Battle of Okinawa: Difference between revisions

Battle of Okinawa
Part of World War II, the Pacific War
A Marine of the 1st Marine Division draws a bead on a Japanese sniper with his Thompson as his companion ducks for cover
Date April 1, 1945 - June 21, 1945 Location Okinawa, Japan Result Allied victory
Belligerents
United States U.K. Canada New Zealand Australia	Empire of Japan
Commanders and leaders
Simon B. Buckner, Jr. † Joseph W. Stilwell	Mitsuru Ushijima†
Strength
548,000 regulars  ? ships  ? aircraft	100,000 regulars & militia  ? ships  ? aircraft
Casualties and losses
12,513 dead or missing 38,916 wounded 33,096 non-combat wounded 79 ships sunk & scrapped 763 aircraft destroyed	66,000 dead or missing 17,000 wounded 7,455 captured 16 ships sunk & scrapped 7,830 aircraft destroyed

The Battle of Okinawa, fought on the Japanese island of Okinawa was the largest amphibious assault during the Pacific campaigns of World War II. It lasted from late March through June 1945.

The battle has been referred to as the "Typhoon of Steel" in English, and tetsu no ame ("rain of steel") or tetsu no bōfū ("violent wind of steel") in Japanese. The nicknames refer to the ferocity of the fighting, the intensity of gunfire involved, and sheer numbers of Allied ships and armoured vehicles that assaulted the island. Okinawa had a large Japanese civilian population, of whom at least 150,000 were killed during the battle.

Neither side expected Okinawa to be the last major battle of the war, which it was. The Allies were planning Operation Downfall, the invasion of Kyushu and Honshū, which never happened due to the Japanese surrender, after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 and the Soviet Union’s declaration of war on Japan.

The forces

Land

The U.S. land campaign was controlled by the Tenth Army, commanded by Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr. The army had two corps under its command, III Amphibious Corps, consisting of 1st and 6th Marine Divisions, with 2nd Marine Division as an afloat reserve, and XXIV Corps, consisting of the 7th, 27th, 77th and 96th Infantry Divisions.

The Japanese land campaign (mainly defensive) was conducted by the 100,000 strong 32nd Army. It initially consisted of the 9th, 24th, and 62nd Divisions, and the 44th Independent Brigade. The 9th Division was moved to Formosa prior to the invasion, resulting in shuffling of Japanese Defensive plans. Primary resistance was to be led in the south by General Mitsuru Ushijima, his second in command Gen. Isamu Cho and chief of staff Major Hiromichi Yahara. Yahara advocated a defensive strategy, whilst Cho advocated an offensive one. In the north, General Takehido Udo was in command.

A Corsair fighter fires rocket projectiles on a run against a Japanese stronghold on Okinawa

Realizing that he could never defend the entire island, Ushijima centered his defense around the historical capital, Shuri Castle, a medieval fortress of the ancient Ryukyuan kings, and the steep ridges on which it was built. This provided the Japanese with a heavy defense line that could be flanked only from the sea. For the first time in the Pacific War, the Japanese not only had ample time to dig elaborate fortifications, much as they had on Iwo Jima, they also had large numbers of tanks and artillery pieces. This relative abundance of materiel, matched with thousands of troops and the knowledge of three years fighting the U.S., ensured that the Okinawa defenses would be the hardest that the U.S. faced during the war. Ushijima knew the Allies could not be stopped, but he wanted to make them pay for every yard of advance.

Sea

U.S. Navy

The US Navy contributed the bulk of the ships and airplanes involved in the operation. Most of the air-to-air fighters and the small dive-bombers and strike aircraft were US Navy carrier based airplanes. Several of the US Navy's ships fell victim to the new Japanese "Kamikaze" tactic. The total strength of the Allied fleet at Okinawa was 1300 ships, where the Navy had the most casualties then anywhere else in the war.

British Commonwealth

Although the land battle was an entirely U.S. operation, the British Pacific Fleet (BPF; known to the U.S. Navy as Task Force 57) provided about 20% of Allied naval air power. The fleet was a combined British Commonwealth carrier group with British, Canadian, New Zealand and Australian ships and personnel. Their mission was to neutralize Japanese airfields at Saishima Gunto.

