Part 14 (1/2)

THE U.S. U.S. ARMED FORCES' ARMED FORCES' Guide to the Pacific Guide to the Pacific briefed visitors to the Ryukyus, of which Okinawa is the main island, with unfailing facetiousness: ”Those who wish a good memento of a stay in briefed visitors to the Ryukyus, of which Okinawa is the main island, with unfailing facetiousness: ”Those who wish a good memento of a stay in Nansei Shoto Nansei Shoto should get a piece of the lacquerware for which the islanders are famous.” In the spring of 1945 some 12,000 Americans and up to 150,000 j.a.panese found death rather than porcelain amid Okinawa's sixty-mile length of fields and mountains, or in the waters offsh.o.r.e. The island was home to 450,000 people, who possessed j.a.panese nationality while remaining culturally distinct. Before an invasion of j.a.pan's main islands could be attempted, it was evident to both sides that this southern outpost was likely to be contested. Its airfields, rather more than midway between Luzon and Kyushu, would have to be denied to the j.a.panese, secured by the Americans. At the time Operation Iceberg was launched in the spring of 1945, it was perceived in Was.h.i.+ngton only as a preliminary to the decisive battle that must follow, for j.a.pan's home islands. Likewise in Tokyo, the defence of Okinawa was deemed vital to j.a.pan's strategy for achieving a negotiated peace. If the U.S. could be made to pay dearly enough for winning a single offsh.o.r.e island, reasoned the nation's leaders and indeed its emperor, Was.h.i.+ngton would conclude that the price of invading Kyushu and Honshu was too great to be borne. They were correct in their a.n.a.lysis, but utterly deluded about its implications. should get a piece of the lacquerware for which the islanders are famous.” In the spring of 1945 some 12,000 Americans and up to 150,000 j.a.panese found death rather than porcelain amid Okinawa's sixty-mile length of fields and mountains, or in the waters offsh.o.r.e. The island was home to 450,000 people, who possessed j.a.panese nationality while remaining culturally distinct. Before an invasion of j.a.pan's main islands could be attempted, it was evident to both sides that this southern outpost was likely to be contested. Its airfields, rather more than midway between Luzon and Kyushu, would have to be denied to the j.a.panese, secured by the Americans. At the time Operation Iceberg was launched in the spring of 1945, it was perceived in Was.h.i.+ngton only as a preliminary to the decisive battle that must follow, for j.a.pan's home islands. Likewise in Tokyo, the defence of Okinawa was deemed vital to j.a.pan's strategy for achieving a negotiated peace. If the U.S. could be made to pay dearly enough for winning a single offsh.o.r.e island, reasoned the nation's leaders and indeed its emperor, Was.h.i.+ngton would conclude that the price of invading Kyushu and Honshu was too great to be borne. They were correct in their a.n.a.lysis, but utterly deluded about its implications.

Twenty-five-year-old Captain Kouichi Ito was the son of a naval officer, brought up at the great Yokosuka naval base. Ito pa.s.sionately wanted to be a warrior. He was embarra.s.sed to find himself disqualified from service as a pilot or sailor, because he was p.r.o.ne to both air-and seasickness. Instead, he became a soldier, and pa.s.sed out near the top of his 1940 military academy cla.s.s. Anticlimax followed, however. For almost four years this fiercely ambitious young man found himself fulfilling garrison duties in Manchuria. While j.a.panese legions stormed triumphantly across Asia and locked themselves in combat with the Americans and British, Ito sat in his quarters reading endless books on the history of conflict-above all, about the First World War. Not until August 1944 did his unit, the 32nd Infantry, at last sail for an undisclosed destination. Only on their arrival did he and his comrades discover that they had joined the garrison of Okinawa.

The regiment, composed mostly of Hokkaidans, found the island strange and somewhat exotic, with its fields of sugarcane, unknown back home, its people's unfamiliar dialect. Okinawa is celebrated for a powerful local rice brew, awamori awamori, which proved most acceptable to tens of thousands of soldiers who now began to fortify themselves there. Likewise, when cigarette rations ran short, it proved useful that Okinawan farmers grew illegal tobacco. Month after month the garrison laboured, enlarging and exploiting a great network of natural caves, preparing slit trenches and bunkers. The work was done with their bare hands. ”We had no machines,” said Kouichi Ito laconically. He himself, having walked the length of the coast, was sure that no invader would land on his regiment's rocky coastal sector in the south-west; and that entrenching this wasted precious resources. Orders were orders, however.

