War Stories II (73 page)

After a month of bloody and violent combat, American Marines and soldiers finally broke through General Ushijima's defenses and conquered Okinawa by the end of June.

Back in the States, America's new president, Harry Truman, wanted to end World War II quickly, with minimal casualties. After witnessing the quick, unconditional surrender of Germany, Truman hoped that Japan might be convinced to do the same.

Mopping-up operations began on the southern end of Okinawa, and Winston Churchill spoke directly to Americans to tell them just how important the Battle of Okinawa was to the world. He said, “The strength and willpower, devotion and technical resources applied by the United States to this task, joined with the death struggle of the enemy... places this battle among the most intense and famous in military history.”

Okinawa was supposed to be the hoped-for turning point that essentially ended the war in the Pacific. But the Imperial Army was unquestionably well fortified and had enough supplies to hold out for many months. The Americans, on the other hand, didn't want to prolong the combat on Okinawa any longer than necessary. Finally, with guts, determination, and commitment, the Americans gave it their all. Both sides sacrificed many lives, but in the end, the Americans finally broke through.

It was said that one Marine division assaulted a hill about a dozen times, taking the hill, losing it, and retaking it again and again in what seemed to be a never-ending cycle. In the process, the division lost twice the number of men in their original troop complement.

Japanese casualties also grew steadily. The Americans slowly pierced the Japanese lines, and they retreated, charging the Americans in a futile suicidal
attack. A few actually surrendered. Nevertheless, the Marines and soldiers had to seize the island inch by bloody inch.

Then, by late June, General Ushijima and his officers knew it was utterly hopeless. Still, unconditional surrender seemed out of the question—true to Japanese tradition. Most of the Imperial Army wanted no part of surrender, and they continued to throw themselves into hopeless suicidal charges. Finally, even General Ushijima recognized that by now the battle was over and his cause was lost. Believing that he had embarrassed himself before his emperor, he determined to end his life in an honorable way. So he brought together his officers and said his goodbyes to them. Then he and his chief of staff, General Cho, took part in the traditional ceremonial feast, after which each of them wrote a
haiku
poem. Then the two officers dressed in their white robes and went out to the front of the cave in which Ushijima had his command headquarters. Each of the two officers knelt and disemboweled himself with a sword. A Japanese junior officer then took his own sword and cut off the heads of the two generals.

The American commander, General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr., was killed by Japanese artillery fire on 18 June. That same day, Marine General Roy Geiger assumed command of the 10th Army on Okinawa, the first time a U.S. Marine would command a field army.

Failure to stop the Americans at Okinawa meant that Japan had to face the unimaginable—an American invasion of the Japanese homeland.

On 21 June, the 10th Army pushed through to take the only part of the island still not in American hands, the southernmost point on Okinawa. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Japanese troops followed the lead of General Ushijima in ritual suicide. On the next day, the American flag flew over Okinawa. The eighty-two-day Okinawa campaign was finally declared officially over on 2 July.

The cost had been horrendous for both sides. American casualties amounted to more than 68,000 sailors, soldiers, and Marines, with some 16,000 killed or missing in action. The Navy lost more men than the Marines did in the Battle of Okinawa, mainly from kamikaze attacks.

The Japanese lost some 131,000 men, with about 108,000 killed in action and another 24,000 sealed in caves or underground fortifications.
Fewer than 11,000 Japanese soldiers, most of them wounded, surrendered or let themselves be captured.

Tragically, some 150,000 Okinawa civilians—about one-third of the population—also lost their lives. And before the battle ended, another third to half of the civilians had been wounded. Many were caught in the crossfire of combat between the two armies, although the Japanese killed many of the civilians when they tried to surrender to the Americans. Only the Battle of Stalingrad, in the European theater, saw a greater loss of civilian lives.

In the Battle of Okinawa the U.S. fleet lost thirty-four ships and more than 600 were damaged. The U.S. lost almost as many aircraft. However, the Japanese lost nearly 8,000 aircraft and nearly all of its remaining Imperial fleet.

Victory on Okinawa brought no rest for the battle-weary soldiers, sailors, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen. They were told to prepare for the massive invasion of Japan itself. They'd won the battle for Okinawa, but the war itself was definitely not yet over.

From Potsdam, after the surrender of Germany and the Nazi war machine, the Allied leaders warned Japan of the destruction of their homeland when the invasion came. The Japanese still would not bend. Their military leaders would rather die than surrender.

But the casualties of the Battle of Okinawa helped President Truman confirm his decision to use the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Truman reckoned that although the new devices would probably kill thousands, using them to force a capitulation by Japan would be the more humane route in the long run.

More people were killed on Okinawa than were later killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. The Okinawan civilians and Japanese and American dead at Okinawa numbered nearly 300,000.

Those numbers must have seemed horrendous to Truman, yet they would only get worse if the bombings continued over Tokyo, and if the planned invasion went forward. The president had also been told that at least one million American deaths would occur during an invasion of Japan. The Allied leaders projected that another one to two million Japanese lives would be lost in defending against an invasion.

These projections did not even include the 400,000 American and Allied POWs, slave laborers, and civilian detainees held by Japan; most would be executed if an invasion began. Nor would it include the half million to a million Japanese troops virtually stranded on various Pacific islands, who would likely starve if Japanese supply ships did not get through—which was now the case since the Japanese had no ships and the Americans controlled the sea lanes.

The Washington war strategists agreed that they couldn't sacrifice millions of lives, but they weren't sure about the atomic bomb, either. In any event, as the sign on Truman's desk put it, “The buck stops here.” The president would make the ultimate decision. And by now, Truman knew that the atomic bomb was only viable alternative.

O
kinawa, the last battle of World War II, yielded horrific losses of life on all sides. President Truman decided that if they were going to press Japan into submission any time within the next ten years, the United States would have to use the atomic bomb.

Truman and the Joint Chiefs wanted the war to end right away. The idea of another decade of the horror was too much to contemplate. They also felt it was imperative to save American lives, but were also concerned about the loss of Japanese lives. That was the main factor in the decision to drop atomic bombs on two Japanese cities, leading finally to Japan's full surrender.

The U.S. soldiers and Marines also wished for an end to the war. The beleaguered American troops who survived Okinawa had never experienced such extreme carnage. Admiral Nimitz had noted, “It was the worst fighting of the Pacific war, its sustained intensity surpassing even the brutal combat of Tarawa, Peleliu, and Iwo Jima.”

But since Okinawa was so vital to Tokyo's last stand, the Japanese felt compelled to defend the island to the death. They did so with a desperation equal only to the unrelenting resolve of the Americans, who were even more determined to guarantee a victory of their own.

Toward the end of the bloody fighting on Okinawa, the Joint Chiefs of Staff approved Operation Olympic—the ultimate invasion of Japan. Military planners scheduled it for 1 November 1945. Under the joint command of General MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz, the U.S. forces would launch an assault on Kyushu, the southernmost Japanese Home Island. The Joint Chiefs had approved an invasion force of 650,000 troops, 2,500 ships, and 6,000 planes to attack the southern coast of Kyushu.

The Imperial military intelligence had correctly guessed the sites of American actions before and after Okinawa. They had expected the Americans to land in the Philippines and ordered their troops there to move back into the mountains and jungles. These troops were to hold out in a defensive operation while they prepared the Home Islands for the expected invasion. They were planning to fortify the coastlines and determine strategies for turning back the Americans when they landed on the beaches.