Crucible of Hell

Buckner was convinced that the simultaneous feinted landing by the 2nd Marine Division on the south-east coast of Okinawa had fooled the Japanese into concentrating their troops in the wrong place. That was far from the case. Coolly watching the landings through binoculars from an observation platform in Shuri Castle, twelve miles to the south, stood the Japanese commander, Lieutenant General Mitsuru Ushijima, and his senior officers. ‘Tall and heavy-set’ with ‘ruddy cheeks and a benign countenance’, the 57-year-old Ushijima had replaced the ailing General Watanabe as commander of the Thirty-Second Army on Okinawa the previous August. He had some field experience as a brigade and divisional commander in China and Burma; but since 1941 had occupied administrative posts in Japan, first as commandant of the army’s Non-commissioned Officers Academy, and then the more prestigious Imperial Japanese Army Academy. Perhaps not surprisingly, he was less hands-on than the fire-eating Watanabe, preferring to leave ‘all operational details to his subordinates’, while still taking overall responsibility. ‘In this respect,’ noted a subordinate, ‘he was faithful to long-standing Japanese military tradition, going back to the great Takamori Saigo, one of the leaders of the Meiji Restoration of 1868.’19

The ‘short, stout officer’ standing nearest to Ushijima on the viewing platform, ‘legs set defiantly apart’, was his right-hand man and chief of staff, Major General Isamu Chō, an ultranationalist who had been active in the 1930s in the ‘young officers’ military clique that was pushing for Japan’s territorial expansion. Implicated in the massacre of at least 200,000 Chinese civilians and prisoners of war at Nanjing in the winter of 1937–8, and briefly arrested for his part in a coup d’état against the civilian government, the 50-year-old Chō was a ruthless and aggressive military strategist who thought attack the best form of defence. If it had been his decision, the Japanese troops on Okinawa would have fought the invading Americans on the beaches. Instead, Ushijima took the advice of his talented operations chief, Colonel Hiromichi Yahara, 42, who was convinced the only way to defend Okinawa, given the inevitable imbalance in troop numbers and firepower, was to leave the beaches uncontested and instead concentrate Japanese strength in the south of the island.20

The plans recently put forward by Imperial General Headquarters (IGHQ) in Tokyo decreed that the battle for Okinawa would be won on the sea and in the air, and that the troops on the island would merely be needed ‘to mop up enemy remnants after they landed’. Yahara knew this was nonsense and planned accordingly. Born to a modest family of farmers in the sparsely populated south-west of Honshu Island, the bespectacled Yahara had used brains and determination to advance his army career, passing out first from the War College. He had served as a regimental officer, worked undercover in South East Asia and, more recently, taught at the Imperial Japanese Army Academy in Tokyo under Ushijima. But it was his two years as an exchange officer in the United States, including six months with the 8th Infantry, that would serve him best on Okinawa as they gave him an insight into the American military mind.21

Arriving in March 1944, Yahara considered Okinawa an obvious future target for US forces as they advanced closer to Japan’s home islands, 400 miles to the north, and argued for a significant troop build-up. ‘I felt it was crucial’, he recalled, ‘that we select those islands where we could expect the enemy to attack, place decisive troop strength there, and make adequate combat preparations while we still had the chance.’ He eventually got his way, and various formations were rushed to Okinawa until, by the late summer of 1944, the garrison had swelled to 105,000 men, backed by a further 20,000 half-trained Okinawan ‘Boeitai’ (Home Guard).22

At this point, Yahara’s strategy was to ‘move in the direction of any enemy landings, launch an offensive, and destroy the enemy near the coast’. But when IGHQ decided in November 1944 to move the Thirty-Second Army’s best formation, the 25,000-strong 9th Division, to the Philippines, via Formosa, Yahara changed tack. Now with, he believed, too few troops to prevent a major landing, he concentrated the vast bulk of his forces in the southern third of the island, ‘behind several heavily fortified lines north of army headquarters at Shuri Castle’. Well protected in tunnels and caves, they could withstand any amount of enemy bombs and gunfire. Or as Yahara put it: ‘Against steel, the product of American industry, we would pit our earthen fortifications, the product of the sweat of our troops and the Okinawan people.’23

