"On April 1, 1945 Easter Sunday the Navy's Fifth Fleet and more than 180,000 U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps troops descended on the Pacific island of Okinawa for a final push towards Japan. The invasion was part of Operation Iceberg, a complex plan to invade and occupy the Ryukyu Islands, including Okinawa."
My grandfather was in medical school during WWI and always felt guilty about not serving.
When WWII began he volunteered for the Navy and wound up the chief medical officer on board a troop transport ship that was stationed off Okinawa during the invasion. He was commended for developing a method of triage for the wounded who were brought aboard. He was nearly killed when a kamikaze plane was shot down just before hitting his ship.
My grandfather was an SR71 pilot and chief of combat operations for the SR 71 program at Kadena/Naha in the 60's.
My dad was of high school age at the time and he would go into the caves all the time. He said at the time caves were littered with human skeletons and the walls would have a white outline where someone was standing when they got hit with a flamethrower.
Said there were also burned out tanks everywhere and rusted out weapons laying around, fun place for a kid to explore.
Okinawa would have been my Dad's fourth landing (Tarawa, Saipan, and Tinian prior) but he was in the 2nd Marine Division which was a floating reserve off Okinawa and they wound up not landing.
My uncle (currently 97 yrs old) served in the 77th ID on Okinawa. Arrived there on May 1 and was wounded on May 27th. Carried a BAR for his squad. He and 2 other soldiers were in a trench near Sugarloaf Hill. He stated that he had just finished his 'watch' for the night and decided to smoke a cigarette. The bottom of the trench was muddy, so he sat on his helmet. He pulled his poncho over his head to shield the lit cigarette from the Japanese situated about 75 yds away. The next thing he remembered was waking up the next morning lying face down in the mud next to a burned-out Japanese truck. His back was injured and his left leg was ripped open from the knee down. That morning, several GI's picked him up out of the mud and got him behind the lines for medical treatment.
He said he never knew if it was a Japanese or US artillery round that blew them out of the trench. He accounted for one GI after the explosion, but never did find out what became of the other.
Some things he told me about his experiences: His jungle training in Hawaii consisted of marching thru pineapple fields. Everyone smoked. Cigarettes were in a 4-pack with your rations. During his training in the states, a BAR required 2-3 soldiers to operate it. One to carry the rifle and the others as an ammunition and equipment bearers. At Okinawa all that additional help disappeared. Skin graphs consisted of suturing his leg to his other leg until the skin began to cover the wound area. He believes his life and leg were saved by the new drug called penicillin.
The story goes that my grandfather was an engineer in the Army and he was wounded at Okinawa. Unfortunately, he passed away well before I was born and his records were destroyed in the archive fire in St. Louis, I believe. I wasn't aware that the army sent engineers to the Pacific but my knowledge on the subject is limited.
My grandfather was an SR71 pilot and chief of combat operations for the SR 71 program at Kadena/Naha in the 60's.
My dad was of high school age at the time and he would go into the caves all the time. He said at the time caves were littered with human skeletons and the walls would have a white outline where someone was standing when they got hit with a flamethrower.
Said there were also burned out tanks everywhere and rusted out weapons laying around, fun place for a kid to explore.
Okinawa had a considerable amount of Army personnel fighting on it. Several divisions worth. The Army saw a lot of fighting in the PTO, Guadalcanal, the Philippines, Okinawa, as well as smaller units in other battles.
My grandfather was an SR71 pilot and chief of combat operations for the SR 71 program at Kadena/Naha in the 60's.
My dad was of high school age at the time and he would go into the caves all the time. He said at the time caves were littered with human skeletons and the walls would have a white outline where someone was standing when they got hit with a flamethrower.
Said there were also burned out tanks everywhere and rusted out weapons laying around, fun place for a kid to explore.
What's the story of the white outline?
Limestone turns black when its burned. It would be white where someone was standing when it was scotched.
In reality, most people are killed by asphyxiation when they are in close confines such as a bunker or cave. The heat from flame throwers is extreme and it consumes all the oxygen. I witnessed one in use at the Beach Assault Living History event at the Nimitz Museum in Fredericksburg. I was standing a good 25-30 yards away when they lit a bunker up with one. You could have easily roasted a hotdog from there. They were a terrible weapon and could easily understand why they were primary targets for any defender.