By the spring of 1945, Ito had become a battalion commander. His unit was better equipped than most of those deployed on Okinawa, having brought a full inventory of weapons from Manchuria. There was still some debate in command messes about whether the Americans would a.s.sault their island or Formosa, further south, but the 77,000 defenders recognised the likelihood that they would fight a great battle. The young officer Ito understood that the war was going badly: ”After Saipan fell, I realised that we could lose.” His regiment had left behind in Manchuria one-third of its complement of Hokkaidans. Like other units, it was now made up to strength with locally recruited Okinawans, who inspired little confidence, but added 20,000 unwilling conscripts to the garrison's strength. Ito took comfort from his father's judgement. The old sailor had seen something of Americans during convoy escort service in World War I, and a.s.serted scornfully, ”They have no idea of discipline.” His son said: ”I understood that the U.S. possessed enormous industrial resources, but I did not believe that in combat their soldiers could match the resolution of our men.” After five years as a mere spectator of the war, the ambitious young warrior was eager to fight: ”It seemed good to have a chance to take part in a real showdown with the enemy.”

At last came a March morning when they awoke to behold on the sea before them a squadron of American wars.h.i.+ps, which soon began to bombard their positions. ”Well, now we know,” they said to each other. ”It's us.” Through the hours and days which followed, they sat pa.s.sive in their caves while the earth shook with relentless concussions. The Americans were sh.e.l.ling everywhere, to sustain uncertainty about their intended landing place. As the j.a.panese grew accustomed to the barrage, Ito periodically emerged from his headquarters bunker into the dust-clouded daylight. Having never before been under fire, he wanted to test himself. When his unit joined battle, he was determined not to be seen to flinch. He was pleased with his own resolution, and waited confidently for the Americans to venture ash.o.r.e.

AFTER D-D D-DAY in Normandy, American landings on Okinawa represented the greatest amphibious operation of the war. More than 1,200 vessels transported 170,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines of Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner's Tenth Army, with 120,000 more providing logistics and technical support. The island's seizure was to be a navy-run operation, under Nimitz's auspices, though soldiers were playing a substantial role. Four divisions would make the initial a.s.sault, with three more in reserve. Vice-Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner's 5th Amphibious Force was supported by Admiral Raymond Spruance's Fifth Fleet, mustering more than forty carriers, eighteen battles.h.i.+ps and almost two hundred destroyers. ”We bombarded all day long in Normandy, American landings on Okinawa represented the greatest amphibious operation of the war. More than 1,200 vessels transported 170,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines of Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner's Tenth Army, with 120,000 more providing logistics and technical support. The island's seizure was to be a navy-run operation, under Nimitz's auspices, though soldiers were playing a substantial role. Four divisions would make the initial a.s.sault, with three more in reserve. Vice-Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner's 5th Amphibious Force was supported by Admiral Raymond Spruance's Fifth Fleet, mustering more than forty carriers, eighteen battles.h.i.+ps and almost two hundred destroyers. ”We bombarded all day long714,” wrote James Hutchinson of the battles.h.i.+p Colorado Colorado on 31 March. ”We fired the sixteen-inch main battery about every three or four minutes all that time. It really gets to be a strain on a person's nerves after a while.” Meanwhile, American units set about seizing several small offsh.o.r.e islands, preliminaries to the main a.s.sault. on 31 March. ”We fired the sixteen-inch main battery about every three or four minutes all that time. It really gets to be a strain on a person's nerves after a while.” Meanwhile, American units set about seizing several small offsh.o.r.e islands, preliminaries to the main a.s.sault.

On one of these, Tokas.h.i.+ki, twenty-two-year-old Lt. Yos.h.i.+hiro Minamoto waited with his s.h.i.+nyo suicide-boat unit. Minamoto was one of 2,200 cadets who graduated from Zama military academy in July 1944. As an engineer, he had completed three years' training-much more than American and British officers received at that time. Yet the most curious aspect of his ceremonial pa.s.sing-out parade was the distribution of a.s.signments which followed. Many newly minted lieutenants were promptly ticketed not merely for the possibility of death, but for its certainty. Some 450 were dispatched to train as kamikaze aircrew. Minamoto was among a further eighty posted to a seaborne special operations unit, whose mission was also explicitly suicidal. They were to man small boats laden with explosives, deployed to meet American amphibious landings. Minamoto, like his comrades, claimed to be untroubled: ”At that time there was no choice.” Suicide was now the pervasive theme among j.a.pan's armed forces.

