_by Colonel Joseph H. Alexander, USMC (Ret)_
Daybreak on 29 May 1945 found the 1st Marine Division beginning its
fifth consecutive week of frontal assault as part of the U.S. Tenth
Army’s grinding offensive against the Japanese defenses centered on
Shuri Castle in southern Okinawa. Operation Iceberg, the campaign to
seize Okinawa, was now two months old--and badly bogged down. The
exhilarating, fast-paced opening of the campaign had been replaced by
week after week of costly, exhausting, attrition warfare against the
Shuri complex.
The 1st Marine Division, hemmed in between two other divisions
with precious little maneuver room, had advanced barely a thousand
yards in the past 18 days--an average of 55 yards each bloody day.
Their sector featured one bristling, honeycombed ridge line after
another--sequentially Kakazu, Dakeshi, and Wana (with its murderous,
reverse slope canyon). Just beyond lay the long shoulder of Shuri
Ridge, the nerve center of the Japanese _Thirty-second Army_ and the
outpost of dozens of the enemy’s forward artillery observers who had
made life so miserable for American assault forces all month long.
But on this rainy morning, this 29th of May, things seemed somehow
different, quieter. After days of bitter fighting, American forces
had finally overrun both outposts of the Shuri Line: Conical Hill on
the east, captured by the 96th Infantry Division, and the Sugar Loaf
complex in the west, seized by the 6th Marine Division. Shuri no longer
seemed invincible.
Company A of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines moved out warily, expecting
the usual firestorm of Japanese artillery at any moment. There was
none. The Marines reached the crest of Shuri Ridge with hardly a
firefight. Astonished, the company commander looked westward along
the ridge several hundred yards to the ruins of Shuri Castle, the
medieval fortress of the ancient Ryukyuan kings. Everyone in the Tenth
Army expected the Japanese to defend Shuri to the death--but the
place seemed lightly held. Spiteful small arms fire appeared to come
from nothing more than a rear guard. Field radios buzzed with this
astounding news. Shuri Castle itself lay beyond division and corps
boundaries, but it was there for the taking. The assault Marines asked
permission to seize the prize.
Major General Pedro del Valle, commanding the 1st Marine Division, did
not hesitate. By all rights the castle belonged to the neighboring
77th Infantry Division and del Valle knew his counterpart, Army Major
General Andrew D. Bruce, would be angry if the Marines snatched the
long-sought trophy before his soldiers could arrive. But this was an
unprecedented opportunity to grab the Tenth Army’s main objective. Del
Valle gave the go-ahead. With that, Company A, 1/5, swept west along
the ridge against light opposition and took possession of the battered
complex. Del Valle’s staff had to do some fancy footwork to keep peace
with their Army neighbors. Only then did they learn that the 77th
Division had scheduled a major bombardment of the castle that morning.
Frantic radio calls averted the near-tragedy just in time. Results of
the Marines’ preemptive action incensed General Bruce. Recalled del
Valle: “I don’t think a single Army division commander would talk to me
after that.”
Notwithstanding this interservice aggravation, the Americans had
achieved much this morning. For two months the Shuri Heights had
provided the Japanese with superb fields of observed fire that covered
the port city of Naha and the entire five-mile neck of southern
Okinawa. Even now, as the Marines of A/1/5 deployed into a hasty
defensive line within the Castle’s rubble, they were oblivious to
the fact that a Japanese rear guard still occupied portions of the
mammoth underground headquarters complex directly under their muddy
boondockers. They would be astounded to learn that the subterranean
headquarters of the _Thirty-second Army_ measured 1,287 feet long and
as much as 160 feet deep--all of it dug by pick and shovel.
The Japanese had in fact stolen a march on the approaching Tenth Army.
Most of their forces had retreated southwards during the incessant
rains, and would soon occupy the third (and final) ring of their
prepared, underground defenses, a series of fortified escarpments in
the Kiyamu Peninsula.
[Illustration: