Okinawa - The Last Battle of World War II

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Okinawa rhe Last Battle of World

War

II

ROBERT LECKIE

began on

t

was

also Easter Sunday.

time the United States

It

April Fool's Day,

commander

lost its

site of

heard the news, they snorted

men were

in

contempt

fighting for their

cious Japanese force

own

whose goal was

Americans and thus drown them

in

Franklin

itself, lost its

Pyle. In that time

when

finally defeated, but

in chief,

the battle

most beloved war correspondent, Ernie

these

945, which

lasted eighty-three days. In that

Delano Roosevelt, and, at the

Germany was

1

GIs on the island

—

"So what?" For

lives against

a tena-

to "bleed all over" the

Japanese blood.

I

achieve final victory over Japan, Okinawa

had

to be seized;

sion of

Japan

would be a catapult for the planned inva-

it

And so the

itself.

U.S.

Marines and

Army attacked

Okinawa with 540,000 men and 1,600 seagoing ing

even D-Doy

and firepower. But

troops, tonnage,

in

Japanese troops were hunkered down caves and terrain that the

U.S.

ships, eclips-

in

a honeycomb of

Army commander.

Tenth

Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner, called the most for-

midable fixed position

Buckner asked torch"

—

his

explosives

in

men

the history of warfare. to

And General

employ "corkscrew and blow-

and flame

—

to conquer the island.

What

he didn't need to ask for was individual heroism. For the battle of

World War

beyond the

call

II

was

full

of acts of valor that

far

of duty. At the end, American casualties totaled

almost 50,000. But the Japanese were

left

And Nippon's navy was crushed, 7,800

of

in

went

last

the last frenzied

(continued on back fhp)

kamikaze

with

its

1

00,000 dead.

planes

attacks of the war.

lost,

many

Okinawa

Books by Robert Leckie

HISTORY

From

Sea to Shining Sea: 1812 -Mexico, the Saga of America's Expansion

George Washington's War: The Saga of the American Revolution

None Died

in Vain:

The Saga

Delivered from Evil:

The Wars Strong

War of World War II

of the American Civil

The

Saga

of America: Updated and Revised, 1609-1991

Men

Armed: The U.S. Marines against Japan

American and CathoUc: The CathoHc Church

With

Sword

Fire and

Challenge for the

to Glory: 1st

The

Pacific:

Conflict:

The March

(edited with

The

in the U.S.

Quentin Reynolds)

Struggle for Guadalcanal

History of the Korean

War

Marine Division's Breakout from Chosin

AUTOBIOGRAPHY Helmet

for

My Pillow

•

Lord,

What

a Family!

BELLES LETTRES

My Heroes: A

These Are Warfare:

A

Study of

War

•

A

Study of the Saints

Soldier-Priest Talks to

Youth

FICTION Ordained

•

Marines!

•

The Bloodborn

Forged

•

Blood of the Seventeen Fires

•

in

Blood

The General

FOR YOUNGER READERS

The Batde The

Story of

for

World War Two

The War

in

•

•

Game

•

Big

The

Story of Football

World War One

Korea

The World Turned Upside-Down The

The

Story of

Iwo Jima

1812:

•

•

Great American Battles

The War Nobody

Keeper Play

•

Won

Stormy Voyage

Okinawa THE LAST BATTLE OF

WORLD WAR

II

ROBERT LECKIE

#!}% VIKING

VIKING

Group

Published by the Penguin

USA Inc., 375 Hudson New York 10014, U.S.A.

Penguin Books

New

York,

Street,

Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

by Viking Penguin, Penguin Books USA Inc.

First published in 1995 a division of

10

9

8

Copyright

6

7

©

4

5

3

2

1

Robert Leckie, 1995

All rights reserved All photographs:

APAVide World Photos

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Leckie, Robert.

Okinawa: the cm.

last battle

of

World War

II /

Robert Leckie

p.

Includes index.

ISBN 1.

0-670-847 16-X

World War, 1939-1945

Okinawa Island (Japan) D767.99.045L43 1995

2.

940.5475— dc20 This book

is

— Campaigns —^Japan — Okinawa — History. I.

Title.

94-39145

printed on acid-free paper.

e Printed in the United States of America Set in Janson Text

Designed by Francesca Belanger

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into

a retrieval system,

form or by any means

or transmitted, in any

(electronic, mechanical, photo-

copying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright

and the above publisher of

this

book.

owner

Island.

To

My

FouTth Grandson,

Sean Michael Leckie

Contents

ONE Why Okinawa?

TWO THREE

at

Bay

9

The Divine Wind

15

FOUR The Japanese Samurai

23

FIVE SIX

Japan

1

America

37

Kamikaze S\i\ke/ Franklin's Ordeal

41

SEVEN The '^Americans''

49

EIGHT Love Day

67

First Blood for

NINE The Marines Overrun

TEN ELEVEN

the North

77

^'Floating Chrysanthemums''

87

Fiery Failure at Kakazu Ridge

97

TWELVE THIRTEEN

i(/ilru5(;/

Back to Banzai!

107

2: /Toffl/ilroze CruclBle

115

FOURTEEN UncU Som:

Logistics Magician

121

FIFTEEN Hodge's Hurricane Attack Hurled Back

125

SIXTEEN Outer

SEVENTEEN

Line Cracked / Ushijima Retreats

Kofli/^oze B

EIGHTEEN

ed /

4

141

Lost Gosp of the Somurof Cho

147

s e s

NINETEEN Mlnatogo:

S CO u

133

r

g

i(/ilcu5if/

A Missed Opportunity

155

h

r

u

1

Contents

TWENTY

May: Rain, Mud, Blood

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

Ch y

s

n

t

6

Breakthrough!

165

Ushijimo Retreats Again

183

m

TWENTY-THREE

Sea and Sky

187

Ushijimo's Lost Stand

197

HI s

TWENTY-FOUR TWENTY-FIVE

— and Die

in

A So/H VT Of

Epilogue: The Value of

F

r

w

1

203

Okinawa

207

Index

211

Okinawa

Why Okinawa? CHAPTER ONE

On

September

mander of the

1944, Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz,

29,

Pacific

Ocean Area (POA), and

com-

Fleet Admiral Ernest

King, chief of U.S. Naval Operations, conferred in San Francisco on the next steps to be taken to deliver the final crusher to a staggering

Japan. This was the conference's stated purpose, but the unspoken objective was to persuade the irascible, often-inflexible

King

to ac-

cept Nimitz's battle plan, instead of King's own.

This would not be

King was known

easy, for the

to be "so

scription

on

it.

lean, hard,

tough he shaves with

Indeed, his civilian chief. Secretary

ordered from Tiffany's a

tall,

silver

of the

a

humorless

blowtorch."

Navy Frank Knox, had

miniature blowtorch with that in-

Thus, there was some trepidation among Nimitz

—

his Army chiefs Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner Army Ground Forces (POA) and Lieutenant General Millard of Harmon of the newly formed Army Air Forces (POA) as well as Admiral Raymond Spruance, alternate chief with Fleet Admiral Wilham "Bull" Halsey, of Nimitz's battle fleet.* They knew that

and

—

When Spruance commanded this enormous concentration of naval striking power, it was called "Task Force Fifty-eight"; when Bull Halsey's flag was flown it was "Task Force Thirty-eight." *

1

OKINAWA

2

King was convinced the next operation

in the Pacific should be

landings on the big island of Formosa off the Chinese southeast-

em

coast. If

eral of the

Nimitz and

staff

could persuade King to accept Gen-

Armies Douglas MacArthur's plan

to invade

Luzon

in

the Philippines rather than Formosa, the conference would end

and high note of interservice cooperation.

in a rare

Each of the conferees was assigned

a luxurious suite in the

elegant Saint Francis Hotel, assembling in Admiral King's opulent quarters for three days of discussions.

Here they were served

menu

in

rooms (wartime rationing then being

in

epicurean meals that were not often to be found on the the Saint Francis dining effect).

Here

also

—

headquarters, where available

and sometimes

maps and

— Nimitz presented

drawn memoranda

for

in the plainer Sea Frontier

logistic tables

his chief

which he was

were more readily

with one of those carefully justly celebrated.

outward calm and precision that did not

With an

reflect his inner appre-

hension, the pink-cheeked, white-haired, baby-faced Nimitz was careful not to provoke the stern-faced, short-fused Admiral

"Ad-

amant" while he explained exactly why King's cherished invasion of Formosa would be impossible to mount at that time. First,

defending that huge island

Japanese had a

full field

American forces then

now known

army much too strong

as

Taiwan, the

to be attacked

by

available in the Pacific, a point vigorously

supported by both Buckner and Harmon. Second, the casualty estimate, based upon U.S. losses of 17,000 dead and

wounded while

eliminating 32,000 dug-in Jap-

anese on the island of Saipan, would reach at least 150,000 or more, a slaughter that

POA's resources could not bear and

the American public would never supinely accept. Conversely,

— always ready and happy to predict minimal own operations — had estimated Luzon could be taken

MacArthur any of

his

losses in

with comparatively moderate casualties.

Throughout is

possible

this recital

— though

Ernest King's face remained stony.

not reported anywhere

— that

It

at the intro-

— Why

might have

moment,

for

3

name of Douglas MacArthur, one of the

duction of the eyelids

Okinawa?

flickered.

he had

admiral's

But Nimitz was prepared for

long ago learned that

this

you cannot take with-

out giving, and Nimitz would give with an alternative to King's cherished plan.

He

suggested to his chief that

if

he acquiesced in

MacArthur's liberation of Luzon and recapture of Manila, these

would

victories

home

islands

clear the Pacific for the direct invasion of Japan's

by seizing Iwo Jima and Okinawa and using them

as staging areas. King's

eyebrows rose

as

would completely sever Japan from her Sumatra, and Burma, and without could not

sail,

her airplanes

fly,

Nimitz continued: oil

sources in Borneo,

this lifeblood

her vehicles

this

roll,

of war her

fleets

or her industries

produce. Equally satisfying, from Okinawa and Iwo the giant

B-29s or Superforts could intensify their bombardment of Japan

bomb Nippon into of invading her home islands.

submis-

proper and might conceivably even sion without the necessity

Admiral King listened intently to Nimitz's out tough, incisive questions.

He

admitted that he had read a

Formosa

in-

wonder openly about the wisdom of

hit-

Joint Chiefs' report questioning the feasibility of a vasion, although he did

ting

shooting

recital,

Iwo only 760 miles from Japan and within the Prefecture of

who

Tokyo

itself.

earlier

had informed the Navy chief that he favored attacking

Turning

to

Admiral Spruance,

three

Okinawa, he asked: "Haven't you something to say? that

Okinawa was your baby." Never

a

man

I

months thought

to allow himself to

be caught between the upper and nether millstones of command,

Spruance replied that he thought his direct superior

had summarized the situation

To

Formosa was

and he had nothing to add.

the Nimitz team's gratified surprise. Admiral

graciously agreed to substitute

to help

nicely,

— Nimitz

plan, even

for his cherished

though that meant he must put

China on hold.

attractive to

Iwo and Okinawa

It

Adamant

his eagerness

might have been that Nimitz's proposal

him because

question of who would be the

it

delayed the politically explosive

Supreme

Allied

Commander

in the

—

OKINAWA

4

Pacific:

Nimitz or MacArthur? For years Douglas MacArthur had

actively sought that eminence, almost insanely jealous as he

of the

by

his

title

Supreme

was

Commander, European Theater, held Dwight Eisenhower. To that end he had

Allied

"former clerk,"

cultivated the support of powerful politicians and the conservative stateside press, desisting only

when an

ano Roosevelt informed him that

Supreme Commander,

it

the Pacific were to have a

would be Nimitz. This way. King may

have reasoned, his decision side in the abrasive

if

exasperated Franklin Del-

— bound to be popular with neither of World War — could

Army-Navy

rivalry

II

be delayed until the actual invasion of Japan,

if

there were such

an operation, for both Nimitz and King dreaded the

fearful car-

nage, both American and Japanese, that might occur

if it

were

attempted. As sailors they understood perhaps better than the always-optimistic soldier

such

a gigantic

MacArthur the

terrible

amphibious operation were to

So the conference in San Francisco ended

consequences

if

fail.

on

a

happy note,

with King returning to Washington to report his approval to his

comrades on the Joint Chiefs, and Nimitz with

his flag officers

going back to Hawaii to plan for the new operations and especially for

Iwo and

Okinawa

lies at

Iceberg, the

code name for Okinawa.

the midpoint of the

Ryukyu

Islands* and almost

between Formosa (Taiwan), 500 nautical miles to the southwest, and Kyushu, 375 miles to the north. In ancient times

Okinawa was

a

dependency of China, paying

an annual tribute to the Imperial Court islands

at

Peking.

The group

of

was called Liu-chVu, the Chinese word usually pronounced

"Loo Choo," meaning

either "pendant ball" or "bubbles floating

*

Because there is no hard-and-fast rule for translating Japanese geographical terms shoto, meaning various islands or group of islands; gunto or retto, a group of islands; shima or jima, an island; or ie, an islet this narrative will use the general EngHsh words for the same.

—

Why on water"; but

who

have

their

name

These

mosa and

Okinawa?

after annexation

great difftculty

5

by Japan

in 1879, their

new

lords,

pronouncing the "L" sound, changed

Ryukyu.

to

islands

he southwest of Japan proper, northeast of For-

the Phihppines, and west of the Bonins, which include

Iwo Jima. Peaks of drowned mountains, they stretch in an arc about 790 miles long between Kyushu and Formosa. Approximately in the center of the arc

is

the

Okinawa Group of some

clustering around the largest of them, Okinawa: 60

fifty islands

miles long (running generally north to south), from 2 to

1

8 miles

wide, and covering 485 square miles. Obviously such a base so close to Japan, able to support dozens of airfields, as well as doz-

ens of divisions together with either in the

all

manner of warships anchored

enormous Hagushi Anchorage

the equally valuable

Nakagusuku Bay

would be almost "another England" Allied invasion of

Europe

—

In 1945 Okinawa had

thousand, of third,

whom

off the west coast or

off the southeast shore,

— the

staging area for the

for the waterborne attack a population of about

upon Japan.

five

hundred

roughly 60 percent lived in the southern

much more amenable than

the rugged and mountainous

north above the two-mile-wide Isthmus of Ishikawa. Originally,

Okinawans resembled Japanese, but an

Malay, Chinese, Mongol, and other races

left

influx of

them smaller and

They were also among the most docile people in the world. They had no history of war, neither making nor carrying arms. (When a travfuller

eler

of face than their

new

informed Napoleon of

masters from the north.

this fact, the

Corsican conqueror was

indignant.) Although Jesus, Allah, and Confucius had been to

Okinawa, their missionaries persuaded few

nounce

if

their primitive animist religion based

erence for ancestors.

fire

any natives to re-

on

a mystical rev-

and hearth and worship of the bones of their

These were placed

in urns kept inside fairly large lyre-

shaped tombs, which the Japanese, with their customary indifference to the feelings of any race but their own, began to fortify

OKINAWA

6

with machine guns and cannon

nawan standards of Hving were

at the

outbreak of the war. Oki-

made no

low, and the Japanese

attempt to raise them. Generally the haughty Nipponese despised the Okinawans as inferior people

and were content to regard them

wood and drawers of water, supply them

— and eventually

their troops

all

Okinawans

—

hewers of

like the

—with sugarcane, sweet

from teachers trained

in Japan,

Amerindians of America

—had no

potatoes, rice, and soybeans. Aside

almost

as

useful with their small-scale farms to

desire to enjoy the blessings of industrial society, but

were content

to live as their ancestors had lived in tiny villages of about one

hundred people or towns numbering one thousand. Although the Japanese, for

all

of their contempt for them, had drafted

young Okinawan males troops in the Great

many

on the whole Japanese

into their militia,

Loo Choo were hated with

a quiet

and sullen

resentment similar to the attitude of the early American colonists

toward the British redcoats quartered in their homes. Although the Japanese and ligible to the

The

Okinawan languages

are alike, neither

intel-

other race.

southern third of the island below Ishikawa, where most

of the fighting would rage,

is

rolling, hilly

country lower than the

much

mountainous, jumbled North, but actually Steep,

is

natural escarpments,

ravines,

ridges abounding in natural caves

and west across the

must engage

in the

island.

most

and terraces

— were

—

as

well as

generally aligned east

This meant that an attacking force

difficult warfare:

There were no north-south

easier to defend.

"cross-hatch" fighting.

ridges with river valleys or passes

through which troops might move

easily.

Thus, moving south,

the Americans would encounter a succession of these heavily fortified east-west ridges,

and each time one

fell,

a

new one would

have to be assaulted.

The

only two-way decent road in the South was in the Naha-

Shuri area: Naha, the

new

capital of the ancient

Okinawa

port and commercial center; Shuri, the kings.

Even these were impassable

Why

Okinawa?

7

during the torrential rains that regularly turned the entire island, except for the limestone ridges, into a sea of

of the Great of

Loo Choo were

mud

— for the

skies

capable of pouring out eleven inches

rainfall in a single day.

Just as inimical to health or endurance was an enervating hu-

midity unrivaled even by Eritrea or the Belgian Congo, and the best description of the country lanes over which a modern,

army would have

anized

to travel

comment: "Okinawa had an

is

excellent

mech-

an American soldier's wry

network of bad roads."

Shuri Castle was the point of Okinawa's defensive arrowhead. It lay it

on high ground overlooking Naha

would

face the

American

invaders).

to the east (or right, as

Beneath

it

an ancient cave

system was being extended and strengthened to provide pletely safe

bomb- and

a

com-

shell-proof headquarters for the Japanese

Thirty-second Army. Heavy guns emplaced nearby could bombard any part of southern Okinawa. If the Americans, in spite of

heavy

losses,

were able to penetrate Shuri's outer defenses, the

defending Japanese could withdraw toward the center. So long

as

Shuri remained unconquered, so did Okinawa.

These

fortifications

sures of Peleliu, a

above the

sea.

resembled the blood-soaked caves and

drowned

coral

mountain that had heaved

But Okinawa's were man-made;

its

fis-

itself

soft coral

and

limestone could be grubbed up with pick and shovel, and small natural caves expanded to hold as

hundred or more. The

fill

building barricades that,

many men

as a

company of two

thus removed was eminently useftil in

when soaked with water and baked by

the sun, were almost as hard as concrete. But Peleliu was only six

miles long by two miles wide, while southern

Okinawa was about

twenty miles long and in some places eighteen miles wide. This, then, was the terrible fortified terrain that would confront the Americans

spring of 1945. at least

when

Even worse

they came storming ashore in the

—

for the

seamen of the U.S. Navy,

—would be the Japanese new weapon of the kamikaze.

—

Japan at Bay CHAPTE R TWO

No

one

— and

especially not the

members of Japanese Imperial

General Headquarters or the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff expected Okinawa to be the the surprise?

enemy

The

striking

Actually, as

of

World War

II.

Why

Joint Chiefs, having woefully underestimated

power

just as grievously

last battle

at the

exaggerated

beginning of the Pacific War, had it

at the end.

some perceptive Okinawans were already privately

assuring each other: ''^Nippon ga maketa. Japan

1945, after the conquest of

is

finished." In early

Iwo Jima by three Marine

divisions,

the island nation so vulnerable to aerial and submarine warfare

had been almost completely severed from in "the land of eternal

summer." Leyte

its

stolen Pacific empire

in the Philippines

had

been assaulted the previous October by an American amphibious force under General of the Armies Douglas MacArthur, and in

the same

month

January

9,

Luzon

Navy had destroyed the remnants of Navy in the Battle of Leyte Gulf. On

the U.S.

the once-proud Japanese

in the Philippines

was invaded, and on February

16-17, like a "typhoon of steel," the fast carriers of the U.S.

launched the

first

naval air raids

on Tokyo Bay.

A

week

Navy later

9

OKINAWA

10

Manila was overrun by those American "devils In late

March Iwo

to three

fell

battle in the annals of

Marine

baggy pants."

in

divisions in the bloodiest

American arms. Not only was Old Glory

enshrined forever in American military history by the historic

Mount

flag-raising atop cally

Suribachi, but

and more dreadful for Japanese

this insignificant little

more important

—

for

new

devastating raids on Japan by the

a base

it

—

cinder clog,

a

guaranteed that the

giant B-29 U.S.

Force bombers would continue and even

Iwo became

was the capture of

fears

speck of black volcanic ash

4V2 miles long and IVi miles wide

Army

Air

rise in fury.

from which the Superforts could

to the Japanese capital undetected

strategi-

fly closer

and under protection of Iwo-

based American fighter planes. Perhaps even more welcome to these gallant airmen, crippled B-29s unable to

hundred-mile

on

flight

tiny Iwo; or

if

back to Saipan could

shot

down

be reached by Iwo-based

now

off the shores of

Dumbo

make touch

the fifteen-

down

safely

Nippon, could even

rescue planes. Thus, not only

could these exorbitantly expensive aerial elephants be saved, but their truly

more

to prove their

valuable crews as well.

On

the night of March

9,

worth and sound the requiem of the "unconquer-

able" island empire, the Superforts already striking Tokyo,

Na-

goya, Osaka, and

Kobe

came down

thousand feet over Tokyo to loose the dreadful

to six

in pulverizing three-hundred-plane raids

firebombs that consumed a

million

human

a

quarter of a million houses and

made

beings homeless while killing 83,800 people in

the most lethal air raid in history

— even exceeding the death and

destruction of the atomic-bomb strikes

on Hiroshima and Na-

gasaki that were to follow.

Meanwhile the huge Japanese merchant carrying vital

oil

fleet,

employed

in

and valuable minerals to the headquarters of an

empire singularly devoid of natural resources, had been steadily blasted into extinction by the flashing torpedoes of the United States Navy's submarines.

Here

"Jhdeed were the

unsung heroes

1

Japan

at

Bay

1

of the splendid Pacific sea charge of three years' duration: four

thousand miles from Pearl Harbor to the reef-rimmed slender long island of Okinawa. These

was

called,

Pacific

men

of "the silent service," as

were fond of joking about

how

they had divided the

between the enemy and themselves, conferring on Japan

"the bottom half." In fact

it

was

true.

Only an occasional supply numerous

ship or transport arrived at or departed Nippon's

ports, themselves silent, ghostly shambles. Incredibly, the

ican submarines,

now

Transportation on the four

Home

Kyushu, and Hokkaido was

at a standstill. Little

road or

rail,

Islands of

over the water or through the

Palace hissing, bowing

Emperor Hirohito

its

doubters

—

air.

War

the

was moved: by

members of the household

staff

giant that

trial

when

it

kept from

the shocking, grisly protests arriving in the

who had Most of

and anonymous because they feared a

Lords' dreaded

and worked

lived

ferry traffic.

In the Imperial

sons to "the red-haired barbarians." silent

Amer-

Honshu, Shikoku,

daily mail: the index fingers of Japanese fathers

many

sea-

out of sea targets, had penetrated Japan's

inland seas to begin the systematic destruction of

too

it

in

Thought PoHce

America, knowing

was.

They

it

— were

visit

lost

these

from

men who had

for the unrivaled indus-

did not share the general jubilation

"the emperor's glorious young eagles" arrived

home from

Pearl Harbor. Their hearts were filled with trepidation, with secret dread for the retribution that they

knew would overtake

their

beloved country.

For eight months following Pearl Harbor, the victory fever had raged unchecked

power of America's floor of Battleship

The

in Japan.

Pacific Fleet

During

that time the striking

had rolled with the

Row. Wake had

fallen,

Guam,

tide

on the

the Philippines.

Rising Sun flew above the Dutch East Indies,

it

surmounted

Union Jack in mushroom helmets

the French tricolor in Indochina, blotting out the

Singapore, where columns of short tan

double-timed through

silent streets.

men in

Burma and Malaya were

also

OKINAWA

12

Japanese. India's hundreds of millions were imperiled, great

China was frilly

all

but isolated from the world, Australia looked fear-

north to Japanese bases on

New

Guinea, toward the long

double chain of the Solomon Islands drawn its lifeline

months

But then, on August

to America.

after

Vice Admiral Chuichi

craft carriers into the

rines landed

like

1942

7,

Nagomo

wind off Pearl Harbor

two knives across

— exactly eight

had turned

his air-

— the American Ma-

on Guadalcanal and the counter-offensive had begun.

In Japan the war dance turned gradually into a dirge while doleful

drums beat

a

requiem of retreat and

defeat. Smiling Jap-

anese mothers no longer strolled along the streets of Japanese

towns and

cities,

grasping their "belts of a thousand stitches,"

entreating passersby to sew a stitch into these magical charms to

be worn into battle by their soldier sons. For lay buried

on faraway

islands

caped starvation by cultivating their

serve

the

lives

potatoes.

those youths

where admirals and generals

the Melanesian or Micronesian natives

yams and sweet

now

And

of the boys

whom

own

— —

like

they despised

es-

vegetable gardens of

the belts that had failed to pre-

who wore them became

battle

souvenirs second only to the Samurai sabers of their fallen officers.

This, then, was the Japan that the United States Joint Chiefs

of Staff still considered

a

formidable foe, so

much

be subdued only by an invasion force of thousands of ships, airplanes, and tanks.

Okinawa was

fall

it

could

men and

achieve final victory,

enormous

of 1945 a three-pronged amphibious

Operation Olympic was to be mounted against south-

ern Kyushu by the Sixth U.S. divisions

so that

million

to be seized as a forward base for this

invading armada. In the assault called

To

a

Army

consisting of ten infantry

and three spearheading Marine

divisions.

This was to be

followed in the spring of 1946 by Operation Coronet, a massive

seaborne assault on the

Tokyo

Plain by the Eighth and

Tenth

Armies, spearheaded by another amphibious force of three rine divisions and with the First

Army

Ma-

transshipped from Europe

Japan to

form

a ten-division reserve.

at

Bay

The

13

entire operation

would be

under the command of General of the Armies MacArthur and "'•

Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz.

Okinawa would be the

catapult

from which

this mightiest

phibious assault force ever assembled would be hurled.

am-

The Divine Wind CHAPTE R THREE

Japanese Imperial Headquarters,

pon was

beaten,

still

refusing to believe that Nip-

writing reports while wearing rose-colored

glasses, also anticipated

nawa

still

an inevitable and bloody fight for Oki-

as the prelude to a titanic struggle for

Japan

While

itself.

the American Joint Chiefs regarded Operation Iceberg as one

stepping-stone toward Japan, their

which the hammer blows of a the American

enemy saw

still-invincible

it

more

as the anvil

on

Japan would destroy

fleet.

Destruction of American sea power remained the chief objecof Japanese mihtary policy. Sea power had brought the

tive

Amer-

icans through the island barriers that Imperial Headquarters

thought to be impenetrable, had landed them very Prefecture of Tokyo, and

lodgment 385 miles closer

now

to the

at

had

Iwo within the

threatened to provide them a

Home

Islands.

Only

sea

power

could make possible the invasion of Japan, something that had

not happened in three thousand years of Japan's recorded history

— something that had been attempted only twice before.

In 1274 and 1281 Kublai Khan, grandson of the great ghis

Khan and Mongol emperor

Gen-

of China, massed huge invasion 15

OKINAWA

16

fleets

on the Chinese coast

for that purpose.

Japan was unpre-

pared to repel such stupendous armadas, but a kamikaze, or

"Divine

Wind"

— actually

a

typhoon

— struck both Mongol

fleets,

scattering and sinking them.

In early 1945, nearly seven centuries

an entire host of

later,

Divine Winds came howling out of Nippon.

bombers of the Special Attack Forces,

cide

had been so named because

it

was seriously believed that they too

would destroy another invasion

They were

He

had led

fleet.

the conception of Vice Admiral Takejiro Onishi.

a carrier

group during the Battle of the Philippine

Sea. After that Japanese aerial disaster as "the

miral

known

to the

Americans

Marianas Turkey Shoot," Onishi had gone to Fleet Ad-

Soemu Toyoda, commander

with the proposal to organize dive

They were the suithe new kamikaze who

a

Combined

Fleet,

who would

crash-

of Japan's

group of

flyers

loaded bombers onto the decks of American warships.

Toyoda

agreed. Like most Japanese he found the concept of

— so popular Japan means of atonement of any kind — glorious method of defending the homeland. So

suicide

in

for failure

as a

a

Toyoda

sent Onishi to the Philippines, where he began orga-

on

nizing kamikaze

a local

and volunteer

Then came

basis.

American seizure of the Palaus and the Filipino

On first

October

kamikaze

He was

shot

—

15, 1944,

Rear Admiral Masafumi Arima

tried to crash-dive the

down by Navy

the

invasion.

American

— the

carrier Franklin.

but Japanese Imperial Head-

fighters,

quarters told the nation that he had succeeded in hitting the carrier

—which he had not done — and thus

"lit

the fuse of the

ardent wishes of his men."

*The

first

organized attacks of the kamikaze came on Octo-

ber 25, at the beginning of the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Suicide

bombers struck blows strong enough

make them aware of

a

new weapon

not savage enough to shatter them.

to startle the

Americans and

in the field against

Too many

them, but

kamikaze missed

The their targets

way

their

Divine

Wind

17

and crashed harmlessly into the ocean, too many

and too many were shot

either arriving or returning,

down.

Of

ter of

them scored

650 suiciders sent to the Philippines, only about a quarhits

— and

almost exclusively on small ships

without the firepower to defend themselves tleships,

and

aircraft carriers.

keeping the national mind

nounced

lost

hits

not believe

like the cruisers, bat-

But Imperial Headquarters,

still

empty of news of failure, an-

carefully

of almost 100 percent. Imperial Headquarters did

its

own propaganda,

of course.

Its

generals and ad-

mirals privately guessed hits ranging from 12 to 50 percent, but

they also assumed that nothing but battleships and carriers had

been

hit.

Thus was

the kamikaze born, in an outburst of national ecstasy

and anticipated deliverance. In the homeland ciders was organized under Vice Admiral

a

huge corps of sui-

Matome

Ugaki. By Jan-

uary 1945 they were part of Japanese military strategy,

dominant

part.

So many

suiciders

operation, to be joined by so ers:

to ravage

not the

would be ordered out on an

many

first-class fighters

the fighters to clear the skies of

bombers

if

enemy

and bomb-

interceptors, the

American shipping and guide the kamikaze to

their victims.

They needed

to be guided because they usually

bination of old, stripped-down aircraft

up

flyers.

Admiral Ugaki did not use

skilled pilots, as

were

a

com-

and young, often hopped-

his

newest planes or his most

Admiral Onishi had in the Philippines. Ugaki

considered this wasteful.

He

beHeved that the

"spiritual

power"

of the "glorious, incomparable young eagles" would compensate for the missing firepower of obsolete crates

from which even the

instruments had been removed. At a period in the Pacific

when

perceptive Japanese

commanders were beginning

War

to ridicule

the "bamboo-spear tactics" of the School of Spiritual Power, as

opposed to the

realities

brave young volunteers

of firepower, Ugaki was showering his

—

for brave they truly

were

—with enco-

— OKINAWA

18

miums of praise intended to may have had about piloting

silence whatever reservations they

these patched-up old cripples, and

also to inspire the nation.

So the suiciders were hailed

Many

graphed, honized. fore taking off their

honor

on

as saviors:

wined, dined, photo-

of them attended their

own

their last mission. Farewell feasts

numerous

at the

airfields

funerals be-

were held

in

on the southernmost Japa-

nese island of Kyushu. Solemn Samurai ceremonies were conducted, and

many

climbed aboard their airplanes on wobbly occur to the Japanese

might

affect the

some of

toasts of sake drunk, so that

— and

especially

legs. It did

Ugaki

the pilots

not seem to

— that

insobriety

aim of the kamikaze and thus defeat the purpose

of the suicide corps; and this was because the concept of the suicide-savior had so captivated the nation

Emperor Hirohito himself would have been regarded and very

real faith in

from schoolgirls to

word of

that the shghtest as treason.

And

another coming of

a

it

was

Divine

this

Wind

tated to the planners at Imperial Headquarters exactly battle of

The

Okinawa was

criticism

very deep that dic-

how

the

to be fought.

speed with which the Americans were overnmning the Phila

mood

Imperial Headquarters in

Tokyo

ippines had

produced

of the blackest pessimism in late

1944

—

at

until those roseate

December and January rewith the brightest hopes. By 1945

reports of kamikaze success during

placed the darkest despair

Headquarters had decided that the United States would next strike at

Okinawa

as •the four

to seize a base for the invasion of Japan proper,

Home

Islands

were

called. It

was now believed that

the kamikaze corps could greatly improve the chances for a successful defense of

prevent

enemy

Okinawa, and thus perhaps

landings in the

Home

— even probably

Islands.

So

Ten-Go, or "Heavenly Operation," was devised.

were to be formed from

a reserve

of military-age

a plan called

New

armies

men who had

The been deferred for around

the

Divine

Wind

19

essential labor, while a powerful air force built

kamikaze

would

be

organized

destroy

to

the

Americans.

More

than four thousand airplanes, both suicide and conven-

would launch an

tional,

all-out attack, joined

and followed by

a suicide

dash of Japan's remaining warships,

The

including the mighty battleship Yamato.

come from two

by hundreds of sui-

from Okinawa and the Kerama Islands

cide motorboats operating

directions: north

air assaults

would

from Formosa where the Japa-

nese Army's Eighth Air Division and the Navy's First Air Fleet

were based, and south from Kyushu, with

a

more powerful

combining several Army and Navy commands, rection of Vice Admiral Ugaki.

On

February 6

all

force

under the

a joint

di-

Army-Navy

Air Agreement stated:

In general Japanese air strength will be conserved until an

enemy landing .

.

.

is

underway or within the defense sphere

Primary emphasis

training and mass

{kamikaze)

.

,

.

be

laid

on the speedy

employment of the

activation,

Special Attack Forces

The main target of Army aircraft will be and of Navy aircraft carrier attack forces.

enemy

transports,

On

face this

its

will

was

a

bold plan conceived in an atmosphere

of the most cordial cooperation. Actually, the only leaders motivated by the same conviction were those

who

believed that the

war could no longer be won. Otherwise, there was gence: the

Navy

officers seeing

Ten-Go

score a great, redeeming victory; the that the final battle

as the last

Army

a

deep diver-

opportunity to

staffers in

agreement

would be fought not on Okinawa but on

Kyushu. Though their views conflicted, their reasoning was logical:

at

the sailors, certain that

Okinawa, neither would

that even

if

airpower could not stop the

do so on Kyushu; the Army

it

enemy

insisting

on the Philippines the Americans had not yet fought

major Japanese army, and

that, shattered

a

and whittied by the

OKINAWA

20

suicide-saviors, they could be repulsed in all

Japan proper. However,

— even the doubters — were convinced that

very least a

at the

severe defeat must be inflicted on the Americans to compel the

AlHes to modify their demand for Unconditional Surrender.

There was one more consideration, probably more apparent

Army

to the

than the Navy. Bamboo-spear tactics were out.

illogical belief that spiritual

spawned that other cause of Japan's absolute inabiHty American charge across the

enemy

Pacific: the doctrine

invaders "at the water's edge."

known

frontal attacks

as

The

power could conquer firepower had

Those

to halt the

of destroying the

nocturnal, massed

"Banzai charges" had repeatedly been

broken in blood, leaving the Japanese defenders so weakened that they were powerless to

resist.

Now there was a new spirit inform-

ing the Japanese Army: defense in depth

—

as careful as the

Banzai

enemy to overcome as the foolhardy wild Banzai had been easy for him to shatter, and so costly in the attrition of enemy men, machines, and ships as to weary the Americans and thus induce them to negotiate. Ambush, or the tactics of delay raised to a military science,

was

reckless, as difficult for the

began on the large island of Biak off the western extremity of

New

Guinea.

It

was conceived by Colonel Kuzume Naoyuki,

commander of about

eleven thousand troops of the defense gar-

rison there. Disdainful of the doctrine of destruction at the ter's

come

edge, he decided instead to allow the Americans to

ashore unopposed so that they would

stroll

wa-

unwarily into the trap

he would prepare for them. This would turn the area around the vital

airfield

pillboxes

—

there

all

martial

artillery,

—

honeycomb of

— that

batteries of mortars,

priceless

Hquid was

gunfire

— to sustain his^defense

and

and

light tanks.

enough ammunition,

less

than abundant on

where the heat and humidity would take

enemy

caves

with riflemen, auto-

filled

also stockpiled these positions with

food, and water Biak,

a

mutually supportive

matic weapons,

Naoyuki

into

a toll

for months.

equal to

Thus, when

the 162nd Infantry of the Forty-first Division of the U.S.

Army

The landed on Biak on

May

dently inland expecting vital airfield.

little

opposition

Then, from the low-lying

the ridges above, there

fell a

21

it

Thereafter, there was

no

confi-

until they reached that

terrain

was not

foolish

—

move

around them and

storm of shot and

terrible

them from the

to extricate

the Japanese

Wind

27, 1944, they did indeed

pinned them to the ground;

were able

Divine

shell that

until dark that amtracks

trap.

and furious Banzai by which

enemy customarily bled itself to death. Biak was a Ambush, or delay, was repeated at

grinding, shot-for-shot battle. Peleliu and

be

won

Iwo Jima,

battles that the U.S.

Marines expected to

within days or a week or so but lasted for months, with

staggering losses not only in valuable time but in

uable

life

still

more

val-

and equipment.

These were the

tactics that

Lieutenant General Mitsuru Ushi-

jima intended to employ on Okinawa with his defending Japanese

Thirty-second Army. After his

arrival there in

August 1944, he

hurled himself into the gratifying task of turning that slender long island into an ocean fortress. In January 1945,

of

staff,

Lieutenant General Isamu Cho, to

he sent

Tokyo

his chief

for a review

of his defenses. Imperial Headquarters planners were delighted

with his preparations, for they dovetailed with Ten-Go. Ushijima's

monster ambush was

just the tactic to lure the

range of the suiciders

— airborne and seaborne — to be smashed so

shatteringly that the Thirty-second

Army could

Americans within

take the offensive

and destroy them.

Upon

his return to

thirsting for battle

Okinawa, Isamu

and bursting to

about Japan's devastating

Cho was

tell his

new weapon

a

happy

chief the

soldier,

good news

of the Divine Wind.

The Japanese Samurai CHAPTER FOUR

To

understand the Samurai

warriors pecuHar to Japan tory of Nippon.

Up

—

—

a hereditary class

it is

until 1853,

Matthew Perry opened Japan

of professional

necessary to understand the his-

when

Commodore

the American

Nippon had been

to world trade,

hermit kingdom into which no foreigner

who

valued his

a

life

would venture. True, between the founding of the Island Empire in

660

B.C.

and the

arrival

of Perry, there had been a brief inter-

lude of intercourse with the West. This occurred after a storm

drove

a

China-bound Portuguese ship ashore

in 1543. Later ships

brought Catholic missionaries, among them Saint Francis Xavier, the great Jesuit missionary and a leader of the Catholic Counter-

Reformation,

who

stepped ashore in 1549.

Under

his influence

the population of a large area of the southern island of

became Catholic

Kyushu

Christians. This pleased neither the ruling sho-

guns (military commanders in chief

who had

seized

power from

the emperor) or the Buddhist priests.

The shoguns olic missionaries

quite understandably suspected that the Cath-

might actually be advance scouts or

colonizing Catholic powers of Europe.

spies for the

They remembered

that

23

OKINAWA

24

after Spanish priests

gellan, they

came

to the Phihppines with Ferdinand

Ma-

were followed by Spanish soldiers who made those

islands the possessions of the king of Spain.

shu Christians was put

down with

a persecution of Christians

foreign or Japanese

An

Kyu-

uprising of

ferocious severity, and in 1617

was begun. All Christians, whether

— Protestant or CathoHc —were hunted down

and those who did not recant under torture were

ruthlessly,

executed.

Thereafter Japan sank back into isolation. the country under pain of death, and

the same grim penalty. built.

No one could

leave

no foreigner enter under

Nor were oceangoing

ships allowed to be

Every Japanese family was required to register

at a

Buddhist

temple, and interest in Buddhist studies was encouraged. Shinto, the naive nature-and-ancestor worship of ancient Japan, was also revived. Shinto, a Chinese

on Japanese for

culture),

word

(significant of

was based on

Chinese influence

a simple feefing of reverence

any surprising or awesome phenomenon of nature:

a splendid

cloud formation, a mountain,

a

a waterfall,

magnificent tree, or

even an oddly shaped stone. Places that stimulated such delight or awe became Shinto shrines. At the head of this basically sha-

manist religion stood a master medicine man: the divine emperor.

Japanese tradition claimed that the imperial family was directly

descended from the sun goddess. Actually,

from the Yamato genitor.

clan,

During the

this family issued

which claimed the sun goddess

third

as its

and fourth centuries the Yamato

priest-chiefs gained suzerainty

and may

pro-

clan's

be said to have imified

the country, although without destroying the rights of the other clans.

This ruling family, then, could claim an antiquity with

which none of the other reigning compare. death

families of the

It also could claim the allegiance of

itself.

To

fail

forgivable crime for

its

world could subjects unto

or embarrass the emperor was a heinous, un-

which there could be no penance or expiation

other than self-destruction. This belief in the divinity of the em-

The Japanese Samurai

25

peror was cleverly and cynically exploited by the shoguns,

who

ruled the country through the emperor as figurehead.

The shoguns came

to

power

after the imperial armies in the

eighth century suffered setbacks at the hands of Japan's original inhabitants, the

Ainu

to the inhospitable

— an extremely hairy race thereafter exiled

North by

the heartless and frequently hairless

Japanese, and called in contempt "the hairy Ainu." Scorning the imperial conscripts, the shoguns formed their better trained and disciplined armies. a

new

class

own

smaller but

These were commanded by

of officers drawn from the sons of local clan chiefs

and called Samurai. They formed

this

new

hereditary class of pro-

fessional warriors serving the daimyos, or feudal lords.

The Samurai were

distinguished by their hair, shaven in front

and top-knotted, and the clan badge worn on their kimonos. They lived Spartan lives

manhood

—

or anger."

and were rigidly

in self-control: a

Nor was he

drilled

— from childhood to

Samurai was taught to show "no joy

ever to engage in trade or handle money.

Like Christian seminarians, he had contempt for commerce as

being infra dignitatem, beneath his dignity. excel in the martial arts. Indeed the

Samurai

—one

long and one short

He

was

also trained to

two swords worn by the

—were

also

badges of rank.

Samurai were expected to become especially proficient with the long,

two-handed sword, actually

extremely sharp saber.

enemy or

"stomach cutting."

for failure or disgrace, a

and thrust

his short

sword into

emonial disembowelment

and

short one was for decapitating a fallen

dispatching himself by seppuku,

as hara-kiri, literally,

ment

The

a thick, heavy, single-edged,

more commonly known

To

kill

himself in atone-

Samurai would squat on the floor his

that, if

stomach it

— turning

it

became unbearably

in a cer-

painful,

could be ended by a comrade standing by to strike his neck with a saber, severing the spinal

A

column.

lifetime of cultivating indifference to pain, however,

part of a Samurai's code of Bushido: "the

way of

was

the warrior."

OKINAWA

26

With this inevitably arrogant warrior class, permitted to cut down any commoner "who has behaved to him in a manner other than he expected," the shoguns ruled Japan. And their reign continued for more than two centuries after the extinction of Christianity. It ended only when Commodore Perry appeared in his steam-

when

driven "black ships," so terrifying to the insular Japanese

they saw these

vessels without sails

on Tokyo Bay. Very quickly

moving

easily against the

wind

opening two ports to the

a treaty

Americans was signed. This unprecedented deference (not to say obeisance) to

a for-

— the

mer-

eign power so enraged conservatives of daimyos,

chants,

known

the

Samurai

— that

as the Meiji Restoration

and restoring the Samurai.

it

revolution

a

to the emperor. It also culminated the career of

No ruler could feel entirely safe with such dangerous

fierce warriors accepted the

hang up

provoked

ending the power of the shoguns

zealots at large within his borders,

to

it

caUings

all

their

and so by imperial edict these

lump-sum termination

offered

them

swords and become merchants, lawyers, doctors,

or bureaucrats. But they did not remain long suppressed, for the Meiji

Restoration,

in

perhaps the most astonishing national

turnabout in history, had embraced in one swoop the entire apparatus of the once-despised

Western

civiHzation. Everything in-

vented or developed by the "Round Eyes" since Greece, Rome,

and the advent of the Christian Era ture, political institutions,

—

their science, industry, cul-

methods of education, business prac-

economics, dress, and even sports

tices,

—was swallowed whole by

Nippon. ^Despite the undoubted exuberance of this nonviolent social revolution (sometimes comical to a Westerner at

smaller Japanese going to his daily workplace

on him ears),

like a scarecrow's suit

and

in a

first

a top hat reaching

the change was outward only; Japan, for

sight of a

tuxedo hanging

all

down

of

its

to his

preten-

sions to democracy, remained a paternalistic, authoritarian state.

The

secret police organized in the 1600s

may

have been banned,

The Japanese Samurai

new Japan

but the

replaced

Tl

them with Thought Pohce, censors

and spies sniffing out sedition and "suspicious" less

bloodhounds, and empowered

like the

activity

hke

tire-

Samurai of old to put

anyone caught doing "anything different." In classrooms

to death

and army barracks young Japanese were taught to glory in Nippon's mihtary traditions, to beheve that dying on the battlefield for the

emperor was the most sublime

fate to

which

a

man

could

aspire.

Inevitably the spirit of the Samurai returned and their code

of Bushido was revived. Soldiers of

mainly peasant army, both

a

and men, were trained in the hard,

officers

selfless

Samurai

school, taught to think of themselves as heirs of that departed

warrior

class.

two-handed long sword of

like the

much

Officers adopted a so-called Samurai saber, old, as their

badge of rank.

Properly sharpened and even though wielded by diminutive Japanese,

could sever

it

a prisoner's

summary execution of tured for information

captives

head

at a single stroke,

— usually

after they

— became one of the

of Japan's new, Samurai-\ed army as

it

least

and

this

had been tor-

gruesome features

took the

field in pursuit

of territorial conquest and the raw materials and markets in which

Nippon,

for a

modern

industrial nation,

cient. Eventually the chief officers

War

was so deplorably

among them emerged

Lords of Japan. In collusion with the zaibatsu

iticians,

defi-

as the

—leading pol-

bureaucrats, and industrialists such as the Mitsubishi and

Mitsui families

— the War Lords ruled the country through the

figurehead of Hirohito.

This career of coalition

territorial

aggrandizement by an authoritarian

began in 1879 with Nippon's annexation of the Ryukyu

Islands, of

which Okinawa was the

largest. Sixty-six years later

three typical Samurai took charge of defending this last barrier

between American armed forces and the

Japan.