Unblooded in combat, Minamoto was imbued with an instinctive condescension towards his foe, which did not long survive his Okinawa experience: ”The naval bombardment was terrifying. It seemed to go on and on. The sound of those sh.e.l.ls in flight frightened me very much.” Yet the invaders' demonstration of naval and air power made little physical impact on the defenders, sheltering underground. Minamoto emerged from his cave on 25 March to a scene of devastation-”Trees were torn apart, the ground blackened, all our quarters flattened along with the local civilian houses.” However, the suicide boats which he commanded were safe in laboriously dug bunkers along the sh.o.r.eline. Glory and death seemed at hand for the two officers and thirty NCOs of his company, designated to pilot their explosive-laden craft against American s.h.i.+ps.

Okinawa, AprilMay 1945 1945

But the crews on Tokas.h.i.+ki and its neighbouring islands never attacked. They were fifteen miles offsh.o.r.e, and U.S. escorts protected every route to the invasion armada. The j.a.panese had expected the Americans to anchor further south, allowing the suicide crews to strike them from the rear, on their seaward side. Now, instead, the vexed young commanding officer sought radio guidance from headquarters at Shanri Castle on the mainland, which was swiftly forthcoming: ”Scuttle your craft.” The order provoked a moment of hysteria among the crews. Many men burst into tears, denouncing their commanders: ”Surely we haven't been through all this, to quit now!” The order was baffling, but was obeyed. Minamoto kept two boats intact, in case there was a new opportunity to launch them. The rest, almost a hundred craft scattered among three islands, were sunk in shallow water. Only a few of those on Okinawa itself were launched, to small effect.

On the morning of 27 March, American troops landed on Tokas.h.i.+ki. The suicide crews now lacked means to resist the invaders beyond swords, pistols and a few grenades. Minamoto ordered the c.o.xswains to withdraw immediately to the north end of the island, to preserve them for future actions. He himself led the maintenance crews, around a hundred strong, in a brief defensive action. The Americans made short work of them. After losing nine dead in the first half-hour, Minamoto ordered his survivors to retreat northwards. He rejected the notion of self-immolation: ”I felt that I wanted to fight to the death with the enemy, rather than merely bring death on myself.” In the event, he did neither. Minamoto became a pa.s.sive spectator of the first of the ghastly human tragedies which disfigured the Okinawa campaign.

Around nine hundred civilian farmers and families inhabited Tokas.h.i.+ki. As Minamoto and his men withdrew northwards into a jumble of rocks and caves, villagers left behind began to use grenades to kill themselves. Today, a revisionist movement among j.a.panese historians and nationalists seeks to argue that such civilian suicides were spontaneous acts, neither ordered nor condoned by the military. This is impossible to accept. Munitions had been supplied to many inhabitants, though it remains conjectural what orders accompanied them. On 28 March 1945 and in the days that followed, on Tokas.h.i.+ki 394 men, women and children immolated themselves. ”Their actions reflected the spirit of the time,” said Minamoto. ”It was the consequence of all the reports about the fate of j.a.panese civilians on Saipan. Those islanders should not have been so hard on themselves. It wasn't as if the invaders were Chinese or Russians.” This, however, was a sentiment of 2005 rather than of 1945. By a bleak irony, Minamoto and his fellow suicide crewmen survived in hiding, while more than a third of the civilians on Tokas.h.i.+ki perished. To the Americans, this little action represented only a skirmish, a minor objective seized at negligible cost. Yet for the j.a.panese, it was a foretaste of much worse to follow.