The change was controversial as it ran counter to the Imperial Japanese Army’s operational doctrine of seeking out a ‘decisive battle’ rather than a ‘war of attrition’. But Ushijima gave his approval, and for the next five months soldiers and civilians toiled night and day to prepare a defensive system across the narrow waist of southern Okinawa where, forward of Ushijima’s HQ on Mount Shuri, ‘several jagged lines of ridges and rocky escarpments’ were turned into ‘formidable nests of interlocking pillboxes and firing positions’. All were ‘connected by a network of caves and passageways inside the hills’ that allowed the defenders to move safely to the point of attack.24

With their defensive preparations complete, Ushijima and his officers were ‘full of confidence’ as they watched the ‘enemy’s frantic deployment’ on the Hagushi beaches on 1 April. Some joked; a few lit cigarettes. All were ‘tense with the warrior’s inner excitement at the thrill of preparing to cross swords with a mighty enemy’.

Yahara marvelled at the sheer scale of the enemy bombardment as ‘smoke and debris from the explosions’ rose into sky. The enemy planes looked to him like ‘hundreds of oversized beans’ as they emerged from the smoke to carry out their bombing operations. Then, finally, American soldiers emerged ‘from the thousand-odd landing craft, thrusting onto the shore’. He wrote later: ‘It is as if the sea itself were advancing with a great roar.’

He chuckled as he tried to put himself into the minds of the enemy commander and his staff. ‘Advancing with such ease,’ wrote Yahara, ‘they must be thinking gleefully that they have passed through a breach in the Japanese defenses. They will be wrong … It is amusing to watch the American army so desperately intent in its attack on an almost undefended coast, like a blind man who has lost his cane, groping on hands and knees to cross a ditch.’

Yet, at the same time, Yahara felt ‘a gnawing sense of unease’. The IGHQ plan was for the air force to play the lead role in ‘warding off the enemy attack’. It had been ‘publicly stated that the best opportunity to destroy the enemy would be while he was still in his ships, before the troops had a chance to land’. For the last week, Japanese aircraft had attacked the ‘enemy fleet under cover of darkness, by moonlight and at dawn’. So why now, asked Yahara, ‘with enemy landing craft swarming around the [Hagushi] beaches, do they not overcome all obstacles, take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime chance, and make an all-out concerted attack?’25

In fact, according to the diary of Vice Admiral Matome Ugaki, the man tasked with the air defence of Okinawa, a full-scale attack on the approaching US 5th Fleet was ordered on 31 March. But only a few kamikaze got through the American anti-aircraft and fighter screen the following day. One flew into the superstructure of the battleship USS West Virginia and its bomb penetrated to the second deck. Fortunately it was a dud, or the casualties of four dead and twenty-three wounded would have been much heavier. Other kamikaze struck a transport, USS Hinsdale, and two LSTs carrying men of the 2nd Marine Division as they feigned a landing off the south-east coast of Okinawa.26

Second Lieutenant Otha L. Grisham, 21, from San Marcos, Texas, was eating breakfast in the officers’ wardroom of LST 724 when he heard the sound of a plane and the ship’s anti-aircraft gunners opening fire. Told to ‘stay put’ and ‘not get in the way’, he continued with his meal. ‘Suddenly,’ recalled Grisham, ‘the ship absorbed a rattling crash, but there was no explosion. It was at midship on the port side, and we rushed to the outside passageway. There sat part of a Jap airplane engine, complete with body parts from the pilot. Our ship’s gunners had shot him down before he could do serious damage to his target.’

The other two vessels were not so lucky. Looking back, Grisham could see LST 884 and the USS Hinsdale burning. As both vessels contained men from the same two Marine units on LST 724, Grisham and his colleagues ‘lobbied for slowing (or stopping) to assist our buddies’. But the ship’s captain refused, and they watched helplessly as survivors jumped overboard to avoid the flames. Their rescue would take many hours and, in total, more lives were lost in these attacks – forty-one – than in the landings proper. ‘Who said it was “safer”’, commented Grisham, ‘to be in Reserve?’27

