KAMIKAZE Archives - World War II Day by Day

JAPANESE-HELD OKINAWA UNDER U.S. ASSAULT

Aboard Admiral Spruance’s Flagship USS Indianapolis • April 1, 1945

For weeks the largest Allied fleet since Operation Overlord ten months earlier—nearly 1,500 U.S. and British vessels—fired 2.3 million shells onto Okinawa, the largest island in the Ryukyu archipelago and a little more than 300 miles from Kyūshū and Shikoku, the southernmost Japanese Home Islands. (Tokyo was 550 miles away.) Kyūshū and Shikoku were home to many Japanese suicide squadrons, whose aviators found the Allied warships within easy reach.

Between March 27 and May 11, 1945, some 2,000 sorties by Marianas-based B‑29 Superfortresses cratered airfields on Kyūshū and Shikoku, particularly runways, as well as hammered hangars and workshops in an effort to suppress Japanese suicide aircraft; yet still a blizzard of bomb-laden death divers was able to sink or damage over 400 Allied ships during the Okinawa campaign, killing and injuring thousands of servicemen. Many of the crippled ships and wounded servicemen never returned to action.

On this date, April 1, 1945, a cloudless Easter Sunday, 60,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines landed on Okinawa, launching Operation Iceberg. Overhead, ferocious attacks by these one-way airmen, or kamikaze, took a heavy toll in lives and damaged dozens of U.S. and British vessels that stood off the island. The kamikaze had been named after the divine wind that had, in medieval times, saved Japan from invasion. However on Okinawa kamikaze aviators loosed a new tactic against Allied ships offshore: not single kamikaze salvos but typhoons of hundreds of aircraft rained down on the fleet, including the newly developed solid-fuel Ohka (“Cherry Blossom”) manned rocket, packed with a terrifying 2,600 pounds of explosives, that hung under the fuselage of a bomber until lit by the one-way pilot. Between April 6 and May 25, seven major kamikaze attacks were attempted, involving more than 1,500 Army and Navy aircraft, some of them long obsolete, flying from Kyūshū, Shikoku, and Formosa (today’s Taiwan) off the Chinese mainland. The Japanese called these one-way squadrons kikusui, or “Floating Chrysanthemums,” and nearly all the pilots were half-trained adolescents, some as young as seventeen. Many had never flown solo or landed an airplane.

In spite of Japan’s single-use weapons offensive, which also included land-based motorboats, by the middle of April American forces had secured three-quarters of the mountainous Long Island-sized island with relative ease. By then much harder fighting had started on the so-called Shuri Line to the south. It took two and a half more months of grueling close-quarter fighting before Japanese resistance ceased. When it did, the largest land battle of the Pacific War had claimed over 75,300 American casualties, which included 20,195 dead (among them U.S. Tenth Army’s Lt. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr.), with perhaps 110,000 dead on the Japanese side, including more than 1,000 one-way pilots, and 11,000 taken prisoner. Out of an estimated 300,000 island residents as many as half ended up dead. Offshore the U.S. Navy lost 29 vessels sunk, 120 damaged, 3,048 officers and sailors killed, and 6,035 wounded. Twenty-four Marines and soldiers received Medals of Honor, including an unlikely conscientious objector and medic, Pfc. Desmond Doss, who wounded in both legs and an arm pulled between 50 and 100 men to safety on Hacksaw Ridge. Mel Gibson portrayed Doss in the 2016 cinematic retelling of Doss’s life and battlefield heroism.

Some of the most vicious combat anywhere in World War II was waged in the Pacific. Of the many fine firsthand accounts by those who fought there I have three favorites: Robert Leckie’s Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific, Eugene Sledge’s With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa, and Chuck Tatum’s Red Blood, Black Sand: Fighting Alongside John Basilone from Boot Camp to Iwo Jima. For those less keen on reading about combat in the Pacific than viewing it, I recommend HBO’s homage to the men and women who fought and died in the Pacific Theater. Produced by Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, and Gary Goetzman, The Pacific is a 10‑part miniseries that delivers a gritty and realistic portrait of the war’s island-hopping campaigns as seen through the intertwined odysseys of Marines Leckie, Sledge, and Medal of Honor recipient John Basilone, who was tragically killed on Iwo Jima on February 19, 1945, the first day of the island’s invasion.—Norm Haskett

The 82-Day Battle of Okinawa, or Operation Iceberg, April 1 to June 22, 1945

Battle of Okinawa: USS Idaho pounds Okinawa, April 1, 1945

Battle of Okinawa: U.S. Marines establish a beachhead on Okinawa

Left: The battleship USS Idaho shells Okinawa on April 1, 1945, coincidentally April Fools Days and Easter Sunday. The Idaho was one of seven U.S. battleships in Fast Carrier Force (TF 58) under Vice Admiral Marc A. Mitscher. British Carrier Force (TF 57) added two battleships to the 88 ships in TF 58, making a total of over 110 Allied warships off the coast of the Japanese-held island. In American hands, the island would provide a staging area for the invasion of the Japanese mainland, airfields from which U.S. warplanes could operate, and safe anchorage for Allied supply vessels and transports to support the upcoming climactic offensive against the Empire of Japan.

Right: Marines in camouflage battle dress storm out of a landing craft to establish a beachhead on Okinawa in the opening phase of Operation Iceberg. Two Marine divisions (the 1st and 6th) of 88,000 men and four divisions of the Tenth U.S. Army (the 7th, 27th, 77th, and 96th) brought the number of U.S. combatants in the initial assault force close to 183,000 to face roughly 80,000 mixed army and navy Japanese and 40,000 Okinawan conscript defenders. Additionally, there were 18,000 Navy personnel (mostly Seabees and medical personnel) in support of Operation Iceberg.

Battle of Okinawa: Marines pass dead Japanese soldier, Okinawa, April 1945

Battle of Okinawa: Two Marines, Northern Okinawa, May 1945

Left: U.S. Marines pass a dead Japanese soldier in a destroyed Okinawan village, April 1945. More than 110,000 defenders were killed in the 82‑day campaign to take the embattled island, and between 40,000 and 150,000 civilians (out of a population of 300,000) died by suicide or were killed during the protracted fighting.

Right: A U.S. Marine provides covering fire with his M1 Thompson submachine gun while another Marine with a Browning Automatic Rifle prepares to break cover to move to a different position. Northern Okinawa, May 1945.

Battle of Okinawa: Cave demolition, Okinawa, May 1945

Left: A demolition crew from the 6th Marine Division watches dynamite charges explode and destroy a Japanese cave. Okinawa, May 1945.

Right: Overcoming the last resistance on Okinawa was aided by the ritual suicide on June 22, 1945, of Japanese commander Lt. Gen. Mitsuru Ushijima and by Allied propaganda leaflets, one of which is being read by a prisoner (of which there were between 7,000 and 11,000) who awaits transportation to the rear. Many civilians gave up at the same time.