AT DAWN on 1 April, Sunday, code-named ”Love Day,” thousands of men of the two Marine and two army divisions which were to lead the a.s.sault on Okinawa crowded the decks of their s.h.i.+ps, listening to distant automatic fire. Information about the landing beaches had been obtained from an eighty-year-old conchologist named Ditlev D. Thaanum, who collected sh.e.l.ls there before the war, and possessed a collection of photographs. An almost equally elderly colleague of Thaanum named Daniel Boone Langford was flown to the Pacific to share his expertise with Turner's 5th Amphibious Force. Langford described, for instance, the deadly on 1 April, Sunday, code-named ”Love Day,” thousands of men of the two Marine and two army divisions which were to lead the a.s.sault on Okinawa crowded the decks of their s.h.i.+ps, listening to distant automatic fire. Information about the landing beaches had been obtained from an eighty-year-old conchologist named Ditlev D. Thaanum, who collected sh.e.l.ls there before the war, and possessed a collection of photographs. An almost equally elderly colleague of Thaanum named Daniel Boone Langford was flown to the Pacific to share his expertise with Turner's 5th Amphibious Force. Langford described, for instance, the deadly habu habu snakes on the island. Every soldier and Marine was briefed about them, though there was no subsequent record of any man seeing one. When the U.S. armada began the bombardment of Okinawa in the days immediately preceding the landing, navy frogmen cleared debris and obstacles from the beaches under the eyes of j.a.panese outposts. The enemy made no attempt to intervene. snakes on the island. Every soldier and Marine was briefed about them, though there was no subsequent record of any man seeing one. When the U.S. armada began the bombardment of Okinawa in the days immediately preceding the landing, navy frogmen cleared debris and obstacles from the beaches under the eyes of j.a.panese outposts. The enemy made no attempt to intervene.

The invaders were to land across a six-mile front on the south-west coast. Wallowing in the big transports, most men antic.i.p.ated the worst. Spotter planes circled above, directing the naval guns. Wariness was essential to their pilots to avoid being caught by sh.e.l.ls, especially from the high-trajectory five-inch destroyer armament. On the s.h.i.+ps a huge cast of spectators, so soon to become actors, saw a sudden burst of light in the sky as a plane was. .h.i.t, then dropped blazing into the sea. ”Everyone expected E Company715 to be literally destroyed,” wrote a 5th Marines corporal, James Johnston. At 0530, the drivers of Lt. Chris Donner's unit went below to warm the engines of their amphibious tractors. The young 1st Marines' forward artillery observer heard a lone, ironic voice singing Rodgers and Hammerstein's ”Oh, What a Beautiful Morning.” Donner descended to the LST's tank deck, and clambered aboard his vehicle, one among hundreds. They launched at 0630, dazzled by the brilliant suns.h.i.+ne after the darkness of the hold, deafened by the roar of aircraft and naval gunfire. Waves broke over the amtracs as they circled offsh.o.r.e, men sitting atop their craft and waving to neighbours with studied gaiety as they waited for the order to land. Sailors peering down from the steep side of a battles.h.i.+p called: ”Give the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds h.e.l.l, Marines!” ”Good luck!” Then the landing craft and tractors turned for the sh.o.r.e in serried ranks, their wakes whitening the water so that from the air it appeared that a host of sea slugs was approaching Okinawa. to be literally destroyed,” wrote a 5th Marines corporal, James Johnston. At 0530, the drivers of Lt. Chris Donner's unit went below to warm the engines of their amphibious tractors. The young 1st Marines' forward artillery observer heard a lone, ironic voice singing Rodgers and Hammerstein's ”Oh, What a Beautiful Morning.” Donner descended to the LST's tank deck, and clambered aboard his vehicle, one among hundreds. They launched at 0630, dazzled by the brilliant suns.h.i.+ne after the darkness of the hold, deafened by the roar of aircraft and naval gunfire. Waves broke over the amtracs as they circled offsh.o.r.e, men sitting atop their craft and waving to neighbours with studied gaiety as they waited for the order to land. Sailors peering down from the steep side of a battles.h.i.+p called: ”Give the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds h.e.l.l, Marines!” ”Good luck!” Then the landing craft and tractors turned for the sh.o.r.e in serried ranks, their wakes whitening the water so that from the air it appeared that a host of sea slugs was approaching Okinawa.

”There was no chatter now,” wrote Donner. ”Each man's face was tight, teeth set. Even above the roar of the amph's motors we began to hear the crackle of small arms...We hit with a jolt that tumbled us in a heap, ground up onto a coral shelf, then onto sand...I led the rush out.” There was no firing in their immediate area, but one squad heard voices from a cavern, and used an interpreter to shout word to come out and surrender. When no response came, Browning-automatic gunners sprayed the mouth. Inside, Marines found the prostrate forms of several civilians: two men, a woman and a three-year-old boy. Only the child was alive, covered with his mother's blood. ”They brought him back to us716,” wrote Chris Donner, ”and Monahan washed the blood off the boy, who had ceased to cry. My team carried him on their shoulders all the rest of the afternoon...So this was Easter Sunday warfare. It sickened me.”

