Okinawa: The Last Battleground

Published in 1945

The newly announced U.S. Tenth Army launched its invasion of the Ryukyu Islands on 26 March 1945, when the 77th Infantry Division invaded the Kerama Retto group southwest of Okinawa Island. The seizure of these small islands preceded the main invasion of Okinawa made on 1 April.

The invasion was the largest amphibious operation of the Pacific war with more than 1,400 ships involved. The U.S. Fifth Fleet was assisted by a British Navy task force. Carrier-based aircraft and fleet units threw a massive bombardment barrage of Japanese positions on Okinawa for nine days preceding the landings.

When the troops landed on the beaches they met with negligible opposition. Early on the first day of the landing two airfields were seized, and on the second day it was announced that the island had been bisected and that the seized airfields were in operation.

With no breathing spell after the Iwo Jima campaign, the Marine Corps moved on to close in on the enemy in his death throes. Just fourteen days after Iwo was taken, the Marines joined with the Army to land on Okinawa.

Compared with Iwo Jima, the first five days of the Okinawa campaign, which began at 0830 hours Easter Sunday, were as peaceful as Easter back home. Before that action ended on 21 June, however, the Marines had been through the most grueling fight in the Pacific second only to Iwo Jima in Marine casualties.

The lack of resistance did not last long. After the seizure of Yontan airfield by the First and Sixth Marine Divisions, and Katana fighter strip by the Army, the U.S. forces found ambush-studded, mountainous terrain tough going, but secured the entire northern section of the island in record time.

Then both Marine divisions joined the Army to attack the strong enemy defenses stretched across the lower half of Okinawa—entrenchments the Americans dubbed the Pacific’s Siegfried Line.

For days the Japanese line was battered until finally the Marines broke through near the city of Naha, only to be halted at “Sugar Loaf Hill.” Eleven times they assaulted that hill before they were able to take and hold the strategic height.

On 23 May the Sixth Marines waded across the Asato River to lead the drive into Naha, and on 30 May they mopped up the last Japanese resistance in the Okinawa capital.

While the ground action dragged on, Japanese suicide planes roared in to attack the U.S. naval support offshore, to sever the supply lines at any cost. Most of the planes were brought down by the guns of the fleet and Marine and Navy fighter planes, but enough got through to carriers and other fleet units to cause tremendous loss in ships and personnel and provide the Navy its toughest battle of any campaign.

In retaliation, Admiral Halsey sent his Hellcat fighters and Helldiver bombers blasting at known kamikaze sites on Miyazaki, Kokobu, Kushira, Kagoshima, and Chiran airfields, all on Kyushu, southernmost of the Japanese home islands.

The raiders sent their bombs, rockets, and bullets into hangars, barracks, and other airfield targets, destroying everything in their path. Other flyers attacked airfield and industrial installations on Minami Daito Island, some 200 miles east of Okinawa. The island had been hit previously by both carrier planes and naval bombardment.

Not until June did the Navy announce the loss of two destroyers, an auxiliary transport and a landing ship off Okinawa, with 469 killed, missing or wounded. The destroyers were the Longshaw, with 179 casualties, and the Drexler, with 209. The Bates, an auxiliary high-speed transport, suffered sixty casualties, and the LSM-135 (medium landing ship) suffered twenty-one.

Ashore, the First Marines led the drive into Shuri to start disintegration of the Japanese line. The Sixth Marines took Naha Airport in an amphibious “end run,” while the Army troops and other Marine units drove down the center of the island, forcing the Japanese down the Yaeju-Dake escarpment where they faced surrender or annihilation.

In the last five days of organized resistance on Okinawa, Marines who had fought the enemy all the way across the South Pacific were amazed to see Japanese approaching U.S. lines waving surrender leaflets.

For the Marines, victory at Okinawa was a fitting close to the war in the Pacific. They had launched the first offensive at Guadalcanal; they were still fighting four years later and 3,000 miles closer to Japan in the last major campaign of the war. Along that long road the Corps had suffered 79,226 casualties; 19,033 crosses marked the graves of Leathernecks who lost their lives.

