender. He had already fought in Europe. He said the devastation was terrible that comparing Japan and Europe was useless, only Berlin was as bombed out as Japan.
When hep cats get together
And every time they meet,
Here’s the way you’ll hear them greet
(Greet)
A hubba, hubba, hubba, hello dad,
Well, a hubba, hubba, hubba, I just got back,
Well, a hubba, hubba, hubba, let’s shoot some breeze,
Say, whatever happened to the Japanese?
Hmm, a hubba, hubba, hubba, haven’t you heard?
A hubba, hubba, hubba, slip me the word,
I got it from a guy who was in the know,
It was mighty smoky over Tokyo.
A friend of mine in a B-29 dropped another load for luck,
As he flew away, he was heard to say,
A hubba, hubba, hubba, yuk, yuk.
________________________________________
Perry Como had a gold record with this song in 1945. Excerpted from MetroLyrics.
I was listening to a talk by Victor Davis Hanson. He said by August 1945, LeMay had about 2000 bombers at his disposal, which were flying daily missions. The largest Japanese cities had been firebombed to the point that 50-70% of their area was destroyed, and LeMay had already started on medium-size cities. LeMay's plan was, with the end of war in Europe, to bring that up to 8,000-10,000 bombers by spring of 1946.
IMHO, the Emperor of Japan was "lucky" the US used atom bombs. If gave him the face, and political cover, to argue to his most hawkish, dead-end elements that unless they surrendered, Japan would simply cease to exist before too long
Dad was a corporal in the 3rd Amphibious Corps, Signal Battalion. He was suited up to go in the first day, but there were no casualties on the beach; it was a huge traffic jam. He had to stand down and wait till the second day.
Because of Okinawa, after VJ Day, he had enough combat points to go home three times over, but the Marine Corps declared him “essential” and sent him to Tientsin to help build a million watt radio transmitter.
When he finally got back to South Carolina all the pretty girls had been scooped up by the men who had beat him home, so he was a bachelor for another year. Then one day, he and a friend saw some pretty Winthrop College freshmen girls walking along Oakland Ave. and stopped to offer them a ride to town. One of them was to become my mom. He let them off on Main St. and of course managed to be ready just at the time they needed to ride back. On the way back, the girls in the back seat were speaking in French and mom said that they thought these guys were cute.
They let them off at the school and driving away in the ‘39 Ford Coupe he said to his friend,
“Did you get what they were saying? They liked us, said we were cute.”
“WHAT!? Well where are ya goin’? Let’s go back and ask ‘em to go to dinner with us!”
“OK, but I’m tellin’ ya, that brunette is MINE!”
For those of us without any military experience maybe someone can enlighten me. Had we not developed the atomic bomb, wouldn’t it have been less costly in Allied lives just to clamp a blockade around the islands and just starve them out? If memory serves Japan was not self-sufficient even in food much less raw materials. Cutting them off from China and Korea would have soon led to even worse shortages.
During a lull in the fighting, Dad was sitting in the mud drinking coffee from a metal cup, and set the cup down for a moment. When he picked it up again, as he was sipping the coffee, he noticed that he had set the cup on the chest of a dead Japanese soldier. It always bothered him that he was not bothered by that.
My Dad was there.
At the time there was no talk about "saving allied lives" there was only talk of absolute unconditional surrender, which everyone knew the Japs would never agree to do.
Tokyo and Sendai, 1954 to 1957.
Okinawa, 1964 to 1967.
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