thedrifter
06-23-05, 06:31 AM
06.21.2005
Six Decades Later, Okinawa Recalled
By Nathaniel R. Helms
On June 21, 1945, Japanese resistance ended on the Pacific Island of Okinawa after one of the longest and bloodiest battles of World War II.
The Americans still stationed there 60 years after the battle ended celebrated their victory last Friday. Marine Lt. Gen. Robert Blackman, commander of U.S. Marine forces in Japan, presided over a quiet memorial ceremony attended largely by American World War II veterans and relatives. They gathered to commemorate the loss of more than 200,000 lives, including 12,520 Americans, 94,136 Japanese troops, and about one-quarter of Okinawa's prewar population of about 366,000 civilians who for centuries had peacefully farmed the rocky soil and sloping hills of the small island next to Japan.
An old lady who was a young woman in 1945 told a reporter from the Taipei Times how she unsuccessfully tried to kill herself with a dud Japanese Army grenade because she and her friends were convinced the Americans would rape and murder them if captured during the fight.
"At one place, we sat together and hit the grenade on the ground, but it did not explode," Sumie Oshiro recalled of her search for death after Japanese soldiers told she and her friends to kill themselves rather than be taken captive. "We tried to kill ourselves many times, trying to explode the grenade we were given from the Japanese army."
Death was everywhere during the 82-day battle to capture the launching point for the American's planned invasion of the home islands of Japan. The Japanese called the American invasion the "typhoon of steel."
Offshore, the U.S. Navy sustained the largest loss of ships in its history with 36 sunk and 368 damaged, including six fleet carriers. The Navy also sustained the largest loss of life in a single battle ever with almost 5,000 killed and an equal number wounded.
One saga in the Navy's terrible trial deserves special recognition, the survival of the destroyer USS Laffey, a brand-new ship built in Bath, Maine, and commissioned on Feb. 8, 1944 under the command of Commander Frederick Julian Becton. After participating in the June 6, 1944, Normandy invasion, the Laffey was transferred to the Pacific Theater where she joined the 7th Fleet at Leyte Gulf in the Philippine Islands. It was there that her gallant crew had its first brush with the Kamikaze Suicide Corps when Japanese pilots intent on crashing their planes into U.S. Navy ships struck repeatedly throughout December 1944. Luckily, the Laffey escaped unscathed.
On Apr. 1, 1945, the first day of the battle for Okinawa, the Laffey took up station to the north of the island at radar picket station number one about 35 miles north of the island to give advance warning of the approach of enemy aircraft or ships. It was there that her luck ran out.
The Laffey was patrolling as usual on Apr. 16th when she underwent a concentrated attack by a veritable flock of Japanese suicide planes. The attack commenced about 0827 when four "Vals" (single-engine Japanese Aichi D3A naval dive bomber with a 2-man crew) attacked. The Laffey shot down three and a nearby ship brought down the fourth one just before three more attacked. The seventh plane crashed into the Laffey amidships and started a huge fire that marked her as a cripple to the attacking Japanese.
Two more planes then attacked in quick succession from astern and crashed into the five-inch twin mount. The first one carried a bomb that exploded on deck. The second one dropped its bomb on deck before crashing into the after 5-inch gun mount. Shortly thereafter, two more planes came in on the port quarter, crashing into the deckhouse just forward of the crippled after five-inch mount. This sent a flood of gasoline into the two compartments below the after crew's head (bathroom) and with the fire that was already raging in the after crew's compartment just aft of the five-inch mount number three. She now had fires going in all of the after three living spaces, besides a big fire topside in the vicinity of the number four 40-mm. antiaircraft gun mount. Then more planes attacked, jamming the rudder and causing more damage with near misses.
In an action had lasted an hour and 20 minutes, the Laffey was attacked by 22 planes, nine of which she shot down unassisted. Eight planes had struck the ship. In the end the Laffey had only four of its original eleven 20-mm. mounts still in commission and only eight of the original 12 barrels on its 40-mm. In addition, her after five-inch mount was completely destroyed. Yet below decks her engines were still intact.
When the accounting was concluded, it was discovered the Laffey had lost 33 men killed or missing and 60 others wounded. Amazingly, the ship survived and is now a war memorial at Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum in Mount Pleasant, S.C.
Meanwhile, on Okinawa proper, the U.S. Army would incur its greatest losses in any campaign against the Japanese. The landing force was called the 10th Army and commanded by Lt. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., who graduated from West Point in 1908. Buckner was killed on 19 June, observing the 8th Marines in action on the drive to the south.
The 10th Army was initially made up of 183,000 Army, Navy, and Marine Corps personnel. During those eighty-two days of combat the Tenth would lose 7,613 men killed and over 30,000 wounded. In addition, the largest numbers of U.S. combat fatigue cases ever recorded would occur on Okinawa.
The Battle of Okinawa would generate many other "firsts" in American military history. The two highest-ranking officers to die during the Second World War were the commanders on Okinawa, Gen. Mitsuri Ushijima, the Japanese 32nd Army commander, and General Buckner. Another first occurred when Buckner was replaced by Gen. Roy Geiger, a Marine aviator who assumed temporary command until Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell arrived from Chine to take command. It was the first and only time in American military history that a Marine would command a fighting force as large as a field army.
continued.............
