Mud and Blood: Okinawa

April 1, 1945. The noose is closing tighter around the Third Reich. Imperial Japan is not far behind. It seems as if the nightmare will all be over soon. However, for the US Marines, Army, and Navy personnel beginning Operation Iceberg, the amphibious assault and invasion of Okinawa, the nightmare has just begun. This patch of dirt that most Americans probably couldn’t find on a map would become one of the most brutal, grueling, and horrific battlefields in the entire war.

Larger compared to most Pacific islands that had been fought over, Okinawa stands about three miles wide and sixty miles long and sits in a string of islands that leads from Taiwan to mainland Japan. The island is one step closer to the Japanese mainland and will provide important air and naval bases for the upcoming invasion of the mainland. This is the closest American forces have landed to Japan, and the Japanese are going to relentlessly and fanatically defend their home turf.

The amphibious assault carried out by the 1^st and 6^th Marine divisions and 96th and 7th Army divisions lands unopposed on the western coast of the island. While taking the beach might have been an easy task, around 100,000 Japanese soldiers are lying in wait as the Army and Marines move towards the interior of the island, and they are going to make the Americans fight for every inch of ground

By April 4, the Americans experienced little resistance moving east, and effectively cut the island in two after reaching the opposite coast. The remaining Japanese forces would make their stand in the North and especially in South end of the island. The fighting to capture these areas would prove to be some of the most intense in the war. By April 22^nd , the Americans had taken most of the Northern half of the island. To the South, the Japanese fiercely held onto their ground. No description on paper can truly capture the horrible conditions the soldiers and marines faced as they pushed south. The battlefield resembled something out of the First World War rather than the Second. Trees had completely disappeared from the constant shelling, and the ground was nothing but mud from the constant rainfall. The soldiers and marines had to fight through the muddy sludge with all manner of abandoned equipment, rotting corpses and shell craters strewn about. Heavy equipment like tanks and artillery pieces struggled to go anywhere in the pervasive mud. Not only were soldiers and marines on the frontlines fighting in these conditions, but they were also eating and sleeping in them for weeks on end. Every house, cave, hill, or bunker had to be cleared one by one of the Japanese soldiers defending them with suicidal fanaticism. It was a slow, methodical slog through the muck to get the island cleared.

The Shuri line, a series of defensive fortifications set up by the Japanese that ran the length of the island, proved to be one of the costliest objectives to take for the Americans on their push south. After weeks of unforgiving and relentless combat, it was finally taken on the 29^th of May. After Shuri was taken, the Japanese fell back to the Kiyan Peninsula to make their final defense. On June 4^th the Marines conducted an amphibious landing on the peninsula, and by now, the writing was on the wall. Many of the remaining Japanese soldiers, sailors and civilians committed suicide rather than fall into the hands of the Americans. By the 21^st , the fighting on Okinawa had ceased with the Americans being victorious. It was the last, yet one of the bloodiest islands that was taken during the war.