OKINAWA
April fool's day 1945, Easter Sunday, as it happened, dawned brilliant and clear in the East China Sea as a gigantic armada of warships and troop carriers assembled off the mountainous, scimitar-shaped island of Okinawa, 330 miles south-west of Japan for 'Operation Iceberg'. An American invasion force of one hundred and seventy two thousand soldiers and marines, led by the tough 'do it by the book' Lieutenant General Buckner, was poised to storm the last obstacle before mainland Japan.
Even before Iwo Jima fell, the plans were in place for the invasion of Okinawa. It promised to be no easy task, for the island was defended by one hundred thousand men of the formidable 32nd Army, under one of Japan's ablest commanders, Lieutenant General Ushijima. The Japanese also had what they believed would be a trump card; nearly two thousand kamikaze pilots that had vowed to give their lives in the attempt to blow the invasion fleet out of the water.
All during the previous week, air and naval bombardments had pounded Okinawa to soften up the defences. Carrier-based planes had already hit the kamikaze bases on the southernmost Japanese home island of Kyushu. Then, on 26th March, the 77th Infantry Division had gone ashore on the Kerama islands, off Okinawa's south-west coast, to secure a supply and repair base for the 1 500 ships that were to take part in 'Operation Iceberg'.
The American aim was to achieve the penultimate victory of the Pacific war: the seizure of a firm base on the very doorstep of Japan as a prelude to the final conquest of the Japanese home islands. The ensuing battle was fought on a scale as yet unknown in the course of the Pacific war: a bloody protracted fight to the finish which forced the Americans to exert every ounce of their strength. The agonising first-hand experience gained in the long road from Guadalcanal to Iwo Jima was to reveal once more at Okinawa that the Japanese will to resist defied all possible estimates when tested on the battlefield. However, the American forces earmarked for the conquest of Okinawa constituted an awesome assembly of battle-wise fighting units.
The Okinawa outline plan was given its official blessing by the Joint Chiefs-of-Staff on 3rd October, 1944. It was envisaged as one of three major offensives intended to stretch Japanese resources to their limits. The other two being the conquest of Luzon and the reduction of Iwo Jima. Luzon would be invaded in December 1944, Iwo Jima in January 1945, and Okinawa in March.
In view of the vital nature of Okinawa, a major bastion of Japan's inner island defences; it was essential that as much Intelligence as possible should be amassed. Aerial photography was an obvious source, but the difficulties were considerable. Okinawa was 1 200 miles from the nearest American air bases when it was selected as the objective of 'Iceberg'; B-29's flying at their high altitude only obtained small- scale photographs; carrier aircraft could only be assigned to Okinawa for photographic reconnaissance when the programme of carrier operations permitted. Other problems included the prevalence of local cloud cover and the large size of Okinawa itself: 60 miles long and from 2 to 18 miles wide, making it extremely difficult to obtain photographs covering the whole island. However, reconnaissance did collect sufficient information to suggest that the main strength of the Japanese defences would be encountered in the southern half of the island around Naha and Yontan, the best two of the four operational airfields on Okinawa. The final estimate of the strength of the garrison was sixty five thousand men. Far less than the actual.
Photo reconnaissance had failed to reveal that Ushijima's 32nd Army was in fact over one hundred thousand strong. Regular troops (infantrymen, gunners, and special services) totalled almost eighty thousand, and there were twenty thousand auxiliary troops known as Boeitai. These were drafted into the Japanese Army to serve in labour and supply duties, relieving the fighting troops of ammunition worries, and thus playing an important part in the battle. In addition to the Boeitai there was a large contingent of Okinawan conscripts assimilated by the regular units on the island. Precise figures for these conscripts are not available but have been set as high as one-third of the total garrison strength.
Japanese hopes for the defence of Okinawa were strikingly similar to those for the defence of Luzon, with the high command ordering that the island must be held at all cost and to the last man. Wildly exaggerated estimates were pinned on the hitting power of the air and sea