Home

Islands of

OKINAWA

28

Lieutenant General Mitsuru Ushijima anese Thirty-second

Army

— may be

— commander of the Japhave been the Sam-

said to

urai beau ideal. Ramrod-straight and lean, sharp-featured with a

graying military brush mustache, he was able to awe subordinates

by

his

unshakable composure and iron self-control. Yet he was

man whose

considerate

staff

not only respected but even revered

him. Ushijima's style was low-key.

and-tumble of

a

staff discussions

He

abstained from the rough-

of policy, plans, or operations; in

which, as had happened during the Guadalcanal disaster, irate officers could actually

make

come

to blows. Rather, he let his aides

the decisions, which he would either approve or reject. But

he always took responsibility for the

good or bad. In

results,

unreserved admiration of him, his idolizing to

Takamori

staff

their

compared him

Saigo, a celebrated hero of the Meiji Restoration.

Early in the war Ushijima had distinguished himself as an infantry group

commander during

he met Isamu Cho, chief of returned to

Tokyo

staff

itary Affairs Bureau.

They

also

Cho came

jima as the Thirty-second's chief, differ

more

Ushijima the serene was spiring his subordinates. his

own

incapacities,

He

a

There

They become commandant of

of the Southern Army.

together, Ushijima to

the Japanese Military Academy,

no two men could

the conquest of Burma.

to serve

to

Cho

on the General Mil-

Okinawa

together, Ushi-

as his chief

of

— and

staff

in character.

man

of presence, capable of in-

also possessed the rare gift of seeing

which he

filled

by choosing Major General

Cho, a firebrand and a planner and organizer, strict but resourceful,

aggressive,

and so invincibly explosive

in

argument

as to

be

unpopular. Deceptively scholarly-looking with thick wide spectacles that exaggerated his owlish features,

he was actually

contrast to the Spartan, abstemious Ushijima his quarters,

—

a

bon

—in

vivant. In

even toward the end of the battle for Okinawa, might

be found unrivaled meals, the best Scotch whiskey, the finest sake,

women. The Burly Cho was also something of officers who served him resented his hec-

and the

prettiest

a bully,

and the young

— The Japanese Samurai

29

toring tirades, even though they admitted that he could

them work harder than any other Isamu Cho had

make

officer.

risen at fifty-one to the rank of Heutenant

general and was in line for another

star.

In 1930, while a cap-

he had joined the Sakura-kai, or "Cherry Society," whose

tain,

hundred-odd members cleanse Japan of

all

—

all

firebrands like

Western influences

Cho

—were sworn

to

that they considered in-

imical to the ancient virtues of the Samurai. Antidemocratic and anticapitalist,

they sought to establish a military dictatorship and

had chosen the cherry

emblem because

tree as their

its

briUiant

though short-lived blossoms symbolized the warrior Samurafs readiness to die for the

A

emperor

at

any moment.

few generals eager to wear the

dictatorial

mantle courted

the Cherry favor, and thus contributed to the society's increasing influence and to Cho's emergence as the leading hothead and

strong-arm advocate. In January 193 to

1,

he helped plot

a

murder the prime minister and replace him with

conspiracy a leading

general, but that distinguished officer declined to accept the

honor, since he seems to have expected to gain that eminence by legal

means. In October the Cherries tried again, with

more the

Tokyo

to

leader.

bomb

The

Cho once

plan was to have revolutionaries

fly

over

among them the prime Emperor Hirohito could be

selected targets, chief

minister's residence.

With him

compelled to choose

dead.

a general as his successor.

However, Cho's

very exuberance foiled the plot. At one of the meetings, held in a geisha

house in Tokyo's red-light

district,

conspiracy must succeed "even

if it is

emperor with

To

a

drawn dagger."

he declared that the

necessary to threaten the

one Cherry member

this

was

treasonous talk indeed, and after he blew the whistle, Japanese

mihtary police raided

Cho

not included

a geisha

house to arrest the ringleaders

— and put an end to the notorious plot of "the

Brocade Banner." In any other his

army Cho's

activity

would

at least

have led to

being court-martialed or even executed, but instead of being

OKINAWA

30

punished he was rewarded with

Kwantung Army, then engaged

assignment to the

a coveted

churia from the flabby big body of the Chinese giant. the public as outraged as

ner

affair, for in

it

might have been by the Brocade Ban-

man who

those days a

wrapping himself

ManNor was

in ripping the province of

excused his misdeeds by

in the flag of patriotism

was forgiven almost

anything. Gradually, however, as the militarists tightened their

hold on Japan, any kind of opposition to the status quo, no matter

how

supposedly patriotic, was not so conveniently ignored.

Nevertheless

Cho

did not

1938 he nearly provoked

a

Union when he and another tack

on Russian

— could

officer

who

also

graces,

much

ordered an unauthorized

at-

Manchurian border. Three that had seized Thailand,

hostilities

between Thai and Vichy

French troops. Yet, he remained

good

restrain himself. In

army

years later, as chief of staff of the

fyingly

—

war between Japan and the Soviet

forces just over the

he seems to have encouraged

not

to the

in the high

command's mysti-

dismay of generals senior to him

sought the Okinawa assignment. Perhaps Imperial

Headquarters believed that Cho's very excess of zeal could

now

burning

be helpful rather than detrimental to the army. If the

fires

in his breast could rekindle the ardor of the soldiers

on Okinawa,

then another kind of kamikaze might yet overwhelm superior

American firepower and save Japan. Such

a possibility

might indeed have inhabited the minds of

these mystical Japanese generals and admirals,

men who

actually

did believe that the soul of a Samurai killed fighting for the

em-

peror would dwell eternally in Yasakuni Shrine in Tokyo. But

from the standpoint of

reality, a

more hopeful

the traditionalist Ushijima or the fiery

Cho

savior than either

existed in the person

of Colonel Hiromichi Yahara, chief planning officer of the Thirty-second Army.

At forty-two Yahara was much younger than

either Ushijima

or Cho, although his record was almost as impressive. Graduated

from the Japanese Mihtary Academy

in the class of 1923,

Yahara

— The Japanese Samurai

31

had served in an infantry regiment, had attended the Japanese

War

College and spent ten months at Fort Moultrie in the

United States

as

an exchange

He

Burma. Tall

a kind

contempt

those

for

— probably born of bamboo-spear — that

of superciliousness advocates of

many of his comrades.

Yahara were

as antithetical as

heart,

two men could

but a science, to be

head.

all

won by

Cho and Where Cho was

Especially Cho. Indeed,

Yahara was thoughtful and

Yahara was

his

tactics

impetuous, Yahara was deliberate; where

all

also served with

for a Japanese, poised, patrician, an intellectual, there

was about him

aggressive,

had

during fighting in China, Thailand, Malaya, and

distinction

alienated

officer.

To

be.

Cho was

careful;

physical and

Cho was

and where

Yahara war was not

a contest

superior tactics adjusted to terrain,

weapons, and troops, not by those wretchedly bloody Banzai charges. In this intellectualism and the aloofness issuing

and in his

his

unconcealed contempt for others

acumen, he again offended fellow

officers

who

from

it,

did not share

on Ushijima's

staffi

Nevertheless Hiromichi Yahara's rationalism was the perfect

complement ferring

now

to Ushijima's

magnetism and Cho's

on the Thirty-second Army

devoted to the

new

tactic

on the most compatible

a

fire,

superb leadership, which

of defense in depth to be executed

terrain imaginable

— did

not presage a

quick and easy victory for the American invaders. This tention to give

the

enemy was

up no ground

thus con-

willingly

trio's in-

and to whittle and weary

reflected in the Thirty-second

Army's slogan com-

posed by Ushijima:

One Plane for One Warship One Boat for One Ship One

Man for

Fulfillment of the

General Ushijima had airfields.

Ten of the Enemy or One Tank

first

slogan was up to the kamikaze, for

little

airpower based on Okinawa's

five

OKINAWA

32

"One Boat for One Ship" would be the objective by Divine Winds of the Sea Raiding Squadrons. They were

nautical enlisted

youths fresh out of high school, trained to ram explosive-stuffed

motorboats into American

There were about 700

ships.

suicide

boats hidden in the Ryukyus, and approximately 350 were only

about fifteen miles west of southern Okinawa in the

islets

of the

Kerama-retto.

The

third stricture

thousand men, of

was

whom

left to a

force of about one

hundred

a fifth

were conscripted from the Oki-

nawan population. The bulk of

these troops was concentrated in

Okinawa's southern

third.

Here Ushijima began arrowhead.

Its

to build a line facing north like a broad

point rested on the heights surrounding Shuri and

Shuri Castle, the city and citadel of Okinawa's ancient kings.

on

flanks swept back to the sea

ridges to the chief city of

Naha- Shuri- Yonabaru

men

either side, through a jungle of

Naha on

Yonabaru

similar hills back to

line. It

the

the west), through

left (to

Airfield

on the

right. It

Mixed Brigade. sea west of

and

Division,

To

its left,

the

Forty-fourth

on Oroku Peninsula

Naha, were about

and seven thousand Japanese

was the

held the bulk of Ushijima's fighting

— the Sixty-second Division, which had served

Twenty-fourth

Its

thirty-five

civilians

in China, the

Independent

jutting into the

hundred Japanese

sailors

under Vice Admiral Minoru

Ota. Roughly three thousand soldiers of the Second Infantry Unit

under Colonel Takehiko ern half of Okinawa

Udo

held the wild, uninhabited north-

— that part that Ushijima,

Yahara, had chosen not to defend. to contest the

Hagushi Beaches

Nor would

in west-central

would defend the Minatoga Beaches were

in the rear of his

at the

urging of

Ushijima attempt

Okinawa.

to the south because they

Naha- Shuri- Yonabaru

line,

but he would

protect almost nothing north of that line, except, of course,

approaches. fields

to

He would

He

its

not even defend Yontan and Kadena Air-

the east of the Hagushi Beaches.

These would be

wrecked the moment the Americans appeared by

a special force

The Japanese Samurai drawn from the

men whom

sand the

Home Guard

the

Boeitai,

Ushijima had

33

of about twenty thou-

ruthlessly called

Okinawan males between twenty and

crew was called the Bimbo

Butai, or

up from among

The wrecking

forty.

"Poor Detachment," by those

Japanese soldiers whose loathing of Okinawa and

nawan had already become

problem

a

all

things Oki-

to General Ushijima.

Conscription of the Boeitai had unwittingly led to one of the chief complaints etables.

among

Ushijima's soldiers: the lack of fresh veg-

There hadn't been enough adult males around

the normal vegetable crop that

fall

to

produce

and winter, and Tokyo was

shipping in bullets, not beans. "I cannot bear having just a cup of rice for a meal with side dishes at all," a soldier wrote.

The

"Our

no

health will be ruined."

lament was raised frequently elsewhere, and Ushijima

took account of

it

by urging

his

men

to "display a

more firm and

resolute spirit, hold to the belief of positive victory, and always

remember

the spirit of

martyrdom and of dying

for the

good of

the country."

By way of and

a half

consolation, the general issued each

man

a pint

of sweet-potato brandy, proclaimed a temporary am-

nesty for drunkards, and promised another issue on April 29, 1945,

when

the

Emperor Hirohito would become

forty-four years

old.

Cho came

back from his

visit to

Tokyo

in late January.

He

reported that Ushijima's defense plans dovetailed with Imperial

Headquarters strategy and that he had been able to dispel some doubts about the decision not to defend the Hagushi Beaches.

Cho was

also elated

the kamikaze.

The

by

a secret report

attacks

he had seen concerning

by twenty-six of Admiral Ugaki's

six-

plane units had brought about instantaneous sinking of one

American

battleship, six carriers,

the clearheaded

Wind.

He

and thirty-four

Cho had been blown

cruisers.

Even

overboard by the Divine

got out an inspirational message for the Thirty-second

Army's top commanders.

It said:

OKINAWA

34

The tied

brave ruddy-faced warriors with white silken scarves

about their heads,

at

peace in their favorite planes, dash

out spiritedly to the attack.

But the

skies

The

skies are slowly brightening.

were rather darkening with the airplanes of the

American Fast Carrier Forces, which began

Loo Choo

late that

month. After the

Great

striking the

raid of January 22, a Japa-

nese soldier wrote in his diary:

While some of the planes

fly

overhead and

strafe, the

bastards fly over the airfield and drop bombs.

of the bombing

really

is terrific. It

past three o'clock and the raid

is still

planes brought the raid to a close. bastards are they?

Bomb from

They were "hard-nosed air

on.

At

What

six

ferocity

furious. It

the

last

is

two

the hell kind of

six to six!

bastards," these Americans, and there

were more and bigger ones coming and Japan, both by

The

makes me

big

and by

sea.

— toward both the

Ryukyus

Naha was being pounded

to

rubble and the wolf packs of the American submarine service were littering the floor

drowned

of the China Sea with sunken cargo vessels and

soldiers.

The most shocking loss of all occurred on June 29, 1944, when the U.S. submarine Sturgeon under Lieutenant Commander C. L. Murphy sent four torpedoes flashing into the side of the troop transport Toyama Maru, sending her to the bottom along

with

fifty-six

hundred

soldiers

and most of her

officers

and crew.

Such reports helped to discourage the troops of the Thirtysecond Army, and one private wrote

in his diary:

brazenly planning to destroy completely every

"The enemy

last ship,

is

cut our

supply lines and attack us."

He

was absolutely correct, and "the enemy" by then was

also

hurling neutralizing thunderbolts at the homeland.

Throughout February and March, while

the Marines were

The Japanese Samurai

35

conquering Iwo Jima, land- and carrier-based planes struck again

and again

at the

Great Loo Choo. Superforts began to rage

all

over the Ryukyus. Okinawa was effectively cut off from Kyushu in the north,

Formosa

On March

in the south.

1,

while the Fast

Carrier Forces were returning to Ulithi from their third strike at

Japan, there were so eting

Okinawa

many

that pilots

planes strafing, bombing, and rock-

had to get in

line for a crack at a target.

Lieutenant General Mitsuru Ushijima was impressed.

"You cannot regard the enemy as on a par with you," he told his men. "You must realize that material power usually overcomes spiritual power in the present war. The enemy is clearly our superior in machines. this

Do

not depend on your

enemy. Devise combat method

precision

[sic]

spirits

overcoming

based on mathematical

— then think about displaying your

spiritual

power."

Ushijima's order was perhaps the most honest issued by a

Japanese commander throughout the war. turned upside

made too

late.

down and

inside out

It

was Bushido

revised,

— but the revision had been

First

Blood for America CHAPTER FIVE

In early October 1944

—

little

San Francisco conference

—

more than

a

week

after the crucial

Fleet Admiral Bull Halsey's monster

Task Force Thirty-eight was speeding blacked-out through the Pacific night,

bound northwestward

When dawn

Okinawa campaign.

for the

broke

it

opening salvos of the

revealed a splendid and

thriUing spectacle: seventeen aircraft carriers carrying one thou-

sand

aircraft, six fast battleships,

fourteen cruisers, and fifty-eight

destroyers together with the subsidiary ships such as oilers and

tenders plunging through a white-capped gray sea almost at flank speed,

some of them with "a bone

waves curving away from either side of their terrifying force to

—white bow prows — huge and

in their teeth"

a

any Japanese unfortunate enough to witness

their approach. Actually, Halsey's fleet alone

was more powerful

than the entire battle force deployed by Admiral Nimitz at Mid-

way on June 6, Combined Fleet, with

five apiece

1942, to defeat Admiral Isoroku

thus restoring carrier

and

power

Yamamoto's

in the Pacific to par

— more important— turning the

tide of naval

battle against Japan.

Halsey's

TF

38 was so large that

it

was spread out into four 37

38

OKINAWA

•

separate groups, each a task force in itself with a rear admiral in

command. The precious

carriers, as always, sailed in the center

of each group in boxlike formation, with the battleships and cruis-

steaming

ers

at the quarters,

guns

their protective antiaircraft

raised like spikes fingering the sky.

Around each formation sped

the circling destroyers, seagoing sheep dogs snapping at the heels

of their

flocks,

but actually screening them and searching, search-

ing, searching for

On

all

enemy submarines. and

ships, surface

Combat Information

ing information to their sel's

air radars rotated unceasingly, feed-

Centers, each ves-

nerve center where sailors worked silently in darkened

compartments below. adjacent to

On the bridges or in sea cabins immediately

them stood the

ship captains and task group

manders, tense and with furrowed brows anticipating dreading

— those

sudden emergencies that

quire instant reaction.

Throughout

TF

arise swiftly

com-

—while and

38 hundreds of

re-

men

perched high on the crow's nests of masts swept the sea with binoculars, looking for those telltale tips of periscopes cutting

through the water, and thus supplementing the

electrical

impulses

of the radar or the pinging of the sonar sniffing out strangers

submerged beneath the waves.

Day after day as the carriers penetrated deeper and deeper into enemy waters, they were turned into the wind to launch planes, either for antisubmarine or defensive fighter patrols.

they were catapulted into the

air,

the destroyers on pilot-rescue

duty churned closer to either side of the cans' " duty to rescue crashed pilots.

flattops. It

was the "tin

Aboard these slender long

"bla(;k-water ships," always a thrilling sight with their sterns into the water and their

officers kept a

worried eye on the

carriers'

spray, the deck

deck angle.

changing wind turned suddenly to keep

destroyer might

dug

prows high, sometimes even bouncing

on the waves, throwing up huge plumes of white

in a

As

it

on

ram the carrier.'To prevent such

If a flattop

its

bow, the

disaster,

deck

First

officers

—usually

sailed or

39

young and highly responsible had

carrier

sailors

—were

and trained.

carefully screened

Each

Blood for America

a dual organization, its regular

fought the ship and

its air

The

group.

air

crew that

group main-

tained and flew the planes: about eighty in the big Essex class

twenty-seven-thousandcton

forty in the smaller Inde-

flattops,

mounted on

pendence class, a carrier with flight decks hull.

With Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher

38's

airplanes

and

Grumman Avenger

— those

as the

one on

facilities

the

TF

torpedo

planes,

Grumman

Hellcat

—would scourge Okinawa land and

enemy island's

three operational airfields as well

le Island off

Okinawa's midwestern shore. All

little

— runways,

craft) defenses,

command,

peerless Curtiss Helldiver dive-bombers

fighter-bombers and fighters sea, especially

in tactical

a cruiser's

barracks, warehouses, hangars,

parked planes

— would be

blasted.

AA

(antiair-

Perhaps

just as

important, camera planes would take mosaic strip photographs of the island for map-makers back in Hawaii.

Before dawn of October 10, 1944, while intelligence officers briefed air crews

tops

on Okinawa's

made ready

defenses,

for battle. Elevators

all

seventeen of the

flat-

brought planes topside to

be stationed in rows on teakwood decks awaiting launch or takeoffi

rockets,

Below, armorers armed the planes with bombs, five-inch

twenty-one-inch torpedoes,

or

belts

of .50

cahber

machine-gun ammunition. At dawn pilot-rescue destroyers took station.

With an

ear-piercing swooosh!

those planes that needed

down

the deck to

artificial

bow

catapults hurled aloft

momentum while

others roared

become airborne themselves.

Between daybreak and dusk the American airmen flew 1,396 sorties over

Okinawa, dropping more than

five

hundred tons of

bombs, destroying suicide submarines, flaming enemy

fighters,

sinking a tender, smaller ships, and the power-driven fishing boats in

Naha

harbor, while setting that city of sixty-five thousand per-

sons ablaze. In

all,

ten transports and thirty merchant ships

went

OKINAWA

40

to the bottom, along with half of the power-driven fishing boats

and sixteen smaller warships

—

a serious loss of

Okinawa's patrol

boats and trawlers assigned to supplying the island.

Perhaps more serious were the attacks on Naha warehouses,

where three hundred thousand sacks of Thirty-second five million

Army

for a

rounds of

thousand rounds of light dred rounds of 47 of

enemy

mm

month

rifle

rice

— enough to feed the

—were burned, plus the

loss

of

and machine-gun ammunition, ten

artillery

and mortar

shells,

antitank ammunition.

planes destroyed or

The

and four hunexact

number

damaged was not known. One Jap-

anese general was killed and another wounded, while military

Among civilians

deaths totaled two hundred. died

—

a tragic loss,

ever, the

steel"

— was within

them during

hundred persons

even though unintended. Eventually, how-

Okinawans would understand

them during such

five

attacks

—which

that the safest place for

they called

"typhoons of

Okinawa's numerous caves, which sheltered

the real typhoons that scourged the island. Perhaps

even more important than the damage dealt to Ushijima's lations

were the thousands of

aerial

instal-

photographs taken, which,

with others shot earlier by B-29s flying from China, enabled the

American map-makers l:24,000-scale

map

in

Hawaii to produce

a

fairly accurate

of utmost value to both infantry and

artillery.

Halsey's losses, meanwhile, were minimal: five pilots and four

crewmen

Upon

carried as missing in action and twenty-one planes lost.

the approach of night, Halsey reversed course, speeding

southward again to nawa's cratered

flown

in,

TF

strike

airfields

Formosa, confident that before Oki-

could be repaired and replacement planes

38 could complete

from the Great Loo Choo.

its

mission without intervention

Kamikaze Strike/

franklMs Ordeal CHAPTER

In the middle of

came soften

to an

March

SIX

the planning stages for Operation Iceberg

end and the preinvasion bombardment intended to

up Okinawa

for the attack began.

eight under Admiral Spruance sortied

Now

from

its

Task Force

anchorage

Fifty-

at Ulithi

enemy airpower based on Kyushu. could not have appeared at a more

for the first phase of destroying

Spruance's difficult

fast carriers

time for Admiral Ugaki. Preparations for Ten-Go were

not complete, and even tion's

if

they had been, the Heavenly Opera-

prime targets were to be comparatively defenseless troop

transports and supply ships

— not those seventeen dreadful Amer-

ican flattops with their thousand airplanes, those half-dozen big battleships, those fourteen cruisers

—

Only the

was ready for

Fifth Air Japanese Fleet

eight air groups two were strictly

all

of which could fight back.

one-way

action,

suiciders.

and of

its

Even these

heroic kamikaze had been so few hours in the air that they

still

had

had

difficulty landing their planes.

Kyushu's

fifty-five airfields

not yet been made ready for the anticipated Ugaki's engineers were tunneling into the

raids,

although

hills to shelter pilots,

troops, ordnance, and repair facilities, while camouflaging run-

41

OKINAWA

42

ways and craft.

abandoned

littering

fields

Communications were poor

the Japanese

— and there were

with dummies and useless

—

real

as

they usually were

problems

ders from Ugaki's headquarters at Kanoya.

air-

among

in transmitting or-

Poor mechanical com-

munication inhibited Japanese battle coordination throughout the war, but even worse was the consistent failure to report defeat,

perhaps because to do so would require the unfortunate com-

mander

to

himself.

kill

Probably the worst instance of

peculiarly Japanese weakness was after the Battle of

miral

Yamamoto

there; although

never told the

Army

ing,

On

a

Midway. Ad-

lost four carriers

he informed Premier Hideki Tojo he had been

defeated, he never supplied the details.

nothing.

he had

this

much

Emperor Hirohito heard

smaller scale, but perhaps even

more shock-

was the report to Tokyo Headquarters of the complete an-

nihilation of the

two-thousand-man

Second Battalion,

First Marines,

Ichiki

Detachment by the

on Guadalcanal.

All that

was re-

vealed was that "the attack of the Ichiki Detachment was not entirely successful." Japan's unique ideographic language

was an-

other cause of imprecise orders. Finally, the acrimonious debates that could divide staff planners at every level was

one more hin-

drance; such a furor arose at Imperial Headquarters over whether

or not to use the Special Attack Forces against Spruance's ap-

proaching

One warships

fleet.

side

was against expending the kamikaze against enemy

when

the true purpose of Ten-Go was to destroy as

many

troop transports and supply ships as possible, while the opposing

group argued that

a passive

islaad to such destruction

be any aircraft

Ugaki

He

to hit did.

defense on Kyushu would expose the

from

left to strike

TF

sea

and sky that there wouldn't

58. In the end,

Tokyo ordered

Spruance with what he had.

From

the start of the American attack at 5:45 a.m.

on March 18 and throughout the following day Ugaki hurled 193 planes

— including 69 kamikaze —

at the

tacking in four separate carrier groups.

Americans again

Of these,

161 planes

at-

— or

Kamikaze Strike/Franklin^ s Ordeal 83 percent

—were

the ground.

lost,

a

while another 50 planes were damaged on

Even with such staggering

gratified, for his pilots

43

losses

Admiral Ugaki was

— again retrieving victory from defeat with

few strokes of the pen, and for

during those two days

— had

battleships, three cruisers,

whom

all

minnows were whales

reported hitting

two

five carriers,

and one unidentified

ship.

But they

reported these "losses" with such joyful shouts of victory that

Ugaki assumed that they were withdrawn because

his fleet

sunk, and that Spruance had

all

was so badly crippled that the Oki-

nawa invasion would be postponed Actually,

TF

pled. Japanese

58

for

some

— though shaken —was

bombers had indeed scored

time.

far

from being

hits,

crip-

damaging four

big carriers: Wasp seriously and Franklin so badly that she was

presumed

lost. It

was

at exactly 7:08 a.m.

ordeal began. At that

lin's

tected

moment

by radar emerged from

550-pound bombs from only

wooden

flight deck.

The

first

a

a

on March 19

a lone

that Frank-

Judy* bomber unde-

low overcast to drop two

hundred

feet

above the

flattop's

missile pierced the deck just ahead

of a pair of Helldiver bombers, while the second penetrated

among

a

aft

group of twenty-nine fueled and armed Helldivers,

Zoom-

Avengers, and Corsairs awaiting their turn to be launched.

ing up and away from the double explosions' flame and shock waves, the Judy was

unharmed by

her by the carrier's

AA

mander

the fusillade of shells fired at

gunners, but was shot

down by Com-

E. B. Parker, chi^i oi Franklin's air group. But

its

destruc-

was small compensation for the dreadful damage

tion

inflicted

on the

it

had

carrier.

Both bombs exploded

in the

hangar deck, setting

afire

twenty-

three planes, fueled, armed, and awaiting their turn to be

by elevator to the

flight

moved

deck above. Flames and explosives

flash-

ing fi-om the stricken planes instantly killed most of a fine of about

*

Japanese warplanes were divided into feminine names for bombers and mas-

culine ones for fighters.

OKINAWA

44

two hundred

and airmen waiting to descend to the mess

sailors

deck below for breakfast. Almost simultaneously

a

huge and grow-

ing cloud of black smoke enveloped Franklin, obscuring her from the sight of surrounding ships.

On per,

the navigation bridge concussions struck Franklin's skip-

Captain Leslie Gehres, knocking him sprawling. Jumping

erect,

he was horrified to see "a sheet of flame come out from

under the starboard

side of the flight

board batteries and spreading that "a great

At the same

instant,

star-

Gehres saw

column of flame and black smoke came out from

the forward elevator well." his ship,

aft.

deck" engulfing the

To

clear the

smoke and flame from

he ordered Quartermaster V. R. Ryan to steer Franklin

to the right.

Ryan

did,

"island" superstructure

but succeeded in surrounding the entire

— himself and the skipper included —

in a

cloud of hot, oily smoke issuing from the parked planes burning aft.

Realizing that his ship was also stricken in

its

stern,

Gehres

ordered Ryan to swing the carrier the other way, meanwhile ordering the still-functioning engine

room

two-thirds. Almost at once the scorching

to increase speed

smoke was blown

by

clear

of Franklin.

Now

there ensued a spate of morning-long blasts,

from bombs and Tiny

The Tiny Tim were

Tim

mosdy

twelve-inch rockets stored on deck.

especially frightening to

men

trying to fight

Commander Joe Taylor, the ship's execit, "Some screamed by the bridge to star-

the flames, because, as utive, later described

board,

some

to port and

even in the midst of

nor^Taylor

this

some

up the

flight deck." Yet,

death-dealing holocaust, neither Gehres

lost their sense

he saw Parker approaching, admiral told you

straight

of humor. "Joe," Gehres said "I'll

when you were

when

have to say the same thing the last

bombed: your

face

is

dirty

as hefl!"

Grinning, the knot in his stomach quickly coming undone,

Parker hurried to the

From

flight

deck to organize fire-fighting

parties.

there he hastened to the hangar deck to organize the same

Kamikaze Strike/Franklin's Ordeal

Because foam and

details.

CO2 were

useless to squelch the inferno

pumps began sup-

raging on Franklin's decks, a pair of emergency plying salt water to the

hundreds of

sailors

now

hoses

fire

45

put into play. Meanwhile,

and airmen trapped by the flames took the

only recourse possible to save themselves: they jumped overboard to a

man,

until there

side of the carrier.

were long

strings of heads

bobbing on either

While Franklin pulled ahead of the swimmers

at a steady eight knots, pilot-rescue destroyers closed

her stern to

pick up the survivors. Eventually they rescued hundreds.

Both to Captain Gehres and Rear Admiral R. E. Davison,

commander of Task Group

58.2,

badly hurt and might go under.

it

To

was

clear that Franklin

was

continue to direct his ships

and planes against the enemy, Davison had no other choice but to

remove

his flag to

another ship. But as he prepared to board

come

the light cruiser Santa Fe, which he had ordered to

along-

side the blazing Franklin to help fight fires

and take off wounded,

he was pleased to hear Gehres

any proposal to aban-

don

flatly reject

Gehres knew that perhaps three hundred of

ship.

were trapped below

in a

explained. Meanwhile, Dr. J. sailors

L.

I'd get

Fuelling,

from

—

them

ship's sit

terrified

enough

It is

out," he

physician,

quietly and

—who would

in the stifling heat, the only air reaching

a hole in the ship's side just big

through.

a

by ordering them to

not consume oxygen by talking. As they sat not be?

men

mess compartment beneath the blazing

hangar deck. "I had promised these kids

calmed the trapped

his

them came

to pass a baseball

probable that they might have suffocated

rescued soon, and that succor did

come from

if

not

brave junior-grade

a

Heutenant named Donald Gary.

As

ship's fuel

and water

officer,

Gary was

famifiar with the

maze of passageways and compartments belowdecks, and he

upon

this

jackets

knowledge to grope

his

way

to locate the trapped blue-

and lead them topside to safety

he received

a

relied

—

a daring feat for

which

Medal of Honor.

That highest

military award in the gift of the United States

OKINAWA

46

went

also

to Chaplain

phen Jurka,

To Commander

Joseph O'Callahan.

Franklin's navigator, Father O'Callahan

stirring sight.

He

seemed

Ste-

was "a soul-

be everywhere, giving Extreme

to

Unction to the dead and dying, urging the men on and himself handling hoses, jettisoning ammunition and doing everything ht could to save the ship."

He seemed

moving through the smoke with the beacon, "his head

like a

bowed

prayer." Marveling at his

never saw a killed

man

as

composed on

cross

his

as his

Master

helmet shining

slightly as if in meditation or

Captain Gehres

serenity.

said:

"I

so completely disregard the danger of being

." .

.

Perhaps the most awesome feat of seamanship during Franklin's

entire ordeal

who

daringly

fight fires

came from Captain Hal

slammed

Fitz of the Santa Fe,

into the carrier's side, remaining there to

and take off wounded

as well as able sailors. In spite

continuing explosions

like strings

gedly held Santa Fe

fast,

his

of

of giant firecrackers, Fitz dog-

own

hoses joining Franklin's in

dousing flames, meanwhile taking aboard eight hundred of the carrier's

seamen.

By noon

the fires were dying

down and

frequent and dangerous. But Franklin was

the explosions less

still

dead in the water,

her black gangs having been driven fi-om the engine rooms by intense heat.

Commandeering

mander Taylor

a

pickup force of messmen.

successfully seized a towline

cruiser Pittsburgh

and began

waters at a limping speed of

a

Com-

from the heavy

crawling withdrawal from Japanese

six knots.

That night

a special detail

equipped with breathing apparatus reduced Franklin's dangerous list»-

of thirty degrees while a party of daring volunteers braved

smoke and heat ers.

Franklin began to

The

room and relight move under its own power.

to enter a boiler

a pair

of boil-

next day, with six boilers operating, the carrier dropped

the Pittsburgh tow and went cleaving through the waves at a

spanking fifteen knots. But then, in early afternoon, hearts

— Kamikaze Strike/Franklin^ s Ordeal breathing free at

last constricted in fear

Judy bomber came gliding out of the

AA

operate the flattop's plentiful

—

less

40

until

Without power

sun.

almost grazing the carrier

two hundred

feet

it

so accurately that the Judy

at its release point,

and

its

bombs

in the sea

about

ship.

Soon Franklin was out of the impact

area.

Captain Gehres

human losses. He was shocked to find that men had been killed and another 1,428 either wounded

took stock of his

724 of his

or unavailable and presumed to be aboard the

two

heavy quadruple

a

— exploded harmlessly

from the

to

guns, Franklin appeared help-

mm gun mount around and fired

now

when another bold

again

another crew of volunteers wrestled

was forced to nose upward

47

cruisers assigned to rescue duty.

ficers

and 603 enlisted

many

of them were

succumb tuted a fallen

men

still

Harbor, those biscuit"

who saw

By

103 of-

the ship, although

many more

Gehres wisely

insti-

decks of wreckage, and scour-

the time Franklin reached Pearl

her decks looking

like

"a shredded wheat

were amazed that she had survived the four-thousand-

mile voyage back to base; and

down

fatigue,

still

distracting work: burying their

at sea, clearing the

ing blackened compartments.

sail

Rather than have

combat

program of punishing and

comrades

destroyers and

But there were

present able to

in shock.

to the paralysis of

five

the hawse pipes off

when her anchors went clattering York's Brooklyn Navy Yard she

New

looked "almost presentable." In truth, because of her gallant skipper and crew, Franklin was by far the most shattered carrier on either side to survive

With Wasp and once reduced his

its

ordeal.

Franklin out of action. Admiral Spruance at

his striking strength to three groups, distributing

far

—with few Kyushu — he retired

remaining vessels among them, after which

well sweeps over still-numbed and battered

out to sea to refuel. Spruance's

flyers

a

claimed a total of

hundred enemy planes destroyed, three hundred shot down battles:

fare-

an estimate that seems exaggerated.

Still,

five

in air

they had cer-

OKINAWA

48

tainly

decimated Admiral Ugaki's Ten-Go force, leaving him with

about thirty-six hundred of his original sand planes. not, as

Worse were

command

of four thou-

his losses in skilled pilots.

he had judged from

And he had

his aviators' wildly optimistic reports

of enemy ships sunk, in any way delayed the invasion of Okinawa.

The "Americans" CHAPTE R SEVEN

Never before

— and God

willing,

may

it

never be so again

— had

there been an invasion armada the equal of the 1,600 seagoing ships carrying 545,000

American GIs and Marines that streamed

across the Pacific in that fateful spring of 1945 island of

Okinawa. In firepower, troops, and tonnage

even the more-famous

D

day in

that invasion, except for the

ance in

bound

air

Normandy on June

it

6,

for the

eclipsed

1944. In

enormous thirty-to-one preponder-

power conferred upon him by 12,000

Eisenhower commanded only 150,000 Allied

aircraft.

General

assault troops

(com-

pared to Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner's attacking force of 184,000

GIs and Marines). True, Eisenhower's support-

number from being seaworthy. And the

most of these were

ing craft would eventually

5,300, but

far

Allied naval forces off the five

Normandy

landing beaches could not approach the firepower of

Admiral Spruance's Task Force Fifty-eight.

Nor was

there any

comparison in the distances traveled from staging area to battleground. Only about 30 miles of English Channel separated southern England from western France, or at most perhaps 400 miles to faraway ports in the

United Kingdom, but ships leaving the 49

OKINAWA

50

West Coast

ports of embarkation at San Francisco and Seattle

sailed 7,355 miles to the target. Yet, in feats of unrivaled sea-

manship

not generally recognized, the 1,300 ships arriving

still

Hagushi Beaches of Okinawa did get there

off the

landings.

And

there were

still

300

left

in time for the

behind in the various an-

chorages stretching across the western ocean.

From

Seattle

and San Francisco no fewer than 3,200 miles

had to be traversed before these newest and farthest-away

vessels

could reach Hawaii, the point from which the stupendous American counter-attack was launched to distant.

Soon these

its

last battle

4,155 miles

ships were putting in at the island battle-

grounds whose names they bore (Guadalcanal, Bougainville, Tarawa, and the lesser battles of the Gilberts and Marshalls, Britain, the Admiralties,

New

up the

New

Buna, and Sidor) to begin the long drive

Guinea coast

— then

staging up through the latest

battlegrounds at Peleliu, Leyte, and Saipan-Tinian-Guam.

Under

unmenaced

across

the Stars and Stripes they roved boldly and that Pacific

Ocean

that

was now an American

lake, for the Phil-

ippines were by then subdued; of the mighty Japanese

Navy

was to guard the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere pan's

the

euphemism

for

its

stolen empire there

most powerful warship

afloat,

that

—Ja-

— only great Yamato,

had survived the holocaust of

Of the emperor's glorious attack on the Day of Infamy had awak-

disaster of the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

young

eagles

whose sneak

ened the sleeping American

mained

to join the ragged

giant, only a

warships were also in the invasion

twenty-two

vessels, for in

few weary veterans re-

remnant of Japanese airpower. fleet,

British

a fast carrier force

of

Europe the gate had been found open

Remagen Bridge, American troops were over the Rhine, and Old Queen of the Waves was sending help to her erstwhile daughter, now Sovereign of the Seas. Fleet Admiral Nimitz was still in overaU command in Hawaii as he had been when the Japanese were stopped at Midway, when the long charge began at Guadalcanal. Admiral Raymond Spruat

the

— The "Americans"

commanded

ance

51

the Fifth Fleet, and there was the saltiest salt

giving orders to the expeditionary force. Vice Admiral Rich-

still

mond

Kelly Turner had brought the Marines to Guadalcanal and

roaming

now, nearly three years

later, still

an old bathrobe,

profane perfectionist with beetling brow

still

and abrasive tongue, scruple to

tell

men

who would

planner

a matchless

also not

how to beach his boat, Kelly Turner Tenth Army to Okinawa. Many of the officers

the coxswain

was bringing the and

a

his flagship bridge in

aboard Turner's ships

— especially the Marines —were

not ecstatic to have the Old Salt in charge.

The

Leathernecks could not forget his monstrous blunder

at

Amphibious Force commander

at

when he was

Guadalcanal,

this first invasion in the

the

long-awaited American

counter-offensive.

In the night of August 8-9, 1942, the Battle of Savo Island better

known

Battle of the

to the sailors

Four

Astoria, Quincy, fifth,

Chicago,

violated a

Ducks"

Sitting

Vincennes,

had

its

—Turner had

as "the

lost four cruisers:

and the Australian Canberra, while

bow blown

commander's

of what you think the

and Leathernecks involved

off.

He

lost

basic principle: never act

enemy

will

on the premise

do but what he has the

to do. Thus, he was unprepared for battle

force led by Rear Admiral Gunichi

a

them because he

when

a

capacity

Japanese task

Mikawa, the hero of Pearl

Harbor, came tearing down the Slot the day

after the

Americans

landed to surprise Turner in a disaster that might have been a catastrophe. Guadalcanal might have been reconquered by the

enemy but

for the tenacity of the

— and wisely most annihilated — abandoned

Marines

so, his fire

sailing

three

Turner quickly

support force having been

al-

away with empty transports and some

supply ships not even half unloaded, others

And

whom

still

deep in the water.

the U.S.

Navy

did not return to Guadalcanal in force until

months

later.

But for Turner's friendship with Nimitz, he

might have

lost his

head

Pearl Harbor. But he did

just as

Admiral Husband Kimmel did

come back

again and again

— risking

at

his

ships in the submarine-infested waters of the Coral Sea, to bring

OKINAWA

52

reinforcements and badly needed supplies to Major General Al-

exander Vandegrift.

This writer well remembers the Four Sitting Ducks, for our battahon was lost in the jungle that night, and the monster explosions that shook the trees and flames that seemingly set the

clouds on

fire

When

were not suggestive of good times to come.

we

returned to the beach the next day and saw not a single ship

on

a

bay that had been

knew Elliott

on

D

that

we were

—an African day by

supplies

a

of masts twenty-four hours

full

Worse, our

alone.

all

was one

slaver if ever there

— had been sunk

Zero that crashed her amidships, sending

— beans,

bullets,

and barbed wire

— down

Jap,

I

came down with

had Jap clothing on.

for the next few months.

that

my mother

into

Davy Jones's

had given

malaria, and the

We

also lived

Worse

all

our

to the bottom,

along with our extra clothing and mosquito nets, so that us quickly

we

earlier,

ship, the George F.

first

time

many of shot a

I

on wormy Japanese

rice

for

me, the portable typewriter

me on my

sixteenth birthday also sank

locker, thus

my naive

wrecking

plan to fight by

day and write by night.

So those Americans

sailing

toward Okinawa

who had been on

"the Canal" were not enchanted to have Kelly Turner at the helm again. It

was well known that he was

degrift's flesh, trying to take personal

ments he brought tactical traps

when

a constant

command

thorn in Van-

of the reinforce-

to the island, planning to deploy

actually he

exactly nothing about

them

in

had no authority on land and knew

ground warfare. One infuriated

officer

wrote: "Turner was a martinet; very, very gifted, but he was stub-

born, opinionated, conceited

.

.

.

thought that he could do

anything better than anybody in the world ... officers,

By and

large naval

they were wary of trying to run land operations, but

Turner, no; because Turner knew everything!"

who

Soldiers

were given

a

served at

New

Georgia

in the

Solomons

sampling of Admiral Turner's hectoring

style

also

when

— The "Americans" he was playing general wold,

commander of

53

— especially Major General Oswald GrisArmy

the

Fourteenth Corps. Turner re-

peatedly usurped Griswold's authority, divided his critics

maintained

—

staff,

prolonged what turned out to be

and

—

his

a miserable

campaign. Whether or not General Simon Bolivar Buckner was

aware of Turner's tendency to interfere

be that the Tenth tral Pacific

Army commander

is

as a

not known, and

newcomer

was unfamiliar with the amphibious

it

to the

may

Cen-

chief's abrasive

personahty.

Buckner was the son of the Confederate general of the same name, so often described by many military historians Actually, Buckner's father

the Southland, for

as

"famous."

was rather more infamous throughout

was he who had accepted the humiliating

it

terms of unconditional surrender of Fort Donelson offered to him

by

his fellow

this adjective

West Point famous

cadet U.

S.

Grant.

It

was to Grant that

he did become famous

really applied, for

not only because his capture of Donelson was received in the

North with delirium retreat for the feat,

(these

Union) but

were the early dark days of defeat and also because his initials U.S. fitted his

and he became known thereafter

der" Grant. Buckner junior "the Old

Man

—

"Unconditional Surren-

some

inexplicable reason called

—was

definitely unlikely to sub-

for

of the Mountain"

as

mit to the sort of bluff Grant ran on his father.

A big man,

ruddy-

faced and white-haired, avid for the conditioning of troops, he

had served four years

in Alaska

and the Aleutians, where he had

improved the defenses of the North

Pacific.

He

had hoped to

lead the invasion of Japan from this region, but the thrust

the Aleutians was never made. Instead

it

from

was coming from the

Central Pacific, and Buckner had been called to Hawaii to lead it.

His

command was

old divisions.

the

Tenth Army,

a

new number

for seven

These were the Seventh, Twenty-seventh, Seventy-

seventh, and Ninety-sixth Infantry Divisions of the U.S.

Twenty-fourth

Army

Corps commanded by Major General John

OKINAWA

54

Hodge, and the

First,

Second, and Sixth Marine Divisions of the

Third Amphibious Corps under the

Roy

Guadalcanal, Major General

silver-haired veteran

of

Geiger.

and especially the replacements who

All of these troops,

fleshed out formations left understrength by battle losses, disease,

or accident, hated the Pacific with a fierce, personal venom. arriving in the islands they stood breathless at the

rail

Upon

of their

transports, drinking in the beauty of a tropical paradise seen

the sea, especially at sunrise or sunset. But then,

ashore

— even

on

a

peaceful island

— they

beauty, a face as hideous as Medusa's.

The

from

when they went

saw the backside of first

sioned by the ambivalent South Seas were the

to be so disillu-

men

of the First

Marine Division when they came on deck the morning of August 7,

1942,

who

stood at the

rail

of their ships studying Guadalcanal.

My buddies and I — waiting to follow our machine guns down the cargo nets to the wooden Higgins boats waiting and wallowing in the swells I

—were enchanted

remembered

until after

landed. Years later,

that scene:

She was beautiful seen from the

Her towering

The

long island.

sea, this slender

central mountains ran

graceful east-west keel. line,

we

down her

sun seemed to

kiss

spine in a

her timber-

and lay shimmering on open patches of tan grass dap-

pling the green of her forests. Gentle waves washed her

beaches white, raising

a gHtter

of sun and water and scoured

sand beneath fringing groves of coconut trees leaning lan-

guorously seaward with nodding, star-shaped heads.

She was

beautiful, but

beneath her loveliness, within the

necklace of sand and palm, under the coiffure of her sunkissed treetops with

its tiara

of jeweled birds, she was a mass

of slops and stinks and pestilence; of scum-crested lagoons

and

vile

swamps inhabited by

spiders as big as your

fist

giant crocodiles; a place of

and wasps

as

long

as

your

finger,

of lizards the length of your leg or as brief as your thumb;

The "Americans" of ants that bite Hke

fire,

of tree-leeches that

suck; of scorpions without the guts to

tipedes

whose

of inflamed scuttle

foul scurrying across

flesh,

— and of

55

kill

when

in clouds

rats

the

By

swarms of

day, black

est,

feed

on

night, mosquitoes

Night or day, the

monsoon life

comes

it

on

all

rains

a

come; and

in torrents, conferring a

that tangled green of vine,

and bush, dripping on eternally

fern, creeper

flies

— bringing malaria, dengue or any one of

moist mushrooming

soar

skin leaves a track

and bats and carrion birds and of a myr-

filthy exotic fevers. it is

and

themselves, of cen-

human

open cuts and make them ulcerous. By

dozen

fasten

of snakes that slither and land crabs that

iad of stinging insects.

come

fall,

in the rain for-

nourishing kingly hardwoods so abundantly that they

more than

thoroughly

a

hundred

feet into the air, rotting

at their base that a rare

wind

them

so

— or perhaps only

—

man leaning against them will bring them crashing down. And Guadalcanal stank. She was sour with the odor of her own decay, her breath so hot and humid, so sullen and so still, that all those hundreds of thousands of Americans who

a

came

to her during the ensuing three years of

and swore to

feel the vitality

war cursed

oozing from them in

a steady

by Buckner's troops

at the

stream of enervating heat.

The same island

— then

reaction was felt

huge staging area

a

— and

from the same

same

division.