Corporal James Johnston ran up the beach nursing slender expectations for his own future: ”I thought I might get to a pillbox717 and dump some grenades before they got me.” The invaders were disbelieving in the face of their own survival. They encountered only a sh.e.l.l-torn sh.o.r.eline, a handful of dazed or dead peasants, negligible resistance. ”I didn't recognise anything I saw and dump some grenades before they got me.” The invaders were disbelieving in the face of their own survival. They encountered only a sh.e.l.l-torn sh.o.r.eline, a handful of dazed or dead peasants, negligible resistance. ”I didn't recognise anything I saw718,” said Lt. Marius Bressoud of the 3/7th Marines. ”There were no pinned-down troops, no bodies.” The Americans fanned out north and south, seizing two airfields, advancing in hours across miles of ground for which they had expected to fight for days. Admiral Richmond Turner, commanding the amphibious force, signalled Nimitz: ”I may be crazy but it looks like the j.a.panese have quit the war, at least in this sector.” Nimitz snorted back: ”Delete all after 'crazy.'”

Yet through the first week of the invaders' residence ash.o.r.e, Okinawa appeared a deceptively innocent, strikingly beautiful tourist destination. For every American save those who had fought on Saipan, this was a first glimpse of the enemy's land and its people, unlike other battlefields they had experienced. There was no jungle, instead subtropical vegetation. Pines were the commonest trees-Nimitz asked for saplings to be s.h.i.+pped to Guam. There were large, bright, almost tasteless wild raspberries. Every inch of cultivable soil was tilled, hills laboriously terraced. Staff officers amused themselves by shooting pigeons. Units advanced in almost carnival mood, some men riding looted bicycles. One company captured two horses. A Marine broke an ankle falling off one, which in view of subsequent events probably saved his life. Soldiers made j.a.panese flags out of parachute flare silk, shooting holes in them to sell to sailors for $50 apiece.

Small boys emerged from peasant huts to beg matches, imitating the action of striking them. Marine general O. P. Smith was moved by the sight of an elderly Okinawan woman at the seaside, tearing a piece of paper into shreds then allowing the fragments to flutter away into the water. This was a local superst.i.tion: the paper represented a prayer, the force of which was supposed to double each time a fragment turned in the air before its immersion. New Yorker New Yorker correspondent John Lardner was fascinated by the tombs which studded every hillside, the relative tranquillity punctuated by desultory encounters with the enemy: ”The roads were narrow and dusty, the villages poor and dingy, but the green island between them was a fine thing to see. Some ridges were so thickly terraced for planting that it was checkered with rice paddies and green squares of sugarcane. Potatoes, beans, garlic, onions, radishes, grew everywhere. The civilians, who were now feeling easier, were walking along the roads and saluting us.” Lardner met a truck in which five Americans were sitting with a young Okinawan civilian wounded that morning. A good-natured Marine stuck a cigarette between the teenager's lips. After one puff, the j.a.panese shuddered and pulled back. Another man said: ”What do you want to treat a j.a.p correspondent John Lardner was fascinated by the tombs which studded every hillside, the relative tranquillity punctuated by desultory encounters with the enemy: ”The roads were narrow and dusty, the villages poor and dingy, but the green island between them was a fine thing to see. Some ridges were so thickly terraced for planting that it was checkered with rice paddies and green squares of sugarcane. Potatoes, beans, garlic, onions, radishes, grew everywhere. The civilians, who were now feeling easier, were walking along the roads and saluting us.” Lardner met a truck in which five Americans were sitting with a young Okinawan civilian wounded that morning. A good-natured Marine stuck a cigarette between the teenager's lips. After one puff, the j.a.panese shuddered and pulled back. Another man said: ”What do you want to treat a j.a.p719 so good for?” so good for?”

”Why not?” demanded the cigarette donor.

”Well, why don't they send some of them back to tell those other j.a.ps how good we treat them? Then maybe they would treat us good.”

Tenth Army's commander shared Admiral Turner's surprise at the initial j.a.panese lack of resistance. Marines moving north overcame sporadic opposition without much difficulty. General Buckner was fearful that anticlimax might deprive him of the battle he was keenly expectant to fight. He had been at Kiska in the Aleutians ”when the army troops had landed and to their embarra.s.sment had found no j.a.panese,” wrote O. P. Smith scornfully. ”He did not want to be involved720 in another Kiska.” Spruance and Turner had wanted Holland Smith of the Marines to command Okinawa. They were overruled by Nimitz, because Smith had made himself violently unpopular among soldiers by sacking an army divisional commander on Saipan. in another Kiska.” Spruance and Turner had wanted Holland Smith of the Marines to command Okinawa. They were overruled by Nimitz, because Smith had made himself violently unpopular among soldiers by sacking an army divisional commander on Saipan.

