The Battle of Okinawa: Marines at the Gates of Japan

By the spring of 1945, the United States Marine Corps had fought its way across the Pacific.

Guadalcanal. Tarawa. Saipan. Tinian. Peleliu. Iwo Jima.

Each battle had moved American forces closer to Japan. But on April 1, 1945, Marines and soldiers landed on an island unlike the tiny atolls and volcanic strongholds they had assaulted before.

They landed on Okinawa.

Only about 350 miles from the Japanese home islands, Okinawa would become the largest amphibious operation of the Pacific War and one of its bloodiest battles.

For the Marines going ashore, it appeared to be the final doorstep before Japan itself.

Operation Iceberg

The invasion of Okinawa was code-named Operation Iceberg.

The island was strategically critical. Its airfields and anchorages could support the enormous Allied force expected to invade Japan. Capturing Okinawa would also further isolate Japan from its remaining overseas possessions.

The invasion force was built around the U.S. Tenth Army under Lt. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr.

The Army's XXIV Corps and the Marine Corps' III Amphibious Corps would conduct the main ground campaign. The Marine force included the 1st and 6th Marine Divisions, with the 2nd Marine Division serving as a floating reserve and conducting diversionary operations.

Before the landings, American aircraft and naval guns pounded Okinawa.

Then came Easter Sunday.

April 1, 1945.

L-Day.

The Marines Go Ashore

Marines and soldiers approached Okinawa's western beaches aboard landing craft and amphibious vehicles.

They expected a slaughter.

The experience of Tarawa, Peleliu and Iwo Jima had taught Marines what could happen when Japanese defenders concentrated their fire on an invasion beach.

But Okinawa was strangely quiet.

The Japanese did not attempt to stop the Americans at the water's edge.

Thousands of troops poured ashore against surprisingly light resistance. By the end of the first day, the Americans had established a massive beachhead and captured important airfields.

It almost seemed too easy.

It was.

The Japanese had deliberately abandoned much of the shoreline.

Their main defenses were waiting farther south.

A Different Kind of Defense

Lt. Gen. Mitsuru Ushijima commanded the Japanese 32nd Army on Okinawa.

Rather than sacrificing his forces attempting to destroy the invasion on the beaches, Ushijima prepared an extensive defensive system in the rugged southern portion of the island.

Caves, tunnels, bunkers, fortified ridges and mutually supporting positions transformed the landscape into a fortress.

The Japanese intended to make the Americans pay for every hill and every yard of ground.

The strategy also bought time for another weapon to attack the enormous Allied fleet surrounding Okinawa.

Kamikazes.

The War at Sea

While Marines and soldiers fought across Okinawa, American sailors offshore faced one of the most intense kamikaze campaigns of the war.

Japanese pilots deliberately crashed aircraft loaded with explosives into American ships.

Destroyers operating radar picket stations around Okinawa were particularly vulnerable.

Day after day, Japanese aircraft appeared over the fleet.

Ships burned.

Others sank.

Thousands of sailors were killed or wounded.

For troops ashore, the naval battle was often visible from the island. Smoke rose from ships offshore while antiaircraft fire filled the sky.

Okinawa had become a battle on land, at sea and in the air simultaneously.

The 6th Marines Drive North

While much of the Army turned south toward the main Japanese defenses, the 6th Marine Division moved north.

The Marines advanced rapidly through much of northern Okinawa before encountering serious resistance on the Motobu Peninsula.

There, Japanese troops had established defensive positions around Mount Yae-Take.

The terrain was difficult. Thick vegetation, steep ridges and concealed positions favored the defenders.

The Marines attacked through the rugged landscape, eventually breaking the Japanese defenses and securing northern Okinawa.

But the hardest fighting was taking place in the south.

The Marines would soon join it.

The Shuri Line

The heart of the Japanese defense centered around a network of positions commonly associated with the Shuri Line.

It was not a single trench or fortification.

It was a defensive system built into Okinawa itself.

Ridges protected other ridges. Caves concealed artillery and machine guns. Tunnels allowed Japanese troops to move between positions. A hill that appeared abandoned could suddenly erupt with fire.

American forces attacked through places whose names became synonymous with the battle:

Sugar Loaf Hill.

Wana Ridge.

Dakeshi Ridge.

Kunishi Ridge.

Shuri.