The fighting on Okinawa came finally to an end on 22 June 1945. It had been a very bitterly fought campaign, in which the U.S. ground forces have suffered 12,500 dead and 35,500 wounded. The U.S. Navy lost thirty-six ships and 368 damaged, and the aircraft losses reached 763.

The Japanese losses were staggering. At least 120,000 military and 42,000 civilians died during this campaign. The equipment losses are no less formidable—over seven thousand planes were reported to be destroyed. Numerous surface vessels were sunk, including the battleship Yamato, described as the most powerful battleship in the world, and for the first time in the war a record number of Japanese prisoners, some 10,755.

Helping Hand

Navy pilot Kenneth D. Smith was only a guest pilot aboard a certain Essex-class carrier but he was earning his way when last seen. On temporary duty, pending his return to his own carrier, the Texan decided to brush up on his flying; he joined a flight assigned to cover advancing U.S. forces on Okinawa and destroyed one Japanese warplane and chased another into the flak of American ships lying just offshore.

The incident occurred at dusk. Smith became separated from the other planes of his division and spotted two single-engined Japanese “Jills” flying south over Okinawa.

 “I had the advantage of surprise,” he related, “and nailed the first ‘Jill’ with my first burst of fire. His engines flamed and he crashed on the beach. When I turned to attack the second plane he had run away. I started after him on a westerly course out towards the open sea but before I could overtake him he was shot down by a ship’s anti-aircraft fire.”

U.S. troops land on a beach on Okinawa April 1, 1945. 7th Infantry Division was one of several divisions that comprised X Army, the force that landed on the beaches that day.

 

U.S. troops load into landing craft as they prepare for the invasion of Okinawa on April 1, 1945.

Aerial photo of the invasion of Okinawa on April 1, 1945.

Aerial photo of the invasion of Okinawa on April 1, 1945.

7th Infantry Division lands on Okinawa during Operation Downfall on April 1, 1945.

U.S. troops land on Okinawa on April 1, 1945.

Soldiers of the US Tenth Army march inland after securing beachheads following the last amphibious assault landings of World War II as vessels from the Allied fleet patrol the waters off of Okinawa, Japan in April 1945.  

The original caption on this photograph reads "Watching Their Troops—As the Marines drive toward the capital city of Naha, leaders watch the action from an observation post on a rocky ledge. They are (left to right): Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., commanding the Tenth Army; Major General Lemuel C. Shepherd, commanding general of the Sixth Marine Division, and his assistant commander, Marine Brigadier General William T. Clement."

Captain Tadashi Kojo, commanding officer of the gun battalion of the 22nd Regiment, which was shipped from Manchuria to Okinawa in June 1944.

Captain Owen Stebbins, commander of Company G, 2nd Battalion, 22nd Regiment, 6th Marine Division, on Guadalcanal before sailing for Okinawa, 1945.

Ernie Pyle, center, chatting with Marines on Okinawa, still wearing their leggings to protect against snakes, on L-Day afternoon.

Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr., with Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell on 7 June 1945. Stilwell was on an inspection mission from Washington. When Buckner was killed eleven days later, Stilwell returned to Okinawa to replace him.

Lieutenant General Mitsuru Ushijima, May 1943, as commandant of the Imperial Military Academy.

Colonel Isamu Cho, August 1938, when he was still involved in the Cherry Blossom Society’s ultranationalist activities.

Colonel Edward W. Snedeker, later lieutenant general, commanded the 7th Marine Regiment before and during the assault on Okinawa.

Commander General Lemuel Shepherd Jr., 6th Marine Division, left, and division operations chief Colonel Victor Krulak in front of Sugar Loaf Hill following its capture.

May 1945 Okinawa. Nicknamed “Sugar Loaf Hill” by the commander of the Second Battalion, 22nd Marine Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Horatio C. Woodhouse, the hill was so small (a 300-yard rectangular-shaped mound that rose barely 50 feet) that it didn’t show up on the standard military map with its 10-meter contour interval. Eleven attempts were made over a 12-day period before Sugar Loaf was taken; entire units were decimated in the fight for the key piece of terrain.