The subst.i.tute choice for command, however, inspired less than universal confidence. Simon Bolivar Buckner was fifty-eight, son of a Civil War Confederate general, ”ruddy, heavy-set721, but with considerable spring in his step, snow-white hair and piercing blue eyes. His fetish was physical conditioning.” During the preparations for Okinawa, the general's enthusiasm for PT had cost his staff sprained ankles, some broken arms and collarbones. He had spent the First World War training fliers, and thereafter filled mostly staff appointments. Smith wrote: ”Buckner had surprisingly little troops' duty722. His methods and judgements were somewhat inflexible.” This grudging view was shared by other officers on Okinawa, whose scepticism would deepen in the months that followed.

Nimitz was right, of course, to have dismissed local commanders' initial bubble of euphoria. After a week of cautious advances, army units in the south of the island were suddenly checked in their tracks by artillery and machine-gun fire. They had reached the first of the immensely powerful concentric lines with which the j.a.panese had fortified the southernmost six miles of Okinawa. Gen. Mitsuru Us.h.i.+jima, commanding 32nd Army, charged with defence of the island, allowed himself to be persuaded that he could not stop the Americans on the beaches. Instead, he adopted the plan of his operations officer, Col. Hiromichi Yahara, for ”sleeping tactics.” One force was concentrated on the northern Mobutu Peninsula, where it offered stubborn resistance from 8 to 20 April. The princ.i.p.al j.a.panese positions lay in the south, around the capital, Naha, where Us.h.i.+jima's men had created a chain of fortresses, the so-called Shuri Line. Including local militiamen, 97,000 j.a.panese were deployed there, crowded into one of the narrowest perimeters of the war.

Through more than two months that followed, U.S. soldiers and Marines a.s.saulted Us.h.i.+jima's bunkers and trenches, paying with flesh for every yard they gained. The struggle proved more intense than any which U.S. forces had hitherto experienced in the Pacific. As usual, the j.a.panese had chosen their positions well. They possessed observation points on high ground, hidden machine guns, mines, and defences almost impregnable to frontal attack. Above all, they had guns and plenty of ammunition. The j.a.panese army, often short of fire support, on Okinawa possessed this in abundance. ”The enemy tactic which impressed us723 most deeply was the intensity and effectiveness of artillery,” wrote Marine captain Levi Burcham, ”and the fact that this fire covered not only our front line area but also (an experience new to many) well back into rear areas, quartermaster dumps and the like.” most deeply was the intensity and effectiveness of artillery,” wrote Marine captain Levi Burcham, ”and the fact that this fire covered not only our front line area but also (an experience new to many) well back into rear areas, quartermaster dumps and the like.”

The U.S. XXIV Corps once received724 14,000 incoming j.a.panese sh.e.l.ls in twenty-four hours. The invaders' advantage of numbers counted for almost nothing, where the enemy could concentrate his forces to hold a front nowhere more than three miles wide, the breadth of the island. Buckner perceived no alternative to launching repeated frontal attacks, which resulted in repeated b.l.o.o.d.y failures. As heavy rain set in, tens of thousands of men competed for possession of a few score yards of mud. Sh.e.l.lfire churned human body parts, debris and excrement into a ghastly compound from which the stench drifted far to the rear. These were scenes more familiar to veterans of the First World War than those of the Second. After the first weeks, press accounts of the horrors of Okinawa inspired anger and bitter criticism back home in the United States. It seemed incomprehensible that with Germany collapsing, U.S. power triumphant almost everywhere in the world, young Americans should be suffering such an ordeal. How could it be that all the might of U.S. armies, navies and air forces was being set at naught in such a fas.h.i.+on? 14,000 incoming j.a.panese sh.e.l.ls in twenty-four hours. The invaders' advantage of numbers counted for almost nothing, where the enemy could concentrate his forces to hold a front nowhere more than three miles wide, the breadth of the island. Buckner perceived no alternative to launching repeated frontal attacks, which resulted in repeated b.l.o.o.d.y failures. As heavy rain set in, tens of thousands of men competed for possession of a few score yards of mud. Sh.e.l.lfire churned human body parts, debris and excrement into a ghastly compound from which the stench drifted far to the rear. These were scenes more familiar to veterans of the First World War than those of the Second. After the first weeks, press accounts of the horrors of Okinawa inspired anger and bitter criticism back home in the United States. It seemed incomprehensible that with Germany collapsing, U.S. power triumphant almost everywhere in the world, young Americans should be suffering such an ordeal. How could it be that all the might of U.S. armies, navies and air forces was being set at naught in such a fas.h.i.+on?

