Remembering the Battle of Okinawa; Lessons Learned for Future Fights (80 years ago today)

defense.gov ^ | 03/27/2025 | David Vergun

[Verginius Rufus]

My father told us a number of stories when we were young but later mostly talked about Sugar Loaf. That he stayed in the Marines after the war may have meant his attitude was different from those whose service was only during the war. (He had already served 4 years from 1936 to 1940 when there was no draft...he became an officer during the war.)

The man who wrote Flags of Our Fathers said his father never talked about the war--his father was supposedly one of the flag-raisers in the famous photo from Iwo Jima (although some have questioned whether he is actually in the photo).

A former professor at my university (now deceased) was a survivor of the Bataan Death March and spent the rest of the war as a POW. Truly horrendous experiences. He finally wrote a book about his experiences and that seemed to help him.

[MacNaughton]

Flags of Our Fathers was very well done. The story of Ira Hayes was so sad.

Mom's family tree had a member who was stationed with the Army in the Philippines during 1941. His family lived there also. As the war clouds were gathering he sent them back to the U.S. When the Japanese invaded the Philippines he was captured and thought to have perished during the Bataan Death March. Decades later his son, who as a small child was in the Philippines before Pearl Harbor, went back and tried to determine the fate of his father. It turns out not only did he survive the Bataan Death March and imprisonment in the Philippines, but he also survived the voyage from the Philippines to Japan on 1 of those horribly crowded prison ships that managed to dodge being sunk by U.S. Navy submarines. He later perished in a POW camp in Japan. His remains, along with many other American POWs, were later recovered and interred in a mass grave at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial.

[Verginius Rufus]

The Japanese believed that you should never surrender so they treated prisoners of war very poorly (worse than the Germans). The professor I knew believed that all the POWs would have been killed if the US had invaded Japan.

My father would have been in the invasion force so he was always convinced that using the atomic bombs was the right thing to do. Even if he had survived that, his life over the next few years would have been different and he would never have met my mother so I would not be alive.

Yes, the story of Ira Hayes is very sad. The US government made heroes of the men captured in the photo and had them tour the US (to get people to buy war bonds), and they did not think they deserved any special recognition beyond what all the other military men were doing.

[MacNaughton]

I recall in With the Old Breed that Eugene Sledge was in a rest & recovery camp on Okinawa when the A-bombs were dropped. He wrote that the surrounding camps, which were not R&R, erupted in cheering and celebrating. The men in his camp showed little reaction because they were all so mentally spent from the Battle for Okinawa. Sledge agreed that dropping the A-bombs was the correct strategy. We have seen in recent years the casualty estimates for American forces ranged from 220,000 to several million, and estimates of Japanese military and civilian casualties ran from the millions to the tens of millions. Casualty estimates did not include potential losses from radiation poisoning resulting from the tactical use of nuclear weapons or from Allied POWs who would have been executed by the Japanese.

[poconopundit]

Seems like the Trump administration is readying for a possible Taiwan defense by homeporting America's newest amphibious ship to Sasebo, Japan where I served for four years about 40 years ago.

Here's the story: Navy’s newest amphibious assault ship relocating to Japan

Source - Stars and Stripes