“Organized resistance ceased.”
Those words are from a communique from Admiral Chester Nimitz, signaling the final curtain on an epic battle, in a war full of epic battles.
US casualties numbered some 12,000 killed and nearly 38,000 wounded in the 82 days of savage fighting. The US Tenth Army consisted of five US Army and three US Marine Divisions (1 in reserve), who landed unopposed on 1 April, Easter Sunday, 1945.
There were many significant events in this brutal fight. Among them: A US Marine General commanding an Army in the field (General Roy S. Geiger), warfare in and among an enemy populace, and a truly massive number of “battle fatigue” cases among US fighting men. Amid the frightful casualties there were charges of incompetence leveled against military commanders by Congressmen, ignorant of the cost of fighting a skilled, determined, prepared, and entrenched enemy on sacred soil. Anyone who has walked the Shuri line, and seen Sugar Loaf, the Half Moon, and the surrounding terrain does not have to imagine much the nightmare of attacking such an enemy there. A superb and gripping account of the land battle on Okinawa can be found in E. B. Sledge’s masterpiece With the Old Breed and many other books.
At sea, the US Navy suffered staggering losses to the Japanese Kamikaze and conventional attacks. At one point, Mitscher’s TF58 was driven away from the island until crippled ships could be escorted safely to Kerama Retto. These Kamikaze attacks were conducted by the thousands, and included rocket-powered “Oka” (Cherry Blossom) piloted warheads, that sank USS Abele DD-733.
The total of US Navy losses in the Fifth Fleet was 36 ships and landing craft sunk, 368 damaged. nearly 5,000 sailors were killed, and almost that many wounded. Among the vessels badly damaged were flattops Franklin CV-13, Bunker Hill CV-17, Enterprise CV-6, Wasp CV-18, hospital ship Comfort AH-6, destroyer Laffey DD-724, and ill-fated cruiser Indianapolis CA-35. in Captain Walter Karig’s Battle Report; Victory in the Pacific, chapter thirty-six is entitled “Seventy-Nine Minutes on the Picket Line”. It is the story of Laffey’s ordeal. A must-read.
The Okinawa campaign was significant for two major doctrinal reasons, one looking forward, the other looking back. Retrospectively, the “island-hopping” across the Central Pacific was criticised by some, including MacArthur, as being unnecessarily costly. However, the urgency with which the battles across those islands were prosecuted allowed for a “get in and get out” fight, which left the Navy exposed in supporting those operations for the absolute shortest time possible. On Okinawa, Nimitz’s admonition to Army General Simon B. Buckner for progress on the ground in order to reduce the heavy losses to Fifth Fleet was a reflection and validation of that experience and those tactics.
Looking forward, Okinawa’s impact would be felt down through the decades, as it helped bring about the dawn of hte Atomic Age. When President Harry Truman made the decision to employ the atomic bomb, it was the fighting and the losses on Iwo Jima, and particularly Okinawa, that haunted him. Estimates of US casualties for the invasion of Kyushu (Olympic) were based on the famous “Saipan Ratio” (for every seven Japanese killed in action, the US cost was 1 killed, and 1.7 wounded). On Iwo Jima and Okinawa, that ratio was much higher.
Though isolated pockets of Japanese continued fighting for many months after 21 June 1945, the furnace of the Okinawa campaign was extinguished. As far as anyone knew on this day in 1945, the Home Islands were next, scheduled for November, 1945