The parents of a man killed on Hector Hill wrote a savage letter, branding his officers as murderers for abandoning their son. There was speculation in his unit about what some soldier must have written home to cause the dead man's people to harbour such bitterness. Another letter, from the father of a wounded man725, excoriated the army for having put his son into combat without adequate training. Lt. Jeptha Carell of the 3/7th Marines came to believe that married men with children should not be allowed to serve in the front line: ”The loss of the father is not only a reason for the family to grieve, it is an economic disaster.” When one of his platoon was killed by an American rocket that fell short, Carell wrote to the man's widow, who responded with a pathetic letter saying that she now had five children to care for. The widow ended: ”I hope you're satisfied!726” James Johnston wrote: ”Oh! to see the folks727-and snow and city lights and girls and old friends and new ones-and the blessed hills of home. Oh! to eat Mom's wonderful cooking and to drink that cool clear water-and a gla.s.s of milk!”

En route to Okinawa, army lieutenant Don Siebert found himself sharing a C-47 ”Gooney Bird” with a party of nurses. The girls kidded the young replacements somewhat unkindly, saying that they would see them again on a casevac flight in a couple of days. ”Of course this was very, very comforting728,” wrote Siebert, ”but we were too gung-ho to heed the warning, and exacted their a.s.surances that they would give us special care.” He himself was troubled, like most newcomers to war, about his own fitness for command: ”Would the men accept my leaders.h.i.+p? Would I have a problem getting to them?” He read field manuals a.s.siduously all the way to the front, where he joined the 382nd Infantry on line outside Shuri Castle. To Siebert's disappointment, he was a.s.signed to become a.s.sistant regimental adjutant and gas officer. He provoked amazement by requesting instead a posting with a line battalion, and was rewarded with a platoon of Fox Company.

The newcomer trudged through heavy rain to take over his woefully under-strength little command, just sixteen strong: ”They were strange faces-dirty, drawn, tired, yet the men appeared to have high morale.” He was plunged into combat, to see his platoon sergeant immediately evacuated after being wounded by mortar fragments. When another man was killed, Siebert felt ashamed that he had not yet discovered the soldier's name. A young lieutenant, Magrath, clambered out on a rock to take a look at his first battlefield. ”Get your a.s.s down!” shouted a sergeant, too late. A bullet hit Magrath in the throat. As he was carried away, he kept asking earnestly whether he would still be able to play his trumpet in a dance band.

In Siebert's first encounter with the j.a.panese, he was shocked to see an enemy soldier keep running at him, despite being hit repeatedly by carbine bullets. Siebert discarded his carbine in favour of an M1 rifle. ”One of the weaknesses of the American army729 in combat,” he wrote, ”was night operations. We did little fighting at night, almost no movement...The j.a.ps, on the other hand, used the darkness. They fought, moved and resupplied in it.” Darkness caused every American soldier, huddled under a poncho to mask the glow of a cigarette, to become acutely sensitive to the risk of surprise. One night in the positions of the infantry company accompanied by gunner Chris Donner, a man panicked when he heard an unexpected noise. He began firing, and killed five of his fellow Marines before somebody shot him down. The company commander, wrote Donner, was thereafter ”embittered over this needless loss in combat,” he wrote, ”was night operations. We did little fighting at night, almost no movement...The j.a.ps, on the other hand, used the darkness. They fought, moved and resupplied in it.” Darkness caused every American soldier, huddled under a poncho to mask the glow of a cigarette, to become acutely sensitive to the risk of surprise. One night in the positions of the infantry company accompanied by gunner Chris Donner, a man panicked when he heard an unexpected noise. He began firing, and killed five of his fellow Marines before somebody shot him down. The company commander, wrote Donner, was thereafter ”embittered over this needless loss730. The entire outfit moved heavily.”