George McMillan wrote of the Marine replace-

Staff Sergeant

ment on Guadalcanal who ran from his tent at dusk and began to pound his fists against a coconut tree. "I hate you, goddamit, I

hate you," the

the

cr)^:

"Hit

Almost

it

all

man

cried, sobbing,

and from another tent came

once for me!"

the troops of Buckner's

Tenth Army shared

loathing, for they had not enjoyed malaria or

monsoons or

this

play-

ing hide-and-seek with crocodiles or scorpions, snakes or poison-

ous centipedes. Indeed, as

late as

February 1945, General Hodge's

OKINAWA

56

infantry divisions were

still

mopping up on Leyte

in weather and

Hodge was dismayed. A commander who had served during

terrain exactly duplicating Guadalcanal's.

veteran and respected infantry

mop-up

the

Collins

—

at

Guadalcanal under the famous "Lightning Joe"

the Japanese on

New

is

chief of staff

had again defeated in the

New

Solomons,

were dearly

that his troops

today called "Rest and Rehabilitation":

beer-and-girls furlough in lington,

— and

Georgia and Bougainville

Hodge knew

as well as Leyte,

of what

Army

a future

Melbourne or Sydney,

i.e.,

in

need

a rousing

Wel-

Australia;

Zealand; or even Manila. But he was not able to

withdraw them fi-om combat

until

March

Great Loo Choo scheduled for April Yet, like the Marines training

1,

with

— exactly

D

day

at the

month away. on Guadalcanal, when the GIs 1

a

heard that their next campaign was to be on Okinawa, they were inexplicably

reassured

— perhaps

because that island's highest

temperature of 85 degrees in no way approached the "paradise" reading of 120.

Before landing day, meanwhile, the Seventy-seventh Division

would be seventh its

in action

— known

as

shoulder patch

on the Kerama

Islands.

GIs of the Seventy-

"the Statue of Liberty Division" because of

— had fought

at

Guam

alongside those fuzzy-

who pinned on them

cheeked Marine youngsters

the nickname

commander was Major General Anled them on Leyte. They were the first

of "the old Bastards." Their

drew Bruce, who had in action because

of a

''''kamikazed''^

islands with

also

Admiral Turner, having already

felt

the shudder

ship beneath his feet, wanted a safe group of

deep anchorages to be used

as a "ships' hospital" to

which the victims of Japanese suiciders could be towed and paired. General

Hodge

also

wanted

a base for

long-range

re-

artillery

to support his corps's landing.

On

the night of

March

25, the

Marines of Major Jim Jones's

veteran Reconnaissance Battalion paddled their rubber boats to

Kerama

to scout the

enemy. Reassured by their reports of

little

opposition, the Seventy-seventh landed there the next day, de-

The "Americans" stroying the

one

islets

On

lairs

of Ushijima's suicide boats as they took the reef

after another.

the

morning of March

how

realized

57

cruel their

29, soldiers of the 306th Infantry*

enemy could

be. In a valley

below their

wounded Okinawan ciamong them. They had dis-

position they found about 150 dead and vilians,

many women and

children

emboweled themselves with grenades the Japanese had given them, after telling them the Americans would torture and murder the

men and

rape the

women.

In another three days Hodge's two

other divisions would be storming those Hagushi Beaches that

Ushijima had chosen not to defend.

Major General James Bradley's Ninety-sixth Division would be on the right flank of the Twenty-fourth Corps

from Leyte's jungle and depleted by fierce battle for

Catmon

assault.

losses suffered

Hill (and Hke

Fresh

during the

Hodge's other

divisions

denied replacements meant for them but sent to Europe to help crush Hitler's sixth

would

last

gasp in the Battle of the Bulge), the Ninety-

face a far

more punishing

ordeal of blood and

mud

while attacking Ushijima's monster Swiss cheese of steel and rock.

The

soldiers of the Ninety-sixth called themselves "the

Dead-

eyes" because Brigadier General Claudius Easley, the division's assistant

commander, was

a crack shot, a

somewhat

illogical ex-

tension of the part for the whole; especially in a formation so recently formed and

new

to combat. t In the division's spearheads

would be the 381st Regiment, under Colonel Michael "Screamin'

This means "regiment," not division. In American military parlance a regiment formed by three battalions is known by its "arm." Thus the First Regiment of the First Marine Division is called "First Marines," or the Seventh Regiment of the First Cavalry Division "Seventh Cavalry." Too often historians with no *

military experience mistake these designations to

formation that

— whether

infantry, cavalry, or

mean

Marine

division, a

—

is

much

larger

usually formed by

three "line" regiments and an artillery regiment with other special troops.

—

This comment in no way is intended to demean these gallant GIs or anyone has looked upon the horrid Medusa face of battle but appears only because it might be asked why other nicknames are mentioned but not the Ninetyt

who

sixth's.

—

OKINAWA

58

Mike" Halloran, and Colonel Edwin May's 383rd. Eddy May was a fine commander whose iron discipline was softened by his compassion for his troops. General soldier in the entire

On

the

left

Hodge

considered him the finest

Twenty-fourth Corps.

flank of

Hodge's zone would be

most expe-

his

rienced division: the Seventh, called "the Hour-Glass Division"

because of

its

shoulder patch and

Archibald Arnold.

Its

commanded by Major General

GIs had seen action

at

Attn in the Aleutians

with their subzero cold, then Kwajalein in the Marshalls with decidedly yet infinitely

more amenable

heat,

and

its

finally those

dripping, enervating, malarial jungles of Leyte. In corps reserve

would be the 382nd Regiment of the Ninety-sixth Division, while the Seventy-seventh Division

Keramas would be committed

still

engaged

in

mopping up

the

to the down-island attack

once the

landings at Hagushi had been completed, Yontan and

Kadena

Airfields

had been

seized,

and the Twenty-fourth Corps wheeled

right (or south) to attack Ushijima's Swiss cheese.

Probably the most experienced and famous formation in the

American armed forces was the

First

Marine Division of Major

General Geiger's Third Amphibious Corps. alone

—where

on August

7,

1942,

On

Guadalcanal

Leathernecks landed to

its

launch the long, three-year American counter-offensive

had been in combat until

out

December

relief, if

26),

such

a total of 142 days

men

statistics are

kept anywhere. During this the tide of the Pacific

fifty

thousand Japanese

Island." In this dreadful carnage they Collins's infantry after 9,

five-

War against

of "the Old Breed" were responsible for de-

straying most of the

ber

(from the landing date

probably a record for sustained combat with-

month campaign, which turned Japan, these

— they

command

were

who

fell

assisted

passed to the

on "Death by General

Army on Decem-

1942, and especially by General Geiger's "Cactus" Air

Force, the Marine, Navy, and U.S. literally blasted

South Pacific

Army

Air Force pilots

who

the once-dreaded Japanese Zero fighter out of the

skies while littering the

bottom of

its

waters with

The "Americans" sunken Nipponese

ships. After "the island," the First

the vicinity of Finschhafen, captured Britain,

59

and seized Peleliu

while exterminating

its

dead and wounded

4,000 Japanese defenders. Major General First.

Born

expert,

an observer in

as

Marshal Pietro Badoglio. Becoming an

Italy's

his

Puerto Rico, he

in

had been graduated from Annapolis, serving

tillery

New

Cape Gloucester on

at a cost of 1,749

Pedro del Valle commanded the

Ethiopia with

fought in

much

guns had

to

do with the

victor}'^

arat

Guadalcanal.

The

Marine Division was commanded by another

Sixth

who

Guadalcanal veteran: Major General Lemuel Shepherd,

would one day be commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps. His was an unblooded 70 percent of

unit,

men and

its

New

sometimes called "the officers

Breed," yet

were veterans of combat

in

orphan regiments that had been combined under the

Sixth's

em-

blem of the

twelve

rifle

silver

Crusader's Sword. Only two of

known

battahons had never

and among

its

"the music" of

bantam

called "the Brute," the sarcastic

nickname that Annapolis midshipmen pinned on its

rowing crews. In the ranks of

this

all

the coxswains

most gung ho of Marine

were such improbable swashbucklers

divisions

bullets,

battle-wise veterans were Lieutenant Colonel Vic-

tor Kulak, a belligerent

of

its

bombs and

as

twenty-year-old

Corporal Donald "Rusty" Golar, the self-styled Glory Kid.

A

brawny redhead. Rusty had fought with the Twenty-second Reg-

Guam

iment on rine," he

would

and say,

won

a

Bronze

grinning

when

Star.

"I'm

his buddies

a

storybook

Ma-

laughed outright.

"I'm lookin' for glory, and I'm lookin' for Japs." There were glory boys from collegiate football, too. Colonel Alan Shapley, com-

mander of the Fourth Marines, had been one of the Naval Academy's

finest

athletes.

Lieutenant

George Murphy of the

Twenty-ninth Marines had been captain of the Notre ball

Dame

foot-

team. In General Geiger's Third Corps reserve was the Second

rine Division. Its

Ma-

Second Marines had joined the original landing

OKINAWA

60

on Guadalcanal

to be joined later

division. Derisively

by

their

comrades of the entire

nicknamed "the Hollywood Marines" because

they were based in California, they were not playacting

waded ashore citadel that

at

Tarawa

in 1943 to take in four days the island

Rear Admiral Keiji Shibasaki had claimed could not

men

be captured by "a million

on

when they

in ten

to fight the grinding battle at Saipan in 1944.

Thomas Watson

still

commanded

They went

thousand years."

Major General

the Second. Because his Leath-

ernecks had staged the eminently successful feint of the textbook shore-to-shore operation at Tinian, he had been asked to do

it

again at the Minatoga Beaches on Okinawa. It

was

fitting that the

commander of

the Third

Amphibious

Corps, which included these three Marine divisions, should be

man more prone

Geiger, the gruff and grizzled white bear of a to deeds than words.

many many

Though

a flying general,

he had been in so

other invasions since Guadalcanal and had devoured so textbooks on tactics that he had emerged as an excellent

leader of ground troops as well.

— the Twenty-seventh Infantry commanded by Major General George Griner — was to Finally,

Tenth Army's Seventh Division

be in "floating reserve"

at

Okinawa.

If all

Twenty-seventh would occupy the island

For

a division

went well

there, the

as a garrison division.

supposedly blooded in combat, such an assignment

was not particularly dangerous, but the Twenty-seventh's record in the Pacific

had not been outstanding.

Guard

outfit, the

where

sixty-five

1944.

On

the

Twenty-seventh saw

hundred of

first

its

many

night

were panicked by Japanese scare bered only

five

hundred

lightly

A New

its first

York National

action

on Makin,

GIs landed on November 20, of these half- trained guardsmen

tactics. Actually, the

armed garrison

enemy num-

soldiers holding

paper-thin fortifications. But they held out for a week, though

outnumbered thirteen

to

one and with almost no

match the overwhelming American superiority

artillery to

in ordnance.

Dur-

The "Americans"

61

ing this delay the escort carrier Liscome Bay was sunk on the

day of troops

with a large loss of

battle,

—

it

never

is

—

for as

life. It

Napoleon

was not the

said:

"There

fault

are

last

of the

no bad

regiments, only bad colonels."

Many

of the Twenty-seventh's officers from Major General

Ralph Smith down to the lowliest second lieutenant were fective; in fact,

during maneuvers in Hawaii more than into

inef-

they were so indifferent to their responsibility that

Honolulu hotels

a

few of them checked

for a night of revelry while their

men

slept

on the bare ground. Again on Saipan under Smith the Twenty-

moved

seventh in between two Marine divisions

so slowly that

it

lagged fifteen hundred yards behind these advancing formations.

Thus

a giant

U was formed with the Twenty-seventh at the base,

presenting the

enemy with an

unrivaled opportunity to exploit

Immediately Marine Lieutenant General Holland

Mad"

it.

M. "Howlin'

commander of the Fifth Corps, relieved Ralph Smith and replaced him with another Army general. This episode Smith,

exploded with the loudest bang of the Pacific's shameful Army-

Navy rivalry.

Army generals had been relieved in the Pacific, but that had been by Army generals. For a Marine general to have the insolence to remove an Army general was to Prior to Saipan five

Twentycommand, and he

join cardinal sin to unforgivable insult. Actually, the

seventh improved after General Griner took

was

still

follow do.

in

command

at

him and redeem

Okinawa, with many brave their division's

The Twenty-seventh was not

men, compared

honor

24,000 for the Marines

—which brought

eager to

—which they would

at full strength,

to the 22,000 of the other

men

only 16,143

Army divisions and

the

their replacements with

them. Altogether, General Buckner's seven combat divisions

bered 183,000 men, of

Hagushi Beaches

whom

— half again

num-

154,000 would be in assault on the as

many

as Ushijima's 110,000, al-

though many of the Japanese commander's troops were raw Old-

OKINAWA

62

nawa

conscripts.

However,

traditional military doctrine specifies

that an attacking force, especially an invader

from the

sea,

should

possess at least a three-to-one superiority over the defense.

These, then, were the troops with which General Buckner intended to make rapid conquest of Okinawa, unaware that only

had Americans encountered such

at Peleliu

At Okinawa Ushijima commanded

position. as

many men and had

formidable fixed

a

at least

depth ten times

fortified in

twenty times

many

as

square

That Buckner was unaware of the

grueling, step-by-step,

shot-for-shot battle that awaited

him was

neither his nor his in-

telligence's fault, for the winter

and spring clouds that shielded

miles.

Loo Choo from

the Great

the skies had

of enemy defenses extremely

difficult,

made

aerial

pinpointing

while the Japanese, unri-

valed at camouflage, had so artfully concealed their caves and crevasses that a

man might

stand but a few paces from a 47

antitank gun and never notice

mm

it.

Because Imperial General Headquarters wanted to bleed the

Americans white

at

Okinawa

just as dearly as the

Chiefs of Staff desired to seize rifice

every

Loo Choo

man in

in his

it,

command

United States

Ushijima was prepared to sacto soak the soil of the

Great

American blood.

In the wardrooms of the troop transports flowing up the curve of the world, nervous planners pored over aerial

montages of enemy

positions,

maps and those skimpy

some of them delighted

there seemed to be so few pillboxes and blockhouses, others, pra(;tical

— remembering

claiming:

On

"No

Biak, Peleliu, and

resistance,

the troop decks

huh? Wait

till

we

Iwo

that

more

— scornfully

ex-

get ashore!"

most of the conversation was about the

deadly habu, a long, thick, dark snake whose bite was supposed to have

no known remedy. Intelligence

said the

thing like a cobra, even displaying pictures of

venomous-looking

reptile,

it.

habu was someIt

was indeed

a

but in the lighthearted way of the

The "Americans"

63

American warrior, Buckner's troops made jokes about

it,

and the

habu soon passed into the immortal GI-Marine menagerie of the goony-birds of

Midway, the upside-down pissing-possum of

Guadalcanal, Australia's lunatic-lunged kookaburra, the "beavers"

New

of the North African beaches, the indecent snow-snake of Iceland.

Zealand kiwi, and the

The men

speculated so

much

about the habu that they almost forgot the Japanese, although officers frequently "held school"

on the weather decks

to stress

the dangers of their objective.

"From Okinawa," one lieutenant told his platoon, "we can bomb the Japs anywhere China, Japan, Formosa ..."

—

"Yeah," It

was

a sergeant

to the south

and

fifty-five

but such discouraging information the troops.

from veterans such Division,

on Kyushu

airfields

to the north,

few dozen scattered throughout the southern Ryukyus,

as well as a

among

vice versa."

of course, that the Japanese had sixty-five

true,

on Formosa

mumbled, "and

who

More as

is

not normally disseminated

pointed and helpful information came

Corporal Al Biscansin of the Sixth Marine

offered this earnest advice to the boots:

"When you

aren't

moving up or

firing,

keep both ends down!

The GI Bill of Rights don't mean a thing to a dead Marine." The GI Bill rivaled the habu as a topic of conversation, for a surprising number of these young men intended to go to college when the war was over. They even expected that great event to happen soon.

"Home canal's

alive in '45,"

they

said, a

happy revision of Guadal-

gloomy estimate of "the Golden Gate

in '48."

They sang

"Good-bye, Mama, I'm off to Okinawa," and joked about the latest

horrendous estimates of American disaster broadcast by Ra-

dio Tokyo.

Admiral Ugaki had already made the mistake of believing that his

mid-March

at-

and seriously delayed invasion of Okinawa. Because of

his

airmen had crippled Spruance's

tacks

error, the

Kerama

fleet in

those

Islands landings caught the Japanese unpre-

OKINAWA

64

pared.

and

a

Only Ushijima's handful of obsolete

on Okinawa

crates

few kamikaze from Kyushu were able to intervene, but they

inflicted

only shght damage. Yet, on March 28, the GIs and

rines aboard the transports heard

Ma-

Radio Tokyo announce the

sinking of a battleship, six cruisers, seven destroyers, and one

minesweeper, and then the voice of an American-educated an-

nouncer simpering:

This

the Zero Hour, boys.

is

ican fighting

men

off the shores of

Okinawa

hear another program

Home"

.

Okinawa

.

nice

it's

.

.

.

.

work

and enjoy

listen

It is

broadcast for

.

.

.

because

you can get

it

.

.

.

.

.

Let's have a

little

The

boys

as well get

used

hot.

it

You boys off because when

.

might

.

.

.

.

Then, having described the for "the boys off

it

while you can,

are going to catch hell soon, and they .

never

Here's a good number, "Going

if

jukebox music for the boys and make

.

you Amer-

many of you will

you're dead you're a long time dead

to the heat

all

in the Pacific, particularly those standing

varieties of death instantly

impending

Okinawa," the voice concluded: "Don't

fail

to

tune in again tomorrow night."

Two

days later the voice was somber.

ships, six cruisers, ten destroyers,

sunk.

The American

thorities told

them

it

people did not want

would take only

resist in a higher standard of living.

American far

citizen

is

"Ten American

battle-

and two transports have been this war,

a short

But the

but the au-

while and would

life

of the average

becoming harder and harder and the war

is

from won ..."

On March 31 feast. "We had a

the assault troops were given an eve-of-battle

huge turkey dinner," the famous war corre-

spondent Ernie Pyle reported. " 'Fattening us up for the boys said."

kill,'

the

The "Americans"

The off

Okinawa" had gone

That was on April or

Tokyo had

next day Radio

L

day, as

it

raised to

They

lost its audience:

— Easter Sunday, 1945, April Fool's Day,

who

officially.

hit the

The L

stood for "Landing,"

Hagushi Beaches with hardly

oppose them had another name

called

it

"The boys

ashore.

was called

but the Americans

hand

1

65

Love Day.

for

it.

a

Love Day CHAPTER EIGHT

At 4:06 A.M. April

1,

1945, beneath still-darkened skies, Vice

Richmond Kelly Turner aboard

miral

his flagship

El Dorado gave

the expeditionary force commander's traditional order:

"Land the

landing force!" Forty-five minutes later with the break of the American

phoon of

bombardment

steel" that drove

— deep

erns, concealed pillboxes,

dawn

force began firing that howling "ty-

most

terrified

Okinawans into

storm caves and shook even those Japanese defenders

moles that they were

Ad-

inside their hollowed-out

their

— resolute hills,

camouflaged blockhouses, and

cav-

fortified

lyre-shaped tombs.

Along eight miles of beaches ten huge

turret guns ranging

battleships

from twelve

were

firing, their

to sixteen inches in their

bore diameter, hurling spinning shells weighing from twelve hundred to eighteen hundred pounds. Most of these battlewagons

were obsolete, and some had been raised from the floor of Battleship

Row

at Pearl

Harbor and been

rebuilt.

kansas had been commissioned well before

been ready for the scrap heap afloat.

There they were:

until Pearl

The

ancient Ar-

World War I and had Harbor Day kept her

flagship Tennessee, Colorado, Idaho,

New

OKINAWA

68

Mexico, Texas,

New

York, West Virginia, Nevada, and, of course,

Most of them shared a common defect: they were too keep up with the modern fast carriers, and so had been

Arkansas.

slow to

refitted for shore

bombardment. Normally,

other ships, firing armor-piercing shells on these off

Okinawa had been adjusted

explosives strong and heavy

enough

battleships fought

flat trajectories,

but

to high-angle fire of high

to pierce

emplacements, and sometimes even to

and shatter enemy

strike reverse slopes.

Interspersed in the gaps between the battlewagons, like the fingers of smaller

hands

prewar heavy cruisers

fitted into

those of bigger ones, were nine

—veterans

of every Pacific preinvasion

bombardment. Joining them were three

light cruisers

and twenty-

three destroyers, as well as dozens of those landing craft infantry

(LCIs) that had been found too awkward for their designed mission of plowing fire.

up on enemy beaches and so converted

Americans boated

"in" cheered lustily

to rocket

in the amtracks following the rocket ships

when they heard

that

monster swoooosh! of

those flights of missiles darkening the skies like so

many arrows

from thousands of bows. Spruance's Fifth Fleet, besides the striking power of his

TF

58 and the flying buffer of the British carrier force, also included ninety minesweepers of

all

types ready to clear

Okinawan waters

of the primitive contact mines planted by the enemy. There were also the brave

SEALS,

as they are

now

called,

of the Navy's

Un-

derwater Demolition Teams, charged with detonating the ene-

my's underwater explosives and pointed stakes; the big bombers

own Tactical and commanded by

of the Twentieth Air Force, and the Tenth Army's Air Force a

made up mostly of Marine

pilots

Marine, Major General Francis Mulcahy. Here, off those eight miles of Hagushi Beaches, the heaviest

weight of metal ever hurled from sea to shore was clearing the

way

for the assault troops

their

many

thunder and

— and

flash, their

erupting volcanos, the

yet,

it

was never needed. For

all

geysering flame and smoke fike so

bombardment was

falling harmlessly

Love Day

among

beaches,

hills,

69

and valleys long ago abandoned by General

Ushijima.

Even Ushijima and

his staff standing atop Shuri Castle

and

studying the scene through binoculars were deeply impressed.

One

of these officers later wrote in his diary that the flash and

crash of this incredible

They were

grandeur."

bombardment was "a scene of unsurpassed Ushijima had accepted Ya-

also glad that

hara's advice not to defend the

Hagushi Beaches. From what they

saw they could imagine the carnage among

their troops if

he had

adhered to the old, discredited doctrine of "destruction

at the

water's edge."

Yet for

all its

negligible effects, the titanic sea

would serve one major psychological purpose:

it

bombardment

would encourage

the assault troops. Boated in their amphibious tractors tracks"

—

in the bellies of their

which they

derisively called

men had been hours. Lined as

— "Landing Ship, Tanks," Stationary Targets" — these

LSTs

"Large

swallowing the smoke of their roaring vehicles for

up on the tank deck two

though they were in

Lincoln Tunnel. All for they

abreast, nose to rear,

a traffic jam,

had been told that Okinawa would not be it

was more than anxiety that

They had

dition they had picked

up

having difficulty holding they would

all let it

breakfasted on "styke in Australia it

and

down. Some

go over the

side,

that'll

be to sew up

Ernie Pyle smiled left its

—

full

was

easy.

fearful,

Among

tied their

'n'

stom-

aiggs," a tra-

New Zealand, and were

ship's doctors

hoped that

once they were seaborne.

"Steak and eggs!" one dismayed surgeon had cried. of guts

it

or sailing to battle in the

— even the veterans — were tense and

some of the Marines achs in knots.

— "am-

"A

nice lot

of steak!"

when he heard

that complaint. Pyle

had

the European Theater, in which the Axis had been driven to knees, to travel with the Marines in the Pacific; and he was

aboard one of those numerous

their big

bow

doors

— roaring louder the coxswains — began waddling down the tank decks to go plunging

yawned open and the amtracks accelerated

LSTs when

as

a

OKINAWA

70

into the East

China

Sea.

They could

capped gray water beneath

a

see ahead of them the white-

mackerel sky, and they could almost

impact of that monster howling seemingly encasing their

feel the

heads in

a great brass

bowl on which some insane giant was ham-

mering. Until that moment, the bombardment had been merely a steady

now

rumbling noise outside. But

it

was

a bellowing,

clanging clamor like Shakespeare's "iron tongue of midnight."

None

of these

this martial

drums,

men

of the assault troops were dismayed to hear

symphony overhead

shells

— big guns booming

like kettle-

speeding shoreward with the woodwinds' howl and

the shriek of violins, the snare-drum rattle of machine guns to-

gether with a brass section of braying ack-ack, and beneath

cough and

in counterpoint keeping the beat, the like

strummed

cellos

and bass

viols.

hum

of mortars

Rather, the GIs and Marines

were delighted by the sound and the fury so suggestive of enemy's destruction, and many of them grinned their

it all

helmeted heads above the gunwales or

as

their

they raised

lifted their

hands on

high with the thumb and forefinger joined in the gesture of perfection.

Ernie Pyle, though exulting in his

first

experience of an am-

phibious invasion, was nonetheless a bit shaken by the bombard-

ment, which he thought actually "set up vibrations in the sort of flutter

— which pained

with invisible drumsticks

and pounded the ears

..." Even

air

—

as

though

—

like

Kelly Turner

all

—

"Bomber Barons" or "Admirals of Artillery" thought that the bombardment would end all opposition, reporting to Nimitz: "I may be crazy, but it looks like the Japanese have quit the war, at least in this sector." Back came the counter-message: "Delete all after 'crazy.'

"

Nimitz would be proved

Love Day Turner looked

a truer

prophet, of course, but on

like a better bet.

Off the beaches four

thousand yards distant the control boats were organizing the

at-

tack waves. Perhaps eight hundred amtracks loaded with GIs and

Marines were sent speeding beachward in fi"om

five to

seven

lines,

Love Day each with

71

bow waves curHng away from

their prows, their churn-

ing propellers leaving frothy white wakes trailing behind like a

tails

thousand yards long. Crawling steadily ahead of them were the

amphibious tanks. Abruptly, as though switched

ceased

— and the GIs and Marines

bombardment

the beach

off^,

in the

amtracks glanced sky-

ward nervously, wonderingly. Actually the sea cannonade had been

only to strike

lifted

during the respite two

enemy

and

of sixty-four carrier planes apiece

flights

came roaring over the beaches fire

installations farther inland,

to strafe

— making the men in the amtracks

them with machine-gun

lift

their

hands

in approval

once again. Usually the strafing planes raised only dust, but sometimes a Japanese fuel storage tank would be

hit,

and plumes of

flame and clouds of smoke swirled skyward to enter drifting white clouds and suffuse

them pink and

bombardment

parted, the

black.

resumed

ships

Once

the aircraft de-

their cannonade: this

time firing every gun they mounted, even 40

mm AA spitting out

red tracers flashing low across the water to explode just inland of the beach. to the rines

Even

so, all this also

had not been needed

— but woe

commander who would have ordered anything

who had

landed at Iwo Jima were

else.

Ma-

bitter over the less

still

when they came enemy positions

than adequate three-day preparation there, for

ashore they were instantly struck by hundreds of that

had been

insisted,

cles far

on

left intact.

Three more days of

could not have failed to knock out that tiny two-by-four island;

steel

all

and

fire,

they

remaining obsta-

and there would have been

fewer casualties than those twenty-two thousand dead and

wounded United

States Marines.

days, with ships firing caliber

no

six

than seven thousand shells in every

less

from sixteen inches

That was why Okinawa got

to

40

mm,

plus the aerial onslaught.

During the beach bombardment preceding H-Hour alone, the fleet fired

rockets,

44,825 rounds of

and 22,500 mortar

Task Force

Fifty-eight

five- to sixteen-inch shells,

shells.

33,000

Seventy miles east of Okinawa

was deployed to furnish

air

support and

OKINAWA

72

to intercept air attacks

from Kyushu, while support

protecting troop carriers

carriers

were

arriving with second- and third-

still

echelon troops. Earlier, carrier fighter-bombers had bathed the beaches in flaming tanks of napalm.

Thus, whether needed or not,

had made

it

certain that

when

this terrible

weight of metal

the American spearheads climbed

the reef to assault the beaches, not an

enemy hand was

raised to

stop them.

Within the

first

had come ashore

hour no

less

— an incredible

than sixteen thousand troops achievement.

With

the beach-

head secure, the remaining combat troops streamed onto Oki-

They were

nawa.

followed by waves of tanks, some of them

amphibious, some carried ashore by flotation devices, others ferried to the beaches

phes.

were

by LSMs. Then came ammunition and sup-

Well before noon of April safely in

Down

1,

1945, the Hagushi Beaches

American hands.

to the south off the

Minatoga Beaches, meanwhile, the

troops of Major General Watson's Second Marine Division also

came roaring shoreward off

in a masterful feint that

some of Ushijima's defenders but

tionally

— brought upon

to strike the invaders. killing

actually

not only drew

— and

their heads the

wrath of the

They damaged

a transport

first

uninten-

kamikaze

and an LST,

and wounding sixteen Americans. But the amtracks

churned beachward

until, as the fourth

wave crossed the

departure at 8:30 a.m., with remarkable precision craft reversed course to return to their ships.

all

still

line

of

the landing

Next day the dem-

onswation was repeated, and General Ushijima reported that "an

enemy landing attempt on

the eastern coast of

day morning was completely

foiled,

Okinawa on Sun-

with heavy losses to the

enemy." Inland on Hagushi the Bimbo Butai had broken and fled at the

first

belch of American guns, leaving the

vital

Yontan and

— Love Day

Kadena Sixth

Airfields deserted

and unprotected. By mid-morning the

Marine Division on the

division front

73

flank of General Buckner's four-

left

had reached Yontan and was moving across

the First Marine Division

kagusuku Bay on the

on

while

right struck out rapidly for

its

Na-

chopping up the remnants of the

east coast,

demoralized Bimbo Butai.

it

Many

of these reluctant soldiers, on

both the Third Corps's front to the

and Twenty-fourth

left

Corps's on the right, threw off the hated Japanese uniform and

melted out of sight

among

own

their

soldiers also shed their uniforms,

Okinawan kimonos northern

hills.

people.

Some

true Japanese

not to desert but to don blue

to conduct guerrilla warfare

from the wild

enemy indeed

to contest the

So there were few

cross-island rush of the

Tenth Army spearheads. Behind the

ri-

flemen, tanks had already rolled across beaches blessedly free of

mines, while behind them came the bulldozers to cut passage

through the terraces. Soon every manner of transport vehicle

wheeled or tracked

—was

depositing supplies on those rapidly

growing inland mountains of

cases, crates,

where the engineers and pioneers of

all

and

barrels.

Every-

the assault divisions were

moving and shaking and transforming Okinawa with customary Yankee energy and ingenuity. Only the Battalion Aid Stations so rapidly organized

on the beaches were quiet and

down and unused

of blood plasma or whole blood swung upside

on

their tall fork-like stands, while doctors

on

their heels or sat

wonderingly

at

inactive. Bottles

and medics squatted

perched on water cans, smoking and staring

empty operating

tables like so

many embarrassed

supernumeraries.

Up front the attacking Americans were slowly letting out their breath. A soldier of the Seventh Division standing on a hill south of the Bishi River spoke for lived longer than

were

I

all

thought

also submitting to the

one of them feeding gulped

it

down

a

I

of them

when he

would."

On

said: "I've

his left the

already

Marines

Great Loo Choo's pastoral charm,

box of

K

rations to a goat,

which quickly

— cardboard and —while others rounded up the all

OKINAWA

74

shaggy

little

Okinawan ponies and vaulted aboard with shouts of

glee.

"Ya-hoo!" one of them

yelled.

"I'm Captain Jinks of the

Horse Marines!"

Out among

the forest of masts in the Hagushi Anchorage

Colonel Cecil Nist, General Hodge's intelligence hardly believe the radio reports from the beaches.

found what the

empty enemy

The

and

now

troops had

the suspicion that had replaced

apprehension was gone, to be supplanted by his Sixth

relief.

Major General

Marine Division headquarters ashore

with the remark: "There was a lot of glory on Iwo, but it

this

could

photographs suggested: formidable but

aerial

positions,

Shepherd moved

officer,

I'll

take

way."

Shepherd and

his staff sailed past the

new LST-hospitals ridenemy

ing lonely and unattended at anchor, with not even a single aircraft threatening to plant the

that big red cross.

On

customary

Division, the ship's surgeon was impatient. sea, his

From

a ship-of-war into

was hosed down and rows of cots

First

the

Marine

moment

the

medical corpsmen had been at

one of mercy. Litter

behind by the Marines was heaved over the

bow

in the center of

one of them assigned to the

amtracks rolled into the

work transforming

bomb

set

up

side, the

inside

doors remained open and outside them

a

it.

Up

left

tank deck

forward the

company of Seabees

rigged a pontoon-pier for casualty boats. All was accomplished

within two hours, and the ship's surgeon fassy

man, obviously

satisfied. rine"^

turn

He

a small,

— strode out onto

thorough, the pier,

stood there, watching the columns of attacking

Ma-

vanishing behind the seawall. But there was no bloody retraffic.

"No

Puzzled, he turned anxiously to a corpsman.

boats,

"Nothing

his

a perfectionist

—

no wounded?"

yet, sir."

The surgeon shrugged, almost ruefully, and went back inside LST. In a moment he had hastened outside again, having

Love Day heard the sound of a boat's engine. of

it

onto the

75

A Marine was

clambering out

pier.

"What's wrong with you, son?"

The Marine

held up a hand spouting blood from one of his

fingers.

"One of my buddies

let

one go and shot the top of

my

fin-

ger off."

The surgeon

peered

at

it,

turning to a corpsman to order

it

dressed.

"What's happening

in there, son?"

"Don't ask me, Doc. All

I

know

is

everybody's goin' in stan-

din' up."

The surgeon

He

sighed.

glanced shoreward again, turning to

go inside for lunch. Coming back to the return let's it

pier,

still

saw no

Calling to his solitary patient, he said: "C'mon, son,

traffic.

go make you

a

new

finger.

We've got plenty of time

to

do

in."*

That was Love Day on Okinawa,

a

most fortuitous eight

hours of daylight during which the Tenth airfields

deep

—

Many vision,

*

he

and

a

captured two

beachhead eight miles wide and three to four miles

a cost of

all at

Army

of these were

28

killed,

among

27 missing, and 104 wounded.

the ranks of the Second Marine Di-

supposedly having drawn the "soft" assignment of feinting

This incident, reported by George McMillan

the First Marine Division in

World War

in

The Old Breed,

his history

of

does not ring true. Marines are trained to keep their weapons on safety lock even during an invasion, and not II,

about to erupt or until receipt of enemy fire. his gun off" is the proper slang. I can remember a corporal I learned to despise from Guadalcanal onward running toward the beach at Peleliu with terror on his face and holding his right hand aloft with the trigger finger missing and spouting carmine. My only comfort watching him sprint for the safety of the Battalion Aid Station on the beach was that his missing member would always remind him of his cowardice. So I doubt to unlock

them

"Let one go"

this

episode

show how beginning.

until a firefight

is

also untypical.

— from the pen of

a

is

"Got

headquarters sergeant

absolutely unopposed the

— and mention

Okinawa invasion

actually

it

was

only to at

its

OKINAWA

76

at the

Minatoga Beaches.

Down

there another suicider put three

holes in destroyer Hinsdale, and the stricken ship had to be towed to

Kerama by

distinction.

tugs, the first invasion ship to achieve that dubious

The

next day

when

made

the Second's Marines

an-

other demonstration, returning to their ships as planned. General

Ushijima

fired off

an exultant report to Imperial General Head-

quarters claiming to have forced the

being

mowed down one

Rather

a

where some

different situation

a single day.

three or

more days and

hands by

nightfall.

take

At Yontan

ing away wrecked

on Okinawa,

enemy

sticks, stones,

it

circled

Objectives expected to require lives

were firmly

Airfield there

American

in

were bulldozers

clear-

planes and General Ushijima's clever

and

cloth. it

Already there was an

had

became louder

ing their rations with gunpowder

on

a big red ball

fires

its

air-

fu-

as bulldozers fell silent

and Marines hopped to the ground clutching

theirs,

withdraw "after

actually existed

many

plane approaching a runway. But selage. Its roar as

to

thousand Americans had come ashore almost

fifty

unimpeded within

dummies of

enemy

after another."

rifles.

Others heat-

stood erect and seized

walking quietly toward the landing

strip.

The Zero swung

seaward for a smooth landing.

The down to

pilot wriggled out of his parachute pack.

the tarmac.

He

stopped. Between that

He

climbed

walked toward the waiting Marines.

moment

in

which he reached for

He

his pistol,

and the next when he slumped to the runway, riddled, an expression of indescribable horror had passed over his face.

"There's always someone," alw'^ys

a

Marine

said ruefully

one poor bastard who doesn't get the word."

— "there's

The Marines Overrun the North

CHAPTER NINE

On

the

morning of April

amazement

2

American fighting men awoke

to see vapor puffs issuing

so chilled that they began to stamp

perature was

above

sixty,

somewhere around

and most of these

fifty

men

from

them

vigorously.

with

all its

welcomed

with their blood thinned by

a respite

ardine field jackets to if

on the Arctic

from the tropic heat

poisonous reptiles and vegetation and diseases, and

they were again surprised to draw

supply

The tem-

degrees and would not go

years in the tropics felt as though they had arisen Circle. Actually, they

in

their Ups, their feet

warm them

new

—

wool and gab-

issues of

a tribute to the service of

there ever was one.

They moved out

heading south, the Marines marching east and

through peaceful

— the GIs north — passing

rapidly along the narrow roads

fields plotted

and pieced around

little

thatched

farm cabins, each sheltered behind stone walls or bamboo windbreaks. Leathernecks of the Sixth Division called themselves "the Striking Sixth"

mentum

in their

—who

— quickly

now

proudly

gathered

mo-

approach march to Colonel Udo's three thou-

sand holding the mountain fastness. Their

first

objective

was 77

OKINAWA

78

Zampa Cape

to give

Admiral Turner the

site for a

badly needed

radar station to warn of approaching Japanese aircraft, while the First struck east across-island for

Nakagusuku Bay, believed

to be

an excellent anchorage and soon to be called Buckner Bay.

"Off and on!" the sergeants shouted

morning

rations.

"Get

move

a

on,

men

as the

finished their

you mother's mistakes

—

an'

keep both ends up!"

"You

there, Drag-Ass, whattaya lookin' behind

"I can't help

conk

me from

it,

Sarge

—

I

keep

feelin'

you for?"

somebody's gonna cold-

behind."

"Oh, yeah? Well,

if

anybody does

—

it'll

be me!"

This mood of incredulity at the ease of the landing was a common sensation among the Americans as Love Day turned into Honeymoon Week on Okinawa. It was even more pronounced in the north, where only Colonel Udo and his men stood between the Marine divisions and their objectives. For the First, with

memories of

fierce battle, the

its

Great Loo Choo was an unbeliev-

able but lovely frolic. In the afternoon General

Del Valle

called

know you any good reason why

a press conference to tell the correspondents: "I don't

where the Japs they

are,

and

I

can't offer

us come ashore so easily. We're pushing on across the as fast as we can move the men and equipment." They

let

island

were, and in two days of "fighting" the First's casualties totaled three dead and eighteen wounded. bilant

On

April

3

the division's ju-

Marines stood on the eastern seawall overlooking the bay

and the Pacific Ocean. That same day scouting parties entered the narrow finger of the Katchin Peninsula, traversing opposition. Encouraged, General Buckner lifted

all

Yontan

Airfield

on

the east

lying two-fifths of the

way

length. In four days, the First had taken

territory expected to require three

To

all

and the Ishikawa Isthmus, that nar-

row neck of land about two miles wide up Okinawa's slender

without

restrictions

the rampaging First, and the division rapidly secured coast between

it

weeks of savage

fighting.

the north, the Sixth was running into steadily stiffening

— The Marines Overrun

North

the

on strong-points

opposition, ambushes, and isolated attacks

who

skirmishes real enough to those

who

those

died or

fell

wounded

79

fought in them, especially

— but not

in sufficient strength

to slow the Sixth's rapid advance. After the division had sealed

men started marching north speed. The First would clean up

off the northern side of Ishikawa, for

Zampa Cape

at route-step

its

behind the Sixth, and also attend to the problem of the Okinawan refugees

now

clogging the roads.

There were so many of them: women with babies

at their

without parents; grizzle-bearded ancients hob-

breasts; children

bling along with bent backs, leaning on staffs and carrying pitiful small bundles representing terrible

war

war had

that the

all

that had also robbed

them, that

left

them of the authority of

their

beards and had exposed them to Japanese mockery and American pity;

and the old white-haired

women who

merely squatted in the road, shriveled,

monkeys, waiting to be

might stop and

could not walk,

frail,

hardly bigger than

carried, waiting for the kind

stick a lighted cigarette

who

Marine who

between their toothless

gums.

They were

a docile people,

cause the Japanese had told

them.

They were

and

now

they were terrified be-

them the Americans would

frightened also because they

them were Japanese

knew

soldiers disguised as civilians.

torture

that

among

But their fear

vanished with gentle treatment, with the policy of carefully searching

many all

all

a knife

males between fifteen and forty-five or cartridge belt beneath a

smock

— to

discover

— and of placing

of these within prisoner-of-war camps. Soon the Okinawans

were speaking openly of their hatred for the Japanese, their loathing for the Reign of Radiant Peace. ''Nippon ga maketa,'' they said. "Japan

is

Marines of the Sixth Division were

still

north, sweeping

making giant

up both

strides daily.

coasts, a

finished."

marching rapidly

regiment to either

side,

and

Tanks packed with grinning riflemen

OKINAWA

80

rolled

up the narrow, dusty roads unimpeded but

sional sniper, a hastily built

for an occa-

and unforbidding roadblock that

bull-

dozers or the tanks themselves could easily shove aside, or here

and there an obviously freshly planted land mine that could be detonated with a well-aimed

On Motobu

shot.

April 8 the tanks in the lead

came

to the

mouth of

the

Peninsula, a wild headland jutting into the East China

Sea on the

covered

rifle

or west of the Marines. Here the Americans dis-

left,

why

was that they had moved so

it

Motobu were

gathered almost

all

easily north.

On

of the two thousand soldiers

remaining to Colonel Udo. They were holed up on twelvehundred-foot

Mount

fortified labyrinth

Yaetake,

among

the well-chosen and well-

of cave-eaten ridges,

and rocky corridors

gorges, steep

hills,

—well supplied with guns, prepared to

fight

cliffs,

to the end.

The Marines moved

in.

They pushed

cautiously around the

coastal roads, their engineers swiftly building bridges over the

ruins of those demolished by the Japanese or trucking in loads of

rock and dirt to

fill

in the rice paddies.

tank-traps blasted at the foot of

By

cliffs

or out

April 13 they had driven the Japanese back

onto the crest of the Yaetake stronghold. They were prepared to attack in a pincers, three battalions to begin a fighting climb

Motobu's west

With

coast,

first light

two to

on

strike

from the

east.

Friday the thirteenth

Marines of the Sixth Division were

from

startled,

on Okinawa, these then grief-stricken,

to hear the bullhorns of the ships offshore blaring:

"Attention! Attention! All hands! President Roosevelt

Repeat, our supreme commander, President Roosevelt, Swiftly the

them

cried,

known no

news reached the men out of earshot.

is

is

dead.

dead."

Many

of

most of them prayed. So many of these youths had

president other than Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

had truly loved him, had depended on him

They

— how much they did

not know until they heard that he was dead.

Nor

could they turn

The Marines Overrun

company

for solace to

They

officers, barely a

services

move

The

81

few years their senior.

might be possible on ships even now

flying

on Motobu could do noth-

the flag at half-mast, but the Marines

ing but

North

"What do we do now?"

could ask only:

Memorial

the

out.

Yaetake attacks became a week-long nightmare against a

phantom enemy. Everywhere

in the hills

were small groups of

Japanese clustering around a Hotchkiss heavy machine gun and the usual proliferation of

Nambu

lights.

these nasty spitting nests, might call

Marines might grenade

down

exact mortar

fire,

but

then, in the succeeding rush, might find nothing but a trail of

blood to suggest that anyone had struck at them. "Jeez!" a

Marine swore. "They've

all

got Nambus, but where

the hell are they?"

On

April

15

grew

naval gunfire and close-up air strikes

More artillery was brought in. Artillery observers went forward, among them a battery commander and his spotter, Pfc. Harold Gonsalves. The commander lived because Gonsalves stronger.

hurled himself on a Japanese grenade to save

him

Medal of Honor.* More and more guns lashed Next day the Marines drove deeper Corporal Richard Bush led

plex.

a

— and win the

at Yaetake.

into the Japanese

com-

squad forward on the right

flank of the three-battalion line, striking at Yaetake's eastern mass.

The

face of the opposing ridge erupted with gunfire. Bush's squad

went up and over

it

to drive the Japanese out, to score the first

breakthrough. But Bush was badly wounded.

*

Here

is

perhaps the most moving of

all

the

He

was pulled back

phenomena of

the war: the self-

of noble and brave young American fighting men who smothered engrenades with their bodies to save their buddies. Yet, discussing this once

sacrifice

emy

a group of teachers, I had just begun to quote Jesus Christ's dictum "Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends," when one of them angrily interrupted me. "Nonsense!" he cried in scorn. "Who would do such a crazy thing?" Glaring at me, he asked with heavy

with

sarcasm,

"Would you?"

I

replied, "I might.

But never to save someone

like

you."

OKINAWA

82

to a cluster of protecting rocks

Bush pulled

sailed in.

he also

it

to him.

lived, to join that

Medals of Honor

Through it

He

lay.

saved the other

A

grenade

wounded and

amazing company of Marines whose

testified

the toughness of their bodies.

to

the hole his squad had cut, through other holes along

the line, the fight marched

where

where other men

became

Marines

as

much up

toiled

a

hills

backs and bandoleers of

upward

— swirling up

in the

mountains

matter of supply as killing the enemy. with five-gallon cans of water on their

rifle-clips

or grenades slung crisscross

about their bodies. Battalion commanders going up to inspect the lines

brought

It

a

water can or

a

mortar

shell

along with them.

was four days before the Marines burst into Colonel Udo's

headquarters to discover this mimeographed sheet intended for their eyes:

NEWS OF NEWS No.

1

Saturday, April 14 President Roosevelt Died

To

the

men

A

Sudden Death

of the Sixth Marine Division!

We take a great honor to speak to you for the first time. We are awfully sorry to learn from the U.P. telegraph that it

the

life

of President Roosevelt has suddenly

at 3:30 p.m.

in spite of

Men ^

on April

its

12. It

come

to

its

end

seems to be an incredible story

actual evidence.

of the 6th Marine Division, particularly

men

of the

15th and 29th Marines and the 3rd Amphibious Corps, express our hearty regret with late President.

What do you

late President's

death?

A

you

all

we

over the death of the

think was the true cause of the

miserable defeat experienced by

the U.S. forces in the sea around the island of Okinawa!

