Posted on 11/13/2001 8:14:43 AM PST by Pokey78
From April 1 to mid-June, 1945, we fought die-hard enemies well entrenched in vast caves stocked with telephone switchboards, tanks, artillery, and mortars. The enemy, while adopting European arms and military organization, had completely rejected Western pluralism, freedom, and tolerance as "weak" and "corrupt," and instead fortified its military with the fanatical religion of "Bushido," a crackpot and deviant Buddhist fundamentalism that sought to marry Emperor-worship with a medieval warrior code to produce a purportedly unstoppable new type of high-tech samurai warrior. The fantatics' goal was to rid the Pacific of Occidentals, and let China, Korea, southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands "join" an "Oriental" alliance, orchestrated from Tokyo as an exploitive empire passed off as the "Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere." Sound familiar?
American soldiers were thousands of miles distant from our shores, closer to the enemy mainland than to friendly bases. As an ally, we had only Britain — who did her best, but could not offer much in our hour of crisis. The enemy shanghaied local civilians into their army, filled them full of lies about Americans, and turned them loose against us either to charge as suicide bombers, or often to commit mass suicide themselves. Soldiers hid in civilian houses, hospitals, even tombs of the dead to avoid our bombers — which were never successful in finding the Japanese high command, but hit a lot of civilians trying. Fanatics like General Isamu Cho and Mitsuru Ushijima boasted of no surrender, rejected all efforts at armistice, and vowed to take as many Americans as possible with them. Crude propaganda leaflets and radio broadcasts promised horrific deaths to Americans and portrayed them as cowardly killers who would rape and murder innocent civilians — over 100,000 natives of the island would eventually be casualties. The Japanese leadership itself, in the manner of ancient warlords, believed Americans were decadent and soft. Indeed, without the overwhelming firepower of the United States — purportedly to be neutralized on Okinawa by offensive suicide attacks on ships, and the defense of caves and concrete bunkers — the generals swore that few of the stinking Americans could ever stand up to Japanese soldiers in battle.
Suicide bombers were everywhere. Kamikazes ("The Divine Wind") dove unexpectedly from cloud cover; eventually they would fly almost 2,000 sorties and sink 34 American ships. They hit another 368 craft. The Japanese unleashed previously unknown and quite bizarre new weapons to terrify Americans, such as the human guided rocket (ohka), the crash boat (Shinto), the suicide midget submarines (koryu and kairyu), and the fukuryu or human mines.
The wounded and dead were wired with explosives; holes in the ground opened up to pour forth small squads of charging Japanese suicide machine-gunners at the rear of American troops. Despite days of preliminary bombing, it was soon discovered, to the Marines' dismay, that few defenders on Okinawa were killed in their fortified and hidden bunkers. Meanwhile, Japanese suicide gliders attacked Marine airfields while Kamikazes from Japan dove onto carriers at sea. Americans met every challenge, but victory proved costly — and far more deadly — than planners had anticipated.
Nearly everything, from bullets to toilet paper, had to be flown in. The weather was cold at night, and during the day wet and muddy — the terrain full of poisonous snakes, razor-sharp coral, and dense underbrush. Hundreds of GIs suffered from exposure and tropical disease. Americans at home, gladdened by news of the European armistice in early May, gradually seemed to lose interest in the protracted fighting in Okinawa. They were more worried about rumors of a wider war in which millions of Americans would be asked to storm the Japanese mainland at the end of the year.
When "Operation Iceberg" was completed by June 22, 12,000 Americans were dead — including the ranking American general in charge of the entire operation, Simon Bolivar Buckner. Thirty-five thousand more were wounded, along with 100,000 Japanese killed and another 100,000 civilian casualties.
What can we learn from Okinawa? First, the good news: In less than three months Americans captured the largest group of islands off the Japanese mainland, destroyed an entire Japanese army, and obtained a base of operations that would doom future enemy naval and air resistance — and were ready to move on to the next objective of Japan herself. American GIs and Marines — among those killed on May 19 at Sugar Loaf Hill was my namesake Victor Hanson of the 6th Marine Division — fought brilliantly, and proved as savage and brave as their desperate Japanese counterparts. And we should remember that the Japanese on Okinawa were far fiercer adversaries than the Taliban. Once the conquered Okinawans themselves learned the true nature of American troops, they became friendly and many welcomed liberation from the Japanese — there was almost no terror in the aftermath of the American victory. Okinawa today enjoys democratic government, as a part of the Japanese nation.
All that being said, the strategy at Okinawa must stand also as an object lesson of what not to do in war. The bombing, both from land-based squadrons and carrier planes, was far too brief, and not effective in penetrating thick fortifications. The ground commanders were far too eager to precipitate operations, and used little imagination in their approaches. Pockets of fortified resistance were not isolated and repeatedly shelled and bombed, but instead almost immediately stormed. And once the fighting turned hand-to-hand, General Buckner rejected the advice of four seasoned subordinates who wished to outflank the deadly Shuri-Yonabaru Line through amphibious landings to the rear. Too much of the fighting on Okinawa resembled World War I: on the ground, mass against mass, machine guns dueling with rifles and mortars, the entrenched enemy gaining enormous advantages against an open and exposed attacker. American soldiers had trouble distinguishing hostiles from neutrals, especially when the fighting reached settled areas.
One final ripple from Okinawa? After the bloodletting, the American military was reluctant ever again to fight such a Japanese-style battle, and looked desperately for ways to avoid such mass carnage in the promised invasion of Japan to come. The mainland, after all, offered a battlefield ten times as large, with 20 times the numbers of combatants, in the midst of millions more of armed civilians. And so American planners, stunned by the tens of thousands of casualties at Okinawa, found their answers at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Make no mistake about it: Ground troops are necessary in Afghanistan — and no doubt elsewhere, in the multifaceted campaigns to come. And we Americans should not be shy in using thousands of them very soon. But to avoid the carnage of Okinawa, let us at least give our planes a little more time to hit the Taliban forces to cut off all their supplies, and to ensure that their soldiers become hungry and cold in the snow, before sending American troops into the battle. We should ignore the passive-aggressive admonitions of our fretting allies and the carping Muslim world over bombing during Ramadan, and instead ensure that the enemy is further pulverized before our conventional forces enter the fray. A few more days or even weeks of bombing — as during the Gulf War — may enrage some in the Middle East; but in the long run, patience will save American lives, which are far more important than our enemies' feelings. In historical terms, the strategy of continued attrition of adversaries without loss of one's own assets is wise — not flawed, nor cowardly.
With far more accurate and deadly preliminary bombing than that of World War II, our infantry can soon win on the ground — within a similar three-month period, but without the losses of Okinawa. Frontal assaults against entrenched Taliban lines should be avoided in favor of flank attacks and envelopments, and a sustained propaganda program must reach civilians to convince them to kill or at least to oppose those hiding among them, rather than us. Street fighting in villages and towns should be largely left to the resistance, who can use our forward bases and firepower stationed outside the metropolitan centers to regroup and reorganize.
Our military, which knows a great deal about the ordeal of Okinawa, is planning precisely this right now. But we, who do not, must give them some time — and more of our composure and support.
Victor Davis Hanson, author most recently of Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power.
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