Posted on 04/01/2018 8:30:33 PM PDT by BBell
As we celebrate Easter Sunday and the Jewish Passover, we should keep in our prayers and remembrances the many Americans who fought and sacrificed during that same time 73 years ago in the Battle of Okinawa.
The event was Operation Iceberg. It was the bloodiest battle and the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific Theater of World War II.
On Easter Sunday, April 1, 1945, the Navy’s Fifth Fleet under Admiral Raymond Spruance attacked the Japanese-held island. They were joined by a British, Canadian, New Zealand, and Australian naval task force and more than 180,000 Army soldiers and Marines. This was the final push toward invading mainland Japan and putting an end to the war.
Military planners considered the capture of Okinawa and its airfields to be a crucial and necessary precondition for the invasion of the Japanese mainland.
Were the U.S. to invade Japan, estimates of potential American casualties were upward of 1.7 to 4 million, with between 400,000 and 800,000 deaths. The Battle of Okinawa only served to raise those estimates, as had the recent brutal battle for Iwo Jima, where U.S. casualties numbered 26,000 over five weeks of fighting. Only a few hundred Japanese had been captured out of the 21,000 troops who fought to the death.
Those expected casualties were the major reason for President Harry Truman’s decision to use the atomic bomb.
The Japanese military knew that Okinawa was their last stand in the Pacific. As a result, they fixed 77,000 troops on the island under the command of Lt. Gen. Mitsuru Ushijima, along with a 20,000-strong Okinawan militia. The Japanese forces even included 1,800 middle school boys conscripted into the “Blood and Iron Corps.”
The American invasion started with a massive seven-day naval bombardment of the landing beaches, where heavy resistance from the Japanese forces was expected. That prelanding bombardment included tens of thousands of artillery shells, rockets, mortar shells, and napalm attacks.
The Japanese allowed American troops to land unopposed on Easter Sunday and to move inland with nominal resistance. Japanese troops had been ordered not to fire on the American landing because Ushijima wanted to lure the American forces into a trap he had laid for them in what became known as the Naha-Shuri-Yonabaru Defense Line in southern Okinawa, a rugged terrain riddled with fortified pillboxes, gun emplacements, tunnels, and caves.
The Japanese also sent the battleship Yamato on a one-way suicide mission to Okinawa, but it was spotted by Allied submarines and sunk (along with a cruiser and four enemy destroyers) by American pilots, downing nearly the entire crew of over 2,300.
The far more dangerous attacks on the Allied fleet were by dense waves of suicide Kamikazes diving their planes into ships. The Fifth Fleet lost 36 ships in the Battle of Okinawa and suffered damage to another 368 ships. Almost 5,000 U.S. sailors and pilots were killed and almost as many were wounded, with over 700 Allied planes being shot down. It was the biggest naval loss of the war.
On Okinawa, Americans fought ferocious battles on almost every defended hilltop. Torrential rains turned the island into a sea of mud that bogged down tanks, trucks, and other heavy equipment.
The most infamous hilltop was Hacksaw Ridge, a 400-foot cliff on the Maeda Escarpment that was depicted in a 2016 movie about Cpl. Desmond T. Doss. Doss was a Seventh-Day Adventist and conscientious objector who became a combat medic. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for rescuing 75 wounded soldiers at Hacksaw Ridge.
In almost every fight on Okinawa, American troops fought for every foot of ground in hand-to-hand combat against fanatical Japanese troops who often took their own lives rather than surrendering. That eventually included Ushijima and his chief of staff who committed seppuku on June 22. It was Ushijima who had ordered his troops to “fight to the death.”
With his suicide, the Battle of Okinawa was effectively over.
The Battle of Okinawa was the deadliest fight of the Pacific island campaign. The Japanese knew they could not win. Their purpose was simply to make the battle as costly as possible to the Americans and to hold them off as long as possible, allowing Japan to prepare for the defense of their home islands. Thus, Japanese commanders considered all their forces and the residents of Okinawa totally expendable.