Were

this

not the direct cause leading him to death,

be quite relieved.

we

could

The American

flag

is

raised

over the First Marine Division

cemetery on Okinawa, last battle

of World

after the

War II,

a

battle of savage proportions.

J^ r-

-#»

,.A

/

wn,

f

ABOVE: Navy up Japanese

carrier planes soften

installations before

the invasion.

RIGHT: Flights of missiles from the rocket ships opposite the

enemy beaches go screaming toward the enemy.

%

'^M-

Not even

the

D-day

force in

Normandy

rivaled the

huge invasion

fleet

gathered for Okinawa. Here in just one of the staging areas for the assauh,

supphes and ships are massed.

Some

bewildered Okinawan refugees aboard

a safe haven.

a

Navy amtrack on

their

way

to

'"^Jv

$i/&St-

above: Unopposed because the Japanese commander of the defending Thirty-second

American were so

Army wisely

"Love Day."

RIGHT: Soon, U.S. troops suffer casualties.

A wounded Marine

is

from the

borne battle-

field uncler

heavy enemy pressure.

bombardment, Marines and GIs of the assault force they moved inland, that they called Landing Day

sea and air

relieved, as

decided not to expose his troops to the dreadful

The body

of a

Japanese soldier killed

by U.S.

Tenth Army forces lies in

front of an

advancing tank.

While

frontline troops consolidate their gains in mid-April 1945, these

reserve soldiers of the Twenty-seventh Infantry Division

—kneel

weeping

Chief, Franklin

in prayer at a

memorial service for

— many of them

their

Delano Roosevelt, who died on April

Commander

in

12.

W^'

made of bamboo (abcuf), were intended

Dummy aircraft such

as this one,

draw off American wrecked Zero fighter

inside a revetment

to

air

on the

first

fire

—which they did —but

day of the landing.

other, true planes,

hke

this

(below), were destroyed from the

A flamethrowing tank of the lays

down

Marine Division

stream of fire on an Okinawan hillside

in bitter fighting. fiercely,

Sixth

.'-'ijij,

a

Japanese soldiers fought

shielded in deeply protected

caves from the American onslaught.

«t

Navy Medical Corpsmen were among the bravest heroes of Okinawa. Here they comfort a wounded Marine where he

fell,

sending lifesaving blood plasma into his veins

from bottles hung on bayoneted the ground.

rifles

thrust into

The Marines Overrun

We

the

North

83

do not think that the majority of you have exact

knowledge of the present operations being carried out by the U.S. forces although

very few

a

member

of you must have

got a glympse of the accurate situation.

An

number of picked

exceedingly great

battleships, cruisers

aircrafts carriers,

and destroyers held on her course to and

near the sea of Okinawa in order to protect you and carry

out operations in concert with you.

The 90%

of them have

already been sunk and destroyed by Japanese Special Fight-

ing Bodies, sea and

In this

air.

way

a

grand "U.S. Sea Bottom

Fleet"

numbering 500 has been brought into existence

around

this little island.

Once you have tail

cut

off,

Even

a

heart.

As

seen a "Lizard" twitching about with

we suppose

this state

of lizard

is

likened to you.

drop of blood can be never expected from a result

It is a sort

piness.

This

It is

time

its

its

own

an apopletic stroke comes to attack.

of vice however to presure upon others unhap-

why we want to write nothing further. now for you, sagacious and pradent, however,

is

to look over the

whole

situations of the present

war and

try

to catch a chance for reflection!!

The Marines went on

to

conquer the

rest of Motobu, securing

the peninsula on April 20. Above them, the Sixth Division's Twenty-second Regiment had reached Okinawa's northernmost

The biggest battle in the northern sector was over. The Sixth spent the rest of April patrolling and pursuing those Japanese who had fled Yaetake and turned irregular, using point.

wardogs to scent the enemy and bark that natural

a warning. They even found enemy of whom they had had such ample, ominous

warning.

"Lookit the snake

I just killed. It's

one of them habu!"

"Hoo-what?" "Habu, the snake they was

all talkin'

about before we landed."

OKINAWA

84

"What're yuh gonna do with

"Do

with

With

it!

the slop they been feeding us

screwy island? I'm gonna cut fry

and eat

it

were, in

First Division

were not quite so desperate.

to

remove the

They used them

Everybody had

numerous Okinawan

a pet

—

a

all

to aban-

sfiding panels that sepa-

for foxhole covers or to build

might have escaped the

at Division

pot.

Headquarters, and

the clerks and typists gathered nightly to play leapit

was dark enough for

the First had ful!"

The men went

pony, a goat, even one of those

rabbits that

There was an open-air theater frog until

it

month of April.

doned Okinawan homes rated the rooms.

there

honeymoon, extending

of the division's battalions built bivouacs complete with

gravel paths, showers, and mess halls.

shanties.

this

and then I'm gonna

fillets

celebrating the

fact, still

for the duration of the

Many

into

it

on

it!"

Marines of the

They

it?"

known

They were

it.

But the

a

movie. This was not battle as

men

said,

so enchanted by "Lilac

"Peace

Time"

jungle juice out of their rations, drank

lacquerware

— one

of

Okinawa's

few

it

—

it's

wonder-

that they

brewed

from "borrowed"

crafts

— and

began

to

harmonize.

They sang

all

the old favorites such as

"The Wabash Can-

nonball" or "Birmingham Jail," as well as that vast repertoire of

bawdies and unprintables collected or composed by local bards during three years of tramping the Pacific. There was a

one for Okinawa, and

able

••

it

went:

Oh, don 't you worry, Mother, your son

No Japs

new print-

is

safe out here.

on Okinawa, no sake, booze or beer.

Your sons

can't find no Nips, so we're going back on ships.

But don't you worry. Mother,

cause we're going on another.

But they were not. The honeymoon was ending. They were staying

on Okinawa and going south, down

to that

Naha-Shuri-

The Marines Overrun Yonabaru

line that

the

North

had stopped the Army's Twenty-fourth Corps.

In the meantime, Admiral Ugaki had hurled the kikusui

—or

85

"Floating Chrysanthemums"

—

first

aerial strikes

of his

on the

American warships surrounding Okinawa; while Admiral Soemu Toyoda, Navy Chief of

Staff,

had

the mightiest warship ever built as a suicide battleship.

—

also ordered great

Yamato

—

to join these kamikaze attacks

"Floating Chrysanthemums" CHAPTER TEN

In Japan the chrysanthemum

woven

flowers,

is

probably the most beloved of

all

into wreaths for weddings and funerals alike, dec-

orating graves or dropped by grieving pilots onto waters in which

comrades had plunged to their death. Thus,

their dearest

formance with

attacks

con-

custom among the flower-loving Nipponese,

Matome Ugaki

Admiral aerial

this

in

decided to give the scheduled Ten-Go

on American shipping the name of

kikusui,

or

"Floating Chrysanthemums."

Although Ugaki's

aerial strength

on Kyushu had been

seri-

ously weakened by Halsey's strikes of mid-October 1944, and especially

by Spruance's sweeps of March 18-19, 1945, he

had well over three thousand planes suiciders

—

in

his

command

after

— both

the

still

conventional and

Americans landed on

Okinawa.

Ugaki had few reservations about

enemy

fleet

his ability to shatter the

and so delay or even prevent the invasion of Japan

proper, but he did occasionally despair about the absence of co-

ordination and cooperation nate air

Army and Navy subordiFormosa and Kyushu. Though the

among

commanders on both

the

87

OKINAWA

88

Japanese

command

nawa than

structure was probably better unified for Oki-

any other operation thus

for

casual chain of

command

commander

say, the

in,

in

which the

far, it

was

a

still

most

thing a subordinate

last

Army, would think of doing was

to

obey

an order from a superior in the Navy. At best to them an order

was no better than

a suggestion.

manders on those two great

Thus Army and Navy com-

island fortresses neither cooperated

with each other nor followed directives from the Combined Fleet

Army Headquarters

or Imperial

Tokyo. Although there was

in

indeed intense and divisive rivalry between the American

and Navy in the least

seldom

from superiors were never

Pacific, orders

— ignored.

If Fleet

Army

— or

at

Admiral Nimitz issued orders to

Admiral Turner off Okinawa, he transmitted them to General Buckner,

who obeyed them

without question.

Admiral Ugaki enjoyed no such luxury. ant General Michio Sugahara,

on Kyushu,

to take

some

If

he wanted Lieuten-

commander of the

action,

Sixth Air

Army

he would not issue an order but

rather send a diplomatic officer to Sugahara's headquarters to explain in the least offensive language

what was being required of

him. Such deference, of course, did not forge the Japanese chain of

command

with iron

Ugaki was based

at

links,

and

it

also

wasted valuable time, for

Kanoya and Sugahara

he ask Admiral Toyoda's

fleet to issue

at

Chiran.

Nor

could

an order binding on both

of them. All that Ugaki could do was to send orders to a pair of

Army

air divisions that

made most of

the

Okinawa

though even here they were sometimes ignored. this

It is

attacks, al-

possible that

deference by senior officers to their subordinates was the

result of Japanese

military officers.

misunderstanding of the character of Western

When Japan

decided to build the Imperial Navy,

the model was the British Royal Navy, and the innate courtesy of its

officers

was mistaken for reticence. Thus an admiral might

hesitate to insist that a his orders lest

it

Ugaki had

a

commander

give

unbending obedience to

be considered rude.

second problem in organizing his forthcoming

"Floating Chrysanthemums"

how

kikusui attacks:

and over-training

his kamikaze. Overtraining a pilot in the sense

combat

wasted

was needed was to guide an obsolete

aircraft

when

to

target and then crash-dive

that

would be

a

skillful

effort

all

between under-training

to strike a balance

of turning him into a

its

89

flyer

But suicide attacking wasn't

it.

when

the

weather was so variable, with conflicting wind currents, poor

vis-

that simple, especially in the

ibility,

and low

could become

on

a direct

target. In

ceilings. In

lost.

For

North

Pacific springtime

such weather even an experienced pilot

keep

a rookie pilot to

course was not enough, for he

bomb-loaded

a

still

crate

might not find

his

such unreliable planes, engine trouble was frequent, and

the student pilot needed to be trained enough to return success-

new

fully to base.

But

suicider until

months

a

recruit

later.

would not emerge

This requirement put an unbearable

burden on Ugaki's attempt to build up suicide tactic for

which

as a qualified

this force

a

powerful

air

armada; the

was being formed was not only

innately self-destructive but also time-consuming. Japan in the

spring of 1945 could not afford to lose

become

a fast-vanishing resource. Finally, the

aerial attacks

on Kyushu and Formosa,

based B-29 strikes on Kyushu and to Fifth Air Force

American seaborne

as well as the

a lesser

Mariana-

degree of MacArthur's

on Formosa, along with the willingness of the

suicide-saviors to take their like the

more months of what had

own

minimal four thousand

cripple Spruance's Fifth Fleet.

lives,

had

aircraft

left

Ugaki with nothing

he needed to destroy or

That was one reason why Ugaki's

airplanes did not immediately strike the Americans the day the

invasion began, and

Toyoda

in

it

was not

Tokyo ordered

That morning dawned ping

a

until that very

Kikusui

1

day that Admiral

to be launched

overcast, with northeast

on April

6.

winds whip-

mackerel sea into a white-crested gray mass, pushing layers

of smutty clouds scudding along at altitudes of three thousand to seven thousand

them with

feet.

It

was good kamikaze weather, providing

excellent cover. Yet Rear Admiral Toshiyuki Yokoi,

OKINAWA

90

whom

Ugaki had placed

in

charge of the kikusui attacks, waited

around noon before sending

until

squadrons

his

hoping

aloft,

thereby to catch patrolling American fighters at that most dan-

moment

gerous

of reftieling

— either

on

aprons of Yontan and Kadena Airfields.

may

It

carrier decks or the

was

how Yamamoto's

have come to Yokoi by his recollection of

carriers at

Midway were

would be no such had long since

moment. But there

struck at exactly that

surprise, for Spruance's task force

installed the routine of

from sunup

patrols aloft

good idea that

a

dropping "window"

till

sundown.

— aluminum

commanders

keeping defensive fighter

Nor

did Yokoi's ruse of

on

strips to create false blips

radar screens to lure American fighters away from the impact area

—

for radar operators picked

them up almost

as

soon

as they

were dropped.

Both Spruance and Turner were aware that aerial strike

would

arrive that day, not only

a massive

enemy

from warnings from

intelhgence officers reading messages in the broken Japanese code, but through combat instincts sharpened by years of expe-

once the enemy had collected enough planes, he would

rience: strike.

To

thwart him, Turner had deployed

a

wide

circle

of

six-

teen radar picket destroyers like irregular-length spokes in a

wheel winding around Okinawa and some of lands.

surrounding

its

These spokes extended from "Point Bolo,"

point on that

Zampa Cape he had

is-

a reference

so ardently desired,

and which

had been presented to him by the Sixth Marine Division. Each radar picket could give early warning of an carried a five-member radar direction

enemy

attack,

team trained

and also

in vectoring

patnolling fighters onto "bogies," unidentified targets. As might

be expected, the pickets would become prime targets of the tacking enemy, especially Radar Picket Stations

1

through

duty on an arc about thirty miles north of Okinawa over which

On

that

enemy

all

was quiet

on

— the point

planes from JCyushu were most likely to

morning of April 6

4,

at-

in the skies

fly.

above

"Floating Chrysanthemums"

the Great

Loo Choo, although Japanese

northern Ryukyus had discovered

brought hundreds

of fighters

91

scout planes in the

TF 58's Fast Carrier Forces and

and bombers down on them. Half

of them missed their target and flew on to Okinawa while the other half zeroed in on Rear Admiral Joseph "Jocko" Clark's Task

a

They hit the carrier Hancock and two destroyers, and kamikaze Judy bomber almost sent the big flattop Bennington to

a

watery grave. Plunging at the American's stern, the suicider was

Group

58.1.

shot to bits by to bear.

ments

When

fell

in a

all

of Bennington's ack-ack that could be brought

the Judy exploded astern, parts of her engine frag-

shower on the

carrier,

temporarily disabling her

rudder.

Later in the day Yokoi's fighters arrived off Okinawa's fields

air-

and were intercepted by American fighters on patrol above

them. At three o'clock, with the Yankee fighters presumably driven from the area, the suiciders struck. ets

They dove on

the pick-

of the radar screen and that forest of masts in Hagushi An-

chorage.

Some 200

of them came plummeting

down

for five hours

until darkness veiled the sea or magnified the funeral pyres of

stricken

American

ships.

Destroyers Bush and Colhoun were sunk, Colhoun hit and stag-

gered so frequently that she had to be abandoned and sunk by friendly tory also

the

fire.

The ammunition

went down, creating

a

ships Logan Victory and Hobbs Vic-

temporary ordnance shortage for

Tenth Army. Nine other destroyers were damaged,

as

were

four destroyer-escorts and five mine vessels. It

was an impressive day's work for the

even though they had

were

lost 135 planes.

as usual exaggerated, rivaling

first sally

of the kikusui

But the kamikaze reports

even those of the Thirty-

second Army, claiming thirty American ships sunk and twenty

more burning. Such bloated estimates so encouraged Admirals Ugaki and Toyoda that the Navy chief began to think that perhaps the world's

first

suicide battleship

— great Yamato —might

re-

OKINAWA

92

ally stagger the

Americans during

its

one-way voyage

Okinawa

to

and eternal glory.

—named for the clan generally credited with founding the Japanese nation — was not only the most powerful battleship Yamato

afloat,

but also the most beautiful.

kamikaze roared

down from

On

April 6, while hundreds of

came

the north, Yamato

trailing af-

bow

terward in the spreading white majesty of her mighty

Yamato had survived the Battle of Leyte Gulf, where her

wave. sister

Musashi had not. Yamato could outshoot anything in the U.S.

Navy. She had nine 18.1 -inch guns

firing a projectile

weighing

3,200 pounds a distance of 45,000 yards, compared to the 2,700-

pound

and 42,000-yard range of the American 16-inchers.

shell

She displaced 72,809 tons

fully laden,

and drew 35

feet.

She was

863 feet long and 128 in the beam. She could hit 27.5 knots top speed or cruise 7,200 miles at 16 knots.

And

at

she was sortying

out of the Inland Sea for Okinawa with only enough fuel in her tanks for a one-way voyage. If soldiers

and tanks,

fliers

and airplanes,

could be enrolled in the ranks of the suiciders,

and boats

sailors it

was

logical that

admirals and dreadnoughts should follow. There were three admirals

coming with Yamato^ and the

destroyers. ships,

light cruiser Yahagi

and eight

There might have been more of them and more war-

but Admiral Toyoda could scrape up only 2,500 tons of

fuel for the venture.

Although Toyoda had high hopes for the

success of the kikusui^ he could not have regarded Yamatd's sally as

anything but a forlorn hope; he gave Rear Admiral Seichi

commanding

this Surface Special

for protection. If to reach

it

a

Attack Force, only two airplanes

was the good fortune of Yamato and company

Okinawa unscathed, or

wagon and

Ito,

few other ships

at least

intact, their

with the huge battlemission was to

fall like

wolves upon the sheep of the American troop transports and supply ships in the Hagushi Anchorage, and then, with their fuel

almost exhausted, beach themselves to support a

sally

by Ushiji-

"Floating Chrysanthemums"

ma's Thirty-second inchers.

Army

with

all

93

guns led by Yamato's

their

At three-twenty on the afternoon of April

twenty minutes

after the first

dove on the Hagushi

targets,

1

8-

exactly

6,

of the Floating Chrysanthemums

Yamato and her escorts shoved off

from Tokuyama.

There had been

a

ceremony. At

six o'clock, all

not on duty had been broken out on deck.

A

men and

officers

message from Ad-

miral Jisaburu Ozawa, chief victim of the Americans' "Marianas

Turkey Shoot," was "Render

The men

this

read:

operation the turning point of the war."

sang the somber National Anthem, ''Umi

Across the

sea, corpses in the

Yukaha''':

water,

Across the mountain, corpses in the field. I shall die for the Emperor. I shall never look back.

Next the

ship's

would never survive

company, convinced to the man that they this

voyage, gave three Banzais for the

em-

peror and returned to quarters. At ten o'clock, Yamato was in the Pacific

Ocean

— racing

down Kyushu's

eastern shores with her

consorts gathering about her, shooing the American submarine Hacklehack away, swinging to starboard off Kyushu's southern

nose to

sail

west through

Van Diemen

Strait into the East

China

Sea.

Admiral Ito was taking the Surface Special Attack Force on

a

big swing west-northwest in hopes of pouncing on the Americans off

Okinawa

at

about dusk of the next day.

But Hacklehack had already alerted Admiral Spruance, and shortly before half-past eight the next

morning

a scout plane

from

Essex spotted the Japanese force just southwest of Kyushu, less

than four hundred miles above Okinawa.

OKINAWA

94

Patrol planes began taking off from Kerama-retto.

At ten

o'clock, Yamato's pathetic pair of fighter escorts flew

back to Japan.

At ten-thirty Rear Admiral Morton Deyo was ordered

to take

seven cruisers, and twenty-one destroyers north

six battleships,

and place them between the approaching Japanese warships and the American transports. At almost the same

moment

the patrol

planes found Yamato sailing at twenty-two knots in the middle of a

diamond-shaped destroyer screen, with cruiser Yahagi

The

behind.

enemy

big planes shadowed the naked

trailing

fleet like

vultures.

"Hope you

will

bring back a nice

fish for breakfast,"

Admiral

Turner signaled Admiral Deyo.

The commander

of the intercepting force seized a signal

blank and pencil to write his reply. orderly handed

"Many

thanks, will try

— " An

him an intercepted message. Scouts of the Fast

Carrier Forces had found the enemy. Three groups totaling 380 planes were preparing to strike. "Will try to," "if the

pehcans haven't caught them

The

Deyo concluded,

all!"

"pelicans" had.

At half past twelve the American warbirds were over the get.

Ten minutes

later

tar-

two bombs exploded near Yamato's main-

mast. Another four minutes and a torpedo had pierced her side.

At the same moment destroyer Hamakaze stood on her nose and slid

under, and Yahagi took a

bomb and

a fish

and went dead in

the water.

There was

a respite.

The Americans came

again at half-past one and planted five

torpedoes in Yamato\ port

side.

engine rooms, and the stricken

Water rushed

mammoth

into boiler and

began to lean to port.

Rear Admiral Kosaku Ariga, Yamato's captain, ordered counter-

"Floating Chrysanthemums"

95

flooding in the starboard boiler and engine rooms. Ensign Mit-

suru Yoshida attempted to warn the

were

men

there.

Too

late.

They

sacrificed.

Yamato

Still

listed,

and she had but one screw working. Her

Her

decks were a shambles of cracked and twisted steel plates.

The

big guns would not work.

watertight wireless

room was

filled

with water, and an explosion had wrecked the emergency dispensary and killed everyone inside.

At two o'clock the

final attack

began.

Hellcats and Avengers plunged fi-om the skies to strike at the hapless ship. Yamato was shaken fore and aft and the entire bat-

shuddered violently. Communications with the bridge

tleship

were cut

came

off,

the distress flag was hoisted, the steering

flooded, and with the rudder

mato sagged over to "Correction of

Down came "Hold

on,

a list

list

jammed hard

left,

room

be-

mighty Ya-

of thirty-five degrees.

hopeless!" the executive officer cried.

the Americans for the death blow.

men!" Ariga shouted. "Hold on, men!"

Bombs were

striking

around and upon Yamato, raising

a giant

clanging, flinging waves of roaring air across her decks, jumbling

men

together in heaps.

officers.

Out of one

Admiral Ito struggled to

and saluted him. The two

men

pile

crawled high-ranking staff

His chief of

his feet.

staff arose

regarded each other solemnly. Ito

turned, shook hands with each of his staff officers, wheeled, and

strode into his cabin, either to embrace death or await

world

will

never

know which. Admiral Ariga rushed

it

— the

to save the

emperor's portrait, but met death instead.

Yamato was dying slowly,

were nearly

vertical,

like the giant

her battle flag

all

explosions racked her monster body, her

blowing up

— and

all

she was.

Her

decks

but touched the waves,

own ammunition began

around her were her

sister ships in

death

agonies. Yahagi was sinking, Isokaze, Hamakaze, Asashimo, and Ka-

sumo had received their death blows.

OKINAWA

96

At twenty-three minutes day's steaming

Japan had it

was

now up

after

two Yamato

slid

under, a

ftill

from Okinawa.

lost

her navy, the suicide battleship had

to the kikusui

Mitsuru Ushijima.

and the

men

failed,

and

of Lieutenant General

Fiery Failure at

Kakazu Ridge CHAPTER ELEVEN

The honeymoon had been Twenty-fourdi Corps

The day

after

brief for

Major General John Hodge's

—hardly more than

a

weekend.

Love Day, the Twenty-fourth's spearheads

raced across the island, Seventh Division on the

on

left.

Ninety-sixth

day for the

the right, turning to their right (or south) the next

anticipated rapid down-island advance. Their progress

seemed

as

bloodless as the Marine drive in the north.

But on April 4 they found resistance "stiffening."

grew

It

stiffer daily until,

sistance" was reported.

on April

8,

They had come

"greatly increased re-

into the outerworks of

Ushijima's Naha-Shuri-Yonabaru Line, and probably

its

most

formidable position: Kakazu Ridge.

At

seem

first

glance,

Kakazu (pronounced "Cock-a-zoo") did not

especially difficult: neither unusually high

steep. Three-quarters of a mile south the

ment seemed

a

much more

what Colonel Eddy

May

nor uncommonly

Urasoe-Mura Escarp-

difficult natural barrier.

383rd Regiment of the Ninety-sixth Division against

Kakazu from

That was

thought when he prepared to send his

his headquarters atop

it.

Studying

another ridge, he considered 97

OKINAWA

98

its

seizure a preliminary to an assault

on Urasoe-Mura. His maps

suggested no other conclusion, although Colonel

aware that the

map was

the entire area was obscured by clouds.

coral

hogback about

on

What

May — and

Colonel

It

West on May's

and the larger Kakazu Ridge proper to

flank,

rough

a

northwest-southeast keel.

a

of the smaller Kakazu

hills

Kakazu was

thousand yards long running from the

coastal flats in the west

formed by two

was not

probably made from photographs taken

when

a

May

was

right

his left.

General Hodges

—

not

also could

suspect was that Kakazu's defenders under Colonel Munetatsu

Hara had been

Okinawan

comb of

fortifying their position for months. Assisted

laborers, they

caves, tunnels,

had constructed

a subterranean

honey-

and passageways. This would not be the

such "impregnable" position encountered by Americans in

first

the Pacific

War: what made

flage, its incredible variety

depth,

its

it

unique was

and number of

its

complete camou-

fortified positions, its

abundance of supplies and ammunition

mm

spigot-mortar unit launching huge 320

shells

— including — network a

its

of mutually supporting emplacements firing interlocking its

by

absolute

invulnerability

shells hurled at

it

to

those

fire,

and

nineteen-hundred-pound

by the battleship Colorado cruising offshore.

Because Colonel Hara had buried his headquarters deep be-

low the main

ridge,

he had complicated his communications: his

only problem. Although

many

tunnels had interconnecting pas-

sages and there were also voice tubes, tions

were

isolated,

be exposed to

had jio

some underground

compelling Hara to use runners

enemy

fire

posi-

who would

once they appeared above ground. Hara

fear of the Americans' plentiful

and powerful tanks, so

superior to the Japanese diminutive "kitchen sinks" that had been nevertheless unstoppable against inferior or lightly in the

Manchuria-Burma-Philippines campaigns. Fronting Ka-

was

a

deep gorge cut

immemorial passage of

a

narrow stream.

kazu Ridge and running into the coral by the

The

armed troops

gorge was

its

entire length

a natural antitank obstacle, impassable to tracked

Fiery Failure at Kakazu Ridge

vehicles.

For tanks to attempt

would bring down on them Finally,

a

to turn either flank of the ridge

storm of

artillery.

Colonel Hara had emplaced outposts in tombs and

concrete pillboxes on the ridge's northern face. all,

99

he had cleverly emplaced most of

Most

his infantry

effective of

and

mortars on the southern or reverse slope of the ridge.

of his

all

They were

enemy troops, artilNot even enemy mortars,

thus in untouchable defilade, shielded from lery,

and even American

battleships.

with that weapon's high, looping trajectory, could reach them.

Moreover, the Americans were absolutely unaware of this reverseslope concentration; while Hara, of course, had his entire front registered

by

his

own

guns.

Thus, Kakazu Ridge.

Colonel school"

May

was sometimes called "a soldier of the old

— meaning that he believed that the brave charge could

usually carry the day. This does not suggest that he

maneuver, only that faced by such sition,

he would instinctively

fall

a

would not

forbidding unflankable po-

back on the frontal

assault.

So

he ordered two of his three battalions to storm Kakazu Ridge and

Kakazu West on April

9, actually

expecting both to

following morning. This meant that ican infantry doctrine

two of them

—

in attack

companies would

all

units

West was it

would be no

at the start late

companies would use

with the third in reserve, and thus, two

strike the

main ridge and two more Kakazu call in their rear.

artillery

would attack before

Right

To

daylight.

one of the companies assaulting Kakazu

Willard Mitchell,

a

born fighter and

when company

until daylight,

was sighted and promptly pinned down. The other a

achieve

preparation beforehand, and

moving out and did not march

was commanded by

Amer-

in accordance with

a battalion of three

West, with the remaining two on surprise, there

—

by the

fall

leader, First Lieutenant

powerfully built southerner

both football and basketball for Mississippi

who had

State. Idolized

played

by

his

OKINAWA

100

men and

called "Captain Hoss," he

bashful battle cry: is

on the Hoss's

them

"Watch

was

also beloved for his

Here comes

out!

Hoss'

'the

— and God by

side!" Mitchell returned their affection

his "Lardasses," a fondly derisive

and

droll

un-

calling

nickname that

they loved. Mitchell's Lardasses were quick to ascend

Kakazu West under

cover of darkness, and not particularly dismayed to learn that they

were alone on

crest

its

and that their supporting comrades were

pinned down below. They also found that the position was com-

posed of two knolls

— one

on the north, and the other to the

south, forming Colonel Hara's reverse slope. a shallow saddle of land.

from

The moment

Between them was

that the Japanese

formed

their steel-and-coral fortress, Mitchell quickly

company

into a perimeter

conceal a prone man.

on the

He hoped

them

if

his

enough

saddle, just deep

to riddle

emerged

to

they charged

forward to clear both saddle and northward knoll. But the enemy refused to oblige, opening

from

fire

their

own

position and show-

ering the saddle with hand grenades and satchel charges, bags stuffed with explosive. Mitchell's

weapons, and long

a furious battle

— with men

Throughout

killed

men

fought back with the same

raged back and forth

and wounded on both

all

sides.

the action, Mitchell roved the besieged saddle,

hurling grenades and firing his carbine, his battle cry

from

—

his lips.

Pfc.

His

men were

Joseph Solch

in a cave

his gallant equal,

slope. Just

his buddies attacked the

grenades and killing

A^ about noon,

and one of them

one of

its

its

320

mm shells could

With Captain Hoss, Solch

huge mortar, destroying

it

with hand

nine-man crew.

sensing that the Americans had but a small

force in front of him, Colonel series

booming

— spotted an enemy spigot mortar mounted

on the reverse

destroy the Americans on the saddle.

and

morning

Hara ordered

his

men

to

make

a

of four furious counter-attacks on the enemy. So that they

might surprise the Americans, and with brutal indifference to their destruction or survival,

he sent them charging through

his

— Fiery Failure at Kakazu Ridge

own mortar of the

first

Lieutenant

charge, while his

When

loss.

fire.

a

second

Bill

men

assault

Curran

killed

101

both the leaders

repulsed the Japanese with heavy

came, Solch, squatting on his

haunches, fired his Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) fi-om the hip to repel an entire

company. In the

throwing "satchel charges

final charge, the

Japanese

big as boxes of apples"

as

— came

within a few feet of overrunning the "American devils" but finally

few feet short.

fell a

Even

so, Mitchell's

company was being badly

whittled. Be-

cause his soldiers were lying on hard coral, they could not get

below ground by scooping out foxholes, and thus were inviting targets for

enemy

riflemen and exposed to the flame and frag-

ments of exploding mortar

shells.

Fierce fighting also raged atop Kakazu Ridge to the east, or

of Mitchell's position. Here the Japanese popped in and out

left

of their barricaded caves to strike the

men

of companies led by

Captain Jack Royster and First Lieutenant Dave Belman. also charged tars.

An

up the reverse

entire

slope, again braving their

They

own mor-

American platoon was pinned down by

a pair

of

enemy machine guns. Pfc. Edward Moskala crawled toward them, clutching his BAR. When close enough but still unobserved, he hurled grenades at the unsuspecting Japanese, rising to rush them spraying bullets. Both guns were knocked out.

Now

Lieutenant Belman was

hit,

refusing evacuation despite

great loss of blood. Captain Royster took a mortar fragment in

the face. In exquisite pain and nearly blind, he also refused to leave.

But

it

was becoming plain to both

officers that the

enemy

was gaining the upper hand. GIs had already begun to withdraw off the ridge crest, hunting protection in the

numerous caves and

holes on the ridge's northern face. After Royster radioed battahon for help. Lieutenant Colonel

the rescue. But this unit got

with the

now

men who had been

King ordered another company

no

to

farther than the gorge, crouching

pinned down there since sunup. King

believed that his battalion was in trouble and asked

May

for

OKINAWA

102

permission to withdraw. as

May

many men withdrawing him

told

that if he

as

refused, telling

that he'd lose

was "jumpy, have the executive

over." Understandably, there was

no

hill.

He

also

officer take

reply.

Captain Royster on the ridge had a

of

far better appreciation

danger than either hard-boiled Eddy

his

King

he would holding the

May

or the cautious

Colonel King. His and Belman's company could not possibly review of the enemy. So Royster called for smoke

treat in full

shells

from the Eighty-eighth Chemical Mortar Battalion. They went

humming up and

looping down, but the wind blew them back

into Royster's face. Eventually there was a withdrawal,

many

last

unable to

him

Now down

man down,

move was

safely

wounded buddies with them. Ed Moskala but when he learned that a wounded man

still

atop the ridge, he went back up to bring

down.

the remnants of King's entire battalion were pinned

in the gorge,

immobilized by enemy

Second Lieutenant Leo Ford, the

to die.

fire.

decided that the best way out was to creep

Snaking along inch by inch on their

wounded. Ford and

who had

their withdrawal.

second

trip

his

To

down

in charge,

the defile to the

earlier in the day.

bellies,

men moved westward

leap erect was

now

officer

jump-off point of Hoss Mitchell's company

Moskala,

to conceal

and the GIs began crawling down toward the gorge,

of them carrying

was the

enough smoke

dragging their

at a snail's pace.

Ed

volunteered again to act as rear guard, covered

Twice he rescued wounded buddies, but on

he paid for his gallantry with

his

life.

For these

his acts

enemy Medal of

of infinite compassion, and his bravery in destroying the guns^ Moskala received the posthumous award of the

Honor.

By

four in the afternoon, the

men

led

by Ford reached

a

point

opposite the north slope of Kakazu West, and were soon joined

by Mitchell's GIs moving rapidly under billowing smoke called

down by Captain Hoss

The Kakazu

skillfully

himself.

attack had failed, but

it

had not been

a disaster.

— Fiery Failure at Kakazu Ridge

In

103

Colonel May's 383rd Regiment had suffered 326

all,

casualties,

with 23 dead, 47 missing and presumed dead, plus 256 wounded.

command may

Colonel Hara's

have

lost half

of

its

and for the defenders to lose nearly twice

1,200;

while fighting from

attackers, testifies to

the valor and

Even before the

skill

failure at

a

many

as

most formidable

strength of as the

fixed position,

of the American infantry.

Kakazu became known

at

Ninety-sixth

Division headquarters, Brigadier Claudius Easley, assistant

mander of the Ninety-sixth, had prepared massive assault under his personal attack" with

no

attempt at surprise

battahons of infantry

second

much more

command. This "powerhouse was to be spearheaded by four

— about three thousand

by eight battaUons of 105 and 155

soldiers

— supported

mm artillery, together with air

and bombardment from the sea led by the battleship

strikes

York.

a

com-

There would be no

the ridge was

still

New

tanks once again, for that gorge below

impassable.

At 7:15 A.M. on April 10 the

assault began. Furious as the

bombardment had been, it in no way depleted Ushitroop strength. When the bombardment lifted, his men

preliminary jima's safe

and

invisible within his steel-and-coral fortress

—would reply

with small arms, machine guns, mortars, and occasionally one of those huge 624-pound mortar shells.

Once

again the Ninety-sixth

fought gallantly, but flesh-and-blood advancing in the open, no matter firing It

how

valiantly,

simply cannot overcome an unseen

from within underground

was almost

changed

as

upon firepower

power, with the inevitable conse-

The Americans were

stopped. Fortunately for them, a

— the forerunner of or — squelched the

greater.

coral.

spiritual

heavy rain

come

and

though the Japanese and the Americans had ex-

battle doctrines: the defenders relying

and the invaders on quence:

fortifications of steel

enemy

battle,

drenching downpours soon to their casualties

might have been

OKINAWA

104

more days of hideous combat

required two

It

to convince

General Easley that Kakazu was simply too formidable for the Ninety-sixth to conquer alone.

On

April

of the 381st Regiment

sidy's battalion

Colonel John Cas-

1 1

made

its

second attempt

to seize the top of the ridge and was again driven back.

That

night the Japanese began bombarding the Americans pinned

down

in the

mm

gorge with their 320

spigot mortars.

One

of

these huge projectiles, woefully inaccurate and fired so haphaz-

seemingly did strike harmlessly on the ground

ardly,

enough an aid

force to start a landslide that buried a cave being used as

station, killing thirteen

On

— but with

the

morning of the

Americans and wounding nine.

twelfth, Easley ordered another attack

by Cassidy's

battalion, supported

Ninety-sixth

moved

out, there

shells so thick that they a minute. Forty-five

by heavy

fell

upon them

came down

men were

air strikes.

at the rate

lost,

a

When

the

shower of mortar

of better than sixty

and that was the end of the

Kakazu debacle of April 9-12. During the gains

made by

failed April

From

assaults the only appreciable

the Twenty-fourth Corps was by the veteran Sev-

enth Infantry Division on the sixth.

9-12

left

or eastern flank of the Ninety-

Triangulation Hill to Ouki on Nakagusuku Bay, the

Seventh drove forward one thousand yards. Ouki Thirty-second Infantry on April

promptly

evicted.

By

1 1

,

fell

to the

but the Americans were

the night of April 12

all

of the Seventh's

formations were halted in front of Hill 178, a towering crag in

roughly the center-east of Ushijima's

line,

which was

also a Jap-

anese artillery observation point. Farther east the Ninety-sixth's

382nd Regiment had been stopped cold where on April

may have been

1 1

it

went into defensive

Tombstone Ridge, positions. Tombstone

at

every bit as tough as Kakazu, but no assault was

planned until General

Hodge

an(J his division

commanders could

assess the situation.

Casualties in the Seventh and Ninety-sixth divisions had been

Fier\- Failure at

451

dead,

wounded, 5.~50

A

—

with

all

killed

— although

more

likely

105

presumed dead and 2.198

missing and

241

Enemy

for a total of 2.890.

truer tigiire

Kakazu Ridge

losses

were estimated

at

was almost certainly exaggerated.

this

would be about 4.000. Most of these

men were killed by bombardment, for during April 9-12 the Amencan invaders had hurled a massive weight of metal from land. sea. and air upon the defending Japanese. The fact that Kakazu.

Tombstone, and Ouki remained

lay

from Kakazu difficult,

m possession of the

What was nition ashore.

shells

it

to

It

those ridges

forward slopes, though

enemy

fire.

General Hodge, was even

there was not yet

enough ammu-

of those two ammunition ships to the

cntical at

first,

Kakazu would have

was

now one

to wait until

had come across the beaches

daily shelling a realm". .Already, after only tie,

all

on

any attempt to dnve past them

seemed

— and

loss

deemed not

causes of delay.

mm

The

— but

to success

attackers that dreadful rain of

needed,

heaMer bombardments

155

reverse slopes of

to Shuri Castle. Seizing the

could be done

would brin? upon the

ki27?nkjze.

enemy hands demon-

American commanders that the key

strated to the

Okinawa

m

to

of the chief

enough 105 and

make

sustained

about nine days of bat-

had become apparent that the Okinawa campaign would

depend upon supply

as

much

as battle.

Back to Banzai! CHAPTER TWELVE

Reports of the Battle of Kakazu Ridge were received by Lieutenant General Isamu

Cho

(he had received another star) and Colo-

Hiromichi Yahara with predictable

nel

neither losses,

icans

knew

the exact

number of enemy

reactions.

fallen or

Yahara was eminently pleased with the

had been dealt

a

bloody repulse exactly

even their

result.

as

Although

own

The Amer-

he had planned

in his defense-in-depth tactics,

and soon the

among them would

Tenth Army that the Americans

would cancel

so whittle the

their offensive so that

rate of attrition

not only the homeland would

be saved, but Okinawa as well.

To

General

Cho

it

appeared that the enemy had suffered

grievously and was so rocked back

on

had come for

a full-scale offensive

of the Thirty-second Army.

Since his humiliation in the earlier

showdown between him and

when General Ushijima had

sided with his planning chief,

Yahara,

the fiery

Cho had

their heels that the time

not ceased to press for a counter-attack. But

even his friend and mentor Ushijima remained unmoved, until an order fi-om Imperial

Thirty-second

Army

Headquarters was received urging the to overrun

Yontan and Kadena

Airfields.

107

OKINAWA

108

This was probably the result of

a

Japanese intelligence warning

Marine Corsairs would soon

that

strength and would difficult

than ever.

make

Cho

arrive

at

these airfields in

the mission of the various kikusui

seized

on

this directive to

persuade Ushi-

jima on April 6 to order an attack prepared for April ever-alert

Yahara pounced upon the appearance of

8.

a

But the 110-ship

convoy offshore of the Urasoe-Mura Escarpment on April proof that the Americans were going to Division on

its

flank.

more

7 as

strike the Sixty-second

Alarmed, Ushijima for the second time can-

celed a Cho-sponsored assault.

But then both the American

failure at

Kakazu Ridge and the

"remarkable" destruction wrought upon the enemy of the kikusui convinced Ushijima and

first

strike

Cho

fleet

by the

that the time to

had indeed come. This misconception was strengthened by

"a stirring telegraph order" from Naval Headquarters claiming that

Ten-Go had been "very successful." "There

easiness

favor."

among enemy

are signs of un-

forces and odds are seven to three in our

Everyone involved

in the

Okinawa defense should unite

in "a general pursuit operation."

Isamu Cho, though not at least as clever.

as rational as his rival

Yahara, was

Everywhere he seemed to see signs of enemy

among them slackening aerial activity on April 10, as well as a Navy report of a reduction in the number of American ships in the Hagushi Anchorage. The calculating Yahara could

weakness,

have explained the

first

as a result

of the same cloudy, rainy

weather that discomfited everyone on the island

— Cho included

— and

the second as caused by the visible stream of unloaded

enemy

ships sailing back to base for reloading and return. But

Cho was

then at his argumentative best, and over the precise

but uninspiring protests of the unhappy Yahara, General Ushijima ordered a "powerfiil" counter-attack for the night of April 12-13.

Cho's plan was for massive

infiltration

of almost the entire

Back to Banzai!

109

east-west front of the U.S. Seventh and Ninety-sixth Divisions.

Three battahons of the Japanese Twenty-fourth Division would strike the

Seventh on the east (or right of the American

line),

while three more from the Sixty-second Division would assault the battered Ninety-sixth.

born of

a Japanese preference

American

They would,

of course, attack at night,

a desire to

negate that dreaded

Breaking through the advance American units,

artillery.

the troops would then spread out in the rear area to a point four

miles below

known

Kadena

Airfield.

caves and tombs.

emerge

to slaughter

On

There they would

technical, headquarters, supply,

more

morning of April

the

Tenth Army's rear-echelon

take refuge in 1 3

they would

troops, usually

and soldiers armed with nothing

lethal than a pencil. In the

melee that would ensue, troops

of both sides would be so hopelessly intermixed that the

would not dare bear.

to bring his artillery, air,

Meanwhile, other battalions remaining

Seventh and Ninety-sixth would launch to

compel the Yankees

would be included echelon.

Cho

enemy

and naval gunfire to in place opposite the

a furious attack

intended

to retreat, perhaps in such panic that they

in the general slaughter of the

enemy's rear

did not specify what would happen next, whether

he intended actually to overrun the

airfields as

Imperial Head-

quarters had suggested, destroying installations and aircraft at will,

or would be content merely with unnerving Buckner and

disorganizing his two forward divisions.

With

on April

12,

Hiromichi Yahara became so apprehensive

committed an

act of insubordination so incredible that in

positions that he

troops marching in drenching rain to their jump-off

any Western army

it

could not have ended otherwise than in a

court-martial and dismissal

tenant General

Takeo

— or perhaps worse. He went to Lieu-

Fujioka,

commander of

Division, and Lieutenant General

the Sixty-second

Tatsumi Amamiya, commander

of the Twenty-fourth, and actually persuaded them not to use three battalions each in the forthcoming operation, but only two.

— OKINAWA

110

Not

six,

but four battalions would march to the plan of Isamu

Cho.

Three

flares burst

of April 12.

Two

over Kakazu Ridge during the early darkness

were

and the other,

lery fire,"

"Commence

red, the first signaling,

"We

"Make

tonight"; and the third, shaped like a dragon, was for all-out attack."

Almost

instantly, at

Americans the heaviest Japanese war.

On

artil-

are attacking with full strength

about 7

artillery

on the

p.m., there fell

concentration of the

the sector of the battered Ninety-sixth alone about

twenty-two hundred rounds exploded, while within

five

minutes

another two hundred rocked the Seventh's zone. Fortunately these Yankees with their painfully acquired battle savvy had their holes so "dry

and deep" that few

dug

casualties resulted.

Americans was the Twenty-second Infantry

First to strike the

Regiment, which had marched for two days in pouring rain from its

base on

Oroku Peninsula

just

south of Naha. Loaded

with 110-pound packs and bags of food these normally small soldiers

— an immense burden

— they had been told by

their

mander, Lieutenant Colonel Masaru Yoshida, to move uous

eel line,"

as they lay

tion

and they did indeed

huddled and shivering

by enemy

air.

By

down

feel

more

like fish

for

com-

in "a sin-

than flesh

in cane fields to escape detec-

nightfall they

were already

dispirited

and

bewildered, moving over unfamiliar terrain and with no precise plan. Instead of attacking en masse, they sought to infiltrate the

Seventh Division's sector in twos or threes or got*nowhere.

One massed

riddled by GIs firing

rifles

attack of about a

a

squad or two, but

hundred Japanese was

and machine guns, kiUing about

of them, wounding another third, and compelling

all

a third

survivors to

take refuge in a cave.

The

assault

on the Ninety^sixth

Division's front, however,

was much heavier, better organized, and of longer duration personally directed as

it

was by General Fujioka. Guileful and

1

Back to Banzai! stealthy as always, a long

1 1

column of Japanese sought

to penetrate

the Ninety-sixth's position by pretending to be GIs marching

openly

down Highway

5 in a

column of twos. Twenty of them

slipped past scrutiny until the Americans, realizing that they were

not friendly troops on their

Those who survived fifty-eight of their

more

attacks

failed

with heavy

opened

flank,

fire

with

all

weapons.

scurried for cover in caves and tombs, but

comrades were

left

dead on the

Two

field.

were mounted against the Ninety-sixth, but both loss.

General Fujioka next tried to

roll

up

his

enemy with two com-

panies following an artillery barrage against Kakazu Ridge.

A

small force staged a diversion around the western flank of Kakazu

West

while the main body tried to overrun the draw between that

point and Kakazu Ridge. First to meet them was Pfc. William

Daily at the trigger of to depress his

a

heavy machine gun in the draw. Unable

gun enough

enemy below

to strike the approaching

him, Daily began tossing grenades. Their explosions alerted Staff Sergeant Beauford "Snuffy" Anderson, holed up in a tomb with his light

grenades

mortar section. Anderson at the

about him, his eye spiraled

it

the

left

tomb

fell

on

a

own

all

dud enemy mortar. Seizing

football-style into the

of his

mortars, wrenched

it

he

draw and was rewarded by an

explosion and screams. Rushing back into the his

to hurl

Japanese, and then emptied his carbine. Glancing

them from

tomb he

collected

yanked out

their casings,

the safety pins, slamming the shell against a rock to release the

setback pin, and spiraled this heavier and

more

lethal "football"

into the draw. Again an explosion and screams

impromptu "passing

attack,"

Anderson sent

footballs spinning into the darkness below,

exercise in

Yankee

platoon. In the plus seven

battle ingenuity

all

.