The amphibious operation to capture Okinawa – code-named Iceberg – was the largest of the Pacific War and the greatest air–land–sea battle in history. Admittedly fewer troops (60,000) were landed on L-Day than had, for example, been put ashore on D-Day in Sicily in 1943 (180,000) and Normandy in 1944 (100,000).28 But the overall scale of Iceberg was arguably greater than both because of the number of naval assets involved, and the distances they had to cover. ‘This is,’ wrote one awestruck participant,

the largest open-seas armada in history. Seven divisions and the whole Pacific Fleet. 1,457 ships and half a million men. Think about this. All those ships and men have to arrive together at the right time and place thousands of miles from the USA. Remarkable logistics. The seven divisions all come from different places and all are on ships. An awesome sight. Then there were the warships: [aircraft] carriers, battleships, cruisers and lots of destroyers. There were also some forty submarines that had been in the operation and had transported the underwater personnel who had worked on the barriers [at the beaches]. I am sure the public did not realise the size of the Okinawa operation. In some ways it was bigger than D-Day.29

Either way it was an astonishing logistical feat. For the assault echelon alone, more than 183,000 troops and 747,000 tons of cargo were loaded onto 430 assault transports and landing ships at eleven different ports, from Seattle to Leyte in the Philippines. The closest Pacific base to Okinawa was at Ulithi, five days’ sailing at ten knots. Yet the bulk of the resupply would come from the West Coast of the United States, a distance of 6,250 nautical miles, or twenty-six days’ sailing.30

Most of the 540,000 Allied servicemen – navy, air and army – who fought in the campaign were American. They included the naval personnel of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance’s US 5th Fleet, the most powerful in history with more than twenty fast aircraft carriers, ten battleships and 1,200 aircraft. Yet a small but significant portion of the 5th Fleet’s sea and air assets were British and Commonwealth in the form of Task Force 57 – otherwise known as the British Pacific Fleet – which comprised two battleships, four fleet carriers, five cruisers (one from New Zealand), eleven destroyers (two from Australia) and 220 aircraft. It was the Royal Navy’s most formidable strike force of the war.31

The campaign would last for eighty-three blood-soaked days as the fighting plumbed depths of savagery that was as bad as anything perpetrated by the Germans and Russians on the Eastern Front. It is a brutal, heart-rending story – made a little more bearable by the many instances of extraordinary heroism and self-sacrifice on both sides – and one best told from multiple perspectives: from the cramped cockpit of a kamikaze plane, the claustrophobic gun turret of a warship under attack, and a half-submerged foxhole amidst the squalor and battle detritus on Sugar Loaf Hill. The narrative shifts from the lofty perch of generals and presidents, to the more humble experience of ordinary servicemen, their families and the Okinawan civilians who were caught so tragically between the warring parties. But first we must go back to the beginning: to 26 July 1944, when the US president met his senior Pacific commanders in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, to decide on the best strategy to defeat Japan.

* The day of landing was designated ‘Love Day’ to avoid confusion with Iwo Jima’s ‘Dog Day’.

† Despite being hit by two 550-pound bombs, which caused catastrophic damage and killed and wounded almost half its crew of 2,600 men, the 872-foot Essex-class carrier was towed back to Brooklyn Navy Yard, via Ulithi and the Panama Canal, where she was repaired.

‡ Literally ‘divine wind’, a form of suicide attack in which the pilot used his plane as a flying bomb. The first successful attack was in October 1942 when a crippled Japanese torpedo bomber deliberately flew into the destroyer USS Smith, killing twenty-eight and wounding twenty-three. But it was not until autumn 1944 that the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Special Attack Corps was formed in the Philippines. During the Okinawa campaign, kamikaze would launch more than 2,000 sorties.

1

‘Where’s Douglas?’

The heavy cruiser USS Baltimore was greeted by an immense crowd of cheering Hawaiians as it docked at Pearl Harbor at 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday 26 July 1944. It was carrying President Franklin D. Roosevelt who, despite a recent illness and the start of what would be his third successful re-election campaign, had come to the headquarters of the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet with just a handful of close advisors to discuss future strategy.1

The first man to greet the wheelchair-bound president* was Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, 59, the Texan-born commander of US forces in the Pacific Ocean Area whose quiet but determined leadership had avenged early American setbacks with a string of victories at sea and on land. Striding up the gangplank at the head of a group of senior officers, Nimitz shook Roosevelt warmly by the hand. The president’s response: ‘Where’s Douglas?’