Six Decades Later, Okinawa Recalled
By Nathaniel R. Helms
On June 21, 1945, Japanese resistance ended on the Pacific Island of Okinawa after one of the longest and bloodiest battles of World War II.
The Americans still stationed there 60 years after the battle ended celebrated their victory last Friday. Marine Lt. Gen. Robert Blackman, commander of U.S. Marine forces in Japan, presided over a quiet memorial ceremony attended largely by American World War II veterans and relatives. They gathered to commemorate the loss of more than 200,000 lives, including 12,520 Americans, 94,136 Japanese troops, and about one-quarter of Okinawa's prewar population of about 366,000 civilians who for centuries had peacefully farmed the rocky soil and sloping hills of the small island next to Japan.
An old lady who was a young woman in 1945 told a reporter from the Taipei Times how she unsuccessfully tried to kill herself with a dud Japanese Army grenade because she and her friends were convinced the Americans would rape and murder them if captured during the fight.
"At one place, we sat together and hit the grenade on the ground, but it did not explode," Sumie Oshiro recalled of her search for death after Japanese soldiers told she and her friends to kill themselves rather than be taken captive. "We tried to kill ourselves many times, trying to explode the grenade we were given from the Japanese army."
Death was everywhere during the 82-day battle to capture the launching point for the American's planned invasion of the home islands of Japan. The Japanese called the American invasion the "typhoon of steel."
Offshore, the U.S. Navy sustained the largest loss of ships in its history with 36 sunk and 368 damaged, including six fleet carriers. The Navy also sustained the largest loss of life in a single battle ever with almost 5,000 killed and an equal number wounded.
One saga in the Navy's terrible trial deserves special recognition, the survival of the destroyer USS Laffey, a brand-new ship built in Bath, Maine, and commissioned on Feb. 8, 1944 under the command of Commander Frederick Julian Becton. After participating in the June 6, 1944, Normandy invasion, the Laffey was transferred to the Pacific Theater where she joined the 7th Fleet at Leyte Gulf in the Philippine Islands. It was there that her gallant crew had its first brush with the Kamikaze Suicide Corps when Japanese pilots intent on crashing their planes into U.S. Navy ships struck repeatedly throughout December 1944. Luckily, the Laffey escaped unscathed.
On Apr. 1, 1945, the first day of the battle for Okinawa, the Laffey took up station to the north of the island at radar picket station number one about 35 miles north of the island to give advance warning of the approach of enemy aircraft or ships. It was there that her luck ran out.
The Laffey was patrolling as usual on Apr. 16th when she underwent a concentrated attack by a veritable flock of Japanese suicide planes. The attack commenced about 0827 when four "Vals" (single-engine Japanese Aichi D3A naval dive bomber with a 2-man crew) attacked. The Laffey shot down three and a nearby ship brought down the fourth one just before three more attacked. The seventh plane crashed into the Laffey amidships and started a huge fire that marked her as a cripple to the attacking Japanese.
Two more planes then attacked in quick succession from astern and crashed into the five-inch twin mount. The first one carried a bomb that exploded on deck. The second one dropped its bomb on deck before crashing into the after 5-inch gun mount. Shortly thereafter, two more planes came in on the port quarter, crashing into the deckhouse just forward of the crippled after five-inch mount. This sent a flood of gasoline into the two compartments below the after crew's head (bathroom) and with the fire that was already raging in the after crew's compartment just aft of the five-inch mount number three. She now had fires going in all of the after three living spaces, besides a big fire topside in the vicinity of the number four 40-mm. antiaircraft gun mount. Then more planes attacked, jamming the rudder and causing more damage with near misses.
In an action had lasted an hour and 20 minutes, the Laffey was attacked by 22 planes, nine of which she shot down unassisted. Eight planes had struck the ship. In the end the Laffey had only four of its original eleven 20-mm. mounts still in commission and only eight of the original 12 barrels on its 40-mm. In addition, her after five-inch mount was completely destroyed. Yet below decks her engines were still intact.
When the accounting was concluded, it was discovered the Laffey had lost 33 men killed or missing and 60 others wounded. Amazingly, the ship survived and is now a war memorial at Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum in Mount Pleasant, S.C.
Meanwhile, on Okinawa proper, the U.S. Army would incur its greatest losses in any campaign against the Japanese. The landing force was called the 10th Army and commanded by Lt. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., who graduated from West Point in 1908. Buckner was killed on 19 June, observing the 8th Marines in action on the drive to the south.
The 10th Army was initially made up of 183,000 Army, Navy, and Marine Corps personnel. During those eighty-two days of combat the Tenth would lose 7,613 men killed and over 30,000 wounded. In addition, the largest numbers of U.S. combat fatigue cases ever recorded would occur on Okinawa.
The Battle of Okinawa would generate many other "firsts" in American military history. The two highest-ranking officers to die during the Second World War were the commanders on Okinawa, Gen. Mitsuri Ushijima, the Japanese 32nd Army commander, and General Buckner. Another first occurred when Buckner was replaced by Gen. Roy Geiger, a Marine aviator who assumed temporary command until Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell arrived from Chine to take command. It was the first and only time in American military history that a Marine would command a fighting force as large as a field army.
continued.............