.

.

With

this

of his fifteen lethal

and by

this effective

he stopped an entire enemy

morning he counted twenty-five enemy

bodies,

abandoned knee mortars and four machine guns. For

his bravery

and quickness of thought, Anderson received the

Medal of Honor.

OKINAWA

112

Other Japanese who had

same end. asked

him

When if

an

enemy

forth to

men

ten of his

company command kill

approached

officer

a

BAR man

he were Japanese, the GI snorted, "No!"

him dead, along with diers of a

Kakazu West met the

infiltrated

twenty Japanese.

On

— and shot

following in single

post under attack in a

and

Sol-

file.

tomb

sallied

the western slope of Kakazu

American machine gunner mowed down twenty-

West

a single

three

more sons of Nippon.

Another enemy force nearly broke through the draw,

until

they were illuminated by star shells fired over the battlefield by

American warships

offshore, a technique developed at Peleliu

and

so successful that night actually could be turned into day. Silhouetted against the dark, the

attack broken in blood.

enemy was

Dawn

easily riddled

and their

revealed a draw covered with

sprawling corpses.

General Cho's desperation attack was also hurled back on

Kakazu Ridge proper.

When

the Ninety-sixth's heavy mortar

crews were informed that about forty Japanese were threatening to overrun their battalion observation post, they decided to risk

up

close support of their riflemen buddies their

comrades would be

safely

below ground

fi-ont.

Hoping

in pits

and foxholes,

they sent about eight hundred high-explosive shells skyward, to

come plunging

tling noise that

Marine

drew the

was the

straight

last

down with

a horrible

whis-

bombardment,

firing shells that

of explosives around the endangered position. In

a curtain

morning enemy dead were "stacked *In their headquarters

like

below Shuri Castle

a despairing

General

Cho

cordwood" below. a

sorrowing General

heard nothing but de-

pressing reports from the front. Nevertheless, that a battalion of the

through American

it

was

still

hoped

Twenty-second Regiment that had slipped

lines

undetected to enter the Ginowan area

in caves until daybreak,

when they could emerge

up the American rear echelons

— and even perhaps reach

might hide out to shoot

humming

sound many Japanese ever heard.

artillery also joined the

Ushijima and

that

Back to Banzai!

Yontan and Kadena

enemy

to destroy

113

aircraft.

that daybreak

showed them incapable of concerted

remained hidden

them

But

become

for sanctuary during the night, they had

so fragmented action.

So they

when

half of

until nightfall of the thirteenth,

successfully slipped back into their

own

in scattering

lines.

Two

final

Japanese counter-attacks were repulsed during the early-morning darkness of the fourteenth, one of them with losses of 116 men, closing out Isamu Cho's abortive counter-offensive. It

had not, of course, been

a

proper Banzai!: howling, sake-

crazed troops, screaming and screeching as they ran through the

darkness banging canteens on bayonets and yelling in singsong

EngHsh what they presumed

to be blood-curdling oaths

anese boy drink American boy's blood!"

— "Jap-

— only to be herded into

enemy barbed wire by American mortars

falling

behind them,

there to be riddled or sometimes even exterminated by accurate

machine-gun and

rifle fire.

But

it

was

still

spear tactics, and worse, a decision to

a reversion to

come

bamboo-

outside of the caves

and tombs and pillboxes from which they had successfully halted the two-division advance of General Hodge's Twenty-fourth

Corps, and expose themselves to the devastation of overwhelmingly superior American artillery, mortar, and naval gunfire, as well as accurate small arms. Ushijima, in authorizing this tic

roman-

regression into the failed tactics of the past, had blessed an

operation

ill

conceived, understrength, misdirected, haphazard,

and uncoordinated. As involved

a

— 1,594 men —were

result, killed.

more than

To

approve

half the

force

a plan caUing for

splendid defensive fighters to take the offensive at night while

moving over unfamiliar

terrain

and woefully inferior in numbers

and firepower was simply to grasp the muzzle of military success rather than the pistol grip; and also to surrender his

own

enor-

mous advantage in terrain and tenacious troops: natural obstacles made unassailable by improved fortifications, thus canceling out his

enemy's superior firepower, and manned by invisible troops

movable only

in death.

OKINAWA

114

He

did this because, like Isamu Cho, his heart had conquered

his head;

and because most Japanese commanders from Midway-

Guadalcanal to Okinawa

itself

could never shed that Bushido-horn,

carefully cultivated conviction that the soft, spoiled, luxury-loving

Americans would quail

at the first flash

of a Samurai saber.

Kikusui 2:

Kamikaze Crucible CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Admiral

Matome Ugaki was

strikes at the

still

convinced that his April 6-7

Americans had seriously damaged

mate not shared by

his colleague,

A

58,

an

esti-

made by Sugahara's staff concluded: "Despite many attacks, the Navy

gahara of the Sixth Air Army.

somewhat sourly

report

cannot block the enemy's carrier force, which east of

TF

Lieutenant General Michio Su-

still is

operating

Okinawa."

Nevertheless Sugahara was eminently cooperative in preparing for Kikusui fleet that it

2,

which Ugaki hoped would so shatter Spruance's

might seek sanctuary

in the

open

sea.

But both he

and the army general reahzed that the second Floating Chrysan-

themum would

never equal the strength of the

cause of the serious losses

it

had

suffered.

first, if

only be-

They were

also

concerned to learn that Marine Corsairs had indeed arrived

Yontan and Kadena, thus menacing ground-based fighters base,

that,

their

own

aircraft

at

with

because of their proximity to their

were more to be feared than carrier-based interceptors.

Their apprehension was somewhat eased, however, with the arrival

on Kyushu of

a

new weapon:

the Oka, or "Cherry Blos115

OKINAWA

116

som"

glide

bomb,

a rocket-boosted, piloted suicider capable of

speeds of 500 knots and carrying a huge wallop of 2,645 pounds

of trinitroanisol. ally a

The Oka was

heavy Betty or Peggy bomber, and flown to within about

dozen miles of its its

slung beneath a mother plane, usu-

target,

when

rockets and directing

bullet speed, the gunfire, but

its

keep

pilot to

Oka was

it

was released with the

toward

made

it

pilot firing

Moving immune

extremely

it

at pistol-

to

so ineffective that

Although Kikusui tried to destroy "the

2

it

this

enemy

difficult for its

16y2-foot missile on target. American

gence was aware of the appearance of sidered

target.

its

believed to be almost

very velocity

his

it

a

intelli-

new weapon, but con-

was christened baka, or "foolish."

was scheduled for April

12,

Admiral Ugaki

remnant" of TF 58 on the day before, hurl-

ing a daylight suicide attack of about fifty-two planes against Admiral Mitscher's carrier force. Typically glowing reports claimed three carriers sunk, a cruiser set ablaze, another cruiser holed,

and two destroyers lots, still

tleships

hit

The

with torpedoes.

next day Ugaki's pi-

mightier with pen than bomb, reported sinking two bat-

and

a light cruiser. Actually very little

to Mitscher's ships

on

either day.

damage was done

Some damage was

inflicted

on

the veteran flattop Enterprise, and a kamikaze crashed the majestic

new battleship Missouri, but succeeded and blistering some

paint.

only in scratching her deck

Destroyer Kidd was hit on picket duty

and badly hurt, with thirty-eight

sailors

wounded, the worst casualty of the

day.

killed

and

Waggish

fifty-five

bluejackets

aboard another picket destroyer, exasperated by repeated strikes at their station, erected a

ingraft

huge sign on deck with an arrow point-

and reading: carriers this way.

Both Ugaki and Sugahara hoped sairs

by planning

a series of

to neutrafize the

bombing

raids

on

enemy Cor-

their airfields the

night before the scheduled attacks of April 12, while Sugahara also organized a

decoy

flight

of fighters to lure

and Corsairs away from the impact

area. In the

TF

58's Hellcats

bombing opera-

— Kikusui

Kamikaze Crucible

117

22 Japanese aircraft struck Yontan and Kadena shortly be-

tion,

fore

2:

dawn of

of their

own

the twelfth,

damaging

enemy

5

American gunners of all

to

planes but losing 5

services.

Next, Sugahara's

decoys attracted nothing but birds rising for dawn breakfasts, so that

was not

it

until eleven o'clock in the

morning

Kyu-

that the

shu main body of about 120 late-model fighters arrived over both Kikai Jima and the Hagushi Anchorage to try to clear the strike area for following flights of 76 kamikaze, plus 20 suiciders roaring

up from Formosa. Although the Nipponese usual against the

more

Americans flying better planes

claiming a probably exaggerated 20 pilots

from the

enemy

carriers of

TF

downed during

planes

were more successful than

fighters

skillful

kills

— the Navy and Marine

58 reported a

fighter sweeps.

— not by intent

much

This

higher 126

also

was prob-

—

enemy but fi-om the inevitable duplication occurring when more than one fighter was firing on the same enemy, or even when a "flamer" ably exaggerated

like the starry-eyed

plunging toward a watery grave might have the winds caused by his velocity

blow the

to base. "Kill" estimates like

him

enabling

fires out,

to return successfully

body counts were much

Amer-

like

ican taxpayers' income-tax returns: so full of deductions for charity that the

churches of America would

be rich "beyond the

all

dreams of avarice." But the American interceptors did

emy

effectively prevent the en-

fighters fi-om protecting the kamikaze.

Although the suiciders

succeeded in damaging eight American ships

and destroyer-escorts of the radar picket smaller craft sunk: the

— and causing high

new

picket destroyer

casualities,

Manert

— mostly destroyers

line, as

well as

some

only one warship was

L. Abele, the first kill

on

record by a baka bomb. Abele was

nawa when

on Picket Station 14 about

it

was jumped by

a pair

thirty miles west of

Oki-

of suicide Vals. Abele's

opened up, each burst seemingly scoring

a

hit

AA

but with the

OKINAWA

118

planes reappearing through the smoke.

One

of the attackers was

sent into the sea, but the second struck the destroyer's after en-

gine room, spreading death and destruction and causing Abele to

buckle visibly. Just then one of two Betty bombers circling like scavengers overhead released

at the stricken destroyer at five

missile perfectly

tremendous

on course,

again.

them Lieutenant

s.g.

hundred knots. The

pilot kept his

striking Abele exactly amidships.

American out of the water

blast lifted the

slammed back

baka bomb, which came shrieking

its

Many men

to be

were blown overboard, among

George Wray, who swam back

to his ship,

jammed escape hatch allowing forward engine room to scramble to safety.

clambering aboard to tear open the entire watch of the

A

In less than another minute,

a

Wray might

have been too

Abele sank five minutes after the baka struck.

and crew were rescued by

a

nearby

LSM,

Most of her

but

six

late, for

officers

men were

killed

and seventy-three missing. Simultaneous with the agony oi Abele, a

flight

of conventional

kamikaze found Rear Admiral Deyo's gunfire support force patrolling waters off the

Deyo

Motobu

Peninsula.

When

they struck,

fortunately had his ships concentrated and they were ready

for the Divine

Winds, which could do

destroyer and crash a 40

One

sailor

gun

turret,

mm

who was blown

little

mount aboard

more than

stagger a

battleship Tennessee.

into the air landed atop a five-inch

where he crouched while calmly stripping off

burning clothing to await

Marine Corporal

a cold bath

W. H. Putnam

board, surfacing near a big

from the nearest

either

life raft.

He

fell

fire

his

hose.

or was blown over-

clambered aboard, finding

unusual company in the presence of the headless torso of the

kamikaze

Thus

who had

crashed his ship.

the scourging of the American fleet off

Okinawa con-

tinued unabated, but once again the kamikaze had failed to strike the paralyzing blow so eagerly sought by Admiral Ugaki. Losses

among

the suiciders are not exactly known, although 185 of

them

Kikusui

had participated in the 355 making the

2:

Kamikaze Crucible

assault

first attacks.

— an

The

119

enormous decline from the

decrease would continue until

on June 21-22 Ugaki could scrape together only 45 decrepit Divine

Winds

— the shriveled

ing Chrysanthemums.

petals

remaining on the deadly Float-

Uncle Sam: Logistics Magician

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Triumphs of "rattling

logistics,

though impressive, usually do not make

good reading,"

as

one British historian wrote of the Na-

poleonic Wars. Yet the industrial and logistics feat of the United States of America fighting the first great is

two-ocean war on record

unrivaled in the history of humankind; and at

the culminating battle of the Island

amphibious operation

War,

Okinawa during

as well as the greatest

in military annals, the

Americans had to

overcome two unprecedented challenges. First, it

had to supply

this unrivaled sea invasion at a distance

of seventy-five hundred miles from

had to keep

a fleet

its

western shores. Second,

unsurpassed in numbers of ships and firepower

constantly at sea for weeks at a time while feeding

munition, food,

it

fuel, airplanes,

and those myriad

of an invader engaged on land and sea and in the

it

lesser

with am-

demands

air.

Even more than Admiral Spruance's Fifth Fleet and Mitscher's Task Force Fifty-eight, General Buckner's Tenth Army was a

monster of consumption. Between April

1

and 16 alone, no

less

than 577,000 tons of supplies were landed on the Hagushi Beaches, a record achieved in the face of two destructive storms 121

OKINAWA

122

and the attacks of the kamikaze. Iceberg planners

A

— though actually

a

difficulty

unsuspected by the

happy one

—was the incred-

speed of the advance of Buckner's attacking divisions, so rapid

ible

Ducks and amphibious

that plies

no

tractors expecting to haul their sup-

were obliged

farther than the beaches

to roll far inland

to unload.

Another problem caused by unforeseen success was that because planners had placed the unloading priority of spare vehicles

ammunition, barbed wire,

lower than such

vital

and food, these

first-priority supplies

beaches to get

supphes

at the

as

had to be heaped on the

now-sorely-needed jeeps and trucks. This

caused the breakdown of an elaborate plan for supply

be established floodlights,

fuel,

suspended only during

dumps

to

Night unloading under

at carefully selected points.

air-raid alerts, helped to

un-

load waiting ships speedily, but also added to beach congestion.

On April

1

General Buckner was dismayed to learn that dur-

3

ing the past twenty-four hours only 640 tons of artillery nition had crossed the beaches, not nearly

expending more

shells

enough

ammu-

to supply guns

than planners had anticipated. Buckner im-

mediately gave priority to artillery

shells,

3,000 tons daily were deposited ashore

and

in the next

— enough

few days

not only for

those tireless guns but also to begin building a reserve.

Okinawa's "excellent network of bad roads" lightly surfaced

tractors

— could

and six-by-six

—

all

trucks.

Those

early April rainstorms that

had delayed unloading of ships also made the roads pelling

narrow and

not be traversed by American armored

American engineers

to try to harden

softer,

com-

them with sand

mi:?^d with coral. But the coral was not easy to dig and had to

be blasted frequently. Without a rock crusher, the engineers

sometimes dumped coral fragments roads, turning

some of them

as big as

boulders on the

into obstacle courses.

Erection of numerous pontoon causeways from the reefs to solid plies

ground helped ease the continuing problem of moving supfrom ship to shore.

LCTs — Landing

Craft,

Tank

— and

Uncle Sam: Logistics Magician

LSMs

could

up

tie

to the small ones, transferring their cargo

The

directly into trucks.

123

cranes. Red Beach

1

bigger ships at the bigger causeways used

opposite Yontan Airfield had the largest

causeway: 1,428 feet long with a pierhead 45 by 175 the

first

few days

sixty

men and

thousand

feet.

During

110,000 tons of cargo

crossed the piers.

The most mortars

more

serious shortage was in shells for the 81

— those unlovely "stovepipes"

to kamikaze April 6 of those

resourceful Admiral to

Guam, and 117

enough arrive

that probably have killed

any other weapon devised

soldiers than

ships.

loss

But the ever-

emergency request

in an

tons of mortar shells were airlifted to Okinawa,

Yontan and Kadena

ship.

— caused by the

two ammunition

Turner quickly put

to keep the stovepipes firing until

by

mm

many more

tons could

were kept so well

Airfields

supplied that not a single plane was grounded for lack of fuel

during the entire campaign. Fifth Fleet

and

oilers

and

TF

58 were supplied by a force of cargo ships

commanded by Rear Admiral D. G. Beary from

flagship in the old light cruiser Detroit.

quests from carrier groups for

oil

When

his

Beary received re-

and/or ammunition, he would

send formations of the necessary ships hurrying to the flattop fleets to

Long

begin replenishment at dawn and complete

before Okinawa, the

Navy had

it

by dusk.

perfected the system of re-

fueling at sea, and eventually replacement ships were trained to fill

the carriers' every need

— even such bulky items

as crated air-

plane engines or jeeps for use on flight decks. Weapons, bombs,

and

bullets

were soon added, and thus

remain almost indefinitely

Admiral Mitscher, but duty and eager for a of "for want of

a

—

Okinawa

a fact that

might be

reconquered.

58 could a

boon

to

fun ashore. In the immemorial rhythm

shoe was

lost," the

most serious problem

was inadequate supplies of 3^2- and 4-inch Manila

would not be solved

TF

bore to his "swab-jockeys" weary of sea

little

a nail a

at sea

at

until

the

line,

Philippines were

and

this

completely

124

K

Cl

Aiiimr.il

b\'

\ov

oiiK'

A new

el.iss ot

er.ines shntthn^:

w

.M.\ri.n\.\>

tofcsih:h:

rui-iuM-'N

shot's hos["»u.\l Inu

.1

bellow inc.

mobile

N A U A

ot [\\c hou\h.\{\\\ucm w.irships ott C'^kiti.iw.i

Su["»pl\ e.isN'

1

S

1

to

the

stM.'inL;"

kcc["»

the

not

K.c.M".iin.is

biii'

^iins

n.u.il

wuh

.unnuitiition ships equijtped

between the ker.un.is

to Jej^^sit e.u'i:os direetU

.ible

.i>

1

.Uso

m

in.ule

\\ .is

I lithi .ind the

.iiui

onto the deeks ot

boinb.u\linent w.irships.

IheN also were "txpe loaded."' th.u

c.urx uii; .unn\iinition tor

iiist

.md 40

mm w

.is

trom

uii:

.ill

.iboiit

ti\e-inehers

thons.md earner

.i

tleet t.inkei^ s.iil-

-4^ J

eNer\ three d.us. F\er\

b\ the ships at

IVo

se.i.

d,\\

dunns:

and around Oki-

Ma\ J"

.^S.^.OOO irallons ot aviation g-asoline. B\ ot' oil

.it

4 .m .uera^ie ot lo". 000 4--i:allon

was eonsuined

tiicl oil

^\000.000 barrels

had been eonsumed and

lons ot aMation c-isolme. to sa\

I.

s.u'.

or meeting thirst\ ships

lett Ciu.ini

the pe.ik period ot April

viral

—

snjiphed both b\ Admir.il He.ir\ .md

hui^e tleet t.mkers

nawa, plus

ot ship

these ships tOi^ether with

(.iii.im to (."^km.iw.i

barrels ot

el.iss

tor destroNers.

l\iel tor .iirer.itt

one

is.

nearly

1.000.000 giU-

J!

nothnic' ot the deli\er\' ot less-

but still-important items as -."00.000 packages ot cig-arertes,

-00.000 oandy bars, .md o\er J4. 000. 000 pieces ot mail

— to

"gladden the heart" of .-Vmeriean sen icemen there. Suggestive of the extent ot the logistical triumph occurring at the Gre.u

lIioo was the

tact

that

Loo

tour escort carriers were employed to

protect replacement planes and pilots being terned to the battle area,

with

(.\\ist

scn

enteen more on the same mission between the

and the

Aside

tirv^m

West

.\l.in.m.is.

the loss ot those two

ammunition

ships. Japan's

naN ah and air forces did next to nothing to intertere ^vuh this

enormous supply

pipeline. Because

Admiral Bear\

about two hundred miles south ot i.'^kmawa with

two escort

carriers,

.sci^re a hit

on the

quickh' repaired.

it

was

rarely attacked.

fleet oiler Ti^Iugih

One

s

tleet

air

lone

operated

cover trom

c.;^*^'

<:.;:.-•

did

but this minor damage was

Hodge's Hurricane Attack Hurled Back CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The

Japanese counter-attack on April 12-13 had

failure of the

cominced Major General John Hodge for a

major breakthrough

line. It

that the time had

come

Ushijima's Xaha-Shuri-Yonabaru

in

was scheduled for April

19.

In the inter\-al. the Sevent\'-seventh Infantn- Division landed

on to a

le fall

Shima

just off the

to the Sixth

western

tip

Marine Dnision.

of .Motobu Peninsula, about le

was

completed airheld. Landing on April

fought

a fair-sized island

16. the Sevent\'-seventh

a savage four-day battle, killing 4,'~06

perhaps even most of them uniformed soldiers killed or missing

with

Japanese

civilians

— many or

— while losing 258

and 8"9 wounded. Marching with the

Sevent)'-seventh was Ernie Pvle.

Before Pyle

left

Ulithi to join the First

other correspondent veiled

down. Ernie." Snortme ten,

you bastards

But

it

it

a

—

was Ernie's

at

jokingly.

in disdain, the

Ell take a drink

last resting

replied: "Lis-

over even," one of your graves."

at the front

commander. Suddenly

"Keep your head

GEs Eriend

place that was

always was with Pyle. he was battalion

him

Marine Di\ision. an-

a

dug on

—

le

Shima.

-\s

driving there with

Japanese machine gun opened 125

— OKINAWA

126

Up, and the driver with his two passengers dived into a ditch. After

the machine

heads

gun

commander and

the

Pyle raised their

— and the gun chattered again. Pyle slumped back into the

ditch. Bullets

Over

fell silent,

had entered

his grave his

ment with

the inscription:

below

his forehead just

new comrades

"On

his helmet.

in the Pacific placed a

this spot, the

monu-

77th Infantry Di-

vision lost a buddy, Ernie Pyle, 18 April, 1945."

Two

days later the defending Japanese

mounted

desperate

a

counter-attack in an effort to recover ground lost during April 20

company

to the Americans. After dark that night infiltrators in

strength and in small groups

—

a

of about 500

total

men

laimched a screeching assault on the front of the 307th Infantry's

G

Company. Many of them

battalion

command

post,

penetrated, actually overrunning a

and might have broken through but for

Anthony Cer-

the efforts of two machine gunners: Staff Sgt.

nawsky and

Pfc.

Martin May. Both

men emptied

their

more

chine guns repeatedly until they had no

heavy ma-

belts left, after

enemy with grenades and carbines, until May was wounded by a mortar shell and the enemy driven off. They returned to the attack, and once again May fought them off but this time he received his mortal wound, and his Medal which they struck

at the

—

of

Honor was awarded posthumously.

On

the following day General Hodge's bellowing, three-

division assault began. Its objective

around Shuri to

seize the

was to penetrate defenses

low valley and highway linking Yona-

baru on the east coast with the capital of mirals Spruance and

Turner were eager

excellent port, the very harbor in cast his anchors

Naha on

the west.

to seize

Naha with

en route to opening Japan to world trade.

Even though General Hodge was hopeful, he had no

is

its

which Commodore Perry had

about the formidable positions th^t "It

Ad-

his troops

going to be really tough," he

said.

would be

"There

illusions

attacking.

are sixty-five

thousand to seventy thousand fighting Japs holed up in the south

Hodge's Hurricane Attack Hurled Back

end of the

and

island,

no way

see

I

them out yard by yard." He

to get

Yonabaru had

for large-scale

artillery

in all

War bombardments

a

howling

Ocean

land, sea,

mm

were surpassed by and

air

— that

pre-

of Army and Marine

to 8-inch howitzers

— 354 pieces

barrage of 75 pieces per mile, the proportion

moved from east to west. Bursting on the roar at dawn of the nineteenth, a rain of

increasing as the array

enemy with

—

Twenty-seven battalions

ranging from 105

— produced

Pacific

a

maneuver. Instead, Naha-Shuri-

the concentration of explosives attack.

he faced

by weight of metal.

to be cracked

All previous Pacific

ceded the

from the

blast

China Sea on the west, there was simply

east to the East

no opportunity

them out except

also said that because

bristling front without flanks stretching

on the

127

a horrible

shells struck

Japanese emplacements for twenty minutes

to the front of the Seventh tleships, six cruisers,

and Ninety-sixth Divisions. Six bat-

and nine destroyers

firing

on

call

thickened

the cannonade with projectiles ranging up to one thousand eight

hundred pounds, while 650 Navy and Marine

aircraft either flew

close-up air support for the waiting troops or punished the ene-

my's outposts and Ushijima's Shuri headquarters with rockets and

one-thousand-pound bombs. Meanwhile, troops boated in transports covered by planes and warships

Minatoga Beaches

in the south,

made another

feint at the

hoping to draw off some of the

enemy's strength. But Ushijima was not deceived and gave no such orders. Instead, he reiterated his instructions to

manders

men

to keep their

they were

strictly

safely

obeyed even when,

minute explosions, the American

pummeling the

rear areas for

feinted at the Japanese

believing the

fire

ground.

after its

still

say,

artillery lifted its fire to

begin

ten minutes, while American troops

hoping to deceive the Japanese into

remained

returned to their

com-

opening twenty-

bombardment had ceased and thus

ground. But they

my's

fi-ont,

all

below ground. Needless to

invisible, so that

fi-ont again,

lure

them above

when

their ene-

no one was caught above

OKINAWA

128

Actually, few Japanese sive artillery assault,

been

fired at

190 Japanese

killed in the

killed

and wounded by

artillery said that

— one

one hundred

for every

as

many

— had

been

he doubted that shells

bombardment.

Nevertheless, the assault went forward

ure

mas-

this

them. Brigadier General Joseph Sheetz commanding

Twenty-fourth Corps as

were

even though nineteen thousand shells had

— and began

to

meas-

gains in yards.

its

At the outset

all

seemed

well.

Major General George Griner's

Twenty-seventh Division, entering Okinawa combat for the time, had been assigned a pre-dawn assault flank of the Twenty-fourth's

enemy by

a

fi"ont.

right

Griner hoped to outflank the

night attack, having read a captured 62nd Division

enemy

intelligence report stating "the night, but very

attack Griner

would need

on the extreme

first

generally fires during the

seldom takes offensive action [then]." In

would have

to cross

to construct bridges

Machinato

Inlet

his night

and to do

this

and improve the road leading to

the water. This could not be done by day, for the Japanese had

complete observation of the terrain north of the Urasoe-Mura Escarpment. So the bridges were built farther back, and the engineers trained in assembling

Meanwhile,

a bulldozer

row, shell-pocked

By

little

jeep road leading to the inlet.

day, in full view of the

upended or mired

make

them and breaking them down.

was assigned to widen and repair the nar-

jeeps,

enemy, the bulldozer retrieved

by night the driver worked

tirelessly to

the road passable for Griner's troops. Thus, before

dawn

of the Nineteenth the Twenty-seventh's spearheads did indeed cros§ Machinato Inlet unseen. detected, and

them

there.

With dawn, however, they were them to the ground and kept

a rain of fire struck

This was the high point of Hodge's massive, three-

division assault. All that the night attack

had achieved was to allow

move undetected over

the low ground interven-

the Americans to

ing between their jump-off point and their objective.

Elsewhere the assault did not even get that

close. It

had been

Hodge's Hurricane Attack Hurled Back

hoped

new flamethrowing tank

that the

Division on the

easily destroy Ushijima's out-

Sherman tank with

old

spout projecting from inside the barrel of

a flame

It fired a

its

75

mm can-

stream of fiery fluid of mixed napalm and gasoline.

The napalm was would

assigned to the Seventh

new weapon was an

posts. In essence, the

non.

would

left flank

29

1

a

soapy, granular flammable substance that

whatever

stick like jelly to

hit:

it

tanks, pillboxes

men. The flamethrower was the only weapon that Japanese. First widely used on Peleliu,

it

— and

terrified the

was usually carried by

a

big strong

man

sometimes

backfired, for a bullet could ignite the tank, inciner-

connected to

firing a tube

tank on his back.

a

ating everyone in the vicinity, while charring the it.

Adapted to

than

a

It

a tank,

it

man who

It

fired

was thought to be much harder to stop

man.

seemed so when three of these flame-belching monsters and

two regular tanks joined the Seventh's attack and clanked toward the coastal

flats

dotted with fortified tombs and pillboxes beneath

Skyline Ridge. Long, hissing jets of orange flame issued from the

mouths of the 75s directed greasy black

into every opening.

Soon clouds of

smoke billowed skyward, and the GIs who had been

watching in fascination cheered wildly.

Now

at

incineration of their enemies

possessing a foothold below, the Americans

—

began climbing the ridge First, preregistered

this

mortars

straight into an

fell

upon them

enemy

hurricane.

flashing and crashing,

and then, boiling over the crest of the ridge, charging up from the reverse slope, and even rushing into their close with the

enemy, came

a

own mortars

to

horde of screaming Japanese hurfing

grenades and satchel charges. Twice they came in counter-attacks,

and each time the GIs clung desperately to their weakening hold

on the forward

slope.

Higher up on Skyline Ridge other advanced unmolested for

five

soldiers of the Seventh

hundred yards

ascent that should have warned

them

ground

same

also preregistered, the

— an ominously easy

— but when they moved into rain of

enemy

fire

stopped

OKINAWA

130

them

cold.

Pinned down throughout the day,

formations of

all

the Seventh were retreating into their former positions by shortly after four o'clock.

They had gained not

a yard.

In the center of Hodge's assault the Ninety-sixth Division

found

The

its

experience even

more

ftiistrating

than the Seventh's.

was the Tanabaru-Nishibaru ridge

objective

line,

which

joined Skyline Ridge, Hill 178, and Kakazu Ridge to form the

zone defended by General Fujioka's Sixty-second Division. Repeated local attacks gained no more than outpost ground. Only

one serious attempt to penetrate enemy defenses was made: by

a

platoon led by First Lieutenant Lawrence O'Brien of Colonel

Mickey Finn's Thirty-second Regiment. O'Brien

tried to

move

onto Skyline Ridge and thence westward to the towering mass of Hill 178. Apart

wounded

one

man and

rapidly

up

Skyline's

right toward 178.

A

Japanese

from an exploding

three others, O'Brien's

steep forward slope, then

shell that killed

men moved

swung

machine gun chattered, and the Americans took refuge

abandoned

From

pillbox.

a ridge above, the

in

an

Japanese hurled gre-

nades and fired knee mortars. O'Brien was pinned down. Major

John Connor, the

rescue, but this unit also

only

six

men

came under enemy

fire

this

Connor

how dangerous

men and

After that

so scourging that

dem-

the forward slopes of the ridges

Connor had

lost

gained not an inch.

first

quick nighttime surge over unoccupied ground

on the Twenty-fourth's sion's sector

platoon to the

recalled O'Brien. In another

could be with the rear slopes unconquered, eighty

a

of the platoon returned to base alive and un-

wounded. With onstration of

commander, sent

battalion

became

right flank, the

a burial

Twenty-seventh Divi-

groupd for American armor. Because

the division's foot soldiers failed to penetrate Kakazu's defenses,

the tanks

—

thirty of

them including three armored flamethrowers

Hodge's Hurricane Attack Hurled Back

and self-propelled 105 try.

This

left

mm howitzers — had no

them exposed

131

supporting infan-

to the plunging fire of

antitank guns above them, and the infiltration tactics of

hurhng

ese suicide squads

bottom

hicle's

Japanese

them.

at

One

plate.

actually waiting for

them

tankers lived, most of

them digging holes beneath

monsters and remaining in them

three days. Others were killed

It

when

and dropped grenades

for five

of the thirty

all,

American tanks that attacked, only eight survived.

turret lids

— praying

mm gunner named Fujio Takeda knocked out

tanks with six shots at four hundred yards. In

steel

Nippon-

satchel charges, usually against the ve-

Unfortunately for the Yankee tankers, the

Kakazu were 47

mm

enemy 47

Many

of the

their disabled

undetected for as long as

the Japanese pried

open

their

in.

was thus that General Hodge's hurricane attack was hurled

back. Failing utterly to break through,

lodgment or foothold assaults

in the

it

did not obtain a single

enemy's defenses, from which farther

might be mounted. Possibly worse, General Griner

Kakazu Ridge had

decision to bypass

gap of almost

left a

in his a

mile

between his Twenty-seventh Division and the Ninety-sixth in the center.

No

American troops were there

counter-attack, and so General

to blunt

Hodge worried

any enemy

that a Japanese

counter-strike could slip through to trap the entire seventh, pressing to pierce

against the iron

it

and there destroy

it.

enemy

defenses

it

Twentyhad

failed

Fortunately, those well-entrenched

Japanese were as blind as the moles they resembled, having no idea of their foe's whereabouts, and

no enemy counter-attack was

launched. Nevertheless, General Griner the next day reiterated his belief that the

mopped

Japanese strongpoints should be bypassed and

up. In reply. Colonel "Screaming

mander of

the 381st Infantry, gave a

Mike" Halloran, com-

more

accurate estimate of

"You cannot bypass a Japanese because a Jap does not know when he is bypassed." Thus ended the hurricane assault with Twenty-fourth Corps

the enemy's troops:

losses totaling

750

killed, missing,

and wounded.

Outer Line Cracked/ Ushijima Retreats

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It

was an entirely different American infantryman who wearily

Up

and warily greeted the dawn of April 20 on Okinawa.

until

the fiery failure at Kakazu during April 12-13 and the bloody repulse of April 19 at Shuri's outer defenses, the in the Pacific

— apart from

only two major

war

in

battles,

a

Guam — had

with

New

to be kept minimal, and the

from log-and-mud

enemy being fortifications,

starved by the effectiveness with ships of the

The

if casualties

half naked and half

which the submarines and war-

were indeed minimal

supreme command any days such

were

attacked was usually

United States Navy had severed their supply

casualties

MacArthur would trumpet

if

Guinea, the sec-

thousands of islands big and small. In these campaigns,

maneuver was not only possible but mandatory

fighting

a

and the Philippine archipelago

largest island in the world, its

been fighting

possible.

These were on the great land mass of ond

infantry

few isolated instances and during

Saipan and

which maneuver was

Army

—

as the boastful

lines.

Douglas

to the world in his tireless pursuit of

in the Pacific

— and the Army infantry had few

as the crucibles at

Kakazu and before

Shuri.

133

OKINAWA

134

But now

come

— though

to their

tifications

of

dimly

own Tarawa,

— the

Peleliu, or

fire

and

by every weapon. They now knew had learned

— that

their for-

—

all

approaches preregistered

as the

Marines

in the Central

enormous massed bombardment of

these truly formidable defenses if

Iwo Jima with

concrete, and coral, interconnected by mazes

steel,

of tunnels with interlocking

Pacific

GIs realized that they had

from

and land was usually

sea, air,

not always no more effective than a smoke screen. True, they

would cause some

but never enough to be decisive; and

casualties,

the accident of a lucky hit could never be repeated on

call.

Only

the impetuous foot soldier slashing in with his hand weapons and

using tanks, hurling explosives and aiming flame, can succeed in a

war against armed and resolute moles. The naval

trajectory, the

arc

—

bomb's broad parabola, the

even the loop of the mortar

a tunnel. If

— cannot chase such moles down

have knocked out only one spoke in

the enemy's wheel. But the wheel

call

artillery projectile's

they can occasionally collapse the whole position with

a direct hit, a rare feat, they

and again

shell's flat

in the

still

turns, killing

absence of that military miracle

—the man on foot has to go

in.

Too

and maiming,

—

direct hits on

often even without his

tanks.

Moreover, the

losses in

armor and the

American GIs on

that near-disastrous April

result of attacks

made

casualties 1

and destruction, but also com-

phcated by the terrain of southern Okinawa official history states:

was » confusion of clay

hills,

little,

"ground

itself. It

was, as the

utterly without pattern;

it

mesa-like hilltops, deep draws, rounded

gentle green valleys, bare and ragged coral ridges,

lumpy mounds of earth, narrow extending downward from the

On

the

into Ushijima's clever and sometimes-

invisible defenses spouting death

Army's

among

9 were not only the

ravines and sloping finger ridges

hill

masses."

April 20, General Hodge's three-division assault into

Ushijima's meat grinder was renewed: Seventh on sixth in the center,

and Twenty-seventh on the

left.

Ninety-

right. In these

Outer Line CrackedAJshijima Retreats

135

two formations the GIs, now thoroughly blooded

first

moved forward more

of warfare,

warily and

skillfully.

in this type

The Thirty-

second Infantry of the Seventh, or "Hour Glass," took Ouki Hill with surprising ease, and then struck at Skyline Ridge, blanketing

with smoke to bhnd the numerous

it

The

enemy mortarmen

worked, especially after two gallant soldiers

tactic

there.

— —

First

Lieutenant John Holms and Staff Sergeant James McCarthy led a final charge to seize the hill, but later perished in a fierce enemy counter-attack that was hurled back. Flamethrowing tanks were

of major assistance in this action, burning out a forward mortar position that could have been troublesome.

But the Skyhne's dogged defenders did not submit so tamely.

One machine gunner

was particularly tenacious

in a pillbox

until

Sergeant Theodore MacDonnell, a mortar observer not expected

on

to join a battle, entered the struggle pillbox throwing grenades.

jammed,

that

ordinarily

a carbine

most

range, however, kill all

useless it

Next he borrowed

— rushing

weapon

a

enemy

the

own, charging the a

position with this

American

in the

BAR, and when arsenal.

At close

could do damage, and MacDonnell used

it

to

three gunners. Then, his Celtic blood aroused, he picked

up the enemy gun and heaved by

his

it

down

the embankment, followed

knee mortar. Without pausing to thank MacDonnell for

this

distinguished favor, one of Colonel Finn's companies proceeded to clear Skyline at a cost of

178

two

now came under American

blasting

enemy

two hundred forty-five

in

fire,

and eleven wounded. Hill

and

after

two days

patrols

caves found these positions stuffed with corpses:

in one, a a

killed

hundred

fourth.

in another, fifty in a third,

and

Those who had survived had been

withdrawn.

The

184th Infantry's objective was the Rocky Crags, two coral

pinnacles that had to be taken before towering Hill 178 could be assaulted.

But no headway was made the

first

day.

Dismayed,

General Arnold came to the front to study these obstacles. Deciding that the crags could be fragmented by direct artillery

fire.

OKINAWA

136

he ordered

a 155

mm

eight hundred yards first

missile

—

a

away and

air.

firing over

open

a knoll

sights, the crew's

ninety-five-pound shell with a hardened tip and a

concrete-piercing fuse the

howitzer up front. Setting up on

— sent

a hefty

chunk of

coral flying into

Seven more destructive shots so upset the Japanese that

Two men

were

a hole for their gun.

Now

they sprayed the knoll with machine-gun

wounded, and the survivors quickly dug

fire.

unseen, assisted by other guns and flamethrowing tanks, the

Americans collapsed

To

shot both crags into smithereens until both

literally

on themselves.

the Seventh's right the Ninety-sixth struck at three ridges:

Tanabaru-Nishibaru-Tombstone. fighting to clear baru.

On

Tombstone and

It

took two days of savage

to advance to the crest of Nishi-

the night of April 21-22 the Japanese counter-attacked

commanded by

three times against a battalion of the 382 nd

Lieutenant Franklin Hartline. In one charge Staff Sergeant David

Dovel

lifted his

machine gun to

severely burning his hands

wounded

in

both

legs,

fire it at

the

on the red-hot

enemy

barrel.

fall-trigger,

Dovel was

also

but survived. Meanwhile soldiers firing

hght or 60 rfim mortars elevated their small stovepipes to

a

dan-

gerously close eighty-six degrees, dropping shells only thirty yards to their front. Colonel Hartline joined the battle, throwing gre-

nades and firing the weapons of the

fallen.

At 3:15 a.m. the Jap-

anese retreated, leaving 198 dead comrades behind.

Tanabaru now

lay temporarily open,

Mitchell's Lardasses filled

who

and

it

was Captain Hoss

seized the opportunity. Its earlier losses

by replacements, the company fought

a

savage hand-

grenade battle that lasted nearly four hours, until Mitchell with three grenades and a carbine rushed the crest to wipe out a

machine-gun its

nest.

By

objectives securely,

killed

nightfall of April 23 the Ninety-sixth held

though

and 19 missing with

it

had paid

a staggering

a

bloody price of 99

660 wounded. Even

so,

Outer Line Cracked/Ushijima Retreats

137

the success of the Seventh and Ninety-sixth clearly indicated to

General Hodge that Ushijima's outer

Soldiers of the Twenty-seventh

two companies that panicked and dered into an enemy position

comrades

and

in the center

comparatively easy time of the

on the twentieth

— except

for

when they blun-

fled in disorder

—were not quite so careful

left, it

was cracking.

line

as their

probably because they had had a

on April

19. Still

on the

right flank,

New Yorkers moved confidently against a position called Item

Pocket, unaware that

most

was probably Ushijima's toughest and

name

cleverly designed fortification. Its

presence in the

map.

it

It

/,

derived fi-om

its

or "Item," grid square on the American tactical

consisted of coral and limestone ridges running like

spokes on a wheel from a swale at Against

came two

it

165th Infantry, the

Mahoney on

the

first

left

center.

its

battalions of Colonel

Gerard Kelly's

commanded by Lieutenant Colonel James

and the second under Lieutenant Colonel

John McDonough on the

right. Resisting

them was Lieutenant

Colonel Kosuke Nishibayashi's Twenty-first Independent Infantry Battalion of about six

Okinawan

three hundred

months on Item's

hundred

soldiers together with

conscripts. All

defenses,

which they

two or

had been working for

called

Gusukuma

after a

nearby town. There was no safe way to approach the position. Because two bridges on Highway could not menace

it.

in

ridges with openings

on

Kakazu

had been knocked out, tanks

Every ridge was protected by mortars with

machine guns zeroed ridge was a

1

from

others.

either side

Tunnels ran beneath the

and on the top. Thus each

in miniature, abundantly stocked with food,

ammunition, and water. Until Item

fell,

no

real

first

day,

there could be

progress south.

No

real

attempt to penetrate Item was made on the

but on the night of the twenty-first

McDonough's

battalion led

a detail

of eight

men from

by Technical Sergeant Ernest Schoeff

OKINAWA

138

and provoked one of the

tried to seize a ridge in a night attack,

wildest fights of the

Okinawa campaign. Forty

to fifty Japanese

screaming "Banzai!" and hurling grenades charged them from about forty yards away. Scrambling into foxholes that they had dug, Schoeff 's

men

fought back with grenades of their own,

— even hurling

rifle

Cook took out ten of the enemy before being killed himself, and when they closed for hand-to-hand fighting, Schoeff broke his M-1 rifle over shots, rifle butts

rocks. Pfc. Paul

one enemy's head, grabbed an Arisaka to bayonet him, sailant.

and then shot

rifle

a third

from another's hands

mushroom-helmeted

as-

made a fighting withdrawal, counting own dead and another missing. Such fierce local

Wisely, the GIs

only two of their

encounters would characterize the Item Pocket fighting lasting until April 25,

and

it

was

a

company

led

by Captain Bernard Ryan

that finally broke through the stubborn Item barrier.

On

the twenty-fifth

Ryan with two platoons climbed

a

ridge and was savagely attacked by Japanese trying to drive off.

But they held, and then,

assisted

key

them

by other companies, began

clearing the ridge to turn Item's seaward flank. Nevertheless resistance continued until April 28,

opened

to

southbound American

when Highway

traffic.

1

was

finally

Now Griner's troops be-

gan to extend their grasp on the Urasoe-Mura Escarpment's western flank, suffering so severely that the division's losses rose above five

hundred during

a single day.

By

the

morning of April

24, the

western end of the Urasoe-Mura Escarpment was in American hands.

Only Kakazu

in Ushijima's outer defenses

remained un-

conquered. Hoping to reduce that stubborn position, forrrred a special attack force

Hodge

under Brigadier General William

Bradford, the Twenty-seventh's assistant division commander.

Called "Bradford Force,"

it

was

to strike

Kakazu

early

on the

twenty-fourth. But that night during a heavy fog a powerful en-

emy

artillery

When ment

barrage struck

tl\e

Bradford Force attacked, that there

was

little

American forward elements.

its

men found

or no resistance.

to their

amaze-

Under cover of

the

Outer Line Cracked/Ushijima Retreats

139

fog and the bombardment, the wily Ushijima had ordered a general retreat to preserve his

For

five

remaining strength.

days since April 19 the Japanese had fought a dogged

defensive battle, limiting the Americans' gains to yards and at

Kakazu stopping them

in their tracks.

the line had been pierced in so

of collapsing with

emy

a

many

consequent

action or suicide.

loss

But by darkness of April 23 places that

of

it

many men;

was

in

danger

either

by en-

So General Ushijima withdrew to

his next

chain of defenses. In effect, the battle for southern a single, solid step

Okinawa had advanced but

—with many more steps to follow.

Kamikaze Bases Scourged/ Kikusui 4 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

May

Major General Curtis Le

had been in command of die

Twentiedi Air Force since die summer of 1944. At thirty-nine, this burly flier, so big

was anxious to apply

new B-29 fines.

until

—

this

ecstatic

Le May prepared

aircraft to stage a

for the

believing

—

like all

by Dwight Eisenhower

Nippon

to her knees,

mered the kamikaze

those

— that

major firebombing

excellent results that an strike at

"Bomber Barons"

his

To-

air raid in history.

command

so detested

alone might bring

Le May was not happy

enemy Okinawa operation. From

concentrate on the

the

off the production

monster March 9

kyo that became the most destructive

Now

bombing with

February 1945, however, that he had

Kobe and with such

time on

into a fighter cockpit,

bomber then coming

enough of these gigantic raid

fit

his theories of incendiary

Superfortress

was not

It

he could barely

to be ordered to

air bases

on Kyushu

April 16

onward the Superforts ham-

airfields,

in support of the

— speaking in lan-

while their chief

guage customarily garbled by the cigar or pipe clenched between his teeth

U.S.

— appealed to General H. H. "Hap" Arnold, chief of the

Army

Air Force, for permission to resume strategic

bomb141

OKINAWA

142

was not granted,

ing. It

if

only because Fleet Admiral Nimitz had

been able to convince the Joint Chiefs that the immediate shortrange effects of punishing the suicider bases would in the long

run prove more valuable than the long-range results of strategic

bombing.

So the Superforts continued to

strike the

though Admiral Ugaki frequently used at his disposal in

and

had neither the speed nor the

One

other

a

vi-

of the most

hundred B-29s attacked Kanoya

There were so many Japanese

fighters

and buzzing the big bombers that Lieutenant Kenneth

aloft

Hornbeck over

airfields.

when

fire-

some

to take out a Superfort. Nevertheless,

erupted on April 27

five

even

the late-model fighters

cious aerial duels developed high in the skies. fierce

fields,

an effort to destroy them. This was not quite

possible, for his interceptors

power necessary

all

Kyushu

later

— the cream

ported:

war correspondents: "The milk run

told is

curdled." Lieutenant Philip

"They must have made

B-29s that

I

saw, and thirty

a

hundred

Van

attacks

on our four-plane

is

Schuyler re-

on the eleven

section."