He was referring to 64-year-old General Douglas MacArthur, the colourful and opinionated Supreme Allied Commander in the South-west Pacific Area (SWPA) who had been controversially awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor – the US military’s highest award for valour – ‘for conspicuous leadership’ during the failed campaign to defend the Philippines from Japanese attack in early 1942. Some had even accused MacArthur of abandoning his command by leaving the island fortress of Corregidor in Manila Bay before it fell in May with the loss of 11,000 US and Filipino troops. In truth, Roosevelt had ordered MacArthur to leave and, ever since, the general had worked tirelessly to redeem his reputation. Having secured Australia, he went on the offensive, capturing vast swathes of territory in New Guinea and the Admiralty Islands. His aim in coming to Hawaii was to convince the president that the Philippines – a country he had vowed to liberate – should be the next major objective.

Arriving by plane, MacArthur realised he was late and urged the police motorcyclists escorting his open-topped car to get him to the docks as quickly as possible. They arrived, sirens screaming, as the presidential party was disembarking. ‘Hello Doug,’ said Roosevelt. ‘What are you doing with that leather jacket on? It’s darn hot today.’

‘Well,’ MacArthur replied, ‘I’ve just landed from Australia. It’s pretty cold there.’2

In the strategy sessions that followed in a big room filled with maps of the Pacific, Nimitz spoke first. His plan – initiated by his boss Admiral Ernest J. King, the commander-in-chief, US Fleet and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – was to bypass the Philippines by launching the next major offensive against Formosa and then the Japanese home islands. Indeed this option was also the preference of the other Joint Chiefs – generals of the army George C. Marshall (US Army) and Henry H. (‘Hap’) Arnold (US Army Air Force) – who both felt it offered the quickest route to defeat Japan. Nimitz, as it happened, was not convinced the plan would work, and preferred to take the Western Caroline Islands first, before invading the central Philippines and Iwo Jima. But loyal to a fault, he argued for his superior’s plan as if it were his own.

MacArthur responded with a masterly presentation, delivered without notes, arguing that the main Philippine island of Luzon was more important than Formosa because with it went control of the South China Sea and Japan’s sea communications to its southern possessions. Whereas bypassing Luzon would expose US forces on Formosa and elsewhere to devastating attacks from Japanese bombers stationed there. Nimitz agreed with this point and, when questioned by Roosevelt, said he could support either operation. So a compromise was agreed: the Philippines would be recovered with the forces available in the western Pacific and Formosa could wait. MacArthur was delighted. The president, he wrote, had remained ‘entirely neutral’ while Nimitz had shown a ‘fine sense of fair play’.3

During his trip the president was invited to lunch at Nimitz’s official residence at Makalapa Hill. But as the house, in the opinion of the secret service, was not up to scratch, a US Naval Construction Battalion of 500 ‘Seabees’ was sent to repaint it, refurbish the bathrooms and even build a new road behind the house so that Roosevelt could be moved from the car to his wheelchair in private. None of the many generals and flag officers also in attendance – one counted 136 stars on the collars of the guests – were any the wiser as they sat down to martini cocktails and a main course of mahimahi, a delicious local fish.4

Given the seat of honour on Roosevelt’s right was Lieutenant General Simon B. Buckner, recently appointed commander of the US Tenth Army, the formation slated to carry out the invasion of Formosa. The president, noted Buckner in his diary, ‘talked cheerfully & made everyone feel relaxed & at home’. He also ‘looked well but his hand shook a little when he raised his cocktail glass’.5> MacArthur, already back in Australia, was far more pessimistic about the president’s health. ‘He is just a shell of the man I knew,’ he told his wife Jean. ‘In six months he will be in his grave.’6

The practical effect of Roosevelt’s visit to Pearl Harbor was to leave the army and navy pursuing joint but separate strategies: MacArthur would continue his advance up through the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies; while Nimitz edged closer to Formosa via the central Pacific, the first step being the capture of Peleliu in the Palau Islands which was finally secured in late November 1944 by the 1st Marine Division and, latterly, the army’s 81st Division, after a vicious two-month campaign that was made immeasurably harder by the formidable Japanese defensive system of caves and underground tunnels.†

By then, much had changed. From 11 to 16 September 1944, Roosevelt, British prime minister Winston Churchill and their combined chiefs of staff met at Quebec for the Octagon Conference where they agreed, among other things, that Britain would become a full partner in the war against Japan after the defeat of Germany. Churchill’s preference was for an advance across the Bay of Bengal and an operation to recover Singapore and the Malay Peninsula, lost in such ignominious circumstances in early 1942. Roosevelt disagreed. The Americans, he said, had been very successful at ‘island-hopping’ in the Pacific, and bypassing strong Japanese garrisons like Singapore which could be mopped up later. But he was prepared to accept Churchill’s offer of naval support in the central Pacific, overruling Admiral King’s unwillingness to share victory ‘with an eleventh-hour entry’.7