Americans incurred almost 50,000 casualties on Okinawa, including over 12,000 dead. Those killed included the American commander, Lt. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner, who was killed by enemy artillery fire just four days before the battle ended, making him the highest-ranking U.S. officer killed during the entire war.
Ernie Pyle, the famous war correspondent, was also killed when he was shot by a sniper on a small island northwest of Okinawa. In addition to Doss, six other Americans who fought in the battle received the Medal of Honor, our nation’s highest award for bravery under fire.
But the Japanese losses were much greater. Only 7,400 Japanese soldiers survived—90 percent of Japanese troops on the island fought to the death. Almost 150,000 Okinawan civilians were killed, amounting to one-third of the prewar population. Many were used as human shields by Japanese troops. Others threw themselves and their families off cliffs on the southern part of Okinawa in mass suicides after the Japanese convinced them that the Americans would kill or rape anyone they captured.
Ironically enough, it was Japanese troops who engaged in mass rapes of Okinawan women during the battle.
The bloody, ferocious battle for Okinawa lasted 82 days and left the island a “vast field of mud, lead, decay, and maggots” according to Ted Tsukiyama’s “Battle of Okinawa.” Almost every building on the island was destroyed.
Truman’s decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August ended the war and all Japanese resistance, thereby preventing the enormous American casualties that would have resulted from a land invasion of Japan.
On Easter Sunday, American Christians will celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which marks the triumph of good over evil, sin, and death. At the same time during Passover, Jewish Americans will celebrate their liberation from slavery in ancient Egypt. Those celebrations are profound and deeply significant.
But we should also pause to remember the Americans and their allies who, 73 years ago, fought and died during Easter and Passover to preserve our freedom and end a brutal war started by a ruthless military dictatorship intent on enslaving the people it conquered.
We and the world owe them more than we can ever repay.
There is a Marine in the church I go to that went aboard Okinawa on Easter Sunday. He was wounded 4 or 5 days in.
Great Guy and family.
Thanks!!
I lived there too... three years, beautiful place. You may think you have seen beautiful blue ocean before... but nothing like Okinawa.
White Cross on Okinawa--Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys (1945)
Okinawa was my father’s introduction to the Japanese.
Said introduction was performed by a kamikaze pilot who flew a few feet over his head while he was manning an antiaircraft gun emplacement at the base of the #3 turret on the Maryland.
The aircraft’s impact and 500 lb bomb it carried killed 12 of his shipmates.
A few feet lower and it would have hit the side of the turret right over his head, and I really would be null and void...
He was also at Guadalcanal. When I was in high school, I read and enjoyed his book Challenge for the Pacific; Guadalcanal, the turning point of the war (Garden City, NY: Doubleday. 1965).
Interesting - there were still stories about some of the savagery of our own troops to the locals right after the war going around twenty years later when I was there - one old sergeant told of a few GI’s taking “target practice” by trying to shoot the babies off of their backs where the local women carried them - sickening if true, but again that far along, how much was rumor, myth, distortion is hard to know - hopefully all of it....
I transcribed a student’s grandfather’s war diary a few years ago. He was on USS Bennington which was at Okinawa. It was April 1, 1944, both Easter and April Fools Day, just like today. The code name was “Love Day”. His diary reads just like the history books. They expected heavy resistance on the beaches and were surprised when there was none. Expected to have things under control quickly but then things got seriously bad. It is all disappearing from living memory now.
May I recommend “Stepping Stones Across The Pacific: A Collection Of Short Stories From The Pacific War” by Tibor Torok?
His son and I used to play together while his dad and my dad worked together at MCAS Beaufort.
I guess it was too painful for him to write about until 1999, my dad, who talked very little about those days, allowed it was pretty accurate...
I lived in Okinawa for some years as a kid. The detritus of war was just under your feet, pretty much everywhere.
My father was in the first landing wave on Okinawa, in an amphib tank.
He lasted 45 days of combat before being injured seriously in the hand, to require evac. to Honolulu.
They saved all of his fingers. He recovered to first light duty, then awaiting return to full duty, but the war ended.
Had the war not ended, he was among troops expecting to land in Japan.