Okinawa had a considerable amount of Army personnel fighting on it. Several divisions worth. The Army saw a lot of fighting in the PTO, Guadalcanal, the Philippines, Okinawa, as well as smaller units in other battles.
Four to five Army Divisions (including 1st Cavalry) for every Marine Division in the PTO.
My grandfather was an SR71 pilot and chief of combat operations for the SR 71 program at Kadena/Naha in the 60's.
My dad was of high school age at the time and he would go into the caves all the time. He said at the time caves were littered with human skeletons and the walls would have a white outline where someone was standing when they got hit with a flamethrower.
Said there were also burned out tanks everywhere and rusted out weapons laying around, fun place for a kid to explore.
What's the story of the white outline?
Limestone turns black when its burned. It would be white where someone was standing when it was scotched.
In reality, most people are killed by asphyxiation when they are in close confines such as a bunker or cave. The heat from flame throwers is extreme and it consumes all the oxygen. I witnessed one in use at the Beach Assault Living History event at the Nimitz Museum in Fredericksburg. I was standing a good 25-30 yards away when they lit a bunker up with one. You could have easily roasted a hotdog from there. They were a terrible weapon and could easily understand why they were primary targets for any defender.
Not Okinawa but I worked with a guy who did a year on Iwo Jima with the Coast Guard in the early 90s when the Japanese put a big effort to track down remains of their dead. Had some awesome pics of helping the Japanese going in caves and helping remove remains, seeing lots of UXOs, as well as equipment.
Okinawa had a considerable amount of Army personnel fighting on it. Several divisions worth. The Army saw a lot of fighting in the PTO, Guadalcanal, the Philippines, Okinawa, as well as smaller units in other battles.
Thanks. Apparently he helped build the airfield there. My cousin was in a marine cryptographer and spent two years on Okinawa in the early 90s. He hated it.
A historical researcher who has uncovered some very interesting stuff*, Trent Telenko, has started putting up a new series of posts on the Okinawa campaign. The first post is at the Chicago Boyz blog here.
Telenko likes to focus on areas that have been obscured or ignored in the prevailing post-war historical narratives, for various reasons. (Institutional biases and post-war politics had a lot to do with much of it.) In this case, it looks like he's going to be looking at radar and other electro-magnetic spectrum combat and intelligence. The teaser he drops is that, according to a June 1945 intel document, it was discovered late in the Okinawa campaign that a specific Japanese radar would trigger automatic responses from USN aircraft IFF systems, and that the Japanese knew this, and it enabled them to track USN combat air patrols from well beyond the range at which said radar would normally be able to detect the planes. This allowed the Japanese to 1) steer kamikaze raids away from the CAP planes, and 2) plot the locations of the picket destroyers and carriers, and thus avoid or target those ships.
* Telenko did a very interesting series of posts for the 75th anniversary of Big Week about a year ago. Also some interesting stuff on drop tanks and the myth of the 'Mustang Miracle.'
The battle of Okinawa proved to be the bloodiest battle of the Pacific War. Thirty-four allied ships and craft of all types had been sunk, mostly by kamikazes, and 368 ships and craft damaged. The fleet had lost 763 aircraft. Total American casualties in the operation numbered over 12,000 killed [including nearly 5,000 Navy dead and almost 8,000 Marine and Army dead] and 36,000 wounded. Navy casualties were tremendous, with a ratio of one killed for one wounded as compared to a one to five ratio for the Marine Corps. Combat stress also caused large numbers of psychiatric casualties, a terrible hemorrhage of front-line strength. There were more than 26,000 non-battle casualties. In the battle of Okinawa, the rate of combat losses due to battle stress, expressed as a percentage of those caused by combat wounds, was 48% [in the Korean War the overall rate was about 20-25%, and in the Yom Kippur War it was about 30%]. American losses at Okinawa were so heavy as to illicite Congressional calls for an investigation into the conduct of the military commanders. Not surprisingly, the cost of this battle, in terms of lives, time, and material, weighed heavily in the decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan just six weeks later.
