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that Ushijima had been mistaken to allow the Americans an unopposed landing on Okinawa. Yet, given the overwhelming power of the amphibious force, it is hard to believe that any Japanese deployment could have prevented American assault units from getting ashore, or indeed from conquering the island. The defenders could aspire only to what they accomplished—the extraction of a bitter price for American victory. The only tactical option which Buckner never explored, and which might have enabled his forces to prevail more quickly, was that of launching attacks in darkness. The difficulty, however, is that night operations demand exceptionally high motivation and tactical skills, to prevent those carrying them out from simply disappearing, “going to ground,” rather than pressing home an assault. It is doubtful that Tenth Army possessed such qualities.

Photo Insert Two

KAMIKAZE

A Japanese pilot prepares for his final mission.

A suicide plane narrowly misses the U.S. carrier Sangamon off Okinawa.

The USS Franklin afire.

ASHORE ON OKINAWA

Marines in one of the innumerable bloody assaults.

Civilians await their fate.

A Marine helps a woman and her baby to safety—most often, such people died.

JAPANESE SAMURAI, EAGER AND OTHERWISE

Toshio Hijikata.

Yoshihiro Minamoto.

Haruki Iki.

Renichi Sugano on a locomotive of the notorious Burma Railway.

Harunori Ohkoshi as a teenage volunteer on his way to Iwo Jima, amid a grave but proud family group.

Kisao Ebisawa, the frustrated Okinawa suicidalist.

Toshiharu Konada, who hoped to pilot a kaiten human torpedo against the allied invasion fleet.

Yoshiko Hashimoto (second row, right) with her family, who paid a terrible price for the 9 March 1945 USAAF firebombing of Tokyo. With their parents are Chieko (second row, left), Hisae ( front row, centre) and Etsuko ( front row, right).

Hachiro Miyashita, who dispatched many suicide missions.

One of Miyashita's own photographs of a sombre young pilot watching the fuelling for his plane’s last flight.

USAAF B-29s release incendiaries over Japan in May 1945.

USAAF B-29s formidable commander, Major-General Curtis LeMay.

CHINESE

Bai Jingfan, her husband and other guerrillas.

Li Guilin.

Zhuan Fengxiang and her husband.

Liu Danhua.

Weng Shan, proud in his American uniform.

“Tieizi”—Li Dongguan.

Australians search enemy corpses for documents in northern Borneo, June 1945.

Mountbatten, astride a captured Japanese gun, addresses British troops in Burma.

THREE OF SLIM’S SOLDIERS

John Randle.

Brian Aldiss ( far right).

Derek Horsford.

KEY FIGURES IN THE FINAL ACT

The Big Three at Potsdam.

Henry Stimson.

Leslie Groves and Robert Oppenheimer.

Hirohito.

Anami.

Marquis Kido.

For Japan, the distinction between the carnage wrought by the Tokyo firebomb attacks.

The atomic bomb on Hiroshima was less decisive than it has seemed to posterity.

Distraught Japanese hear the emperor’s broadcast on 15 August 1945.

The surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay aboard the battleship Missouri.

American sailors celebrate victory on board the USS Bougainville.

At every level, from high command to fighting soldiers, sailors and Marines, Americans emerged from the battle shocked by the ferocity of the resistance they had encountered, the determination of Japanese combatants to die rather than accept defeat. “People out here attach more importance to the Kamikaze method of attack as an illustration of the Japanese state of mind than as a weapon of destruction,” New York Times correspondent William L. Laurence wrote from the Pacific. “Considered carefully, the fact that literally thousands of men, many young and in their prime, will go out alone on missions of certain death…is not one calculated to breed optimism.” Some historians, armed with knowledge of subsequent events, argue that the capture of Okinawa was unnecessary. It did not bring Japan’s surrender a day closer. Yet to those directing the operation at the time, it was perceived as an indispensable