Naval battle

BPF was assigned the task of neutralising the Japanese airfields in the Sakishima Islands, which it did from 26 March until 10 April. On 10 April, its attention was shifted to airfields on northern Formosa. The force withdrew to San Pedro Bay on 23 April. Although by then a commonplace event for the U.S. Navy, this was the longest time that a Royal Naval fleet of that size had been maintained at sea.

From 4 May 1945, BPF returned to action, subduing the airfields as before, this time with naval bombardment as well as aircraft. A number of kamikaze attacks caused significant damage but only a brief interruption to the force's work. They finally withdrew to Guam and Manus Island on 25 May.

Perhaps the most dramatic action of this campaign occurred far from Okinawa itself: the attempted kamikaze attack by a strike force of Japanese surface vessels led by the battleship Yamato. The Yamato and other vessels in Operation Ten-Go were intercepted shortly after leaving Japanese home waters. Under attack from more than 300 carrier aircraft, the world's largest battleship sank on 7 April 1945, long before she could reach Okinawa, where the ship would have grounded itself and used its big guns to support Japanese forces.

Land battle

The land battle took place over about 82 days from April 1, 1945.

The north

The U.S. swept across the thin part of the south-central part of the island, with relative ease by World War II standards, soon taking the lightly-held north, though there was fierce fighting at Mount Yae-dake, and took the Kadena and the Yomitan airbases.

Few U.S. soldiers encountered the feared Habu snake, and soon discarded the cumbersome leggings designed to protect them from snakebite.

The entire north fell on April 20.

The south

Cho's offensive strategy led to a disastrous land and sea attack that caused the near massacre of the attacking Japanese troops by the superior firepower of the U.S. soldiers. From then on, Ushijima adopted the more successful tactics advocated by Maj. Yahara.

Fighting in the south was hardest: the Japanese soldiers hid in caves armed with hidden machine guns and explosives; U.S. forces often lost many men before clearing the Japanese out from each cave or other hiding place. The U.S. advance was inexorable but resulted in massive casualties sustained by both sides.

On May 29, Brig. Gen. Pedro del Valle, commanding the 1st Marine Division, ordered Company A, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines to capture Shuri Castle. Seizure of the castle represented both strategic and psychological blows for the Japanese and was a milestone in the campaign.

The island fell on about June 21, though some Japanese continued fighting, including the future governor of Okinawa prefecture, Masahide Ota.

Ushijima and Cho committed suicide in their command headquarters on Hill 89 in the closing hours of the battle. Major Yahara was the most senior officer to have survived the battle on the island, and later authored a book entitled The Battle for Okinawa.

Aftermath

At some battles, such as Iwo Jima, there had been no civilians involved, but Okinawa had a large indigenous civilian population. Japanese civilian losses in the battle, shown after the war, were at least 122,000. U.S. losses were over 72,000 casualties, of whom 12,513 were killed or missing, over twice the number killed at Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal combined. Several thousand soldiers who died indirectly (from wounds and other causes), at a later date, are not included. About a third of the civilian population of the island were killed in the spring of 1945. There were about 66,000 Japanese combatants killed and 7,000 captured. Some of the soldiers committed seppuku or simply blew themselves up with grenades. Some of the civilians, having been convinced by Japanese propaganda that the U.S. soldiers were barbarians who committed horrible atrocities, killed their families and themselves to avoid capture. Other Okinawans were murdered by Japanese to avoid their capture or to steal their food and supplies. Ironically, this was also the first (and only) battle in the war in which the Japanese surrendered by thousands.

At the very end of the campaign, Buckner was killed by a Japanese ricocheting artillery shell while inspecting his troops at the front line, just 4 days before the end of the battle. He was the highest-ranking U.S. officer to die during the war. His death, so near the end of the battle and the war, was ironic, for it was Buckner's decision to attack the Japanese defenses head-on, which proved to be extremely costly in U.S. lives although the attack was ultimately successful. It was also his failure to detect the Japanese retreat to their second line of defense that led to the greatest slaughter on Okinawa in the latter stages of the battle, including the deaths of uncounted thousands of civilians.

U.S. forces suffered their highest ever casualty rate for combat stress reaction during the entire battle, at 48% above other casualties compared to 30% in the Korean War.

The most famous U.S. casualty was the war correspondent Ernie Pyle, who was killed by Japanese sniper fire on Ie Shima, just off the northwest coast of Okinawa.

Del Valle was awarded a Distinguished Service Medal for his leadership in the fight to take Okinawa and the subsequent occupation and reorganization of Okinawa.

