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By Root 1243 0

belligerents. The Americans, with Australians and New Zealanders, fought their way west through the Japanese-held islands: Tarawa that November, Kwajalein and Truk in early 1944, Bougainville in March, Tinian that summer. The Philippines campaign began in October, while British and Indian troops pushed the Japanese hard in Burma and reopened the Burma Road in January 1945; they would liberate Mandalay in March. US marines assaulted Iwo Jima, less than 700 miles south of Tokyo, beginning in mid-February. The Japanese, dug into caves, tunnels, and pillboxes, fought back fiercely. The Americans blasted them with grenades and artillery and burned them out using tanks equipped with flamethrowers. Iwo was declared secure on 26 March. The Japanese lost nearly 22.000 dead, virtually all the island’s defenders. Iwo cost the Americans 7.000 dead and almost 20,000 wounded. ‘I hope to God’, groaned a wounded marine, ‘that we don’t have to go on anymore of those screwy islands.’15

Nimitz had another in mind. Okinawa was at the center of the Ryukyu chain, about midway between Taiwan and Kyushu. It was 60 miles long and between 2 and 18 miles wide, and a possible base for American ships and planes. The Okinawans had been ruled by the Japanese since 1879. The commander of the Japanese garrison on the island, General Mitsuru Ushijima, had 70,000 troops, but knew he faced an American force far larger than his (180,000), and thus decided to abandon defense of Okinawa’s beaches and retreat mostly to the southern end of the island, where limestone ridges, caves, and a network of bunkers offered hope of concealment, protection, and positional advantage. When the Americans disembarked warily on 1 April, they met little resistance. For a week, as they advanced, things remained quiet. Then, on the 8th, the 24th Marine Corps ran up against the outermost picket of Ushijima’s defenses, Kakazu Ridge. It was the beginning of a nightmarish period of assault, withering machine gun and artillery fire, retreat, counterattack, and—if all went well—survival to fight another day. Meanwhile, the US fleet that had delivered the troops and shelled Japanese positions came under attack from the air. On 6 April the Japanese mustered 700 planes, half of them kamikaze fighters on suicide missions, and struck the US vessels. ‘The strain of waiting, the anticipated terror, made vivid from past experience, sent some men into hysteria, insanity, breakdown,’ wrote a correspondent. The Americans lost three destroyers, a mammoth cargo carrier, and two ammunition supply ships, and ten other ships suffered damage.

American commanders elsewhere in the theater chafed at the slow progress made by the assault force. But there was precious little the marines could do. The Japanese were well armed, and they fought intelligently and remorselessly. And they were almost impregnably dug in. ‘We poured a tremendous amount of metal in on those positions,’ recounted a marine commander. ‘Not only from artillery but from ships at sea. It seemed nothing could possibly be living in that churning mass where the shells were falling and roaring but when we next advanced, Japs would still be there, even madder than they had been before.’ It took two months and three weeks to take Okinawa. Some 110,000 Japanese combatants, including pilots and sailors, were killed—almost without precedent, 7,400 surrendered—and between 45,000 and 80,000 Okinawans died, victims of the shelling, the crossfire, and by suicide, the result of their own fears, stoked by the Japanese, that the Americans had come to rape and torture them. Combined US Army, Navy, and marine deaths in the campaign came to 12,500; total US casualties approached 50,000. Three days before the end on Okinawa—that is, on 18 June—President Truman met the Joint Chiefs of Staff to discuss strategy for defeating Japan. Many at the meeting argued that the United States would have to invade Japan, beginning with the southern island of Kyushu. Truman approved an invasion plan, but added his hope that ‘there was a possibility of preventing an Okinawa