Japanese human losses were enormous: 107,539 soldiers killed and 23,764 sealed in caves or buried by the Japanese themselves; 10,755 captured or surrendered. The Japanese lost 7,830 aircraft and 16 combat ships. Since many Okinawan residents fled to caves where they subsequently were entombed the precise number of civilian casualties will probably never be known, but the lowest estimate is 42,000 killed. Somewhere between one-tenth and one-fourth of the civilian population perished, though by some estimates the battle of Okinawa killed almost a third of the civilian population. According to US Army records during the planning phase of the operation, the assumption was that Okinawa was home to about 300,000 civilians. At the conclusion of hostilities around 196,000 civilians remained. However, US Army figures for the 82-day campaign showed a total figure of 142,058 civilian casualties, including those killed by artillery fire, air attacks and those who were pressed into service by the Japanese army.
GUAM, April, 18--Ernie Pyle died today on Ie Island, just west of Okinawa, like so many of the doughboys he had written about. The nationally known war correspondent was killed instantly by Japanese machine-gun fire.
AT THIS SPOT THE 77th INFANTRY DIVISION LOST A BUDDY ERNIE PYLE 18 April 1945
Rank and organization: Private First Class, United States Army, Medical Detachment, 307th Infantry, 77th Infantry Division.
Place and date: Near Urasoe Mura, Okinawa, Ryukyu Islands, April 29, 1945 May 21, 1945.
Entered service at Lynchburg, Virginia
Birth: Lynchburg, Virginia
G.O. No.: 97, November 1, 1945.
The Citation: The President of the United States of America, in the name of Congress, takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor to Private First Class Desmond Thomas Doss, United States Army, for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action above and beyond the call of duty from April 29 - 21 May 1945, while serving with the Medical Detachment, 307th Infantry Regiment, 77th Infantry Division, in action at Urasoe Mura, Okinawa, Ryukyu Islands. Private First Class Doss was a company aid man when the 1st Battalion assaulted a jagged escarpment 400 feet high As our troops gained the summit, a heavy concentration of artillery, mortar, and machinegun fire crashed into them, inflicting approximately 75 casualties and driving the others back. Private First Class Doss refused to seek cover and remained in the fire-swept area with the many stricken, carrying them one-by-one to the edge of the escarpment and there lowering them on a rope-supported litter down the face of a cliff to friendly hands. On 2 May, he exposed himself to heavy rifle and mortar fire in rescuing a wounded man 200 yards forward of the lines on the same escarpment; and two days later he treated four men who had been cut down while assaulting a strongly defended cave, advancing through a shower of grenades to within eight yards of enemy forces in a cave's mouth, where he dressed his comrades' wounds before making four separate trips under fire to evacuate them to safety. On 5 May, he unhesitatingly braved enemy shelling and small arms fire to assist an artillery officer. He applied bandages, moved his patient to a spot that offered protection from small arms fire and, while artillery and mortar shells fell close by, painstakingly administered plasma. Later that day, when an American was severely wounded by fire from a cave, Private First Class Doss crawled to him where he had fallen 25 feet from the enemy position, rendered aid, and carried him 100 yards to safety while continually exposed to enemy fire. On 21 May, in a night attack on high ground near Shuri, he remained in the exposed territory while the rest of his company took cover, fearlessly risking the chance that he would be mistaken for an infiltrating Japanese and giving aid to the injured until he was himself seriously wounded in the legs by the explosion of a grenade. Rather than call another aid man from cover, he cared for his own injuries and waited five hours before litter bearers reached him and started carrying him to cover. The trio was caught in an enemy tank attack and Private First Class Doss, seeing a more critically wounded man nearby, crawled off the litter; and directed the bearers to give their first attention to the other man. Awaiting the litter bearers' return, he was again struck, this time suffering a compound fracture of one arm. With magnificent fortitude, he bound a rifle stock to his shattered arm as a splint and then crawled 300 yards over rough terrain to the aid station. Through his outstanding bravery and unflinching determination in the face of desperately dangerous conditions, Private First Class Doss saved the lives of many soldiers. His name became a symbol throughout the 77th Infantry Division for outstanding gallantry far above and beyond the call of duty.