One

crip-

pled Superfort flying out of formation was pounced on by four

enemy fighters releasing white phosphorous bombs across its path. By skillful maneuver, the stricken aircraft broke clear. Four fighters fell

and one Superfort was

lost.

On the following day American gunners using their electronic computing gunsights claimed to have shot down

thirty-six Japa-

nese fighters together with thirteen "probables." Again, a B-29

was

lost.

Using the

tactics

blanketed the Kyushu

fields

of pattern-bombing, the Americans

with fragmentation and demolition

bombs, cratering runways and taxiways, riddling everything erect and destroying revetments. They also struck filled

at

hangars and shops

with planes under repair while mangling irreplaceable tools.

Japanese fighters compelled to land wherever they could on Kyu-

shu became so scattered that Ugaki and Sugahara found

it

almost

impossible to assemble them for concentrated flights intended to clear the

Okinawa

skies for the following kamikaze.

Thus, many

Kamikaze Bases Scourged/^'^«5'w/ 4

more

suiciders than usual

Marine

naval and

were exposed to the stuttering guns of

flyers off the carriers,

Marine Corsairs based

at

143

and more frequently the

Yontan and Kadena.

Nevertheless, Ugaki and Sugahara

managed

to put together

Kikusui 4, scheduled for two main attacks April 27 and 28, and a

preliminary on April 22.

and although

a total

Le May's

attacks continued into

of 24 Superforts were

May,

with 233 dam-

lost,

aged, the enemy's losses in fighters, though never

known

exactly,

were certainly astronomical. Moreover, the Superforts achieved their objective in crippHng the aerial fleets of

Admiral Ugaki and

General Sugahara.

As often happens, either because of

luck,

favorable weather, the "prelim" was

more

"main bout." Twenty Navy and

ships.

One

among

sion that

its

depth charges

mangled the

toward Kerama.

Army

A

aft,

setting off a

tin can's stern

Two

third struck destroyer Ish-

and sent

it

Marine

thirty-six kills,

pilots

mostly

at

ing

down

at

Hagushi but

among

unskillful

young

suiciders unable to

Loo Choo became an

first

combat mis-

ace in one flight, shoot-

five Vals.

On April to

crawling slowly

Kadena and Yontan. They reported

evade their attacks. Major George Axtell on his sion over the Great

monster explo-

other destroyers suffered minor damage.

There might have been much more destruction for the

kamikaze came

crashed and sank a landing craft and another

capsized the minesweeper Swallow.

erwood

indolence, or

destructive than the

them from the gunners on the

diving out of a haze concealing

Hagushi

forty-six

enemy

27 and 28 the

tireless

put 100 kamikaze into the

Ugaki and Sugahara managed

air.

Four of them were baka

bombers.

On

inflicting

only minor damage on four near-missed destroyers. But

the

first

day they struck

at 8:41 p.m. the hospital ship

nawa with

at

dusk with fighter escort,

ComfoTt sailing southwest of Oki-

a full load of patients

on

a clear night

and during

a

— OKINAWA

144

moon

full

with

Convention observed

the

Hghted

ship

—was deHberately dive-bombed by

at it in a

the

Geneva

— which by poUcy and preference the Japanese never

was well aware of the privileged

again.

according to

a kamikaze.

The

pilot

status of his target, having dived

preliminary run, before pulling up and banking to dive

His plane and

bomb

crashed through three superstructure

decks before exploding in the surgery compartment.

Comfort did not sink, nor was there any panic.

By

a miracle

of exemplary calm and the efforts of fire-fighting and repair crews, and despite casualties of thirty killed and thirty-three

wounded

— some of these either

hospital ship

sick or

wounded

dealt successfully with fire and flooding. Captain

took

precautions

all

— swinging

out undamaged

weather decks and deliberately darkening sible

to

make Guam

Adin Tooker

on

lifeboats

his ship against the pos-

onslaught of another predatory kamikaze

The

— the

patients

was able to remain seaworthy while the repair crews

—and was thus able

in safety five days later.

next day the B-29s

—

in

vengeance

it is

to be

hoped

scorched and scourged enemy fighters on Kyushu, leaving few escorts for the thirty- three suiciders

one of two

fast carrier

groups

bound

for

Task Group

58.4,

off Okinawa. Finding the

still

Americans, two Zero suiciders dove out of the sun on destroyers

Haggard and Uhlmann. By bad luck hit

a

40

mm shell from

Haggard's main gun computer, leaving

Fortunately,

its

Uhlmann

five-inchers useless.

both Zeros missed, but then another kamikaze

crashed Haggard'' s starboard side, detonating a 550-pound against her forward engine.

A second

ten feet, but then as Hazelwood

suicider missed

came

to her assistance, a third

scored a direct hit on her main deck that killed

Volckert

mained

Douw

and forty-five

afloat but

Haggard had

officers

to be

bomb

Haggard by

Commander

and men. Hazelwood

re-

towed to the Keramas.

Hazard's skipper Lieutenant Commander Victor Soballe and all other hands on deck gaped in amazement

Upon

its arrival.

and dismay

at

what they beheld

in the anchorage. If not exactly

Kamikaze Bases Sconrg^d/Kikusui 4

a

"graveyard of ships,"

it

was

145

emergency room

at least a hospital

stuffed with every category of floating cripple. Destroyers

types of smaller ships

and

all

— minesweepers, tenders, destroyer-escorts,

—

LSMs, LCTs in every stage of wreckage or disrepair were everywhere. Some had lost their masts, the smokestacks of others were either crumpled or missing, twisted guns hung over gunwales like broken teeth or were pointed uselessly upward, superstructures were caved in while in the sides of dozens of other vessels

were gaping, jagged black holes

by makeshift cofferdams looking

bows were sometimes

like

— some of them covered —while missing blisters

similarly protected against flooding or else

had been jammed up against sagging bridges

Commander damaged

vessels

Soballe's heart sank

were

in line for repairs

like steel accordions.

when he saw how many ahead of his own.

It

could

be weeks or more, and then, by the time Haggard would be ready to enter the floating dry dock,

it

might be discovered that she

could not stand the flooding of just one more compartment and thus could not be repaired at

turn

to: to

all.

So Soballe ordered

his

crew to

improvise and scrounge and cannibalize and invent

and "borrow"

(that universal service

euphemism

for pilferage or

"pinching") whatever they needed but could not obtain by requisition.

This required not only skill-fingered

fingered ones.

There were enough of the

sailors first

but light-

kind

among

Haggard^s welders, electricians, steamfitters, carpenters, and the other technical "mates" needed to run a

modern warship, and

a

superabundance of the second kind among bos'n's mates and ordinary deckhands.

The

light-fingered details scrounged or bor-

rowed enough scraps and pieces of lumber and other materials needed to patch

a hole

twenty by eighteen feet where the suicider

had crashed. Another hole through which seawater had flowed to flood engine and boiler

rooms was plugged when Soballe and

others put on diving equipment to cover

it

with a seven-ton tem-

porary patch, after which the rooms were while, the black

gang ingeniously

pumped

out.

Mean-

rebuilt an after boiler

from

OKINAWA

146

fragments of a wrecked one, using whatever scraps that would to repair steam lines to the engines.

one

boiler, the

months Yard.

crew got their beloved ship under way, and

sailed her halfway

fit

So resurrected, lighting off in four

around the world to the Norfolk Navy

The

ups and downs of

war in Okinawa shown here: a P-47,

the air are

broken and burning after crashing

takeoff;

during

and grinning,

cigar-smoking pilots

from the Second

Marine

fighter patrol

after they

down

had shot

fifteen

enemy

bombers operating off Yontan Airfield.

^"^

/>•

i;-^

ABOVE: Ancestor-worshiping Okinawans usually buried their dead in huge lyre-shaped tombs, which the Japanese later fortified and the Americans overran using tactics of "corkscrew and blowtorch" explosive and flame, either aimed or dropped. Here a typical tomb serves as cover for

—

a battalion

BELOW:

command

post.

A phosphorous

grenade explodes in a shattered build-

ing as Yanks attempt to dislodge

A-

a

sniper hidden in the ruins.

.V^.-ii*- "W€. z. .

.^

.5 -.^-i: 2..

'"W

m The Japanese hunkered down tenaciously in caves forming the "Little Siegfried Line" as Army infantrymen and Marines battled close in and also

sought the help of tanks (below).

capital city of

Naha.

It

was

a bitter struggle for the

En route to Okinawa, Ernie Pyle, the most beloved correspondent of World War II, was serenaded by an accordion-playing Marine. Here

is

Ernie Pyle waiting beside

northwest of Okinawa.

Moments

a

jeep

later

on

a

road in tiny le Shima, an island

he was killed by

a

Japanese sniper.

Pyle was buried

on

le

Shima, an

Army chaplain offering the

benediction as the doughboys

Pyle loved

looked on.

Late in June, American forces could ease up. The Japanese had finally

been overwhelmed. Here, Leathernecks and GIs were able to rest from their battles. One soldier took over a bomb-shelter cave and it

his

made

home. >*CJ

!Jr.^/I

^^/

y

.ItSi^-^^''

Toward

the end of the fighting

occurred the astonishing

on Okinawa, there

phenomenon of Japanese

soldiers surrendering en masse, rather than kilHng

themselves, as was customary. the 10,000

who

laid

lone American GI.

down

Here

are hundreds of

their arms,

guarded by

a

American

who

soldiers

overran the

cliff

where Lieutenant General Mitsuru Ushijima,

comman-

der of the Japanese troops on Okinawa,

committed

suicide,

along with his chief of

staff,

Lieutenant

General Isamu Cho, found no trace of their bodies but only

General Ushijima's dress blouse. Oki-

nawa was secured.

finally

Last

Gasp of the

Samurai Cho CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

On

April 29,

tant

hohday

moned

his

Emperor

Hirohito's birthday and the most impor-

in Japan, Lieutenant

General Mitsuru Ushijima sum-

top commanders to his headquarters in a tunnel

underneath Shuri Castle. For days they had been privately arguing over Isamu Cho's proposal for a massive counter-stroke

Now

against the Americans.

whether or not changed.

Some

insist that

custom

his strategy for

defending Okinawa should be

historians say Ushijima

he was.

Thirty-second

Ushijima wished them to discuss

It

does not seem

was not present, others

likely,

however, that the

— even though was not discussions — would ignore such momen-

Army commander

to attend staff

his

it

a

tous meeting called by himself.

camp chairs at a rough flat table covered with maps. Around them the stones of the tunnel glistened with sweat. Water from the moat surrounding medieval Ushijima's chiefs sat on canvas

Shuri seeped through crevices in the wall or dripped incessantly

on the glasses

floor of beaten earth.

worn by most of

the stars of the

Dim

light glinted

weakly off the

the officers in attendance or winked

numerous generals

on

present.

147

OKINAWA

148

Isamu Cho

sat close to

questioning gaze of his arch as

Ushijima, staring arrogantly into the rival,

Colonel Hiromichi Yahara. Just

he had predicted the debacle of General Cho's abortive

counter-attack of April 12-13, the rigidly rational Yahara was

now

prepared to oppose what he knew would be a plan for an even greater and

ing he

more

made

it

disastrous counter-stroke.

By

his patrician bear-

clear that he could not be bullied

rank or the fiery rhetoric of the burly general

now

by either the rising to ad-

dress the meeting.

Cho began soldier

—

in the

with an incredible untruth: that the Japanese

main from four

American enemies and

firom thirty to fifty

superb hand-to-hand fighter effete

American

devils.

of approval followed

to six inches shorter than his

A

this

who

pounds

lighter

— was

could easily overpower the

a

soft,

general clearing of throats and grunts

absurd remark, either born of the School

of the Rosy Report or emanating fi^om the sake bottles being passed freely around. Very quickly most of the

commanders

ent supported Cho's plan: Lieutenant General

commander of

Takeo

pres-

Fujioka,

the Sixty-second Division, and also the plan's

coauthor; Lieutenant General Tatsumi Amamiya, swallowing his detestation of the boastful Fujioka in his eagerness to lead his

untested Twenty-fourth Division into battle at

last;

and Major

Command. Thirty-second Army had

General Kosuke Wada, chief of the Fifth Artillery

Wada

agreed with the others that the

made an achievement unprecedented preserved

its

main body

intact after a

in Pacific warfare:

month of

it

had

fighting.

This, Yahara bluntly interjected, happened only because the

Americans had not yet hurled Shuri-Yonabaru

line.

But

their full strength against the

now

because of the April 12-13

Naha-

that the outer defenses had fallen,

fiasco, the

American commander was

strengthening his assault forces, according to intelligence reports.

An

even bigger disaster would ensue

offensive

if

Cho's massive counter-

were approved, he warned. And to speak of the valor of

— Last Gasp of the Samurai

Cho

149

the troops was foohsh, because even now, since there had been

no

brandy on the emperor's birthday, the

issue of sweet-potato

men were

discontented. For thirty days these gallant

down upon a Hagushi Anchorage choked with enemy ships. The Divine Winds had not blown morning

risen every still

men had

them away.

even Japanese soldiers to beheve

difficult for

to their rescue

— nor could

they be

for complaining about being asked to fight alone

one

from the homeland.

day's sail It

was

Navy would come

that the

blamed

It

to look

was

true,

Isamu Cho rephed slowly, that the Americans had

not thrown in

There was

a

all

their strength.

new Marine

But they were doing so now.

division in the enemy's assault line, the

hated butchers of Guadalcanal. Another

First, the

was due to

join them.

This was the

moment

— the Sixth

to destroy the

Amer-

Cho continued, the Thirty-second Army been reinforced. Had not our chief General Ushijima in

icans' fresh

power. But,

had

also

his

wisdom concluded

that the

enemy was not

interested in

storming the Minatoga Beaches, and so had ordered our comrades of the Twenty-fourth Division and Forty-fourth Brigade to join us here?

Now

it is

we who

are at full strength. Let us strike the

enemy immediately and annihilate them before they can grind

down

to

our main

line.

Careful, full-scale counter-attack, not the foolish glory of the

Banzai, would crush the Americans.

There must be help from the

kamikaze, then massed artillery

with the troops attacking

along the

line.

The

fresh

fire

all

Twenty-fourth Division would be

hurled at the center and open a hole through which the Fortyfourth Brigade would pour in a thrust to the west coast.

The

Forty-fourth would then wheel south and the First Marine Division

would be

isolated

and annihilated.

The American

Twenty-fourth Corps would be rolled up. There should counter-landings on both flanks. gineer Regiment would

also be

The Twenty-sixth Shipping En-

embark from Naha

in barges, small boats,

OKINAWA

150

and native canoes to

strike the rear of the

Marine

division. Later,

Twenty-

the youths of the Twenty-sixth, Twenty-eighth, and

ninth Sea Raiding Squadrons would cross the reef and wade

ashore

help

to

would

the

A

engineers.

counter-landing

similar

of the Seventh Infantry Division on the

strike the rear

east. It

would be

difficult to

conceive a

disparate sallies

was one

might

—

a

montage of uncoordinated

Moreover,

be.

was made doubly

it

on

troops. Yet,

he praised

meant confusing

own

their

as tactically excellent,

probably because he was about

it

Cho

monstrosity and did not want to

as a strategic

it

entirely.

Yahara

said:

take the offensive with inferior forces against abso-

certain

enemy

We

defeat.

calmly recognizing vitable

if this

arose to criticize the operation,

superior

lutely

by the Japanese

when Colonel Yahara

to demolish

"To

difficult

night attack to cancel out the American

a

superiority in artillery, even

alienate

sorties if ever there

— paid absolutely no heed to what the enemy's reaction

unfailing reliance

to

more complicated plan of

and Cho's proposal calling for so many disconnected and

attack,

its

no matter what

forces

is

reckless

and

will

only lead

must continue the current operation, final is

destiny

done

—

for

annihilation

— and maintain

the principle of a strategic holding action. If

ine-

is

to the bitter

we should

fail,

end the

period of maintaining a strategic holding action, as well as the

holding action for the decisive battle for the homeland, will be shortened. Moreover, our forces will

inflict

but small losses on

the enemy, while on the other hand, scores of thousands of our

troops

will

have

been

sacrificed

in

vain

as

victims

4.

Before

of the

offensive."

Yahara It

down.

sat

was now up to Ushijima.

He nodded

to

The

would begin

attack

Cho.

flank counter-landings

at

dawn on May

that, the

would be launched. Before them the

artil-

Last Gasp of the Samurai

Cho

151

would commence, and before everything would come the

leiy

kamikaze.

The Japanese of

May

3.

aerial assaults

Once

again, the

began

at six o'clock

bombers sought

on the night

to get at the rich

pickings in the Hagushi Anchorage, but thirty-six of

shot down and the

rest forced to

unload

at

them were

high altitude, with

damage. Only the suicide-diving kamikaze broke through.

little

They sank destroyer Little and an LSM, while damaging two mine layers

and an LCS. After midnight,

Army

rear areas,

coming

sixty

in scattering

bombers struck Tenth

window. Terrible

craft fire rose in crisscrossing streams of light, as

though

narrow-beamed searchlights were aimed into the

bombers dropped

their loads aimlessly

— though

antiair-

a million

night,

and the

some of them

landed in a Marine evacuation hospital.

An hour

later

on the west coast

Marine amtanks guarding Machinato

Airfield

on the beach. American

cruisers,

fired at voices

destroyers, and gunboats

on "flycatcher"

patrol shot at squat Jap-

anese barges sliding darkly upcoast from Naha. their way. Instead of landing far

enough north

in their rear, they veered inshore

The

barges lost

to take the Marines

and blundered into the outposts

B Company, First Marines. The Japanese sent up a screeching and gobbling of battle cries and the surprised Marines sprang to their guns. All up and down the sea wall the battle raged, with Marine amtracks moving out of

to sea

two

and coming

fires.

Some

in again to grind the Japs to pieces

five

hundred Japanese died

between

in this futile west-

flank landing.

The east-flank landings came to the same annihilating end. Navy patrol boats sighted the Japanese craft. They fired at them and turned night into day with Division's Reconnaissance

star-shells. Soldiers

Troops joined the

the destruction of four hundred men.

At dawn, the main attack began.

of the Seventh

sailors to

complete

OKINAWA

152

It

went

dicted.

straight to the

Wave

doom

that Colonel Yahara had pre-

wave of the Twenty-fourth Division's men

after

shuffled forward to death in that gray dawn,

own

artillery shells, taking this risk in

moving among

their

hopes of getting in on the

Americans. But the soldiers of the Seventh and Seventy-seventh Divisions held firm

of division lery,

plus

—while American warships, sixteen battalions

artillery,

and twelve battalions of heavier corps

artil-

134 airplanes, smothered the enemy in a wrathful

blanket of steel and explosive. Ships as big as the fourteen-inch-

gunned New York and

Colorado, as small as gunboats with

down

cannons, ranged up and

on

20

mm

the east coast firing at the Japanese

call.

Across the island, the kamikaze dove again on ships in the

Hagushi Anchorage, again

falling

on the

luckless small vessels of

the radar picket screen.

With them were

May 4

hit the light

one of the baka

temporarily on

fire.

The

a

mine-layer Shea and set

kamikaze also sank two more

Luce and Morrison, as well as two rier

the baka bombs. This it

destroyers.

LSMs, while damaging

the car-

Sangamon, the cruiser Birmingham, another pair of destroyers,

minesweeper, and an LCS. Again, they

and transport

ships.

And

failed to get at the

cargo

they lost 95 planes.

Ashore, Isamu Cho's massive counterthrust was being broken

by that material power for which Mitsuru Ushijima had shown such profound respect. ing.

saw

Sometimes

Much

of the Japanese assault died aborn-

the Japanese closed, but rarely.

up and down some of the

battles

There were

ridges

held

Seventy-seventh, but they ended with the GIs either in

of thair previous position or holding the Japanese

territory.

One

new ground

was annihilated by

farther inside

battalion of the Japanese

in a three-day fight.

a reserve

by the

command

fourth Division got behind the Seventy-seventh on the it

see-

Twentyleft,

but

battaHon of the Seventh Division

Otherwise the Twenty-fourth Division never

punched that hole through which the Forty-fourth Brigade was to race

and

isolate the First

Marine Division.

Last Gasp of the Samurai

the First began attacking on the

And

Cho

153

morning of May

bore the brunt of Cho's big

4.

Even these

as the GIs on their left Marines were battling southeast toward the key bastion of Shuri. They scored gains of up to four hundred yards. The next day sally,

—

more pushing the Japanese back even advance was made more costly by the fact that they

they attacked again, once

though

their

were up against rested battalions of the Japanese Sixty-second Division. By the night of May 5 the Marines had picked up an-

By

other three hundred yards.

that time Lieutenant General

Isamu Cho's massive stroke had been completely shattered. Those

two days of fighting had cost the Japanese 6,227 dead. The Sev-

men

enth and Seventy-seventh Divisions had lost 714

wounded while holding 649

taken losses of

The

in the

more

costly business of attack.

next day the First gained another three hundred yards, and

added

a fourth

into the line a

the line,

men

killed or

the First Marine Division had

Medal of Honor winner

on

grenade with

bert Kinser did

May

1

.

on

had

May

Robert Bush had risked officer,

its rolls

since

coming

That day Corporal John Fardy smothered

his Hfe, as it

to

4.

William Foster. Sergeant El-

Pfc.

Two

days before that,

his life to give

plasma to

Corpsman a wounded

driving off a Japanese rush with pistol and carbine,

killing six of the

enemy and

refusing evacuation though badly

wounded.

There would be more Medals of Honor won come. The

main

First Division

line, as

by

May

5

had the GIs on their

had come left.

and

this

would be assigned

In front of the First was

To

the western half of the Shuri bastion. to the Sixth

in the days to

against Ushijima's

their right

was Naha,

Marine Division the next

day. In the sector of both these Marine divisions were systems of

interlocking fortified ridges such as those encountered

Jima.

Nor would

the

way be made easy here by

on Iwo

farther counter-

attack.

A change had taken place at Shuri

Castle. In tears, Lieutenant

General Ushijima had promised Colonel Yahara that from

now

OKINAWA

154

on he would

listen to

no one but him. The Ushijima-Cho

rela-

tionship had ended in the recrimination of a red and useless defeat.

Isamu Cho argued no longer.

convinced

now

Army and

ultimate destruction.

He became

that only time stood

silent

and

stoical,

between the Thirty-second

Minatoga:

A Missed Opportunity CHAPTER NINETEEN

One of the still-unexplained puzzlers of the Battle for Okinawa is why Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner allowed two veteran Marine divisions to stand idle in the north a

month, the Sixth for nearly two weeks one or two

to relieve

Army

his three-division assault

First for

— instead of using them

infantry divisions badly battered in

on the Naha-Shuri-Yonabaru

answer, unpleasant though this speculation that

— the

may

be,

line.

The

seems to be

Buckner wanted the Army infantry to have the honor of

crushing the Japanese Thirty-second Army.

There

is

and

attitude,

manders of

nothing especially biased or prejudiced in such an it

is

actually

rival services

much more common among com-

than

is

generally understood.

decision by a Marine general occurred

liam Rupertus, hesitated

much

iment with

He

did

Geiger,

it

a

commanding

A

similar

when Major General Wil-

the First Marine Division at Peleliu,

too long before reheving his crippled First Reg-

regiment from the Eighty-first Infantry Division.

only after ordered to do so by Major General

who was commander

Roy

of the Third Marine Amphibious

Corps. But Buckner's reluctance was somewhat more surprising 155

— OKINAWA

156

in that the First

Marine Division was probably the most experi-

enced fighting formation in the American Armed Forces; 70 percent of the Sixth

— though new to

battle as a unit

— was composed

of veterans from other divisions in other campaigns. It

was not

until April

28 that Buckner decided to put fresh

troops into his renewed down-island offensive.

would remain relieved

in place

on the

left,

and the Ninety-sixth would be

by the Seventy-seventh. The

relieve the

Marine Division would

First

Twenty-seventh Infantry Division on the Seventy-

seventh's right with the Sixth

ern flank.

The Seventh

Thus

Marine Division holding the west-

the line, Seventh, Seventy-seventh, First, Sixth:

Twenty-fourth Corps, Third Corps.

Almost simultaneously with pute over a proposal

this

realignment there arose a dis-

made by Major General Andrew Bruce of

the Seventy-seventh. Just before Cho's counter-attack, Bruce had

suggested that his division envelop Ushijima's rear by storming the Minatoga Beaches below him.

seventh had

made

anese line at

Ormoc

On

Leyte, Bruce's Seventy-

a strikingly successful

landing behind the Jap-

— where "the 77th rolled

a pair

of sevens"

and he was confident he could do the same on Okinawa. Once ashore, his division could either

move

and communications center on the

inland to take Iwa, a road

island's

southern

tip,

or push

north to join the Seventh near Yonabaru.

Buckner gave no serious consideration to the suggestion his supply officer. Brigadier

that

General David Blakelock, reported

though he could supply food for the operation. Tenth

had not enough ammunition to spare for Blakelock's analysis was correct; for even service of supply

it.

On

Army

the last count,

Tenth Army's splendid

had not yet been able to compensate for the

of those two ammunition ships on April that

after

Tenth Army planners had

6.

Buckner was

rejected the

also

loss

aware

Minatoga Beaches

before L-day: the reefs were too dangerous, the beaches inadequate, and the area exposed to strong

enemy

counter-attack.

Minatoga:

Beach

outlets also

A Missed

Opportunity

were commanded by

157

a plateau,

and Bruce's

landing would be too far south to receive support from Hodge's corps in the north and was also out of range of his

artillery.

These were indeed daunting considerations, although hardly

more formidable than

the drying reef and seawall at

Tarawa or

even the reefs and seawall at Hagushi. Other division chiefs besides

Bruce supported his proposal, although not necessarily to

be executed by his division. Major General Pedro del Valle of the First

Marine Division beheved

although

it

should be

rine Division,

in

still

made by

advisable,

more experienced Second Ma-

the

Third Corps

Shepherd of the Sixth

ond

Minatoga landing was

a

reserve.

Major General Lemuel

he had suggested use of the Sec-

said later

several times to Buckner, pointing out that the logistics ar-

gument

did not apply to this formation because

beans and bullets of

its

own

landing by the Second, he wrote

battle or

had enough

employ

A

"would have seriously

later,

him

threatened Ushijima's rear and required

from the Shuri

it

to sustain a thirty-day assault.

to

withdraw troops

his limited reserve to contain the

landing."

Army

Okinawa

historians of

in their

book on the campaign

were agreed that Minatoga would have produced culties

and might have

end of April. If

made

failed, but only if it

after

May

counter-strike was shattered

more than two or

—

officer,

jima's order for the Japanese

assault.

This

left

move north Minatoga

had originally opposed

mended

it.

it

were attempted before the

— the date that Cho's abortive

could not have been opposed by

three thousand men. Colonel

Tenth Army operations fourth Brigade to

5

had learned by

John Guerard,

late April

of Ushi-

Twenty-fourth Division and Fortyinto Shuri,

where they joined Cho's

lightly defended,

a landing there,

and Guerard,

now

Tenth Army commander did not

who

strongly recom-

So did General Hodge, who went to Tenth

headquarters to urge Buckner to envelop the the

logistical diffi-

enemy

Army

there.

But

agree, again basing his re-

OKINAWA

158

on the

jection

the Second

own

argument even though he now knew that

logistics

Marine Division could operate

for a

month on

its

supplies.

Buckner's decision became highly controversial in the stateside press even before the

newspapers

influential

Okinawa campaign had ended. Such

as the

Washington Star and the

New York

Herald-Tribufie, probably at the urging of Admiral King, flatly

been made. Some

stated that the secondary landing should have

Tenth

historians in defense of

Buckner have suggested that

Army commander had

even suspected that the Okinawa fighting

would continue through May, and then nizing

month

end to

it

the

for almost another ago-

he might have preferred to risk

in June,

by landing

if

in Ushijima's rear.

This

is

quick

a

a specious argu-

ment, the purest conjecture apparently based upon nothing more substantial than a desire to exonerate the

mander

gamble with favor:

little risk.

odds

All the

after

May 5

an inferior foe defending against his

number

Tenth Army com-

what can only be described

for having failed to take

were

own

in

as a

Buckner's

superiority in the

and quality of his troops, as well as in supply and in

control of the air above and sea surrounding Okinawa.

Caught between four American another in reserve and

them; and in his rear land, sea,

ment or

and

a

a garrison division also available

sky; hopelessly isolated

and cut off from reinforce-

supplies, with the kikusui attacks of

mission or

—

if

behind

seventh veteran division; pounded from

Ushijima's Thirty-second

as

divisions to his front, with

Army

surrender was

land,

could either be starved into sub-

still

Ushijima, Cho, and Yahara

no help on

so unthinkable to Samurai such

— compelled

to

make

a final "glo-

rious" sally that would be broken in blood ending in mass suicide.

Meanwhile, with the Minatoga opportunity rejected feasible.

General Buckner

still

as

un-

had to face the growing and open

disenchantment of Admirals Spruance and Turner with the slow progress of

Tenth Army on

on Buckner the

land.

Turner had repeatedly urged

necessity for a quick conquest to relieve the ter-

Minatoga:

A Missed

For such

long

159

on the concentration of American

rible pressure of the kikusui

ships off Okinawa.

Opportunity

huge body of

a

remain so

enemy was indeed un-

of a suicidal

as plainly visible targets

vessels to

precedented in military history. This, of course, was not entirely

enemy

the fault of General Buckner but rather

sense in

— to "bleed

all

policy

—

in a

over" the Americans and thus drown them

Japanese blood. Again,

was small comfort to either Spru-

this

ance or Turner. Buckner's reply to the Expeditionary Force com-

mander was

To

was moving slowly

that he

Admiral Spruance

wrote: "I doubt

any

really saves

if

was not

when Jap

.

.

There

The

It

method of fighting

merely spreads the ca-

longer period greatly increases

air attacks

when

are times

lives."

convincing argument, for he

long run.

lives in the

the naval casualties .

a

an effort to "save

the Army's slow, methodical

over a longer period.

sualties

factor

this

in

I

on

ships

is

a

continuing

get impatient for

some of

Holland ('Howlin' Mad') Smith's drive." Spruance was fully

slow

assault,

right: lives are definitely

they are merely spread out in time, but in the

end the number of saulting unit

not "saved" by a care-

comes

casualties to, say,

is

an

tected by machine guns, thus

the same or almost so. If an as-

enemy

making

it

.47 antitank position pro-

impossible for supporting

tanks to advance, and decides to call for artillery to knock

before attacking, in the subsequent assault

it

will

it

out

almost certainly

discover that shells simply cannot pulverize strong and clever defenses.

Foot

soldiers will

still

have to go in there with hand weap-

ons, with flamethrowers, grenades, and satchel charges, and the

time

lost

waiting for artillery to destroy the position will have

been wasted. And

same

their casualties will be the

as if they

had

attacked instantly.

Even General Buckner himself on at a press

May

conference that Okinawa would

1

fall

had acknowledged only to tactics he

described as "corkscrew and blowtorch": the corkscrew being explosives

and the blowtorch flamethrowers and napalm. But

these have to be aimed!

Aimed

close up. Visible.

all

of

They cannot be

OKINAWA

160

from

fired like

a

mile or

more

which would be

to die rear in an arc,

skipping stones on water. Because every defensive position

has a

mouth or

aperture through which

bullets, grenades, satchel charges, or

its

weapon can be

fired,

flame have to be hurled,

thrown, or squirted through these openings. Again, close up.

Even napalm airplane,

it

will skid,

and because

has about as

it is

much chance

to enter a foot-by-foot or

even a two feet-by-two feet opening

through the eye of

Go speedy

always dropped from an

as has a

camel "to pass

a needle."

ahead, ask the question, "What's the difference

—

lost will

if

the results are the same?"

extend the exposure of

a

The answer is

supporting

fleet

— slow or

that the time

such as Spru-

ance's to the assaults of the kikusui, and also delay the departure

of such naval forces to participate in another amphibious invasion elsewhere or release the

fast carriers to strike

homeland Japan.

Finally, slow, careful land assaults could delay the entire Pacific

timetable to the great pleasure of the enemy, for the one thing

Japan could not afford to waste

in the spring of

1945 was time.

Spruance and Turner could not forget what had happened to the escort carrier Liscome Bay at Makin,

GIs moving slowly took

a

week

when

to conquer a

sixty-five

weak

hundred

position in an

operation that should have been finished in hours. Ordinarily, Liscome Bay would have been long gone from the impact area, but the ship was sunk

on the

last

day by an enemy submarine, with

Similarly, because of slow progress

extensive loss of

life.

nawa, ships and

many seamen and

lost daily

The

on Oki-

seagoing Marines were being

on the Hagushi Anchorage.

admirals were also anguished by and ever mindful of the

ordeal of their men, these unsung heroes, aboard those exposed ships, especially those

of the Radar Picket Line scourged by hun-

dreds of kamikaze and baka.

Men

were horribly burned. They

were blown into the ocean, either to drown or pass agonizing hours awaiting rescue and the ministrations of medical corpsmen.

Those who survived

the suiciders' screaming dives

went

for days

Minatoga:

on end without

A

Missed Opportunity

sleep, their nerves

161

exposed and quivering Uke

wires stripped of insulation. Lying wide-eyed on their bunks, they

waited to hear the dreaded bullhorns being activated

telltale click

— hke

a starter's

and

static

of the ship's

gun sending them leap-

ing erect and running so that they were already in motion when the

shrill,

Men

strident notes of

in the boiler

"General Quarters" burst in their

rooms worked

in intense heat.

The

ears.

super-

sudden high-

heaters, built to give the quick pressure

needed

speed maneuvering under

were often kept running

aerial attack,

for

made for use. But it had to be that way, for war off Okinawa moment's notice. Very little time separated that mo-

three or four days at a time, though they had been intermittent

was war

at a

ment when

became clouded with pips of approach-

radar screens

ing "bogies" and the shrieking suiciders came plunging to the attack.

An

attempt to give the crews more warning of

enemy

ap-

proach had to be abandoned, one war correspondent reported: "The strain of waiting, the anticipated terror, made vivid from past experience, sent

some men

into hysteria, insanity, break-

down." Similar reports reaching Admiral Nimitz led

him

to request

from MacArthur the return of most of the ships of the Seventh Fleet he had so generously loaned the Southwest Pacific chief at

the start of the Leyte campaign.

Spruance's ships. But MacArthur

He

wanted

to relieve

against compliance with this agreed-upon condition ately

committing these vessels

and the Eighth

Army

— to

—

some of

had already protected himself

as well as the

a useless

by deliber-

Eleventh Air Force

campaign

in the

southern

Philippines in order to prevent their scheduled transfer to Nimitz.

Such

tactics,

of course, were nothing

new

in

World War

II.

Dur-

ing the Battle of the Bulge General George Patton deliberately

committed

his

beloved Fourth Armored Division to an unneces-

sary battle to prevent

Bradley, vision.

who had

its

being taken from him by General

already

commandeered

his

Omar

Tenth Armored Di-

But MacArthur's move was the soul of ingratitude for

— OKINAWA

162

Nimitz's generosity.

And

it

was compounded by the general's

turn to his old, discredited theme of "minimal losses" by

re-

com-

paring the ease and low casualties of his southern PhiHppine

campaign to

— again against mud-and-logs and fragmented troops

Tenth Army's higher

and-coral defenses death.

manned by

Because of

this

moving through

losses

determined to fight to the

soldiers

typical

steel-concrete-

MacArthurian

selfishness,

the

scourging of the Fifth Fleet continued. In fairness to Buckner, the defensive complex into which he

was plunging

straight ahead could not be reduced in

way than corkscrew and blowtorch. But been more impetuous and

spirited, less

William Westmoreland

eral

in

i.e.,

obstacle and call for artillery. But

it

the attack could have

dependent on what Gen-

Vietnam

riated as "the firebase psychosis":

a

a

generation later exco-

tendency to stop

also

at

every

must not be forgotten

Buckner summarily rejected the one opportunity

that

any other

for

maneu-

ver on Okinawa: the envelopment of Ushijima's rear by a landing at

Minatoga. Why,

never be known, for this able, considerate,

will

and dedicated soldier did not oirs or at least

live

mem-

long enough to write his

an explanation of his position.

But was the straight-ahead, annihilating attack the only solution to the destruction of Ushijima's remaining sixty thousand

men? Tenth Army had and port

way

facifities

out, around, under, over, or through.

cutting off the itz's

already secured and improved

the air

enemy

to let

him

starve?

Did no one suggest

Why not

on the vine" by

Nimenemy gar-

emulate

"island-hopping" strategy in the Pacific, leaving

rison* to "wither

all

on Okinawa. For the Japanese, there was no

seizing the biggest and

most

by

aerial

useful islands while neutralizing those lying in between

bombing. The Japanese could have been whittled and demoralized

by constant

aerial, land,

and sea bombardment

— even goaded

into those desperation, back-breaking Banzai attacks so attractive to the

Samurai character. Doubtless, they would not remain com-

pletely contained but

would

sally forth in typical

night forays

Minatoga:

aimed

at

A Missed

Opportunity

163

spreading terror and destruction. But this could have

only minor success.

It

could never have inflicted casualties

among

the Americans comparable to what they suffered in Buckner's final

straight-ahead assault.

Nevertheless, perhaps because of the importunate appeals of

were superior Spruance and Turner — who, — General Buckner did quickly schedule another grand offensive after

for

May

1 1

.

The

the eastern (or First

Ninety-sixth Division back on line would be on

left) flank,

the Seventy-seventh

on

Marine Division, and then the Sixth on the

flank.

General Hodge would

troops on the

left

entire front, with typical

officers

his

all,

command

and would be the

his

right, or western,

Twenty-fourth Corps

tactical

commander of

of Geiger, whose courtesy matched Buckner's,

Hodge

as tactical chief,

he was his senior and about to receive his third

This offensive was to be tactics,

right; next,

Geiger leading the Third Corps Marines.

not protest the selection of

same

its

a continuation

It

the

was

that he did

even though

star.

of the others with the

including the capable General Bruce's innovation of

concentrating on a limited objective from which

fire

could be

brought to bear on the enemy's reverse slope. Just before the jump-off date, however, the Great

Loo Choo's

and moisture-laden sky became the Lord of the

gray, growling, Battlefield.

May: Rain, Mud, Blood— and Breakthrough! CHAPTER TWENTY

On May

7 the skies of the

Great Loo Choo opened with pro-

longed and torrential rains that reminded First Division Leathernecks of the month-long

New

Britain campaign.

storms,

some

monsoon they had endured

During seventeen days of intermittent on Okinawa.

fifteen inches of rain fell

Nothing could stand against sodden pocket of

a

GI

it;

a letter

from home

in the

or Marine had to be read and re-read and

memorized before the ink ran and a pair of socks lasted

in the

it fell

no longer; and

apart in less than a week;

pack of cigarettes became

a

watery and uninflammable unless smoked the same day, or

else,

along with matches, they were kept dry within a contraceptive inside a helmet liner. Pocketknife blades rusted together,

and

made

gar-

watches recorded the period of their

own

decay. Rain

bage of the food; pencils swelled into useless pulp; fountain pens

became clogged with watery barrels turned blue with to keep the raindrops in the rifle

to

go over

ink,

and their points burst

mold and had

from fouling

apart; rifle

to be slung upside

their bores.

Sometimes

down

bullets

magazines stuck together, while machine gunners had their belts daily, extracting the bullets

and oiling them 165

OKINAWA

166

to prevent their sticking to the cloth loops. Everything lay

and sodden, squishy and squashy to the touch, exuding

damp

a steady

and musty reek that was the odor of decaying vegetation.

To warm,

the Americans out in the open

— unlike

their

and snug in their underground warrens

dry,

enemies

— there were

only three things of value to be found in this gurgling, gushing, rushing, streaming, dripping, drenching

downpour

that turned

Okinawa's numerous narrow and shallow streams into raging,

and

boiling, white torrents of water: a dry place, hot

and most of

all

solid food,

— most unbelievably important of — all!

a

hot cup

of coffee. At sundown before blackout discipline would be in force,

among

squads huddhng together

waxed covers of

K

containing grains of lies fortified

And because

and water heated in

was

on Okinawa made Okinawa mud.

was everywhere:

in the ears,

it

It

under the

nails, inside

and cold between the

was in

his food,

was unique

toes. It

got

and sometimes he could

grinding like emery grains between his teeth. Whatever

slotted, pierced, open, or

also.

canteen cup

K ration soluble coffee — thus were their bel-

into a man's weapons, feel it

a

against another cold black rainy night.

the rain it

rations,

leggings, or squeezed coarse

Men

empty received

this

mud. Wounds

fell and made mud. It made pick-and-shovel coo-

prayed not to get hit while rain

embarrassed drivers of bulldozers and lies

over the island, tiny

all

were made of the wrappings of cigarette packages and the

fires

of those lordly tank troops.

Some

days

it

denied Americans

the use of roads altogether, and GIs and Marines on the attack

again often had to be supplied by airdrop. Frequently

coated and heavy with

though encased

in lead.

of them before the footed. Engineers

and worked knees.

mud

on the

in sacking

it

was

A few strides and a man's shoes were mud. Two more and they seemed as A third step and it was easier to slip out

harc^y possible to walk in

it.

sucked them off and walk in airfields actually

drawn over

it

bare-

put their shoes aside

their feet

and

tied

around the

May: Rain, Mud, Blood It

was

mud

this

in

— and Breakthrough!

which the entire Tenth Army

167

immo-

lay

on the eighth of May, the day on which smeared and dripping Marines and GIs received the splendid news that Ger-

bilized

many had

surrendered.

"So what?" they snorted

The

in

contempt.

death of Hitler and the destruction of his Third Reich

meant about

as

much

to these embattled

of one condemned criminal might

Americans

mean

as the

to another

pardon

still

under

sentence of death. General Ushijima and the stubborn soldiers of his

Thirty-second

Army were

moment Ushijima was stalled his

reminded ible death. vital

enemy

their only concern,

and

at that

very

taking advantage of the rain that had

to strengthen his flanks while his artillerists

their foe that the air

still

sang and shrieked with invis-

Ushijima also reinforced the strongpoints guarding the

forty-foot-wide east-west highway behind his barrier line,

settling

down

to that

grim step-for-step war of

attrition

urged on

—

him by Colonel Yahara. Because of these defenses and the inthe Tenth Army drive southward on May 9 moved cessant rain

—

even slower.

At the same time, the

kikusui scourging of the invasion fleet

rose to a crescendo of fury.

Opposing them were those Marine

who had come

Corsair pilots from Yontan and Kadena

Great Loo Choo expecting to

fly

to the

close-up support of the ground

Leathernecks, only to be called to the rescue of the radar picket ships.

They rode

away from pilots

the suiciders

their target vessels,

had expended

all

their

down

to

unintended destruction

sometimes even

ammunition.

after the

American

A few of them

attacked

the kamikaze and baka with their whirling propellers, just as Lieu-

tenant Robert Klingman did in the bizarre Battle of the Frozen

Guns.

That was the dogfight fought

at

over 40,000 feet

among

a

Japanese two-seater Nick fighter and two Corsairs piloted by

Klingman and Captain Kenneth Reusser. over le Shima on

May

On

combat

10 they spotted the vapor

air patrol

trail

of the

OKINAWA

168

Japanese

25,000

at

feet.

They chased him, chmbing

steadily firom

10,000 altitude until, after a pursuit of 185 miles, firing off most

of their ammunition to lighten their load, they caught up with

Nick

at

They

closed.

the

38,000

feet.

Reusser shot up nese's left

wing and

and pressed

feet

another pass.

off^

to

damaging the Japa-

They chopped up

in to within

frozen.

He

50

drove

the enemy's rudder

on

his

own

The

frozen guns.

Corsair's big

chewed on. Klingman turned and came back

propellers

enough

in

Klingman bored

gun button. His guns were

his

his fists

stabilizer.

ammunition

dangling. In the Nick's rear cockpit the gunner was

left it

banging

cut

his

engine.

propellers whirling.

in, his

and

all

left

He

He

cut off the rudder and loosened the right

was running out of

gas.

He

decided he didn't have

make Okinawa anyway and turned

the Nick's stabilizer.

15,000 feet

it

lost

for

The

for a third pass.

He

plane went into a spin, and at

both wings and plunged into the East China

Sea.

Klingman his

power

and on

started

down, losing

his

But he landed

at 10,000.

oxygen

at

18,000

at

Kadena

feet,

and

Field, dead-stick

wings and fuselage sewn with bullet holes

his belly, his

and pieces of the destroyed Nick

in his cowling.

enemy

Nevertheless, the losses inflicted on the

aircraft did

not dissuade Admiral Turner from asking Buckner once again to speed up his attack, and the Tenth

Army

uling a massive, four-division assault for

The Tenth Army had

four

fall

chief obliged by sched-

May

11.

divisions abreast.

Hodge's Twenty-fourth Corps was on the

left (or east)

General with the

Ninety-sixth and Seventy-seventh divisions in that order, and

General Geiger's Third Corps on the right (or west) with the First

and

Sixth.

The

the Seventy-seventh

the

Ninety-sixth's objective was Conical Hill,

would buck

at Shuri Castle, the First strike

Dakeshi-Wana-Wana complex guarding

Shuri, and the Sixth

May: Rain, Mud, Blood at

Sugar Loaf Hill.

rine divisions

Of these

— and Breakthrough!

169

four objectives, those facing the

were the strongest.

Sugar Loaf opposite the Sixth was

at least the

equal of the bloody meat grinder of Iwo Jima.

It

formidable

was not

hill

but a complex of three. Sugar Loaf itself did not look

just

an oblong ridge about

its left

rear

by the

high. But

fifty feet

Half-Moon and on

its

who

gunners

it

On

the

was attacking was Shuri Heights,

just

one

difficult,

was protected to

right rear

shoe, a long ridge bristling with mortars. First Division

Ma-

by the Horseleft

where the

also stuffed with

could hit the Sixth on Sugar Loaf as well as the

First to their front.

To

To

attempt to get

at

Sugar Loaf was to be hit by the others.

was

strike at the others

to be hit

by Sugar Loaf. But

this

was

not suspected until the main position was reached on the morning of

May

14, after a fighting crossing

grinding

On

down of

that

May

smaller

of the Asa River and steady

guarding the approaches.

hills

14 most of the morning was spent evacuating

Marines stricken while crossing the

flat

open ground approaching

that harmless-looking loaf of earth. In the afternoon a charge with

supporting tanks was driven back

knocked fell

out,

among

and

from Sugar's

artillery

the riflemen.

when

A

three of four tanks were front, left-rear,

and rear

second assault before dusk reached

Sugar Loaf's base. But of 150 Marines from the Second Battalion,

Twenty-second,

were exhausted. Suddenly, the

who began it, They were out

enemy stopped

one was speaking to them.

only 40 reached the of supplies.

firing.