Some military historians believe that Okinawa led directly to U.S. use of the atomic bomb, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A prominent holder of this view is Victor Davis Hanson, who states it explicitly in his book Ripples of Battle:

...because the Japanese on Okinawa, including native Okinawans, were so fierce in their defense (even when cut off, and without supplies), and because casualties were so appalling, many American strategists looked for an alternative means to subdue mainland Japan, other than a direct invasion. This means presented itself, with the advent of atomic bombs, which worked admirably in convincing the Japanese to sue for peace, without American casualties. Ironically, the American conventional fire-bombing of major Japanese cities (which had been going on for months before Okinawa) was far more effective at killing civilians than the atomic bombs and, had the American simply continued, or expanded this, the Japanese would likely have surrendered anyway. Nevertheless, the bombs were a powerful symbolic display of American power, and the Japanese capitulated, obviating the need for an invasion of the home islands.

In 1945, Winston Churchill called the battle "among the most intense and famous in military history."

After the battle, the U.S. occupied Okinawa, and set up the Government of the Ryukyu Islands. Kadena remains the largest U.S. air base in Asia.

Quotes

• "7,613 were killed and missing in action, and the remaining sixty-four-odd thousand were almost equally divided between those wounded seriously enough to be out of action more than a week and non-battle casualties, chiefly victims of battle fatigue." (Feifer)
• "Ninety percent of the buildings on the island were completely destroyed, and the lush tropical landscape was turned into a vast field of mud, lead, decay and maggots." [1]
• "By the end of May monsoon rains which turned contested slopes and roads into a morass exacerbated both the tactical and medical situations. The ground advance began to resemble a World War I battlefield as troops became mired in mud and flooded roads greatly inhibited evacuation of wounded to the rear. Troops lived on a field sodden by rain, part garbage dump and part graveyard. Unburied Japanese bodies decayed, sank in the mud, and became part of a noxious stew. Anyone sliding down the greasy slopes could easily find their pockets full of maggots at the end of the journey." [2]
• "While on Okinawa, the marines and soldiers were going through their crucible of hell brought on by rain, heat, poison snakes, mosquitoes...the stench of human feces and rotting human flesh filled with maggots...." [3]

References

Books

• Astor, Gerald (1996). Operation Iceberg : The Invasion and Conquest of Okinawa in World War II. Dell. ISBN 0-440-22178-1.
• Feifer, George (2001). The Battle of Okinawa: The Blood and the Bomb. The Lyons Press. ISBN 1-58574-215-5.
• Hallas, James H. (2006). Killing Ground on Okinawa: The Battle for Sugar Loaf Hill. Potomac Books. ISBN 1-59797-063-8.
• Lacey, Laura Homan (2005). Stay Off The Skyline: The Sixth Marine Division on Okinawa - An Oral History. Potomac Books. ISBN 1-57488-952-4.
• Morison, Samuel Eliot (2002 (reissue)). Victory in the Pacific, 1945, vol. 14 of History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. Champaign, Illinois, USA: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-07065-8. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
• Rottman, Gordon (2002). Okinawa 1945: The last Battle. Osprey Publishing. ISBN 1-84176-546-5.
• Sledge, E. B. (1990). With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-506714-2. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Yahara (2001). Okinawa P. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-471-18080-7.-Firsthand account of the battle by a surviving Japanese officer.

Web

• Battle of Okinawa, GlobalSecurity.org. Retrieved January 8, 2006.
• US military on the Battle of Okinawa
• New Zealand account with reference to Operation Iceberg
• The battle of Okinawa
• USS Gilbert Islands CVE 107. 1945 {at Okinawa}
• United States Army in World War II The War in the Pacific Okinawa: The Last Battle
• Global Security history of Battle of Okinawa particular combat fatigue figures
• History Online about Battle of Okinawa particular force strengths and casualties on both sides
• Animated History of The Battle for Okinawa
• Soldiers of the 184th Infantry, 7th ID in the Pacific, 1943-1945
• Huber, Thomas M. (May). "Japan's Battle of Okinawa, April-June 1945". Leavenworth Papers. United States Army Command and General Staff College. Retrieved November 20. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate=, |date=, and |year= / |date= mismatch (help); Cite has empty unknown parameters: |coauthors= and |month= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)- Article about the battle from the Japanese perspective.