USMC 2 yrs, active duty, discharged before 20th birthday.
The American Legion Christmas party last December had 5 people who had served during WW2. A few more than that who served in Korea. Us Viet Nam era types had a bunch. Not many for Iraq and Afghanistan. The new vets are busy with families and things are to fresh in there minds I think. I hope they get on board someday. All gave some, Some gave all.
“I believe the severity of the fighting, convinced the leaders that this was what an invasion of Japan was going to be like, and tipped the scales in favor of using the Atom Bomb.”
Then the US lives lost were not in vain. The airstrip that resulted helped end the war, too.
I was on Okinawa when that story came out and they found the bodies. Pretty neat.
The little $#!% filled snowflake.
How and the HELL can anyone consider David Hogg a hero of the Florida High School shooting and he wasn’t even there that day and yet three real heroes JROTC Cadets Alaina Petty, 14, Martin Duque, 13, Peter Wang, 15 (who was in uniform at the time) all died while working to save fellow students seem to have no voice?
Yes, the severity of our casualties “convinced the leaders that this was what an invasion of Japan was going to be like..”
Forget the Kai Bird version of events, and that of other leftist fake historians.
People forget that the Japanese Imperial Army in China, according to at least one item I read, numbered up to 2,000,000 men and held a lot of Chinese mainland territory.
We could not have fought them on the ground to defeat without paying a truly horrible price (the same for the British/Indian/Burmese and Kuomintang Chinese Nationalist forces. The Communists under Mao were not going to waste their men fighting the Japanese, just like Ho Chi Minh DID NOT wage total warfare against the Japanese in Indochina (he held his main forces back so that they could take over when the Japanese surrendered and before the French could come back).
We did not have another ready nuke to take out any Mainland China army as an example of what awaited the rest of them (the next A bomb being worked on was at least 3 months away, if not 6 or more and there were no more plans for additional ones).
By nuking Japan and inflicting terrible but well known casualties on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we forced the Japanese Imperial leadership to realize that would could systematically destroy their homeland without an invasion.
That is what brought about their “unconditional surrender”.
My father-in-law, a veteran Army soldier (75th JASCO) of 4 Pacific Island landings including Tinian, Saipan and Iwo Jima told me that he knew he wasn’t going to come back.
My father was on standby orders with the Chemical Warfare Service to go to Australia to help oversee our Chemical weapons already prepositioned there in case the Japanese resorted to them in their final homeland stand.
Another friend of mine, a medic, was onboard a ship sailing for Japan when the big ones were dropped. He said once they got the word what happened, the ship turned around to another destination.
We are here today because our fathers/relatives/in-laws and complete American soldier/sailor and Air Force men and women did not have to go “in” to Japan.
Never let the Left tell you that using the atomic bomb was immoral. It was the most “moral” thing Pres. Truman could do to save hundreds of thousands, if not millions of American, Allied forces, and Japanese soldiers/civilians lives.
No regrets. Only wish he had more A bombs to take out the Mainland Japanese armies.
#20. Our “millenials” today, for the most part, could never have qualified for the military in WW2. What a sad state of affairs that our liberal mental faggots can never measure up to their grandfathers, uncles, and neighbors.
ping
My dad was a snot-nosed 17-year old kid on this day back then....a PFC BAR Rifleman, 1st Marine Div, G27
He was in the first wave to hit the beach....good thing too because the Japanese weren’t zeroed in with their firepower. The 2nd and 3rd waves were the ones that literally caught holy hell coming ashore. He really never talked much about it until the last few years of his life. The things he told us were almost unbelievable about how bad the fighting was. A year or so before he passed, the USMC sent a contingent to his home and presented him with a commendation for his WWII service. He passed a couple of years ago.
FWIW, he had me shooting a little single-shot .22 by the age of six. He taught me how to hunt, fish, live off the land...and how to fight. He was more than just my dad, he was my best friend, my hero and I miss him terribly so.
Back then, he was the same age as this little twerp, Hogg, but 100 times more a man...lugging around a BAR killing America’s enemy so little snowflake twerps like Hogg are free to go around and bitch & moan about guns.
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