It

It

The men

hill.

They

was getting dusk.

realized that

some-

was Major Henry Courtney, the

battalion's executive officer.

"If

we

don't take the top of this

"the Japs will be

only

way we can

down take

hill

tonight," he was saying,

here to drive us away in the morning. it is

to

make

a

The

Banzai charge of our own.

I'm asking for volunteers."

There was hardly ward, grinning.

a

pause before the Glory Kid stepped for-

OKINAWA

170

sound

"I hate to

guy

like a

Rusty Golar, "but what the

in a

hell did

dime novel,"

we come

There were 1 9 other volunteers from

men who

and 26 fresh

this

said

Corporal

here for?"

exhausted remnant,

appeared carrying supplies. Major Court-

ney took these 45 Marines up Sugar Loaf under cover of darkness, heaving grenades as they went, digging in under the protection of their

own

machine-gun

them from

From

mortars.

the Horseshoe and

and mortar

fire

shells,

while grenades came up at

the reverse slope of Sugar Loaf. At midnight, Court-

ney heard the enemy gathering below.

"Take

we

Half-Moon came

all

the grenades

you can

He

decided to strike them.

carry," he whispered.

"When

get over the top, throw them and start digging in."

They went shout,

behind Courtney.

out,

"Keep coming,

there's a

mess of

They heard the major them down there!" And

then they heard the explosion of the mortar shell that killed him.

They answered with grenades of their own, hanging on Loaf while

all

to Sugar

of the Japanese positions struck at them, while a

cold rain swept in from the East China Sea, until the mists of the

morning showed

that there

were only 20

men

left

of the 45

who

had come up the night before. In that mist Rusty Golar, the self-styled Storybook Marine,

fought the battle he had always sought. With his buddies he was

on the

right

With

daylight, the Japanese

opened up on him. Golar

Moon

to the left

lar swiveled his

gun

to rake it

booming "Yeah!" of bursts. It

his light

ma-

to his

The Japanese on

Half-

a deep,

booming "Yeah!" Go-

Half-Moon.

the Glory Kid and his

own

fire,

the

alternating

went on while Sugar Loaf's defenders were gradually

killed

men

trying to bring

up ammunition

or wounded, continuing until only Golar and a few

others were all

up

went, the whipsawing Japanese

whittled to a handful, while

had

set

on Horseshoe Hill

fired back.

opened up. With

Back and forth

were

where he

right flank of Sugar Loaf,

chine gun.

been

left alive.

fired.

By then

He drew

the Glory Kid's machine-gun belts

his pistol, yelling,

"Gotta use what

I

May: Rain, Mud, Blood got

He

left!"

emptied

— and Breakthrough!

twice more.

it

below and began scurrying about the

He

threw

171

at the caves

it

hillcrest to gather

grenades

from the bodies of dead Marines. need some more

"Still

Don He threw. He found

throw

stuff to

Kelly, one of the few

at Private

Marine, seized

it,

a

loaded

jumped

BAR

erect,

at those guys,"

men

in the

and

fired

he yelled

on the

ridge.

hands of another

fallen

alive

still

it

until

it

jammed.

"Nothin' more to give 'em now," the Glory Kid bellowed to Kelly. "Let's get

over to pick up gun.

"I'll

voice,

some of

a stricken

these

wounded guys down." He bent

Marine

have you in sick bay in no time," he said in

enemy wounded man down

cracked. Rusty Golar was staggered. carefully.

in

it,

snooze

Bronze

Star.

died.

He

Golar remains his

a

No

walked to

man

like a

An

put the

a ditch

on

his

and

sat

preparing to take

posthumous Medal of Honor

valiant warrior, not even another vir-

though both went unrecognized. Rusty

legend in the annals of his gallant corps.

comrades on Sugar Loaf were recoiling under

thundering shower of enemy mortar

a

Three Sherman tanks

shells.

were to have punished the enemy's reverse slope and thus

clear the

47

He

had been brave and compassionate, the twin

tues of a born fighter, and

Soon

He

pushing back his helmet

— and there he

commemorates the deeds of this

that

soothing

Incredulity was etched

rough, slowly whitening features.

a

a

and began walking toward the rear edge of Sugar Loaf. rifle

down

machine

as easily as hefting his

mm

way

for the foot soldiers

were knocked out by enemy

antitank guns, their blazing hulks incinerating the

superstition of the "near-sighted Japanese."

Without

this

silly

support

the Marines could not hold against renewed Japanese assaults.

They withdrew,

leaving behind

them the

still

bodies of about a

hundred comrades, among them the burly football

Murphy, and the jor Courtney,

star

George

forty-five selfless volunteers of the valorous

whose widow would receive

his

Ma-

posthumous Medal

of Honor.

Throughout

that night

and the following day the Japanese

OKINAWA

172

clung stubbornly to Sugar Loaf while the entire complex quivered

beneath a combined air-sea-land

American

assault.

But

all

run turned the Sugar's

An

artillery

were repulsed,

barrage preceding each

May

on

until,

17,

left flank.

almost imperceptible depression had been observed run-

ning north and south between Half-Moon Hill to the

Sugar Loaf. rines

was not actually

It

who had wandered

into

General Shepherd, up on the regiment

a valley,

it

but Japanese

Hill,

Two

lines

battalions

left

fire

and

on Ma-

had not been heavy or accurate. now, decided to move an entire

— the Twenty-ninth — through

Loaf's armor.

Moon

an end

this tiny

would go through

chink in Sugar

to strike at Half-

holding there to support another battalion moving

against the left face of Sugar Loaf,

which

their

own

assault

was

expected to unmask.

The

Moon

battalions

Hill

was

hit.

went forward under

a fierce barrage. Half-

Sugar Loaf was attacked. Three times

pany of Marines charged to Sugar Loaf's

crest.

a

com-

Each time they

They surged up a fourth time and won. But they had no more ammunition. None could be brought up to them. It was heartbreaking. They had to go down, giving up the vital

were driven

off.

height taken at a cost of 160 casualties.

The

next day they went up to stay.

Four days of

fiill-scale attack,

the

hammering of two Marine

regiments and supporting arms, had worn the complex's defense thin.

Sugar Loaf was ready to

Captain

fall.

Howard Mabie brought

to the edge of the

his assaulting

low ground opposite the

hill.

company up Artillery

and

mortars plastered the crest while three tanks slipped around the left flank.

The

barrage stopped.

The

Japanese rushed from their

caves below the reverse slope to occupy the crest.

them under

fire,

surprised

them and

Rocket trucks raced down

fi"QjTi

The

tanks took

riddled them.

the north,

bumping and sway-

ing over a saddle of ground, stopped, loosed their flights of missiles,

whirled and careened away with a whine of changing gears

May: Rain, Mud, Blood

and

a roar of

wasted gasoHne

—

hillsides reel

Marines sprinted over the

left.

its fire

It

was

who had

— and

PX

it

wasn't

—

Sugar Loaf

for

it

relieved the fought-out

drive deeper into the complex. lost a total

a string

of 2,662 killed and

of

began again. The

the crest, formed, and swept

supplies.

made

teams, another sweeping

the reverse slope, killing as they went. Back

"Send up the

Japa-

and up Sugar Loaf, one platoon

field

They met on

rockets

though

as

set off. Artillery

taking the right face, peeling off

up on the

The

behind them.

and reverberate

monster firecrackers had been

173

just avoiding the inevitable

nese artillery shells crashing in

Sugar Loaf's

— and Breakthrough!

is

down

came the message: ours."

took the fresh Fourth Marines

Twenty-ninth four more days to

The

Marine Division

Sixth

wounded

itself

in this bitter battle, with

another 1,289 felled by combat fatigue. In the end, after the Half-

Moon into

the

was taken and the Sixth stood poised to drive down-island

Naha, they came under plunging enemy left

The the

artillery fire

from

on Shuri Heights. Sixth could not strike at

Naha

until the First destroyed

enemy on Shuri Heights.

The

First

Marine Division was "processing"

its

way

south.

This was the cold, grim term coined by Major General del Valle to describe the cold, grim warfare that his troops were fight-

ing en route to Shuri Heights. Along that

Dakeshi Town,

Wana

Ridge,

way

Wana Draw

lay

Dakeshi Ridge,

— those now-familiar

formidable jumbles of stone-steel-and-concrete that could only be

made smooth by

the "processing" of tank-infantry-flamethrower

teams. These four places were the sentinel forts guarding the

northwest way into the heart of the Naha- Shuri- Yonabaru line Shuri Castle.

Moving down

ging one another vision

all

against them,

along the

pitiless

was exposed to almost constant

struck unceasingly from

its

front.

its

at

regiments leapfrog-

way, the First Marine Difire

from

The deeper

its left

flank and

the advance, the

OKINAWA

174

more numerous and formidable became the

more

the defenses in depth,

difficult the terrain.

On May

the First began bucking at Dakeshi Ridge and

1 1

Dakeshi Town. Both

fell

icans plodding forward night. Daylight

after a

seesaw three-day batde, the Amer-

by day, the Japanese counter-attacking by

sometimes meant

ground

a fresh attack to recover

surrendered during the night. Platoons took a position at the cost

of three-fourths of their men, then tried to hang on with the survivors.

Sometimes they could

found

rines

a labyrinth

among

everywhere

Dakeshi

not. In

Town

the

Ma-

of tunnels, shafts, and caves, with snipers

the ruins

— crouching

behind broken

Town also fell, entered Wana Draw.

walls,

But Dakeshi

and on

May 14 the First Marine Division Wana Draw was a long, narrowing

ravine running east to

hidden in wells or

Shuri. It left

cisterns.

was formed by the reverse slope of

Wana

and the forward slope of another ridge to the

Ridge on

its

right. All its

low, gently rising ground was covered by gunfire, from

mouth

its

four hundred yards wide to the point at which, eight hundred

yards east,

it

narrowed sharply between steep

cliffs

under the

heights of Shuri.

Although neither Shuri nor Shuri Castle was

in the

zone of

the First Marine Division, but rather in the Seventy-seventh Di-

plunging

vision's, the

fire

that

First Division's left flank. It left,

or

and attack up

east,

thorn from

its

menacing the

flesh

from them was meant for the

was necessary for the

Wana Draw

14, the

on Sugar Loaf, the

— both

to

First to face

remove

that

and to knock out those powerful positions

entire western half of the

attack south past Shuri

On May

fell

would be struck

Tenth Army in

front.

both flank and

Any

rear.

day on which Major Courtney led the charge First

Marine Division began "processing"

Wana Draw.

A

few tanks slipped into the

ravine.

They probed

for the

caves. Antitank fire fell

on them. Supporting riflemen took the

Japanese gunners under

fire.

Suicide troops rushed for the tanks

May: Rain, Mud, Blood

— and Breakthrough!

175

hurling satchel charges. Again the supporting riflemen protected the tanks. But sometimes the antitank guns knocked out the tanks,

sometimes the Japanese infantrymen drove the Marine riflemen back, sometimes the satchel charges blew

They

in.

a tank.

But when

more vulnerable flame-

the tanks did gain a foothold, then the

throwing tanks rumbled

up

sprayed the hillside with

fire,

particularly those reverse slopes that could not be reached

bombs or

artillery.

Squads of foot Marines went

under the protective and more

men went

down

fire

into

their mortars

and

man,

most

basic,

And

these were the

— peeling More

Wana Draw. Day

after

up

day the Division

but soon there were whole companies

slopes, "processing" caves

to

with bazoo-

of riflemen kneeling in the mud.

after cave, crawling

rifle

and

a battle

its

It

was war

at its

fought by corporals and privates.

men who won

the First Division processed

pillboxes, calling

grenades on the machine guns and

mortars sure to be nesting on the reverse slope.

man

men

them

this barrier,

working up the

them,

to

team by team, taking cave

bucked against

in after

hand grenades, blocks of dynamite

kas, flamethrowers, off,

by

way

Honor

while

into Shuri: Private Dale

Han-

the Medals of

sen, using a bazooka, a rifle,

and hand grenades to knock out

pillbox and a mortar position

and

lost his

own

Pfc. Albert

life;

kill

a

dozen Japanese before he

a

Schwab, attacking machine guns

alone with his flamethrower, silencing

them even

as

he perished;

Corporal Louis Hauge, doing the same with grenades, and also

men were their indomitable comrades of the Navy Medical Corps, men such as Corpsman William Halyburton, who deliberately shielded wounded Marines with his own dying.

body

With

these

until his life leaked out of

This was the

fight for

it.

Wana Draw,

that pitiless bloodletting

swirling inside a gully while the very elements

men men

in in

muddy green

howled about these

floundering up the forward slopes, these

smeared khaki sliding down the reverse

under cover of smoke screens, the

men

slopes.

At

in khaki crept

night,

forward

OKINAWA

176

men

again to close with the

in green, to fight with bayonets

and strangfing hands. But the

fists

fight for

Wana Draw. The

men

in khaki

Marines drew closer to Shuri. The

on

soldiers of the Seventy-seventh Division

their left

were thrust-

On

ing toward Shuri and Shuri Castle from the eastern gate. east flank the

and

were losing the

Seventh Infantry Division was back in the

line

the

and

smashing into Yonabaru; the Sixth Marine Division was again on the

march

to

Naha on

the west. All along the line, division and

corps artillery were battering Ushijima's strongpoints, the Tenth

Army's Tactical Air Force roved over the

battlefield at will

— and

the warships of the fleet were slugging away with the most for-

midable supporting

yet laid

fire

down

in the Pacific, for they

had

caught the hang of pasting those reverse slopes that land-air

pounding could not reach. Ushijima's barrier line was buckling.

On

the eastern front fi-om Conical Hill to Shuri Castle, the

Ninety-sixth and Seventy-seventh Divisions were also driving slowly but doggedly into Ushijima's bristling defenses

— and with

the Seventy-seventh there marched perhaps the most unusual

hero in the annals of American arms. His name was Pfc. Doss.

He

was

medic

a

Seventh-Day Adventist, touching

a

in the

307th Infantry.

a doctrinal pacifist

who

weapon and would not work on

He

Desmond

was

also a

shrank from even

Saturday, his creed's

Sabbath. As a conscientious objector, on religious grounds he

might have joined that corps of noncombatants who refused to serve their country clearly that

it

was

his flesh for his

on the

his

battlefield.

But Desmond Doss saw

duty to serve and that he, too, could risk

country without taking the

life

of a brother

human. As

a

medic during

Escarpment

in late April,

disregard for his dies.

his regiment's bitter battle

own

on the Maeda

Doss distinguished himself by

safety

and

his utter

his devotion to his soldier

Again and again he risked enemy

fire

to

come

bud-

to the side of

May: Rain, Mud, Blood

where he fastened them

cliff,

own

devising and lowered

that

some of

177

wounds and then dragging them

stricken GIs, dressing their

the edge of a

— and Breakthrough!

them

to safety.

to a rope sling of his

He

did this so often

he had

his buddies, believing that

to

a

charmed

life,

sought to stay near him. For his gallantry. Doss received the

Medal of Honor: and

a credit to a

award on

who

reproach to those

a

nation that could bestow

with the Seventy-seventh on

still

veteran division took on the Chocolate

complex

position

its

highest military

a brave pacifist.

Doss was

Hill

not serve,"

said, "I will

—

the

in

center

of the

May

when

1 1

Drop-Wart

Hill-Flattop

This forbidding

island.

— bristled

almost as formidable as Sugar Loaf

mortars and interlocking machine-guns and 47

the Seventh's GIs

—

like the

Marines

at

Sugar Loaf

frightful.

with

mm antitank guns.

Because Ushijima had added a protective minefield to

without tanks. Casualties were

that

front,

its

— had to attack

Colonel Aubrey Smith's

306th Regiment was bled so horribly that Smith was compelled

— that twenty-four hundred — into to

form the remnants

is,

about eight hundred

a single battalion.

men

out of

A similar Gethsem-

ane awaited Colonel Stephen Hamilton's 307th after

it

relieved

the 306th. As Hamilton's soldiers filed into place, one of

thought that the

Drop looked

line of

like a

As Doss had

them

American dead sprawled atop Chocolate

skirmish line ready to leap erect and charge.

risked his

life

on the escarpment, he crawled

enemy fire to succor the wounded. But there his charmed life ended when a bursting mortar shell mangled both his legs. Doss treated his own wounds, waiting five hours for stretcher-bearers to arrive. On the way to the Battalion Aid Station, a fierce enemy barrage drove the bearers to cover. Lying alone on the litter. Doss saw a badly wounded GI untended, rolling from the stretcher to crawl to him and dress his wounds.

bravely through

While waiting arm, suffering

for the bearers to return. a

touching a gun,

compound this

fracture.

Doss was

hit again in the

Overcoming

indomitable youth actually

his horror

made

of

a splint for

OKINAWA

178

his

arm from

a rifle stock,

to the aid station,

and then squirmed three hundred yards

where he was treated and began

to recover

from

woimds.

his

Such was the uncommon valor mixed with unique compassion that

was

On

common on

Okinawa.

the Twenty-fourth Corps's eastern flank above Buckner

Bay the Ninety-sixth Division was driving and also Dick Hill

had

on

left

May

just to the east of Flattop.

Here

stiff

resistance

both GIs of the Seventy-seventh on their division's

stalled

extreme

against Conical Hill,

and those of the Ninety-sixth on their own

right.

But

17 an infantry platoon entered over a road cut between

Dick and Flattop

to explode

enemy mines. They used bayonets

to detonate the buried explosives

—

a risky tactic that cost

casualties. In the process they sealed off five caves fall

nineteen

of

enemy

soldiers.

Lieutenant Colonel Cyril Sterner of the 382nd's Second Battalion realized at

once that

to the Japanese position.

this lightly

But

it

defended road was the key

was heavily mined. Ingeniously,

Sterner ordered seven tons of bangalore torpedoes pipe packed with explosives nated, thus blasting rear of

Dick and

all

—

— lengths of

laid in the road's ruts

the mines.

Flattop, assisted

Now

and deto-

tanks could get into the

by flamethrowing tanks, and

once the Americans were able to make such

a

penetration they

enemy flank. That was what was done at Flattop all that was needed for the Tenth Army Ushijima's barrier line was for Colonel Eddy May's

always turned the

and Dick, and by to pierce

May 2 1

382nd Infantry of the Ninety-sixth Division nut known

as

Conical Hill.

Conical Hill was the eminence holding flank of Ushijima's

Americans, the vital

it

to crack that hard

Naha-Shuri-Yonabaru

down

the easternmost

barrier. If

it fell

to the

would unmask Yonabaru, the eastern terminus of

Yonabaru-Naha highway.

If the

Twenty-fourth Corps

May: Rain, Mud, Blood did succeed in turning

Marine

it,

divisions of the

its

— and Breakthrough!

179

troops could then meet the two

Third Corps

at

Naha, thus effecting

a

double envelopment that might trap Ushijima before he could retreat farther south. Because of the importance of this position,

General Hodge had chosen Colonel

commander

— to

May — his

best regimental

direct the attack.

Conical Hill's importance had not been lost on General Ushijima,

and he had stationed one thousand of his

Most of them were

confident that they could not be dislodged.

concentrated in the they expected the

hills

finest troops there,

and ridges to the west of Conical, where

enemy

where

to strike. Indeed, that was

actually attempted his penetration.

But the battalion

May

May had

as-

signed to that sector got nowhere in ten days of fighting, while

another assaulting Conical's north face had seized so

ground

in

Buckner actually joined

mans

away

blasting

slope. Stare's

much

two days that both Hodge and Buckner were delighted.

Now E

at

May on May

1

3

to

watch the Sher-

every fissure and crack of Conical's forward

and F Companies of Lieutenant Colonel Edward

Second Battalion began to move

out. Because

E

was slow

getting started, the two platoons forming the spearhead of Lieu-

tenant

Owen

off point.

O'Neill's

F Company

quickly reached their jump-

As an indication of the heavy

Ninety-sixth's

company

two technical sergeants:

casualties ravaging the

officers, these units

were commanded by

Guy Dale and Dennis Doniphan. They

waited for O'Neill, unaware that his radio was not working. willing to delay longer, they tiative.

There was

little

went up Conical on

resistance, but the

their

own

Unini-

Americans were not

deceived. Forward slopes were always a waltz: the real dance of

death came screeching out the back door. Yet, to their surprise,

not

a soldier

was

hit as

they climbed to a point about

fifty feet

below Conical's high round peak. Here they began to dig to attempt to take Conical's tiny indefensible top

drawn

fire

in, for

would have

from every quarter.

By one of

those accidental strokes of luck that so often rule

OKINAWA

180

Doniphan and Dale apparently had caught the Japan unguarded moment. Perhaps the enemy had been

the battlefield,

anese in

preoccupied with those western

Whatever the

hills.

excuse, the

Americans had been given time to entrench themselves

was the chink and

clink

— and

it

of those entrenching tools that alarmed

Lieutenant Colonel Kensuke Udo. At once he ordered a counter-

Out of the reverse slope poured ing full tilt down the forward slope attack.

Now

ground.

ing for the tardy

E Company

come up

and form

the

Two

flank.

to be

hammered

com-

to the

Lieutenant O'Neill joined his men, visibly and vo-

by the action of his

cally pleased

the yelling Japanese,

hill

companies

full

mortars below

now held

immediately

alert sergeants,

call-

under Captain Stanley Sutten to

a battle front

safely

on F Company's

right

entrenched and supported by

a perimeter east of Conical's peak.

Oddly

enough, the Japanese did not counter-attack that night.

At 383rd's headquarters congratulated Colonel finest small-unit

a delighted

May on what

Simon

Bolivar Buckner

he described

as

one of the

maneuvers he had ever witnessed.

During the next three days

—May

14, 15,

and 16

— E and F

Companies, now joined by G, fought off the desperately counterattacking Japanese in a bitter battle

Gradually the enemy shells

on Conical's forward

— again charging through

— began to whittle Colonel

their

Stare's battalion.

slope.

own mortar

At

last

Major

General Jim Bradley ordered Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Nolan's

Third Battahon of the 381st Infantry fought-out Dogfaces.

Nolan sent with the

his

fall

It

was

a

to relieve Stare's valiant but

wise decision, for the belligerent

GIs driving down

a

hogback into Sugar

Hill,

and

of that strongpoint. Conical Hill was in vAmerican

hands. In ten days between

May

11

and 21 both sides had been

locked in the fiercest fighting of this terrible Okinawa campaign, so hideously reminiscent of the^ trench warfare of

both in

its

horrible

pierce the defenses

World War

I,

human losses and the attempt of one side to of an enemy determined to yield not an inch.

May: Rain, Mud, Blood It

— and Breakthrough!

was the unstoppable force against the immovable

clearly in military terms,

fail

overwhelm

to

— no matter how valorous and dedicated

sualties in the

spiritual

power

devotees. Ca-

its

Seventy-seventh Division were 239

wounded, and 16 missing;

more

object;

what always happens when firepower

wielded by the valiant cannot alone

181

1,212

killed,

in the Ninety-sixth Division 138 killed,

1,059 wounded, and 9 missing, Japanese losses are not known,

although they were probably twice

this

number, even though

Ushijima's soldiers were on the defensive.

Perhaps the greatest tribute to the American fighting

Okinawa came from

men on

their favorite English-language broadcaster,

Radio Tokyo: Sugar Loaf Hill

.

.

.

Chocolate Drop

.

.

.

Strawberry Hill.

Gee, these places sound wonderful! You can

just see the

candy houses with the white picket fences around them and the candy canes hanging fi^om the trees, their red and white stripes gHstening in the sun.

these places

names of

is

hills in

you can get down

bare

...

I

sir,

these are the

southern Okinawa where the fighting's so

close that fists

But the only thing red about

the blood of Americans. Yes,

guess

it's

to bayonets

and sometimes your

natural to idealize the worst places

Why, Sugar

with pretty names to make them seem

less awful.

Loaf has changed hands so often

looks like Dante's In-

ferno. Yes,

sir,

Strawberry Hill.

Sugar Loaf Hill

.

it .

They sound good,

.

Chocolate Drop

don't they?

who've been there know what they're

.

.

Only those

really like.

True enough. But only the Yanks who were the final score.

.

there really

knew

—

Ushijima Retreats Again CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Major General John Hodge saw the lodgment on Conical an opportunity for flank.

He

a turning

movement of

Hill as

Ushijima's eastern

would use the rested Seventy-seventh Division

"rested" in that, withdrawn from combat, they had only to con-

tend with mud, misery, and malaria Bay's coastal If the

flats

— to

without fear of plunging

move along Buckner fire

from Conical

Hill.

Seventy-seventh could reach and capture Yonabaru, they

could wheel west to join the Marine divisions moving around the

enemy's western flank and so trap the Thirty-second

Army

in a

double envelopment. It

was an excellent concept and

a distinct possibility,

two factors stood between the idea and rain

and Ushijima's unwillingness to

On

the night of

May

its

sit still

for destruction.

22, with the Sixth

Marine Division

across the Asato River and poised to break into

another conference under

Ushijima had decided to

Yonabaru-Naha

valley,

Castle.

Naha, there was

Lieutenant General

He

could no longer hold his

He would

have to withdraw south of

retreat.

Yonabaru- Shuri-Naha hne. the

Shuri

although

execution: renewed

abandoning even that

fine cross-island

183

OKINAWA

184

road.

Where

on the

Should

to?

east coast, or

it

be the wild, roadless Chinen Peninsula

The wran-

southernmost Kiyamu Peninsula?

Kiyamu was chosen because of the strength of the Yaeju-Yuza Peaks and the honeycombs of natural and artificial caves that could accommodate the entire Thirtygle began. In the end, the

Army for its final stand. The next day Ushijima began

second

reinforcing his flanks again to

hold off the Americans while his withdrawal began, but he was too late to prevent the turning of the west flank at Naha. Sixth Division burst into the city's ruins and began

Ushijima east flank at

The

reduction.

its

counter-attacked the Seventh Division on the

still

Yonabani, trying to relieve the pressure there, but

the Seventh's valiant Dogfaces held

A nocturnal

fast.

kamikaze raid hurled

at

Okinawa shipping

to co-

incide with Ushijima's land strikes was shattered, with 150 planes

shot

down

in

Bates and one

The most

exchange for the

LSM,

plus

loss

damage

of the destroyer-transport

to eight other ships.

ferocious display of antiaircraft

power yet seen

in

the Pacific broke up a daring airborne attack on Yontan and Ka-

dena

was an unusually clear night, and there were

Airfields. It

thousands of witnesses to this small savage setback that the suicide spirit

was able to

inflict

on the Americans.

Perhaps twenty twin-engined bombers came gliding through a fiery

lacework woven by American antiaircraft gunners. Eleven

of them

That

fell

in flames.

solitary Sally

Yontan's runways.

The

rest,

except one,

bomber skidded on

When

it

fled.

its

belly along

stopped, eight of fourteen

men

one of of the

Japanese First Air Raiding Brigade were dead in their

seats,

but

tumbling out the door, coming

erect,

and

six

of them were

alive,

sprinting for parked planes while hurling heat grenades and phos-

phorous bombs. They blew up eight airplanes, damaged twentysix others,

dumps housing seventy thousand two Marines and wounded eighteen

destroyed two fuel

gallons of gasoline, and killed

others before they were finally hunted

down and

killed.

Ushijima Retreats Again

In the morning the

Tenth Army was

185

still

down

grinding

to-

ward the heart of Ushijima's defense in Shuri Castle. Marines of the First Division in

the city and

its

Wana Draw

began to draw

heights to their east.

swiftly closer to

They began

to notice Japa-

noon of May 26

nese sealing off caves and quitting the draw. At

Major General del Valle asked for an aerial reconnaissance over the Yonabaru-Naha valley.

He

had

a

hunch the Japanese were

pulhng back from Shuri, trying to sneak out under cover of heavy

A

a

rain.

spotter plane

from the battleship New York reported that

the roads behind Shuri were packed. Between three thousand and

four thousand Japanese were on the rear march with

all

their

guns, tanks, and trucks. In thirteen minutes, despite rain and bad visibility,

the warships of the fleet were

on the

Soon

fifty

strafing,

and

target.

Marine Corsairs were with them, rocketing and

every Marine artillery piece or mortar within range had ing muzzle pointed toward the valley.

They

its

from

killed

smok-

five

hun-

muddy roadways

dred to eight hundred Japanese and littered the

with wrecked vehicles.

Three days It

later the

Marines took Shuri Castle.

was not supposed to be

theirs to take;

it

was the objective

of the Seventy-seventh Division, the very plum of the Okinawa fighting, but the First

Marine Division took

General del Valle sent ing into Shuri on the Japanese

still

May

29.

it

anyway.

a battalion of the Fifth

He

Marines climb-

wanted to get around and behind

holding out in

Wana Draw. The

quickly stormed Shuri Ridge to the east, or

left,

First Battalion

of the draw

— so

quickly that Lieutenant Colonel Charles Shelburne asked per-

mission to go on to the castle eight hundred yards

The

Seventy-seventh Division was

granted

it.

fighting

from the

castle,

still

east.

Del Valle

two

days' hard

and the chance was too good to ignore.

The light defenses around Shuri might be only a temporary lapse. Company A of the Fifth Marines under Captain Julius Dusenbury began slogging east in knee-deep mud. Inside Captain

186

OKINAWA

Dusenbury's helmet was

a flag, as

among Marine commanders

had become almost customary

since

While the Marines marched,

Suribachi flag-raising.

the

del Valle

was

just barely averting

the Seventy-seventh's planned artillery and aerial strike on Shuri

and then Dusenbury's Marines overran

Castle,

and swept into the

soldiers

a party of Japanese

castle courtyard, into the battered

ruins of what had once been a beautiful palace with curving, tiered

roofs of tain

tile.

They

ran up to

Dusenbury flew

its

high parapet, and over this Cap-

his flag.

Shuri Castle, the key bastion of the Okinawa defenses, was in

American hands the

tated, if

— and

if

the Seventy-seventh Division was

Tenth Army was

manded

the

annoyed.

The

Americans on flag that

and Bars, not the Stars and

Two

Okinawa could not be

Bolivar Buckner's father. Stripes,

its

The

rightful place.

del Valle sent a party with the standard of the First

and

entirely

Stars

waved over Okinawa.

days later Old Glory was in

vision, the

irri-

who com-

Captain Dusenbury of South Carolina

Simon

flew was the flag of

displeased, the soldier

one that had flown over Guadalcanal,

General

Marine Di-

New

Britain,

Peleliu.

Now, above

Shuri Castle not far from the spot where

modore Perry had most victorious

Com-

hoisted the American flag a century ago, the

flag

of the Pacific was caught and flung in the

breeze.

The Japanese on

it,

missing.

terrible

power

retreating to the south could see

They it

kept

firing, for

it.

They

fired

they understood that the

symbolized was already massing to come south

and "destroy them.

Chrysanthemums Die in

Sea and Sky

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Plane and pilot losses in the Fifth Air Fleet and Sixth Air

had been so severe that

in

Japan

been organized. Replacements fed

from bases

in central

in

a special

kamikaze corps had

men were

both machines and

and northern Nippon to Kyushu. Often

more than raw

these aviators were hardly

periods were of short duration. At strictly volunteers,

Army

first

recruits

whose training

the kamikaze had been

but as the Okinawa campaign continued,

all

Japanese sailors and soldiers were subject to suicide duty whether or not they wished to go. Sometimes commanders "volunteered" their entire units for this not-always desirable service.

more

"glorious

to base. Others

young

More and

eagles" began to "get lost" and returned

who went

willingly

were frustrated by frequent

engine trouble or the weather. These were the ardent, idealist

who left the verse: "When I fly the skies / What a fine burial place / Would be the top of a cloud." Others were not so eager to make the supreme sacrifice, like the one who

youths such

as the pilot

wrote: "I say frankly, regret.

My

I

do not

die willingly.

country's future leaves

me

I

die not without

uneasy ...

I

am

terribly

distressed."

187

1

OKINAWA

188

Much Its

of the glamour of the Special Attack Forces had faded.

members were

still

idolized, of course,

and there was always

ceremony

for the final departure: toasts of sake to be

cigarettes

from the Imperial Gift

to be

smoked

a

drunk and

— Hirohito's part-

ing benefaction upon his private army of assassins. But the

scourging of the Kyushu bases by American

air

power had turned

these once-thriving and stimulating centers into dreary, dismal

limbos where the kamikaze awaiting the death order escaped

boredom

— or

depression

— by

helping local farmers with their

spring planting. Rain, as the

it

seemed, always brought the kamikaze, and on

Tenth Army

assault slogged

May

and slipped forward, the growl

and grumble and whistling rain of the Great Loo Choo's

were

a

welcome sound

1

skies

to about 150 Japanese aircraft hurtling

south from Kyushu. Those

who were

believing Shintoists said a

prayer of thanksgiving to the Sun Goddess for having providenaverted her face, forgetting in their gratitude the disaster

tially

that had crippled their attack at

bombers climbing from Kokobu a

outset.

its

A

formation of Judy

Airfield's Airstrip 2 crashed into

formation of Val suiciders taking off from another runway, with

a total loss

of 15 planes.

to roar south for

Those

TF

135, however, continued

58.

that reached Picket Station 15 about 7:50 a.m.

delighted to sight two

them.

The remaining

Okinawa and

They were

enemy

destroyers clearly visible below

Hugh W.

the Evans and

Hadley,

commanded by

Naval Academy classmates Commanders Robert Archer and Baron Mullaney

no

less

them

in Hadley.

were

They watched

in

in

Evans

apprehension

as

than 50 suiciders peeled off to begin orbiting above

— and when they began to

classic ship-airplane battle

For an hour and

a half

of

dive, there

World War

without letup Evans and Hadley fought

down twenty-three of them, The Marines from Yontan and Kanineteen out of the skies. Commander

off fifty kamikaze. Hadley alone shot

while Evans claimed

fifteen.

dena knocked another

ensued probably the

II.

Chrysanthemums Die

Mullaney of Hadley the

189

squadron leader's answer: "I'm out of ammunition but

ten kamikaze

— while

He

coming

did, flying straight into a flurry

Hadley fore and

at

aft,

trying to head

of

them

other Marines of his squadron rode

down through

They were not

always success-

the ack-ack with stuttering guns. ful,

and Sky

Marines to help him. Back came

called for

I'm sticking with you."

off

in Sea

tough

for both of these

little

ships took four kamikaze hits

But they survived to be towed to that anchorage in

apiece.

Kerama-retto that had become

and maimed American

ships,

a vast hospital

and there

ward

for stricken

Commander Mullaney fliers: "I am

could write this tribute to the Yontan and Kadena

my ship

willing to take

to the shores of Japan if

I

could have these

Marines with me." Meanwhile, another Fifty-eight.

On

Marc Mitscher watched skillfully

radar.

fifty

in

open admiration

used rain clouds and

He

kamikaze had found Task Force

the bridge of his flag carrier Bunker Hill Admiral

frowned

window

as the

Japanese pilots

to deceive the

American

Zero suicider broke from low clouds on

as a

the carrier's starboard quarter, smashing through rows of planes

on the

flight

deck to

exploding. Behind

it

came

a

Judy diving

astern. It hit at the worst possible

refueling fire,

on the

overboard and

start fires before crashing

flight deck.

While

straight

down from

moment

— with armed planes

broken

fuel line fed a roaring

a

these planes exploded like a burst from a giant machine gun.

In a few

moments 400

sailors

were

killed or

blown out of sight

and another 264 wounded.

Even

so Bunker Hill's ordeal did not quite equal the

Franklin, although there

was

just as

douse her flames and keep her

much heroism

afloat.

Machinist's

agony of

in the fight to

Mate Jack

vaggio would forever bless the porthole in the ship's stencil that he had so fervently cursed for the to scatter his papers.

continued lieved he

life.

Now

Sal-

room

wind blowing through

he wriggled through

it

this passport to

Another machinist named Harold Fraught be-

was trapped

in a smoke-filled passageway, until

he saw

OKINAWA

190

a tiny I

was

open pordiole.

it

but couldn't, and

about to give up when someone pushed

just

would

sure

was about to reach

"I

like to find

who

out

it

me

through.

I

was who kept pushing every

guy through but not saving himself." For 5V2 hours Bunker HilPs

crew fought the flames

gallant

threatening to consume and sink their ship. Splendid seamanship saved her: heeling from a great vessel gradually to send a

to starboard to one to port, the

list

combined

momentum

gravity and gathering

huge mass of burning gasoline and

oil,

water and foam,

sloshing slowly from the hangar deck overboard into the sea. At this point.

Hill

Admiral Mitscher transferred

— the second-worst-hit ship

she would need Enterprise. as

much

Next

many months

in the

of repair

from Bunker

his flag

Navy

—

to survive,

to the

though

more famous

day, the kikusui struck again, but not nearly with

savagery as on

May

1 1

— scoring only

Bache, a radar picket ship far south of

power plant and

one

hit

on the

Okinawa, knocking out

its

killing forty-one sailors.

Nevertheless Admiral Spruance was alarmed by the renewed fury of the Floating

Chrysanthemums and ordered Mitscher

two task groups north

take

Mitscher

work over

the

Kyushu

to

airfields.

did, introducing a naval novelty in the night-flying Air

Group Ninety aboard airmen no

rest.

Enterprise,

which gave the weary Japanese

Mitscher also struck hard

airfields, shifting his sights

bases.

to

at

Ugaki's northern

from the enemy's battered southern

Meanwhile, Corsairs and Hellcats ranged among enemy

interceptors like devouring wolves while the torpedo-launching

Avengers and Helldiver dive-bombers ravaged no

less

than thirty-

four of Ugaki's air bases. Still

the kamikaze fought back.

four fighters

zoomed

bent on punishing land.

A

aloft as

TF

58 for

On May

14 a flight of eighty-

cover for twenty-six Zero suiciders its

audacious strikes at the home-

pretakeoff briefing could not have been briefer: three

words, "Get the carriers!"

not forget

this

command

Young Lieutenant Tomai Kai could as

he roared

aloft in his

bomb-laden

Chrysanthemums Die Zero.

To

carrier.

Enterprise

—

He

II

this

was

flattops

from enemy ack-ack ex-

his frail craft

Kai pointed his Zero's nose

tracers flowing

cloud at fifteen hundred

a

at the

his throttle, miraculously passing

rier's

58 and a

one of the most battle-seasoned

ploding around him. Bursting from

mm

TF

— but he didn't hesitate to jump her despite the

bucking and bouncing of

20 and 40

191

had no way of knowing that

the ''Big E, "

World War

feet,

and Sky

deHght he soon found himself above

his

monster

of

in Sea

Big E's stern and opened

unscathed through

a

storm of

toward him. Standing on the car-

bridge Admiral Mitscher's calculating eye calmly watched

the enemy's approach.

Two hundred yards astern Lieutenant Kai flip-flopped his craft upside

down

just as

he passed over

steepen his dive, yanked the stick

all

the

Enterprise,

way

air-

and then, to

back. Just before he

crashed into the carrier's flight deck at an angle of fifty degrees,

he released

down

his

550-pound bomb. The

missile

plunged straight

the yawning elevator well, exploding with a monstrous roar

that sent the elevator roof spinning lazily into the sea. Fortunately,

most of the crewmen above deck were wearing flash-proof

clothing so that only a few

men were

badly burned in comparison

to the horrible scorching of Franklin's

thirteen

were

men had fuel,

tight

and sixty-nine wounded. Big £'s

alert

crew-

prepared their ship for attack. Fuel lines had been

drained and

of

killed

crewmen. Moreover, only

filled

with CO,; aircraft had been disarmed, drained

and stowed below; compartments had been made water-

by dogging down the bulkheads, and emergency rations

were stored within them. Best of fire-fighting details

all,

when

flames did erupt, the

were ready for them.

Thus, when Admiral Mitscher on zically at the hole left in the flight

his flag bridge stared quiz-

deck by Kai's Zero, he was not

dismayed. Instead, he removed the long-visored baseball cap he always wore, scratched his bald head and said: "Tell

group commanders that to

grow

hair

on

my

if

my

task

the Japanese keep this up, they're going

head yet." Marc Mitscher also would cherish

OKINAWA

192

a calling card

Lieutenant

found on the intact corpse of the heroic young

Tomai Kai who had come

so close to sinking the ad-

miral's flagship.

Following the

failure

of the Floating Chrysanthemum oper-

on Yontan-Kadena and

ation that included the airborne attack

Lieutenant Kai's crash dive on Enterprise, the Fifth Air Fleet was so short of planes and pilots that

pressed into service twenty

it

Shirigaku twin-engine trainers. These awkward aircraft, certainly

no match

for the swift

most of the

aircraft

and sturdy American

deployed in Kikiisui 7 on

fighters,

comprised

May 24. No

decision

could have been more indicative of the desperation of Ugaki and Sugahara.

They would not

only lose the invaluable pilots and

crew-trainers of the Shirigaku, but have few instructors remaining to teach the low-quality recruits being

dragooned

and sent to Kyushu. And they did lose them, roved

sairs

among them with

in the

Marine Cor-

as the

stuttering guns.

north

Nevertheless,

Kikusui 7 did hole the destroyer Stormes, while damaging the destroyer-transports Bates and Barry so badly that Bates sank and

Barry was converted to

a

kamikaze decoy.

But the Divine Winds were back on

Chrysanthemum

8, a

May

27-28 for Floating

novelty in that on the twenty-seventh

some

Army and Navy aircraft attacked at night. Here was a demonstration of how inept aircraft designed for daytime combat eighty-five

can be fighting in darkness. Picket destroyers Anthony and Braine firing

on radar quickly took out an

assailants, identified

indefinite

only by gasoline

the ?)thers waited until

dawn

to

fires

ican

on black water. Wisely,

renew the

aging Anthony and mangling Braine to

kill

number of invisible

assault, slightly

about

a

dam-

hundred Amer-

seamen and wounding about the same number.

The

next day in clearing weather the kikusui were back, this

time swooping again on their fayorite target: the ships of Radar Picket Station 15. Destroyers Drexler and Lowry were hit and staggered, but above

them Marine Corsairs were plucking

petals

.

Chrysanthemums Die

in Sea

and Sky

from the Chrysanthemums. Lieutenants R.

Seaman each downed a third.

As both

a red-balled

F.

Bourne and

B.

peehng the ene-

maintained control and plunged into

pilot

its

J.

enemy, while Seaman exploded

pilots joined to attack a fourth,

my's metal hide,

193

Drexler with an impact that sent flames shooting hundreds of feet

Within

high.

men down

minute Drexler rolled over and sank, taking 158

a

with her.

Reports of

Had

the

came from

a

perfected a

board of inquiry that preferred to believe

probably correctly

— that

May

manded

a

still

ghost

bomb

striking a ship's

fully

magazine

intended to continue his

believing that Admiral Spruance

fleet

— and

a violent fireball.

Admiral Ugaki

28,

kikusui attacks,

heavy

a

could easily produce such After

made eyelids flutter in Washington, new and fearful explosive? The answer

this disaster

enemy

now com-

of floating wrecks and derelicts. But then

bad weather and the Army's disenchantment with the Floating

Chrysanthemums nese

air

— the

generals had always believed that Japa-

power should be husbanded

terfered with his plans.

Sixth Air

To

his

for

homeland defense

—

dismay General Sugahara and

Army were removed from Navy

He

control.

still

inhis

had

the cooperation of the Army's Third Air Division, however, and

planned to resume what can only be described as his Graveyard

Operation with Kikusui 9 on June

3

Before then American airpower received

forcement bolts.

—

in the arrival of a

Here was

a

derbolts under Captain

forming in a Lufbery

On May

28 a

its

circle

each Zero was to protect the its

light

speed, armament,

flight

of eight

Thun-

John Vogt jumped twenty-eight Zeros

—

a defensive aerial tactic

copied from a ring of show horses moving

Zero with

powerful rein-

squadron of Army P-47 Thunder-

fighter unrivaled for

armor, and climbing power.

a

tail

tail

perhaps

to nose.

Thus,

of the plane ahead. Because the

armament and

thin

armor was

fast

and ma-

neuverable, these pilots probably thought they were safe from attack, but the

Thunderbolts climbing

at full throttle

moved high

— OKINAWA

194

above their quarry screaming down

at

twenty-eight thousand feet

in a dive that sent six

Vogt claimed

the sea along with two "probables." Captain

accounted for Floating

five

it

on June

did take to the skies

But

aircraft.

naval historian Samuel Eliot

number

to have

of them.

Chrysanthemum 9

supposedly with about 101

their

— and then came

of the enemy flaming into

Morison

3,

seems unlikely. The

this

gives only

fifty.

Whatever

was sharply reduced by the Yontan-Kadena Ma-

rine Corsairs, succeeding only in holing a minelayer.

The

next

day the kamikaze dove again, but in almost negligible strength.

Once

To

again the unfortunate Anthony was their target.

the

crew's unbelieving eyes a suicider barely nicked by gunfire actually bailed out\

This most unwarlike

however, availed him

tactic,

nothing: his parachute streamed after

him unopened

plunge into the briny. Another plane dived

40

mm

gunners shot

it

at

mark

to

Anthony but her

down.

Kikusui 9 suggested that attrition of the Fifth Air Fleet

from Okinawa, Iwo Jima, Guam, and the

most complete. Admiral Ugaki, who had fleet

of more than 4,000

aircraft,

was

fast carriers

Only

Nevertheless this relentless

a

it

lected, escorted six

— was

al-

now

in

June down

— and

to about

these

marked

— not

10.

—

air

admiral

With Okinawa

already

to say merciless

was scheduled for June 21-22.

Supposedly

were

raids

handful of kamikaze remained.

prepared Floating Chrysanthemum

doomed,

—

started in April with a

1,270, of which only 570 were serviceable for conventional duty.

his

fifty-eight to forty-five

kamikaze had been col-

by an unknown number of

baka bombs, Ugaki's masterpiece.

"aborted" and returned to base

is

fighters.

Also aboard

How many

not known; but by

of them late

June

"abortion" was becoming nearly as popular as divine death had been. This

last

attack of the deadly Floating

Chrysanthemums

produced only a few near misses while one faithful suicider set the seaplane tender Curtis afire and another struck at Barry

previously

damaged destroyer-escort converted

to

— the

decoy duty

Chrysanthemums Die as

it

ships.

was being towed to

station

by

Meanwhile the baka brigade was

failed to release

Kyushu while

from

their

195

LSM-50

— sinking both

a

complete

down

fizzle:

two

mother planes and were returned

the other four were either lost

planes were shot

Thus

its

and Sky

in Sea

when

their

to

mother

or harmed nothing but a few dozen fishes.

the inglorious end of the kikusui that were to save Japan.

