_A mass of rubble is all that is left of Shuri Castle, its walls, the
moat below them, and Shuri City beyond, after the 5th Marines had
captured the area. The battered trees are part of a forest growth which
in more peaceful times had surrounded it._]
Seizing Shuri Castle represented an undeniable milestone in the Okinawa
campaign, but it was a hollow victory. Just as the flag-raising on Iwo
Jima’s Mount Suribachi signified only the end of the beginning of that
prolonged battle, the capture of Shuri did not end the fighting. The
brutal slugfest on Okinawa still had another 24 days to run. And still
the Plum Rains fell, and the horrors, and the dying, continued.
_Countdown to ‘Love-Day’_
The three-month-long battle of Okinawa covered a 700-mile arc from
Formosa to Kyushu and involved a million combatants--Americans,
Japanese, British, and native Okinawans. With a magnitude that rivaled
the Normandy invasion the previous June, the battle of Okinawa was the
biggest and costliest single operation of the Pacific War. For each of
its 82 days of combat, the battle would claim an average of 3,000 lives
from the antagonists and the unfortunate non-combatants.
Imperial Japan by spring 1945 has been characterized as a wounded wild
animal, enraged, cornered, and desperate. Japanese leaders knew fully
well that Okinawa in U.S. hands would be transformed into a gigantic
staging base--“the England of the Pacific”--for the ultimate invasion
of the sacred homeland. They were willing to sacrifice everything to
avoid the unspeakable disgrace of unconditional surrender and foreign
occupation.
Okinawa would therefore present the U.S. Navy with its greatest
operational challenge: protecting an enormous and vulnerable amphibious
task force tethered to the beachhead against the ungodliest of furies,
the Japanese _kamikazes_. Equally, Okinawa would test whether U.S.
amphibious power projection had truly come of age--whether Americans in
the Pacific Theater could plan and execute a massive assault against a
large, heavily defended land-mass, integrate the tactical capabilities
of all services, fend off every imaginable form of counterattack, and
maintain operational momentum ashore. Nor would Operation Iceberg
be conducted in a vacuum. Action preliminary to the invasion would
kick-off at the same time that major campaigns in Iwo Jima and the
Philippines were still being wrapped up, a reflection of the great
expansion of American military power in the Pacific, yet a further
strain on Allied resources.
But as expansive and dramatic as the Battle of Okinawa proved to
be, both sides clearly saw the contest as a foretaste of even more
desperate fighting to come with the inevitable invasion of the Japanese
home islands. Okinawa’s proximity to Japan--well within medium bomber
and fighter escort range--and its militarily useful ports, airfields,
anchorages, and training areas--made the skinny island an imperative
objective for the Americans, eclipsing their earlier plans for the
seizure of Formosa for that purpose.
[Illustration: _A well-armed Marine assault team, with a BAR and a
flamethrower, moves out and heads for its objective across the rubble
created by preliminary bombardment._
Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 116632
]
Okinawa, the largest of the Ryukyuan Islands, sits at the apex of a
triangle almost equidistant to strategic areas. Kyushu is 350 miles
to the north; Formosa 330 miles to the southwest; Shanghai 450 miles
to the west. As so many Pacific battlefields, Okinawa had a peaceful
heritage. Although officially one of the administrative prefectures
of Japan, and Japanese territory since being forcibly seized in 1879,
Okinawa prided itself on its distinctive differences, its long Chinese
legacy and Malay influence, and a unique sense of community.
[Illustration: WESTERN PACIFIC]
The Japanese _Imperial General Headquarters (IGHQ)_ in Tokyo did little
to fortify or garrison Okinawa in the opening years of the Pacific War.
With the American seizure of Saipan in mid-1944, however, _IGHQ_ began
dispatching reinforcements and fortification materials to critical
areas within the “Inner Strategic Zone,” including Iwo Jima, Peleliu,
the Philippines, and Okinawa.
On Okinawa, _IGHQ_ established a new field army, the _Thirty-second
Army_, and endeavored to funnel trained components to it from elsewhere
along Japan’s great armed perimeter in China, Manchuria, or the home
islands. But American submarines exacted a deadly toll. On 29 June
1944, the USS _Sturgeon_ torpedoed the transport _Toyama Maru_ and
sank her with the loss of 5,600 troops of the _44th Independent Mixed
Brigade_, bound for Okinawa. It would take the Japanese the balance of
the year to find qualified replacements.
By October 1944 the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff had recognized the
paramount strategic value of the Ryukyus and issued orders to Admiral
Chester W. Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Fleet/Commander, Pacific
Ocean Areas, to seize Okinawa immediately after the Iwo Jima campaign.
The JCS directed Nimitz to “seize, occupy, and defend Okinawa”--then
transform the captured island into an advance staging base for the
invasion of Japan.
[Illustration: OKINAWA GUNTO]
Nimitz turned once again to his most veteran commanders to execute the
demanding mission. Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, victor of Midway, the
Gilberts, Marshalls, Marianas, and the Battle of the Philippine Sea,
would command the U.S. Fifth Fleet, arguably the most powerful armada
of warships ever assembled. Vice Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner, gifted
and irascible veteran of the Solomons and Central Pacific landings,
would again command all amphibious forces under Spruance. But Turner’s
military counterpart would no longer be the familiar old war-horse,
Marine Lieutenant General Holland M. Smith. Iwo Jima had proven to be
Smith’s last fight. Now the expeditionary forces had grown to the size
of a field army with 182,000 assault troops. Army Lieutenant General
Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., the son of a Confederate general who fought
against U.S. Grant at Fort Donaldson in the American Civil War, would
command the newly created U.S. Tenth Army.
[Illustration: