{"id":699,"date":"2024-06-22T02:19:53","date_gmt":"2024-06-22T02:19:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/langleyesquire.com\/?p=699"},"modified":"2024-06-24T04:24:14","modified_gmt":"2024-06-24T04:24:14","slug":"the-end-of-war-battle-of-okinawa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/langleyesquire.com\/en\/the-end-of-war-battle-of-okinawa\/","title":{"rendered":"End of War"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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<\/p>\n

Maybe because I grew-up on this tortured tropical island, the reminder yesterday of the 79th anniversary of the fall of Okinawa to US forces jumped-out at me like a punch.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This 90-day battle was epic even among truly epic battles elsewhere in the three WWII theatres (Pacific, Europe, Africa). \u00a0Ninety-days! \u00a0What this could have possibly been like? Simply, it had to have boggled\u2026 even now with hindsight, it must even now boggle the mind and shock one\u2019s sensibilities.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Today \u2026 we too are confronted with global trends and aspects of the economy, the human-condition that we cannot quite grasp. Things are underfoot that we cannot quite accept as reality. We in fact refuse to believe: they are too huge, too incomprehensible. They run counter to everything that our society, our religions and our training have guided us to conclude about the world and how things \u201cwork\u201d. Back then, too, alien concepts were thrust upon Americans.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

With this reference, try to put yourself back in time, after the Marco-Polo Bridge Incident, then Pearl Harbor, the fall of Singapore. \u00a0Not so long ago\u2026 consider this:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Guadalcanal was a shocker. America for the first time was confronted with the ferocity of those Japanese fighters, the concealment of nests, the tactics employed, the tunneling, the inhumane treatment of prisoners, the preference of death-over-capture, reverence for the Emperor. \u00a0Only afterwards and with the benefit of hindsight spanning 7 decades is anyone able to appreciate any of this at all. \u00a0While astounding, we would not be mesmerized today if kamikaze-type fighters plunged into ships in a far-off war. \u00a0Back then, this new tactic in fact had soldiers and sailors frozen in place, so new and incomprehensible a sight it presented. Comparably, it would be as if watching an authentic star-fighter warship, replete with hieroglyphic symbols and bearing obvious scarring \/ discoloration from an ageless trip, landing today, just there, a stone\u2019s throw away!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Similarly, when sleepy, countrified, insular & agrarian America joined the world community and was confronted by something equally incomprehensible (the Japanese), we too were dumbfounded. Honestly, people on decks of aircraft-carriers already on fire stood frozen in fear as plane after plane struggled to crash INTO them (kamikaze), or waves of Japanese soldiers with bayonets fixed charged foxholes (and usually being successful!), having wrapped each other tightly in gauze so that even if hit, they could continue. \u00a0This tactic created the absolute necessity for the deployment of the .45 calibre sidearm which would drop an elephant. \u00a0They just couldn\u2019t kill these other-worldly Japanese.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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\n
\"Battle
The Battle of Okinawa<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Unfathomable. Yet, just like us today: lost in our training, schmeared in the lie that is consumerism controlled by mass-media, (and thinking it is \u201cnatural\u201d), pursuing money\u2026 never getting \u201cthere\u201d.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

My teenage pals and I came to know all the battlefields in Okinawa by exploring caves in jungle fatigues, crawling like tunnel-rats, outstretched arms holding candles, probing into the damp, heavy darkness, waving away cobwebs, squealing like little girls at monstrous bugs, centipedes, spiders\u2026 always forward. Reading topography for possible jungle-swallowed sniper-nests; being rewarded with discoveries of bones, ordinance, undiscovered cache, discarded bodies, hidden tunnel openings. And this insatiable appetite was not just generated by a terrain burdened with raw, recent and abundant scars.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

During this very brief battle, one third of the 300,000 Ryukyuan population were annihilated, most of the children, all the young men. \u00a0All livestock, chickens, pigs: gone. Agriculture came to a complete halt months before the campaign. Ryukyuans who spoke in their native dialect were killed as potential spies, not even a second-consideration given: \u201cjust do it\u201d. Entire villages were regimented, 100% of them! Tunnels were dug everywhere: into sacred tombs, into naturally occurring limestone caverns (lots of these!), double-backs formed into the hills, concealments in water-wells, inside ponds, under floorboards of houses. Ninety-days! \u00a0And every inch intended to be a bloody, hand-to-hand battle.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n
\"Okinawa
Destruction of the island of Okinawa<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n