Japan's third Divine

Wind had

spent

itself

on the sturdy

and stout hearts of the United States Naval Service.

ships

Ushijima's Last Stand

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

It

was the month of June, the month of Ushijima's

last stand.

Lieutenant General Buckner had redisposed his Tenth for the final heave of the war.

On

the west, or right, flank the

The

Marines' sector had been narrowed.

was going

to

make

Oroku Peninsula

a shore-to-shore

in the southwest,

had not the strength

The Third

fact,

Marine Division sent back a

kamikaze target

Marine Division

and the First Marine Division

Third Corps

front.

was depleted. With the Second

to Saipan

— rather than kept

afloat as

— Major General Geiger had not been able to

rest either the First or the Sixth.

divisions themselves

resting

Sixth

amphibious assault on the

to cover the entire

Corps, in

Army

had

He

had no reserve, and the

tried to maintain battle efficiency

one regiment while the other two attacked. But

it

by

could

not always be done. So the Third Corps needed troops, and soon the Eighth Regiment of the Second Marine Division would be

brought into Okinawa to furnish them. But

this

was not

until after

the Eighth had finished capturing islands to the west of to give Admiral

Turner long-range radar and

Okinawa

fighter-director

stations.

197

OKINAWA

198

The Twenty-fourth Corps was in better shape. Major General Hodge had three divisions exclusive of the Twenty-seventh on

—

garrison in the north

— and had been able to

rest

one while the

other two were attacking. Only infrequently, as in the before Shuri, were

all

three in the line. But from June 4

the Twenty-fourth Corps was grinding

down on

days

final

onward

the Yaeju-Yuza

Peaks where most of the Thirty-second Army's remnants had holed up. Even General Ushijima was here, conducting the

last

stand from his headquarters cave just above the ocean.

June

5

was

a sad

favorite regimental

day for General Hodge, for on that date

commander

— Colonel Eddy May—

fell

with an enemy machine gunner's bullet through his heart.

had

called

May "the finest soldier I have

his

dead

Hodge

ever known," and though

he was indeed "a hard 'un," the courageous calm with which he

would stand exposed sitions lost

was legendary.

to

enemy

Two

fire

weeks

while studying Japanese po-

later the Ninety-sixth Division

another brave leader: Brigadier General Claudius Easley, as-

sistant division

commander. As usual

was up front scouting the enemy, and

enemy machine gun,

a burst

this

brave

just as

little

gamecock

he pointed out an

from that very weapon pierced

his

brain.

On

the same day that Easley was killed the final

Medal of

Honor was won on Okinawa. Technical Sergeant John Meagher of the Seventy-seventh's 305th Infantry was mounted on a tank directing

rushed

at

its fire

when a Japanese

soldier wielding a satchel charge

him. Dropping to the ground, Meagher bayoneted his

assailant,

then ran back to his Sherman to

at a pair

of Japanese machine guns. Emptying his gun's

Meagher

seized his thirty-five-pound

baseball bat to club the remaining

weapon

fire a

division

though

as

enemy gunners

Casualties in the Ninety-sixth had been far

machine gun

Its rifle

battalions

were a

to death.

from

light as the

ground south on the honeycomb of caves and

peaks that was the Yaeju-Yuza.

it

belt,

fortified

were so reduced

in strength that General Hodge, to maintain the division's

mo-

Ushijima's Last Stand

mentum,

199

transferred the Seventy-seventh's 305th Infantry to the

Ninety-sixth.

When

the GIs of the Twenty-fourth Corps began to pene-

enemy

trate the

many

cave strongholds,

with what they found.

The

caves were

of them were sickened

full

of

men and

misery.

There were many sick and dying. Some caves had become reeking pest-holes.

As many

as forty

men

some of

lay in

warrens. At times a doctor or a corpsman

how

they

felt.

They

Men

died from

lated.

The

rain

could do

little

men

serious. Filth

The

accumu-

smell was so overpowering

could hardly breathe.

He

shared the fa-

who were even

then, in that

Ushijima was determined to fight on.

Still

to ask

outside, water streamed into the caves,

and the wounded nearly drowned. that

came around

more. They had no supplies.

wounds not considered

drummed

these hillside

naticism of those

Army

diehards

month of June, attempting

to

wreck the peace party that the new

premier. Baron Kantaro Suzuki, was forming with the secret en-

couragement of Emperor Hirohito. Tokyo had been savaged twice more, on

May

23 and 25, and the emperor was

uinely dismayed by the slaughter

among

now

gen-

his people.

But General Ushijima and General Cho, resuming their old relationship,

were capable of no such dismay. The fight was to be

to the finish,

and on June 4 the Tenth

Army shuddered and

drove

forward.

On off

that date the Sixth

from Naha

World War

II.

to

make

Marine Division's spearheads shoved

the last Marine amphibious assault of

Again the amtracks, wallowing in the sea waves,

the naval gunfire thundering overhead, the shores of the objective

winking and spouting smoke

by-two Oroku Peninsula

— and

in

a

beaches, coral pinnacles, caves,

in they

went

to

conquer three-

whirling ten-day battle. Again hills,

tunnel systems, 5,000

last-

ditch Japanese to be killed, an admiral to be driven to suicide,

and again death and wounds for Marines

was the

Pacific

— 1,608 of them. Oroku

War in microcosm — even

in

its

Medals of Honor:

OKINAWA

200

McTureous

Private Robert

attacking machine guns firing

on

Corpsman wounded Marines while dying of

stretcher-bearers and losing his hfe to save his buddies;

Fred Lester continuing to his

treat

own wounds. But Oroku ended

committed arms and

On June

hara-kiri.

Admiral Ota

the Japanese threw

toward the mainland in the southeast.

fled

The

not escape.

1 3

in a rout after

down their They could

Marine Division had driven past the base

First

of the peninsula and sealed

off.

it

The

Japanese began sur-

rendering.

Beneath Oroku, the coast.

Okinawa had been

First

had broken through to the south

sliced

down

the middle, but

who

portant to those weary, hungry Marines outlet to

which amtracks could now bring

a week on reduced rations, made supply nearly impossible.

been

On

slogging

did

more im-

was the sea

it

The men had through the mud that

supplies.

the eastern flank the Seventh and Ninety-sixth Infantry

Divisions were also nearing the southern coast. Lieutenant eral

He

Buckner had already made had had

a letter

Gen-

a surrender appeal to Ushijima.

dropped behind the

lines. It said:

under your command have fought bravely and

The

forces

well,

and your infantry

your opponents

.

.

.

tactics

have merited the respect of

Like myself, you are an infantry general

long schooled and practiced in infantry warfare ... therefore, that

you understand

struction of

Japanese resistance on the island

all

matter of days

.

.

as clearly as

I,

I

believe,

that the deis

merely

a

.

The letter was dropped on June 10. It reached Ushijima and Cho on June 17. They thought it hilarious. How could a Samurai surrender?

A

Samurai can only

Ushijima and kiri

Cho had

kill

himself.

already resigned themselves to hara-

by that seventeenth of June, for by then

all

was over.

On

the

west flank the First Marine Division was battling through Kunishi

Ushijima's Last Stand

Ridge while the Sixth had again come into

201

on the

line

was racing for Ara Point, the southernmost

right and

of Okinawa. In

tip

the east, the Ninety-sixth Division was finishing off resistance in the Yaeju-Yuza Peaks, and the Seventh Division's soldiers were

on the Thirty-second Army's very headquarters.

closing in

There was nothing

Ushijima and Cho, save the

left for

isfying news the next day that the American

them with Simon

a surrender offer

who had

sat-

insulted

was himself dead.

Bolivar Buckner had

come down

to

Regiment enter

see the fresh Eighth Marine

had come to Okinawa on June

Mezado Ridge

battle.

15, after seizing

to

The Eighth

Admiral Turner's

radar outposts, and was attached to the First Division. As had

happened

ment of

in the beginning at Guadalcanal,

when another

the Second Division was attached to the First, so

happening

in the

end

at

was

at

Ku-

Okinawa.

Colonel Clarence Wallace sent the Eighth Marines in nishi Ridge.

regiit

They were to attack in columns of battalions to seize enemy in two, to carry out General del Valle's

a road, to split the

plans for a decisive thrust to the sea. Lieutenant General Buckner

Mezado Ridge at noon. He watched about an hour. They moved swiftly on their ob-

joined Colonel Wallace on the Marines for jective.

Buckner

said:

"Things are going so well here,

I

think

I'll

move on

to

another unit." Five Japanese shells struck

Mezado

Ridge.

the air with flying coral.

A shard

pierced General Buckner's

filled

chest and he died within ten minutes

They exploded and

— knowing,

at least, that his

Tenth Army was winning.

Command went

to

Roy

Geiger, senior officer and about to

be promoted to lieutenant general.

had been

at

The

grizzled white bear

who

Guadalcanal in the beginning was leading at the end

on Okinawa.

That came three days

later.

OKINAWA

202

On June 21a a small

mound

patrol

from the Sixth Marine Division reached

atop a spiky coral

was the

cliff. It

tip

of Ara Point.

Beneath them were the mingling waters of the Pacific Ocean and the East China Sea.

A

few more days of skirmishing and

When

to the north remained.

a reverse

mop-up

drive

these were over, and the last of the

kamikaze had been shot down, the Japanese Thirty-second

Army

was no more, with roughly 100,000 dead, and, surprisingly, another 10,000 captured. American casualties totaled 49,151, with

Marine

losses at 2,938

Army's

at

dead or missing and 13,708 wounded; the

4,675 and 18,099; and the Navy's at 4,907 and 4,824.

There was

little

3,000 planes*

of Japanese airpower after losses of about

left

— about

1,900 of

them kamikaze

— against 763

for

the Americans; and the sinking of Yamato and 15 other ships

meant the end of Nippon's Navy. Though the United

Navy had been

States

staggered with 36 ships sunk and another 368

damaged, there were

still

plenty

left to

mount

the

fall

invasion of

Kyushu from Okinawa. So the Great Loo Choo three days of fighting.

A

fell

to the Americans after eighty-

few hours

after the

Marine patrol

reached Ara Point, Major General Geiger declared organized resistance to be at an end.

and early American estimates of 7,800 Japanese planes lost during the Okinawa Campaign either in combat or under enemy air raids were much too high. A more conservative and probably more accurate figure of 3,000 was later made by the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey. * Official

—

—

A Samurai Farewell CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

On

— the day General Geiger declared the Okinawa — Ushijima and Cho realized

the night of June 21

American victory on their headquarters

in

under Hill 95 near the Pacific Ocean that the

end had come. Soldiers of Colonel John Finn's Thirty-second Infantry of the Seventh Division were

nades through a vertical

Ushijima nor

dropping hand gre-

from the top of the

air shaft

explosives had already killed or

still

wounded

hill.

The

ten officers. Neither

Cho wished to meet a similar fate at the hands of They would take their own lives in the ac-

the American devils.

cepted Samurai ceremony.

Colonel Yahara had desired to join them in hara-kiri, but Ushijima had decreed that his planning

memory and only man to

with his excellent

officer,

habit of straightforward reporting, should be the

attempt to escape to

Tokyo with

a fall

what had happened on Okinawa. Unfortunately,

account of

in his physique

and bearing, Hiromichi Yahara was also the worst possible choice.

No

matter

how he

cian officer

sought to disguise himself,

this tall

and

patri-

would stand out among the diminutive Okinawan

population like a green tree in a petrified forest

— and

he was 203

OKINAWA

204

quickly captured. Being a Samurai, he had probably asked for a

bayonet with which to make the act of expiation

many

like so

other captured Samurai before him. If he had, he certainly would

have been laughingly refused.

That night under Cho, together with

Hill 95 Lieutenant Generals Ushijima and

their ranking officers,

consumed

a farewell

Na-

dinner prepared for them by the commander's cook, Tetsuo

kamuta.

It

began with bean-curd soup, and then proceeded to

a

bountiful repast of rice, canned meats, potatoes, fried fish cakes, fresh cabbage, and a dessert of canned pineapple. Sake flowed as

At the meal's end Isamo Cho

freely as the lively conversation.

produced from

White

his large stock of liquors a bottle

scotch, with

which he and

his chief

of Black and

solemnly toasted each

other. It

was agreed that nothing should be allowed

with the

ritual suicide

of Ushijima and Cho.

Thus, in the early morning hours and

officers

men

liver the last

95,

and

of Thirty-second

Banzai of

after

that,

to interfere

moonrise, the

Army Headquarters would

World War

if

just before

II:

a

de-

climbing charge up Hill

there were any survivors, the

town of

Mabuni. At about

3

A.M. of June 22, 1945, with a glowing white

polishing the gleaming black waters of the Pacific

Ushijima's staff singing ''Umi Yukaba'"

Banzai began climbing the

Behind them

Tokyo: "Our utmost.

We

at his

valiantly,

and techniques but

it

month, 20th year of the Showa Era. obligations.

was

Cho I

as

all

last

I

hereby

Bowing

last

message to

were used

to the

nothing before the

wrote: "22nd day, 6th

depart without regret,

Army Chief of Staff Cho; Army

General Cho, Isamu, age of departure 52 years. At place

with

— the members of the

desk Ushijima wrote his

material strength of the enemy."

shame or

— and

cliffi

strategy, tactics

fought

moon

fear,

Lieutenant

this

time and

certify the foregoing."

Cho said: "Well, Commanding General way may be dark, I, Cho, will lead the way."

to his chief,

Ushijima, as the

A

Samurai Farewell

205

Returning the bow, Ushijima replied: "Please do take along

my

An hour the

cliff face

and

six feet

Both wore

A white

later

it is

Ushijima and

wide, opening

Cho

upon

their dress uniforms,

and

a

American

It

was about

a small

Only

a

six feet

high

ledge above the water.

complete with medals and saber.

white sheet symbolizing death were laid over its

descent.

out to the ledge, Ushijima calmly fanning himin reverence to the eastern sky, the

obeisance to the emperor, and quilt.

stepped through a fissure in

Above them the moon had begun

They strolled self. They bowed and

warm."

getting

overlooking the ocean.*

quilt

the ledge.

fan since

so, I will

hundred

soldiers.

feet

sat

customary

together on the white sheet

behind them were the approaching

Having heard

voices, they

began hurling gre-

nades, unaware that the Japanese generals were so close to them. First

Ushijima and then

Cho

bared their bellies to the upward

thrust of the ceremonial knives in their hands.

Upon

the sight of

blood the adjutant standing by with unsheathed saber delivered the coup de grace.

Two

shouts,

moon began

two saber

flashes

— and

it

was done. And the

sinking into an obsidian sea.

* This account of Ushijima and Cho's final moments came from Ushijima's cook Tetsuo Nakamuta, who was a witness.

Epilogue:

The Value of Okinawa CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Truth trying

to overtake falsehood

is

Hke the sound of an explo-

sion seeking to catch up with the flash, and this seems to be especially true of that greatest

the belief in

August 1945 compelled Japan to surrender.

There the

II:

bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

that the atomic early

myth of World War

Age of

is

no question

the

that these dreadful fireballs ushering in

Mushroom Cloud had much

to

do with Emperor

Hirohito's decision to order his Imperial Conference to accept the Allied surrender offer. But before they were dropped

been suggested

at the

beginning of

this narrative

—

as has

—

Japan was

al-

ready a defeated and demoralized nation, deeply divided between the diehards fiercely determined to continue the conflict regardless

of the costs, and those timid

realized that the

members of the peace

end had come but who

wrath of the firebrands.

The

fact

remains that

party

who

feared to risk the

atomic bombings, then, brought Hi-

rohito to their side and encouraged

But the

still

them

to defy the

before then, before

War

Lords.

Okinawa, Japan was

already beaten.

This was the conclusion of the most authoritative voice on 207

OKINAWA

208

Bombing Survey

the subject, the U.S. Strategic

Harry Truman

ident

World War

II. It

to assess the effects of

declared: "Based

surviving Japanese leaders involved,

prior to 1st

AlHed bombing

in

a detailed investigation of

it is

the Survey's opinion that

December, 1945, and

certainly prior to 31st

if

on

created by Pres-

in all probability

November, 1945, Japan would have surrendered, even bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had

the atomic

not entered the war, even contemplated." then, were the

Debate so ravaged.

still

No

no invasion had been planned or

if

judgment could be more unequivocal. Why,

bombs dropped? rages over whether or not Japan should have been

Harry Truman

to his dying day insisted that he "never

had any doubt" about the necessity of

striking

Nippon with

atomic weapons. However, recent examination of his private papers produced a letter to his sister in which he wrote: "It was a terrible decision."

than

Germany because

fact that the

the "Fat light

Some

it

claim that Japan was chosen rather

was an Oriental nation

— ignoring the

Nazis had been destroyed in May, two months before

Boy" on

not of

critics

this

its

tower

world

at

Alamogordo

flashed

upward with

— or that the thickening mood of savage

revenge that had seized the American public had to be

Apart from such emotional conclusions, the atomic

him

to

bomb

walk

it

satisfied.

should be obvious that

kept Stalin out of Western Europe and forced

softly in Asia.

This was indeed

ation of the highest order, one that

no

a strategic

consider-

sincere statesman could

refuse to balance against the hideous loss of

life

and property that

would ensue under the mushroom cloud; together with the tainty that for

all

a

cer-

American declarations of desiring peace and prosperity

peoples would henceforth have to be read in the light of

those terrible fireballs. Nevertheless, the atomic

bombs

did in-

deed keep the Soviet Union out of Western Europe and curtailed its

ambitions in the Far East, even though they also presented the

Soviets with a powerful psychological stick with which to beat the

United States and

its

Free World

allies.

Epilogue:

To

The Value

these considerations

of Okinawa

209

must be added the convictions of

—

many high-ranking naval and air commanders none of them members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that Japan could be

—

bombed, true,

shelled,

and blockaded into submission. This

is

probably

but can never be proved. At best such a policy would in-

dubitably have saved

many American

lives,

even though

would

it

almost certainly have caused horrible and unimaginable suffering in Japan. Because

it

would have taken so much longer,

would

it

have given the insatiably land-hungry Stalin the opportunity to enter the war for a

much

longer period than his actual six-day

contribution, and thus cloak

him

customary mane of the

in the

lion roaring for his "rightful" share of the spoils. Hiroshima,

then, did save Japan

War

from the brutal and

Lords determined that the nation must die

But Nagasaki was

Samurai.

absolutely

of her

selfish policies

like a dutiful

coming

unnecessary,

only three days after Hiroshima and thus too close to influence

any decision. Probably

it

was dropped to show Japan that the

bomb — — and presumably could produce many more.

United States possessed more than one only two

From

this

all

actually

speculation only two probabilities

it

had

seem

to

emerge: one, that Japan was already beaten and would have surrendered before the monster Operation Olympic invasion began three as

months

much

two, that Harry

Truman dropped both bombs

to frighten Stalin as to finish off Japan.

Where,

A

later;

then, does this leave

myth of

Okinawa?

bombs is the other though less widespread misconception of Okinawa as an unnecessary battle. Here is one more instance of that cart-before-thecorollary of the

horse thinking

by

Aristotie:

ing."

The

common

to those facile

"Contemplating

Battle for

the atomic

little,

minds so well described

they have no difficulty decid-

Okinawa was begun on April

1,

than 4 months before the bombing of Hiroshima and before the

first

bomb was

exploded

at

1945, 3 Vi

more

months

Alamogordo. The Ameri-

OKINAWA

210

cans wanted

Okinawa

shu, the Japanese

for a staging area only 375 miles

hoped through

cripple or destroy the

enemy

its

kamikaze corps either to

power

sea

from Kyu-

that had brought the

Americans so close to Japan proper. Because Imperial General Headquarters had not the sHghtest suspicion that the Americans were close to producing an atomic

bomb, General Ushijima and to defend

his

Army

Thirty-second

expected

Okinawa with conventional weapons, while General

Buckner intended to instruments of war.

seize the

Not

Great Loo

until just before

Choo

with the same

Hiroshima were Fleet

— the — informed that

Admiral Nimitz and General of the Armies MacArthur ficers

their

who would command the invasion of Japan country now possessed atomic weapons. By

Okinawa had

fallen

— and when

it

did,

it

of-

then, of course,

so shocked

Emperor

Hirohito that he could echo what Fleet Admiral Osami Nagano, his personal naval advisor,

of Saipan: "Hell

is

had cried when he learned of the

on us!"

Until Okinawa, Hirohito had been an accomplice of the

Lords;

came

if

to

not a willing one, then, in the

know him

loss

War

words of MacArthur, who

better than any other Westerner: "a figure-

head, but not quite a stooge." After

lenge them, and the atomic

So Okinawa was indeed

its fall,

he was ready to chal-

bombs gave him

that opportunity.

decisive, for if the

in this biggest battle of the Pacific

Japanese had

won

War, the hold of the War

Lords upon the nation of Nippon would have been so strengthened that even the influence of Hirohito could not have persuaded the Imperial Conference to accept the Allied surrender offer.*Thus, the

war would have been prolonged

Japan, of course

— and

Tokyo

Plain.

for

only the production and use of more

atomic bombs would have avoided that the

— hopelessly

titanic clash

of arms upon

Index

dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 10, 207-9, 210

Abele, 17-18

Ainu, 25

Amamiya, Tatsumi, 109, 148 ambush tactics, 20-21

Australia, 12 Axtell,

ammunition, supplying of, 121124, 156 Anderson, Beauford "Snuffy,"

George, 143

B-29 bombers (Superfortresses), 3,

10, 35, 141, 142, 143,

Anthony, 192, 194

Badogho, Pietro, 59

Ara Point, 201, 202

baka {Oka; Cherry Blossom)

bombs, 115-16, 117, 118,

Archer, Robert, 188 Ariga, Kosaku,

144

Bache, 190

111

94-95

143, 152, 160, 167, 194, 195

Arima, Masafumi, 16

Banzai charges, 20, 21, 31, 113,

Aristode, 209

138, 149, 162, 169,

Arkansas, 67, 68

Army Air Forces (POA), 1 Army Ground Forces (POA),

Barry, 192,

204

194-95

Bates, 184, 192 1

Beary, D. G., 123, 124

Arnold, Archibald, 58, 135-36

Belman, Dave, 101, 102

Arnold, H. H. "Hap," 141

Bennington, 91

Asa River, 169

Biak, 20-21, 62 Bimbo Butai (Poor Detachment),

Asashimo, 95

Asato River, 183

33,72-73

Astoria, 51

Birmingham, 152

atomic bombs, 208, 210

Biscansin, Al, 63

211

1

Index

212

Cherry Blossom (Oka; baka) bombs, 115-16, 117, 118,

Blakelock, David, 156 Boeitai, 33

Bonin

143, 152, 160, 167, 194, 195

Islands, 5

Borneo,

Cherry Society (Sakura-kai), 29

3

Bourne, R.

F.,

193

Chicago, 51

Bradford, William, 138

China,

Bradford Force, 138

Okinawa and, 4-5 Cho, Isamu, 21, 28-30,

Bradley, James, 57, 180

Omar, 161

Bradley,

30

3, 12,

114, 158,

31, 33,

199,203

Braine, 192

Buckner's surrender appeal

Brocade Banner affair, 29-30 Bruce, Andrew, 56, 156, 157 Buckner, Simon Bolivar, Jr., xi,

character

2, 53, 78, 179, 180,

death

of, 162,

and, 200, 201

1,

201,210

Minatoga landing rejected

by,

155-58, 159, 162 of,

Tenth Army and,

28-29, 30, 31

29-30

counter-attack plans

of, 107,

108-10, 112, 113, 147-51,

201

surrender appeal

of,

in conspiracy plots,

152, 153-54, 156, 157 farewell dinner of,

200, 201

xi,

49, 53,

204

kamikaze and, 30, 33-34 suicide of, 200, 203,

204-5

55,61-62,63, 73, 109, 121122, 155-59, 162, 163, 168,

Chocolate Drop, 177, 181 Christianity, 23-24, 26

197

Clark, Joseph "Jocko," 91

Turner and, 53, 88, 158 Buckner, Simon Bolivar, Sr., 53 Buckner Bay (Nakagusuku Bay), 5,

73, 78, 178, 183

Buddhism,

23,

24

Bulge, Battle of the, 57, 162

Bunker

Hill,

Burma,

189-90

3, 11,

28

Bush, 91

Bush, Richard, 81-82

Colhoun, 91 Collins, "Lightning Joe," 56, 58 Colorado, 98, 152

Comfort,

143-44

Conical Hill, 168, 176, 178-80, 183

Connor, John, 130 Cook, Paul, 138 "corkscrew and blowtorch" tics, xi,

tac-

159, 162

Bush, Robert, 153

Coronet, Operation, 12

Bushi4p,2S,21, 35, 114

Courtney, Henry, 169, 170, 171,

see also

Samurai

174 Curran,

Canberra, 51

Curtis,

Bill,

101

194

Gary, Donald, 45

WiUiam,

Cassidy, John, 104

Daily,

Catholicism, 23-24

daimyos, 25

Catmon

Dakeshi Ridge, 173, 174 Dakeshi Town, 168, 173, 174

Hill,

57

Cernawsky, Anthony, 126

1 1

1

,

Index Dale, Guy, 179-80

213

Four

Sitting Ducks, Battle of

Davison, R. E., 45

(Batde of Savo Island),

del Valle, Pedro, 59, 78, 157,

52

43-47, 189, 191

Franklin, 16,

Deyo, Morton, 94, 118 Dick Hill, 178

Fraught, Harold, 189-90

see

Frozen Guns, Battle of

kamikaze

Doniphan, Dennis, 179-80 Doss, Desmond, 176-78 Douw, Volckert, 144 Dovel, David, 136 Drexler,

1

Francis Xavier, Saint, 23

173, 185, 186, 201 Detroit, 123

Divine Wind,

5

the,

167-

168

FueUing,

J. L.,

fuel oil, 123,

45

124

Fujioka, Takeo, 109, 110, 111, 130, 148

192-93

Dusenbuiy,

Julius,

185-86

gasoline, aviation, 124

Dutch East

Indies,

1

Gehres, LesHe, 44, 45, 46, 47 Geiger, Roy, 54, 58, 59, 60, 155,

Easley, Claudius, 57, 103, 104

death

of,

Eisenhower, Dwight D.,

4, 49,

Elliott,

52

Germany, Nazi, 57, 167, 208 Golar, Donald "Rusty," 59, 169-

El Dorado, 67 52

Enterprise {''Big E''), 116, 190,

191-92 Essex,

Geneva Convention, 144 George F.

141

Elliott,

163, 168, 197, 201, 202,

203

198

171

Gonsalves, Harold, 81

Grant, Ulysses

93

S.,

53

Evans, 188

Griner, George, 60, 61, 128, 131,

Fardy, John, 153

Griswold, Oswald, 53

Finn, John, 203

Guadalcanal, 12, 28, 42, 50-51,

138

Finn, Mickey, 130, 135 "firebase psychosis," 162 Fitz,

58, 60, 63, 75n, 149, 201

conditions on,

Guam,

Hal, 46

flamethrowers, 129, 130, 135, 159 Flattop Hill, 177, 178

54-56

11, 56, 124, 133,

194

Guerard, John, 157 Gusukuma, 137

Floating Chrysanthemums (kikusui), 85,

87-92, 96, 108,

115-19, 143, 158, 159, 160, 167,

187-95

83-84

Hadley, 188, 189

Haggard, 144, 145-46

Ford, Leo, 102

Formosa (Taiwan), 35,40,63,87,

habus, 62-63, Hackleback, 93

2, 3, 4, 5, 19,

89, 117

Foster, William, 153

Hagushi Anchorage,

5,

92-93,

108, 117, 149, 151, 152,

160

1

Index

214

Hagushi Beaches, 32, 33, 50, 57, 58,61,65,68-69, 72, 121,

hurricane attack

May

143, 157

Half-Moon

of,

125-31

and, 58, 179, 198

as tactical chief, 163

Hokkaido, 11 Holms, John, 135

Hill, 169, 170, 172,

173

Honshu, 11 Hornbeck, Kenneth, 142 Horseshoe Hill, 169, 170 Hugh W. Hadley, 188, 189

Halloran, Michael "Screamin'

Mike," 57-58, 131 Halsey, William "Bull,"

1,

37,

40, 87

Halyburton, William, 175

Hamakaze, 94, 95 Hamilton, Stephen, 177

Iceberg Operation, planning of, 4,

Hancock, 91

Ichiki

Hansen, Dale, 175 Hara, Munetatsu, 98, 99, 100,

le

15,41, 122

Detachment, 42

Shima, 125, 167

India, 12

Indochina,

103

1

Isherwood, 143

hara-kiri (seppuku), 25, 200, 203,

204

Ishikawa Isthmus,

of Ushijima and Cho, 200, 203,

204-5 Harmon, Millard,

1,

Isokaze,

5, 6,

78,

79

95

Item Pocket, 137-38 Ito, Seichi, 92, 93, 95

2

Hartline, Franklin, 136

Iwa, 156

Hauge, Louis, 175

Iwojima,

Hawaii, 39, 50, 61

5,

15,

194

3,4,9, 10,21, 35, 62, 71, 74, 134, 153, 169 flag- raising at, 10, 186

battle of,

Pearl Harbor, 11, 12, 50, 51,

67 Hazelwood, 144

Heavenly Operation (Ten-Go), 18-21,41,42,48, 87, 108

Japan, Japanese, 23-27

Ainu people

in,

24

Hirohito, Emperor, 11, 18, 29,

defeats not reported by, 42

33, 42, 147, 149, 188, 199,

2.07,210 Hiroshima, atomic bombing

Geneva Convention ignored by, 144

of,

10,207-9,210

history of,

23-24

Hitler, Adolf, 57, 167

imperial family

Hobbs

isolation of, 23,

Victory,

25

Catholic missionaries and, 23-

Hinsdale, 76

91

Hodge, John, 53-54, 55-56, 58, 74,97,98, 104, 105,

134, 137, 157, 168, 179, 183,

198-99 Bradford Force formed by, 138

24-25

24

in, 26, 28 poor communication among,

Meiji Restoration

57,

113,

in,

""

42 rehgions

in,

23-24

Samurai culture

in, 12, 18, 23,

Index

25-26,27,28,29,

30, 114,

Kerama

in, 26,

Islands, 19, 56, 58, 63,

76, 124

158, 162, 200, 203, 204,

209 Western influences

215

29

Khan, Genghis, 15 Khan, Kublai, 15-16

Jones, Jim, 56

Kidd, 116

Jurka, Stephen, 46

Kikai Jima, 117 kikusui (Floating Chrysanthe-

Kadena

Airfield,

mums),

32-33, 58, 73,

116-17, 123, 143, 167, 168, 184, 188, 189, 192, 194

85, 87-92, 96, 108,

115-19, 143, 158, 159, 160,

90, 107-8, 109, 113, 115,

167,

187-95 115-19

Kikusui

2,

Kikusui

4,

143

Kikusui

7,

192

107, 108, 110, 111-14, 130,

Kikusui

8,

192

131, 133, 137, 138, 139

Kikusui

P, 193,

Kai, Tomai, 190-92 Kakazu Ridge, 97-103,

104, 105,

kamikaze (Divine Wind) (suicide bombers), 31, 32,

7,

16-20, 21, 30,

33,41,42, 56-57,

194

Kikusui 70, 194

Kimmel, Husband, 51 King, Ernest, 1-4, 101-2, 158

64,91, 105, 116, 122, 123,

Kinser, Elbert, 153

124, 131, 143, 144, 149, 151,

Kiyamu

152, 160-61, 184, 187-88,

197,202,210 American attacks on bases

of,

141-43, 188 baka, 115-16, 117, 118, 143,

152, 160, 167, 194, 195

Comfort

bombed

by,

143-44

farewell ceremonies for, 18,

Peninsula, 184 Klingman, Robert, 167-68 Knox, Frank, 1 Kobe, 10, 141 Kokobu Airfield, 188 Kulak, Victor, 59 Kunishi Ridge, 200-1

Kwantung Army, 30 Kyushu,

188 kikusui, 85,

87-92, 96, 108,

72,87, 89,90,93, 115, 117,

115-19, 143, 158, 159, 160, 167,

192, 195, 202,

202

L

210

day (Landing Day; Love Day), 65, 67-76, 78, 97

Yamato, 19, 50, 85, 91-96, 202

kamikaze (Divine Wind) phoon), 16 Airfield, 142

Kasumo, 95 Kelly,

141, 142, 144, 187, 188, 190,

187-95

mandatory duty and, 187 success rates of, 17, 42-43, 91,

Kanoya

4, 5, 11, 12, 18, 19, 23,

24, 35, 41, 42, 47, 63, 64,

Don, 171

Kelly, Gerard, 137

(ty-

Le May,

Curtis, 141, 143

Lester, Fred,

200

16-17, 50, 56, 57, 58, 92, 156, 161

Leyte,

9,

Liscome Bay, 61, 160 Little,

151

Logan

Victory,

91

1

Index

216

121-24

logistics,

Morrison, 152

LowTj, 192

mortars, 123, 129

Luce, 152

Moskala, Edward, 101, 102

Luzon,

Motobu

9

2, 3,

Peninsula, 80-83, 118,

125

Mabie, Howard, 172 MacArthur, Douglas, 2-3, 9, 89, 133, 161-62, 210 McCarthy, James, 135 MacDonnell, Theodore, 135

McDonough, John,

12,

137

Machinate Airfield, 1 5 Machinate Inlet, 128 McMillan, George, 55, 75n McTureous, Robert, 200 Magellan, Ferdinand, 24 Mahoney, James, 137 Makin, 60, 160 Manchuria, 30 L. Abele,

Manila,

3,

mud, 166-67 Mulcahy, Erancis, 68 Mullaney, Baron, 188-89

Murphy, C. L., 34 Murphy, George, 59, 171 Musashi, 92

Nagano, Osami, 210 Nagasaki, atomic bombing

Nagomo,

Chuichi, 12

32, 34, 39, 40, 97,

110, 125, 126, 127, 148, 149,

10

151, 153, 155, 173, 176, 178, 179, 183, 184, 185, 199

Nakagusuku Bay (Buckner

99, 101-2, 103, 178, 179,

5,

Bay),

73, 78, 178, 183

Nakamuta, Tetsuo, 205n Naoyuki, Kuzume, 20

180 of,

of, 10,

207-9,210

117-18

Marianas Turkey Shoot, 16, 93 May, Edwin "Eddy," 58, 97-98,

death

Suribachi, 10, 186

Yaetake, 80, 81, 83

Nagoya, 10 Naha, 6, 7,

Malaya, 11

Manert

Mount Mount

198

May, Martin, 126

napalm, 129, 159, 160

Meagher, John, 198

Napoleon

Meiji Restoration, 26, 28

Mik^jva, Gunichi, 51

5,61 Naval Operations, U.S., 1 Navy Medical Corps, 175 New Guinea, 12, 20, 133

Minatoga Beaches,

New

York, 103, 152, 185

New

York Herald-Tribune, 158

Mezado Midway,

Ridge, 201 Battle of, 42

32, 60, 72, 76,

127, 149, 156-58, 162 Missouri, 116

Mitchell, Willard "Captain

Hoss," 99-100, 101, 102, 136

I,

Emperor of France,

Nimitz, Chester,

1, 2,

3-4,

37, 50, 51, 70, 88, 142,

162,210 Nippon, see Japan, Japanese

Mitscher, Marc, 39, 116, 121,

Nishibaru, 130, 136

191-92 Morison, Samuel Eliot, 194

Nishibayashi, Kosuke, 137

123, 189, 190,

Nist, Cecil, 74

13,

161-

Index

Perry, Matthew, 23, 26, 126, 186

Nolan, Daniel, 180

Normandy,

invasion

217

of,

49

Philippines,

24, 50,

5, 11, 18, 19,

123, 133, 161, 162

16-17, 18

O'Brien, Lawrence, 130

kamikaze

in,

O'Callahan, Joseph, 46

Leyte,

16-17, 50, 56, 57, 58,

oil,

92, 156, 161

123, 124

Oka (Cherry Blossom;

baka)

bombs, 115-16, 117, 118, 143, 152, 160, 167, 194, 195

4-5

Japan's annexation

mud

in,

Luzon, 2, 3, 9 Phihppine Sea, Batde Pittsburgh, 46

of,

16

Poor Detachment {Bimbo Butai), 33, 72-73 Putnam, W. H., 118 Pyle, Ernie, 64, 69-70, 125-26

Okinawa, 4-7, 27 China and, 4-5 history of,

9,

of, 5

166-67

rain in, 165-67, 185, 188, 189

Quincy, 51

religions in, 5, 188

roads

in,

Radio Tokyo, 64, 181 165-67, 185, 188, 189

6-7, 122

Okinawa Group,

rain,

5

Old Breed, The (McMillan), ISn

refueling, 123

Olympic, Operation, 12

Reusser, Kenneth, 167-68

O'Neill,

Owen,

Rocky Crags, 135-36

179, 180

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 4

Onishi, Takejiro, 16, 17

Operation Coronet, 12 Operation

Iceberg,

planning

deatii of, of, 4,

80-81, 82

Royster, Jack, 101, 102

15,41, 122 Operation Olympic, 12

Rupertus, WiUiam, 155

Ormoc, 156 Oroku Peninsula,

Ryan, Bernard, 138

Russia, 30, 208

32, 110, 197,

199-200

Ryan, V. R., 44

Ryukyu

Osaka, 10

Islands,

4-5, 27,

34, 35,

63,91

Ota, Minoru, 32, 200

Ouki, 104, 105

Saigo, Takamori, 28

Ouki Hill, 135 Ozawa, Jisaburu, 93

Sakura-kai (Cherry Society), 29

Saipan,

2,

60, 61, 133, 197,

Salvaggio, Jack, Pacific

Ocean Area (POA),

1

Palaus, 16

Parker, E. B., 43,

44-45

Patton, George, 161 Pearl Harbor, 11, 12, 50, 51, 67 Peleliu, 7, 21, 50, 59, 62, ISn,

112, 129, 134, 155

1

210

89

Samurai, 12, 18, 23, IS -26, 27,

28,29, 30, 114, 158, 162, 200, 203, 204, 209 Bushido, code of, 25, 27, 35,

114 Sangamon, 152 Santa Fe, 45, 46

1

1

Index

218

Savo Island, Battle of (Battle of

43,47,49, 50-51,63,68,

the Four Sitting Ducks), 51,

87, 89, 90,93, 115, 121, 126,

52

158, 159, 160, 161, 163, 190,

137-38

Schoeff, Ernest,

193

Schwab, Albert, 175 Seaman, J. B., 193

Stalin,

Stare,

seppuku (hara-kiri), 25, 200, 203,

204 of Ushijima and Cho, 200, 203,

204-5

Joseph, 208, 209 Edward, 179, 180

Sterner, Cyril, 178 Stormes, 192

Strawberry Hill,

1

8

Sturgeon, 34

Shapley, Alan, 59

Sugahara, Michio, 88, 115, 116,

Shea, 152

117, 142, 143, 192, 193

Sugar Loaf

Sheetz, Joseph, 128

Shelburne, Charles, 185

Hill,

169-73, 174,

177, 180, 181

Shepherd, Lemuel, 59, 74, 157,

suicide bombers, see kamikaze

Sumatra,

172 Shibasaki, Keiji, 60

3

Superfortresses (B-29 bombers),

Shikoku, 11

3, 10, 35,

141, 142, 143, 144

Shinto, 24, 188

supplies, 121-24, 156

Shirigaku, 192

Suribachi,

shoguns, 23, 25, 26

Sutten, Stanley, 180

Shuri, 6,

7, 32,

97, 125, 126, 127,

133, 148, 153, 155, 157, 173,

Mount,

10,

186

Suzuki, Kantaro, 199 Swallow, 143

174, 175, 176, 178, 183, 185,

Taiwan (Formosa),

198 Shuri Castle,

7, 32, 69,

105, 112,

147, 168, 173, 174, 176, 183,

2, 3, 4, 5, 19,

35,40, 63,87, 89, 117 Takeda, Fujio, 131 Taluga, 124

185, 186

Shuri Ridge, 185

Tanabaru, 130, 136 Tarawa, 60, 134, 157

Singapore,

Task Force

Shuri Heights, 169, 173

1

Skyline Ridge, 129-30, 135

slow assault

tactics,

\n, 41,

159-60

Franklin, 16,

190-91 43-47, 189, 191

Task Force Thirty-eight (TF In, 37-40

Smith, Ralph, 61

144-45

Ten-Go (Heavenly Operation), 18-21,41,42,48,87, 108

Islands, 12

Tennessee, 118

Soviet Union, 30, 208 1,

38),

Taylor, Joe, 44, 46

Solch, Joseph, 100, 101

Spruance, Raymond,

58),

121, 123, 188, 189,

Rowland M. "Howhn' Mad," 61, 159

Smith,

Solomon

(TF

42-43, 47-48, 49,

68, 71-72, 91, 115, 116, 117,

Smith, Aubrey, 177

Soballe, Victor,

Fifty-eight

3,

41,

42-

Thailand, 30

Index

Thought PoHce,

27

11,

Tojo, Hideld, 42

Tokyo,

3, 10, 15,

141

Tokyo Plain, 12 Tombstone Ridge,

104, 105, 136

Tooker, Adin, 144 Toyama Maru, 34 Toyoda, Soemu, 16, 85, 88, 89, 91,92 Truman, Harry S., 208, 209 Turner, Richmond Kelly, 51-53, 56, 67, 70, 78, 88, 90, 94,

219

and material vs. spiritual power, 35, 152, 181, 204 Minatoga Beaches and, 32, 72, 76, 127, 149, 156-58, 162 Naha-Shuri-Yonabani Line and, 32, 97, 104, 125, 127, 129, 137-39, 176, 178,

atShuri Castle, 69, 112, 147, 183, 185

204-5 made to,

suicide of, 200, 203,

surrender appeal

200

123, 124, 126, 158-59, 160,

U.S. Strategic

163, 168, 197

183-

184, 185

Bombing

Survey,

208

Udo, Kensuke, 180 Udo, Takehiko, 32,

77, 78, 80,

Vandegrift, Alexander, 52

Van

82

Ugaki, Matome, 17-18, 19, 33,

Schuyler, Philip, 142

Vincennes, 51

41,

42-43, 48, 63, 85, 87, 88-90,91, 115, 116, 118,

Vogt,John, 193-94

119, 142, 143, 190, 192, 193,

Wada, Kosuke, 148 Wake, 11

194

Uhlmann, 144

Wallace, Clarence, 201

Wana Draw,

''UmiYukaba,'' 93, 20^

Urasoe-Mura Escarpment,

108,

Wana

138 Ushijima, Mitsuru, 21, 28, 32, 33,

Wart

Ridge, 168, 173, 174 Hill,

177

35, 40, 57, 58, 61, 62, 64,

Washington

92-93, 96, 103, 107, 108, 112, 113-14, 134, 147148, 150, 153-54, 167, 177, 181, 210 American victory and, 203, 204

Wasp, 43, 47

69,

character

of, 28, 30,

31

168, 173, 174-76,

185

Star, 158

Watson, Thomas, 60, 72 Westmoreland, William, 162

World War

I,

180

Wray, George, 118 Xavier, Francis, 23

Conical Hill and, 176, 178-79, 183

Yaeju-Yuza Peaks, 184, 198, 201

exaggerated battle reports 72, 76

stand

Yaetake, Mount, 80, 81, 83 Yahagi, 92, 94, 95

204 197-202

farewell dinner of, last

of,

of,

Yahara, Hiromichi, 30-31, 32, 69, 107, 108, 109, 148, 150,

Index

220

Yahara, Hiromichi

{cont.)

152, 153-54, 158, 167,

203-4 Yamamoto,

58,

72-

73, 76, 78,90, 107-8, 113,

Isoroku, 37, 42, 90

Yamato, 19, 50, 85, 91-96, 202

Yamato

Yonabaru Airfield, 32 Yontan Airfield, 32-33,

115, 116-17, 123, 143, 167, 184, 188, 189, 192, 194

clan, 24, 92

Yoshida, Masaru, 110

Yokoi, Toshiyuki, 89-90, 91

Yoshida, Mitsuru, 95

Yonabaru, 97, 125, 126, 127, 148, 27

155, 156, 173, 176, 178, 183,

zaibatsu,

184, 185

Zampa Cape, 79

I

front flap)

he author, who himself fought as a Marine

many

through

from both

Pacific battles, retells this epic story of

war

of

the

with

sides,

Japanese generals, who

portraits

close

strikingly

moments com-

the battle's last

in

mitted harakiri. Robert Leckie especially focuses on the

American cers,

who

and

soldiers themselves

their

commanding

offi-

brilliantly illuminated portraits of individuals

drawing

enemy

fought a merciless

military history at

its

in

the tradition of American

most splendid and most

Robert

Leckie

more than of

self-sacrificing.

is

the author of

thirty books,

them on

military

most

history,

which include Helmet for

L

My

I

Pillow,

^

U.S.

Marine Corps early

years First

in

World War

the

II.

He

joined the

war and served nearly three

the Pacific as a machine gunner and scout of the

Marine

lives in

in

a personal narrative of

Division,

Andover,

New

and was wounded and decorated. He Jersey.

Jacket design by Neil Stuart Jacket photograph courtesy of UPl/Bettmann

Author photograph by Adrien Salvos

#5% A

USA New York,

division of Penguin

375 Hudson Street, Printed in U.S.A.

N.Y. 10014

A Medal

of

Honor

from Robert Leckie's

Okinawa

''Fierce fighting...

raged atop Kakaiu Ridge.... Here the Japanese popped

out of their barricaded caves....

a pair of ing his

enemy machine guns.

BAR. When

close

An

Pf c.

entire American platoon

was

pinned

and

down by

Edward Moslcaia crawled toward them,

enough but

in

clutch-

unobserved, he hurled grenades at the

still

unsuspecting Japanese, rising to rush them, spraying bullets. Both guns were

knocked out.... ''The GIs

began crawling down toward the gorge, many of them carrying wound-

ed buddies with them. Ed Moskala

wounded man unable

that a

to

the officer

now

defile.... Ed

in

but

when he

learned

atop the ridge, he went back up to

fire.

To leap erect

was

were pinned down

who had

in

the gorge,

to die. Second Lieutenant Leo Ford,

charge, decided that the best

Moskala,

man down,

v

way

out

was

to creep

down

bravery of the

in

destroying the

the

volunteered again to act as rear guard, covered

withdrawal. Twice he rescued wounded buddies, but on his second

paid for his gallantry with his I

still

the remnants of [the] entire battalion

immobilized by enemy

their

the last

move was

bring him safely down....

"Now

was

life.

trip

he

For these acts of infinite compassion, and his

enemy guns, Moskala

received the posthumous

award

Medal of Honor."

I

ISBN 0-670-84716-X

9

780670"847167'