Happy with this concession, Churchill and his chiefs of staff let the Americans decide the optimum route of advance in the Pacific. On 15 September, with the Octagon Conference still in progress, the Joint Chiefs authorised MacArthur to bring forward his operation to capture the Philippine island of Leyte from 20 December to 20 October. But there was still an assumption that Nimitz would launch Operation Causeway – the invasion of Formosa – once the Philippines were secured. That, however, was about to change.

On 16 September, sensing an opportunity to ditch the Formosa operation in favour of a move directly north from the Philippines to the Ryukyu and Bonin islands, and from there to Japan, Nimitz asked his senior army commanders for their opinion. Lieutenant General Robert C. Richardson Jr, commanding US Army Forces in the Pacific Ocean Area, was firmly in agreement. Regarding the occupation of Formosa as a costly diversion, he argued instead for a dual advance along the Luzon–Ryukyus and Marianas–Bonins axes. This would allow MacArthur to seize the island of Luzon after Leyte, and provide air and naval bases in the Philippines to block enemy shipping lanes and neutralise Formosa. But only the next step – possession of the Ryukyu chain of islands, extending 700 miles south of the Japanese home islands, and the Bonins further to the east – would enable extensive air operations against the main islands of Kyushu and Honshu. These, in turn, would prepare the ground for amphibious landings.

Richardson was backed up by Lieutenant General Millard F. Harmon, commanding US Army Air Forces, who pointed out that the acquisition of air bases could be achieved with far less cost in men and materiel in the Ryukus than in Formosa. The final nail in Causeway’s coffin was provided by Lieutenant General Buckner who pointed out that his Tenth Army lacked the supporting and service troops for such a large-scale operation.8

Nimitz repeated these arguments to Admiral King when they met in San Francisco on 29 September. The alternative to Causeway, said Nimitz, was to keep pressure on the Japanese by taking, in turn, Luzon, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Formosa, meanwhile, could be kept in check by a series of air strikes from carriers. Why Iwo Jima? asked King. Because, explained Nimitz, it would allow fighter protection for the huge B-29 bombing raids on the Japanese home islands that were planned for 1945.9

Convinced by Nimitz, King proposed to his fellow Joint Chiefs on 2 October that, because of insufficient resources in the Pacific Ocean Area and the unwillingness of the War Department to make additional resources available until after the defeat of Germany, operations against Luzon, Iwo Jima and Okinawa should precede the seizure of Formosa. They concurred and, a day later, Nimitz was ordered by the Joint Chiefs to ‘occupy one or more positions’ in the Ryukyu Islands, beginning on 1 March 1945. The purpose was to establish bases from which to attack ‘the main islands of Japan and their sea approaches’ with air and naval forces; support further operations in regions bordering the East China Sea; and sever air and sea communications between Japan’s home islands and its possessions to the south and west. But the first step was to ‘capture, occupy, defend and develop Okinawa Island’.10

* In 1921, at the age of 39, Roosevelt contracted polio, lost the use of both legs and had been partially confined to a wheelchair ever since. In public he used leg braces to give the appearance of mobility.

† Only a handful of the 10,700 Japanese defenders laid down their arms; the rest fought to the death. US casualties were 1,800 killed and 7,000 wounded.

2

Operation Iceberg

‘Directive received deferring our project,’ noted Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr in his diary on 4 October 1944. He added: ‘Took physical exam. Blood pressure 120/76. Dr said he could find nothing wrong except danger from Japs.’1

The forced humour masked Buckner’s understandable nervousness about what lay ahead: not only his first test as a field commander, but in a battle of any kind. It may not have helped that he was the son of a famous Confederate general – named after the Venezuelan soldier and statesman Simón Bolívar, then at the height of his fame as the ‘Liberator’ of South America – who, after a shaky start, won laurels at the battles of Perryville and Chickamauga. He became, as it happened, both the first Confederate commander to surrender an army, and also the last. He was 63 when his son Simon Bolivar Jr was born in Munfordville, Kentucky in 1886. A year later, standing as a Democrat, Buckner Sr became the state’s thirtieth governor.