Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [263]
On 6 May, Ito was belatedly ordered to pull back. He consoled his men by quoting the German general Mackensen, in a desperate position during the First World War: “Don’t think of this as a retreat, but as an advance in a different direction.” They had no means of carrying out thirty badly wounded men. Ito moved among these, distributing grenades which should enable them to take some American companions into the next world. One man he knew well, Lance-Corporal Kurokawa, begged him again and again: “Take me away with you. Take me with you. Please. Please.” Yet Kurokawa too was left to face death with his grenade. So many close comrades were gone—Ohyama, Mori, Otaki and a host of others whose names Ito forgot. Many more fell during their bloody break-out to a new line a mile back.
The ruins of Naha, Okinawa’s capital, fell to the Americans on 27 May. Ushijima retreated to his final positions further south-west, on the Oruku Peninsula. Here, Ito and his men joined their commander, along with some thousands of other surviving defenders. By the first days of June, the captain found himself left with 135 men, out of the five-hundred-strong battalion he had led into battle: “We were exhausted, morally and physically. We faced the traditional predicament of Japanese warriors of old, with our backs to the wall.” They were proud of the losses they had inflicted on the Americans, but understood that the defences were broken. Yard by yard, Buckner’s persevering Marines and soldiers had ground down the Japanese 32nd Army. Ito and a few companions were among several hundred men who, rejecting surrender or suicide, took refuge in Okinawa’s multitude of caves, scavenging by night for food, with help from local civilians.
The last days of the battle were rendered especially horrible by the presence of so many Japanese women and children among the defenders, some still eager to live, others determined to die. After Lt. Marius Bressoud’s Marines blew open a cave mouth, a crowd of civilians emerged, whom he dispatched to the rear. Three remained, badly wounded: a child, its mother and grandmother. Platoon Sgt. Joe Taylor said: “We can’t just leave these people, and we can’t spare escorts.” Bressoud knew the NCO meant that the Okinawans should be put out of their misery, like injured animals. He asked if there was a volunteer to do the job. Nobody spoke. “‘OK,’ I said, ‘I’ll do it myself.’ All three were lying motionless on their backs. Some very thoughtful person in the platoon had covered their heads with clean white cloths so that I did not have to look at their faces. I fired one round through each head.” Yet the mother and grandmother continued to writhe. Bressoud, a devout Catholic, fired again and again. “By this time the cloths and the heads750 were a mess. It had not been a neat, gangland-style execution after all. I was overcome with emotion I cannot possibly describe…thoroughly ashamed, not because I had killed them, but because I did it in so emotional and unprofessional a manner.”
Resistance petered out in the last weeks of June. Yet if Buckner’s land campaign represented a shocking experience for American soldiers and Marines, it was matched, perhaps even outdone, by the struggle waged at sea. The battle off Okinawa cost more lives than any other fought by the U.S. Navy in the Pacific war.
2. At Sea
USHIJIMA’S 32nd Army represented the static defence of Okinawa. The hub of Japanese strategy, however, was an air assault upon the invasion fleet on a scale hitherto unseen in the Pacific theatre. The Americans were almost entirely dependent on carriers for fighter cover—the airfields captured ashore remained for weeks within range of Japanese artillery, and could handle few planes. Marc Mitscher’s task groups could sustain combat air patrols of not more than 60 to 80 fighters. Against these, the Japanese