“
S
moke and dust rose up from the
shore, thousands of feet high,”
wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning
war correspondent Ernie Pyle,
watching from the 5th Marines’
command ship, “until finally the
land was completely veiled. Bombs
and strafing machine guns and
roaring engines mingled with the crash of
naval bombardment and seemed to drown
out all existence. The ghastly concussion set
up vibrations in the air – a sort of flutter –
which pained and pounded the ears as
though with invisible drumsticks. During
all this time the waves of assault craft were
forming up behind us.”
It was 7:45am on 1 April 1945 – or ‘Love
Day’, the invasion of the 70 mile-long island
of Okinawa, the most southerly of Japan’s 47
prefectures. Pyle’s ship was just one of 1,300
Allied vessels, containing 183,000 combat
troops, that were taking part in the greatest
air-land-sea battle in history, the last major
clash of the Second World War, and one that
would have profound consequences for the
modern world.
The decision to attack Okinawa – Opera-
tion ‘Iceberg’ – had been taken by American
military chiefs the previous October. Posses-
sion of Okinawa, just 400 miles south of the
Japanese home islands, would allow Allied
planes to bomb strategic targets on the
mainland and prepare the ground for an
amphibious invasion. It was the culmination
of a two-pronged American advance –
through New Guinea and the Philippines
and, further north, through the islands of the
central Pacific – that had been gathering pace
since the landings on Guadalcanal in the
Solomon Islands in August 1942. Now, with
this second landing on Japanese soil (follow-
ing Iwo Jima in February 1945), the end of the
Pacific War was in sight.Dead in the water
In one of the first assault craft to hit the beach
at H-hour – 8:30am – was 22-year-old Corpo-
ral Jim Johnston from Nebraska. As they
approached the shore, Johnston thought of
the dead Marines he had seen in the water
and on the beach during the bloody battle for
the island of Peleliu the previous September,
and “wondered what we would look like to
the waves that would come behind us”. He
approached a pillbox, anticipating the
“impact of bullets ripping into my body”, but
there was “no fire”. The pillbox was empty. So
he and his men moved inland and, within an
hour, the beachhead “was several hundred
yards deep and growing by the minute”.
By nightfall, the beachhead on the west
coast of Okinawa was 15,000 yards long and,
in places, 5,000 yards deep. More than 60,000The battle of Okinawa
men were ashore. In addition, numerous
tanks and anti-aircraft units had been
landed, as had all the divisional artillery and,
by evening, guns were in position to support
the forward troops. A captured airfield was
now serviceable for emergency landings.
The American commander, Lieutenant
General Simon B Buckner Jr, was elated. “We
landed practically without opposition,” he
noted in his diary, “and gained more ground
than we expected to for three days... The Japs
have missed their best opportunity.”
Unbeknown to Buckner, who was fighting
his first ever battle, the day was going entirely
to plan for the Japanese commanders. Aware
that their 80,000 soldiers, bolstered by
around 20,000 Okinawan ‘Boeitai’ (home
guard), were outgunned and outnumbered,
they had chosen to concentrate the bulk of
their forces behind several heavily fortified
lines in the southern third of the island
where, well protected in tunnels and caves,
they could withstand any amount of Ameri-
can bombs and shells. Here several jagged
lines of ridges and rocky escarpment had
been turned into formidable nests of
interlocking pillboxes and firing positions.
All were connected by a network of caves USMC-NARAOKINAWA WAS
THE GREATEST AIR-
LAND-SEA BATTLE
IN HISTORY, THE
LAST MAJOR CLASH
OF THE SECOND
WORLD WAR
“
S
moke and dust rose up from the
shore, thousands of feet high,”
wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning
war correspondent Ernie Pyle,
watching from the 5th Marines’
command ship, “until finally the
land was completely veiled. Bombs
and strafing machine guns and
roaring engines mingled with the crash of
naval bombardment and seemed to drown
out all existence. The ghastly concussion set
up vibrations in the air – a sort of flutter –
which pained and pounded the ears as
though with invisible drumsticks. During
all this time the waves of assault craft were
forming up behind us.”
It was 7:45am on 1 April 1945 – or ‘Love
Day’, the invasion of the 70 mile-long island
of Okinawa, the most southerly of Japan’s 47
prefectures. Pyle’s ship was just one of 1,300
Allied vessels, containing 183,000 combat
troops, that were taking part in the greatest
air-land-sea battle in history, the last major
clash of the Second World War, and one that
would have profound consequences for the
modern world.
The decision to attack Okinawa – Opera-
tion ‘Iceberg’ – had been taken by American
military chiefs the previous October. Posses-
sion of Okinawa, just 400 miles south of the
Japanese home islands, would allow Allied
planes to bomb strategic targets on the
mainland and prepare the ground for an
amphibious invasion. It was the culmination
of a two-pronged American advance –
through New Guinea and the Philippines
and, further north, through the islands of the
central Pacific – that had been gathering pace
since the landings on Guadalcanal in the
Solomon Islands in August 1942. Now, with
this second landing on Japanese soil (follow-
ing Iwo Jima in February 1945), the end of the
Pacific War was in sight.Dead in the water
In one of the first assault craft to hit the beach
at H-hour – 8:30am – was 22-year-old Corpo-
ral Jim Johnston from Nebraska. As they
approached the shore, Johnston thought of
the dead Marines he had seen in the water
and on the beach during the bloody battle for
the island of Peleliu the previous September,
and “wondered what we would look like to
the waves that would come behind us”. He
approached a pillbox, anticipating the
“impact of bullets ripping into my body”, but
there was “no fire”. The pillbox was empty. So
he and his men moved inland and, within an
hour, the beachhead “was several hundred
yards deep and growing by the minute”.
By nightfall, the beachhead on the west
coast of Okinawa was 15,000 yards long and,
in places, 5,000 yards deep. More than 60,000The battle of Okinawa
men were ashore. In addition, numerous
tanks and anti-aircraft units had been
landed, as had all the divisional artillery and,
by evening, guns were in position to support
the forward troops. A captured airfield was
now serviceable for emergency landings.
The American commander, Lieutenant
General Simon B Buckner Jr, was elated. “We
landed practically without opposition,” he
noted in his diary, “and gained more ground
than we expected to for three days... The Japs
have missed their best opportunity.”
Unbeknown to Buckner, who was fighting
his first ever battle, the day was going entirely
to plan for the Japanese commanders. Aware
that their 80,000 soldiers, bolstered by
around 20,000 Okinawan ‘Boeitai’ (home
guard), were outgunned and outnumbered,
they had chosen to concentrate the bulk of
their forces behind several heavily fortified
lines in the southern third of the island
where, well protected in tunnels and caves,
they could withstand any amount of Ameri-
can bombs and shells. Here several jagged
lines of ridges and rocky escarpment had
been turned into formidable nests of
interlocking pillboxes and firing positions.
All were connected by a network of caves USMC-NARAOKINAWA WAS
THE GREATEST AIR-
LAND-SEA BATTLE
IN HISTORY, THE
LAST MAJOR CLASH
OF THE SECOND
WORLD WAR