The fighting often became brutally close.

Flamethrowers, demolition charges, tanks, artillery and infantry teams were used to destroy fortified positions one at a time.

Then the Americans moved forward and did it again.

Sugar Loaf Hill

For the 6th Marine Division, few places represented the brutality of Okinawa better than Sugar Loaf Hill.

The hill itself was not particularly large.

That was deceptive.

Sugar Loaf was part of a mutually supporting defensive complex. Japanese positions on surrounding terrain could fire on Marines attempting to take the hill.

Marines attacked repeatedly.

They reached the crest.

They were driven back.

They attacked again.

Units suffered devastating casualties as artillery, mortars and machine guns swept the approaches.

The struggle continued for days.

Eventually the Marines secured Sugar Loaf and the surrounding positions, but the cost was enormous.

It demonstrated the fundamental problem facing American forces on Okinawa.

Capturing one hill did not end the battle.

There was always another fortified ridge behind it.

Rain, Mud and Exhaustion

Then the weather turned against both armies.

Heavy rain transformed southern Okinawa into a sea of mud.

Roads became nearly impassable. Vehicles bogged down. Supply routes deteriorated. Foxholes filled with water.

Marines lived and fought in mud that seemed to cover everything.

The battlefield was littered with destroyed equipment and the dead.

The smell became overwhelming.

Men who had survived weeks of combat were exhausted.

Yet the advance continued.

The Fall of Shuri

By late May, American forces were breaking through the Japanese defensive system around Shuri.

Rather than allow his remaining army to be trapped, Ushijima ordered a withdrawal farther south.

On May 29, Marines of the 1st Marine Division reached Shuri Castle.

The capture carried enormous symbolic importance, but the battle was not finished.

Japanese forces withdrew toward the southern end of Okinawa, where they established their final defensive positions.

The Americans followed.

The Last Resistance

By June, the Japanese position was collapsing.

Organized resistance was compressed into an increasingly small area near Okinawa's southern coast.

Caves and isolated strongpoints still had to be cleared.

Some Japanese soldiers surrendered.

Many did not.

On June 18, Tenth Army commander Lt. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. was killed by Japanese artillery while observing operations near the front.

Marine Maj. Gen. Roy Geiger temporarily assumed command of the Tenth Army, becoming the first Marine officer to command a field army.

Within days, organized Japanese resistance effectively ended.

Ushijima and his chief of staff committed suicide during the final stages of the battle.

The Battle of Okinawa was declared secured on June 22, 1945.

The Human Cost

Okinawa had lasted nearly three months.

American forces suffered tens of thousands of casualties, including more than 12,000 Americans killed or missing.

Japanese military losses were catastrophic, with estimates generally exceeding 100,000 dead.

But Okinawa was also home to a large civilian population.

Civilians were trapped between the opposing armies. Many were killed by artillery, bombing and ground combat. Others died from starvation, disease, suicide or coercion.

Exact civilian losses remain uncertain, but estimates commonly reach into the tens of thousands and often substantially higher.

Entire communities were devastated.

Okinawa was not simply a military battlefield.

It was a populated island consumed by total war.

The Invasion That Never Came

The capture of Okinawa gave the Allies exactly what they had wanted: a major base close to Japan.

American planners were preparing Operation Downfall, the proposed invasion of the Japanese home islands.

Okinawa offered a terrifying preview of what such an invasion might involve.

If the Japanese had defended Okinawa with such determination, what would happen on Japanese soil?

The question weighed heavily on American military planners.

But the invasion never came.

Atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The Soviet Union entered the war against Japan, attacking Japanese forces in Manchuria.

Japan announced its surrender on August 15.

The formal surrender followed aboard USS Missouri on September 2, 1945.

Okinawa became the last great land battle of the Pacific War.

Marines at the Gates of Japan

For the Marines who fought there, Okinawa represented the culmination of nearly four years of war across the Pacific.

The Corps had begun its offensive campaign at Guadalcanal in 1942.

From there, Marines crossed thousands of miles of ocean.

Tarawa.

Cape Gloucester.

Saipan.

Tinian.

Peleliu.

Iwo Jima.

And finally Okinawa.

Each island brought them closer to Japan.

At Okinawa, they could go little farther without invading the Japanese home islands themselves.

The Marines had reached the gates of Japan.

The war ended before they were ordered through them.