<\/p>\n

In any conflict, to suffer a double-digit loss is a catastrophe: a 5% attrition guarantees a courts-martial. Historically, casualties will normally be three times greater than fatalities. But in Okinawa this involved civilians, too, as combatents!\u00a0 For Japan, Okinawa could simply not be lost.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Soldiers from all over Japan poured into the islands. Eventually 100,000 soldiers occupied the island and conscripted the locals. Fewer than 8% of these soldiers survived (!).\u00a0The largest battleship ever built (even today) was the mighty Yamato with a crew of 3,000. In transit, on a one-way kamikaze mission to \u201crescue\u201d Okinawa (to be purposefully beached in Buckner Bay) (near where I lived), it was sent to the bottom with all-hands. The US forces lost 12,500 soldiers suffering an astounding 5 time multiple in casualties. Even more sobering is the fact that as bad as it was on land, the Navy suffered more deaths than the army or the marines.\u00a0In fact, the Navy suffered more deaths than casualties, a rare reversal generated from the successful plunder of kamikaze attacks.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The most lasting impact of the battle is vivid and well-preserved. I\u2019ve visited Okinawa and outlaying islands endlessly since departing Okinawa, then returning to focus my career on this marvelous, insanely-difficult-to-master country & culture. The final days of the battle focused on the southern tip as defensive-position after defensive-position fell (none \u201csurrendered\u201d) and as a smaller and increasingly more decimated bands of soldiers retreated, eventually carving-out a last-stand on the Mabuni hills of the Itoman peninsula.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Clean-up lasted another month as the beachhead at Buckner was expanded and mopping-up increasingly centered around the Cliffs area. At this time, caves everywhere were packed with the wounded remnants of decimated forces. Ammo was almost all spent, little water, few rations. US Piper planes (spotters) identifying pockets while Japanese soldiers ordered Okinawan kids to crawl out to the lines to do damage and keep the GIs at bay. Caves given-up still contained wounded soldiers and terrified civilians, who each took turns killing themselves. The terror in the south had civilians killing one another after taking turns \u2018taking care of\u2019 their parents, infants, then their beloved children last. This insanity just escapes description.<\/p>\n

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With so, so many, and not enough grenades to go around, they tried to tightly huddle in groups of five or so, pull the pin\u2026 struggle with each other in these last desperate seconds to hold the device closer to their chests \u2026 but this always left most just mortally wounded \u2026 and absolutely terrifying even more the 14 year-olds who watched, or came across piles of withering bodies afterwards. This went on for days: too afraid to die, not knowing how, no easy methods, and always the pounding of aerial bombs, mortars, pillars of black smoke rising into the sky. The verdant vegetation now long gone, the sea can be seen beyond.\u00a0But this only conveys more horror as it is absolutely, impossibly, covered to the horizon with ships of every imaginable shape: the devil-amerika-jin G.I. are here. \u00a0Panic.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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\"Battle
Battle of Okinawa<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n

<\/p>\n

As the noose tightened and the GIs approached on foot, and with no self-defense and no soldiers to protect them or even order them around, the cliffs preventing further escape beckoned them as their only escape. In droves they just leapt \u2026 Japanese-speaking G.I.s pleading with them, begging them with canteens of water, pleas and promises. Reports from spotters in the piper airplanes were ghastly, reporting the final dash, girls in white, in pairs or just perched on a craggy edge, sometimes approaching soldiers only yards away, \u00a0pleadingly\u2026 a brief hesitation, then falling to the coral 200~300 feet below.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Very, very few didn\u2019t leap and survived in inerasable shame, guilt, exhaustion\u2026 maybe less than a hundred? \u00a0In the twilight of their lives now (as of this writing), these beautiful girls now take turns walking tourists through the quiet, preserved caves\u2026 and thereby honoring their friends by being the echoes of such a wretched, wretched story.<\/p>\n

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Maybe because I grew-up on this tortured tropical island, the reminder yesterday of the 79th anniversary of the fall of Okinawa to US forces jumped-out<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":1169,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center 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