The Final Storm - Jeff Shaara [153]
To the east, the First Marine Division had pressed their attack hard against the heights closer to the Shuri Castle, and the castle itself began taking heavy fire from American artillery, an assault that required several days to complete. To their east, the American infantry divisions accomplished the same goal, surging toward more of the high ground the Japanese generals had assumed would resist any attack. The cost to all the American divisions was extraordinary, entire companies wiped out, officers swept away en masse, yet in every case the Americans continued their push, inflicting casualties on the enemy that equaled or exceeded their own. The difference of course was that the Americans could bring in replacements, fill holes in the line, replace officers with new men coming in from the ships that continued to arrive offshore. The Japanese had no such luxury.
The men of the Sixth Marine Division who survived Sugar Loaf Hill were given little time for recovery. The city of Naha and its valuable airfield still lay in their path, and with furious pressure on General Buckner to complete the conquest of Okinawa, a campaign that had already exceeded its timetable by several weeks, even the squads and companies that had lost so many of their number on that dismal hill were still needed, still pressed into action. This meant that the men with the light wounds would still be called upon to do their part. No matter their number and their enthusiasm, the replacements could not be as dependable as the men who had already faced some of the worst fighting of the war.
In a bizarre postscript to the campaigns that punched hard against the primary Japanese defenses, word had come through the commanders, passed along through the ranks, finally reaching the men who held the rifle. On May 8, the war in Europe had ended. Hitler was said to have died, and the Germans had officially surrendered. In towns across America, streets filled with celebration, a nation grateful that in that one part of the war at least, sons and husbands would finally return home. On Okinawa, the announcement of VE Day was virtually ignored.
21. USHIJIMA
BENEATH SHURI CASTLE, HEADQUARTERS, THIRTY-SECOND ARMY
MAY 22, 1945
He had received word of the German surrender with the same stoic resignation he had felt for weeks now. Though others around him seemed injured by the news, as though a good friend had been lost, Ushijima understood that the alliance with Germany had been only one more enormous miscalculation. It was a familiar song, years of soothing reassurances from Japan’s Imperial High Command that all was well, that Japan’s destiny was being fulfilled. The decisions to expand Japan’s inevitable empire by striking hard into China, by striking hard at the British and the Americans, were made by men in grand offices in Tokyo, who drew lines on maps without ever facing the pure devastating reality of what their decisions had done to their glorious army, their invincible navy. The alliance with Hitler had been one more of those wise decisions, aligning Japanese interests with Germany’s, both nations seeking to spread their superior races over a vast empire that would eventually divide the world into two mighty spheres of influence. No one in Tokyo had revealed to Ushijima what might occur if those two spheres happened to collide. Now that mattered not at all. Germany’s sphere had been smashed to rubble, and Ushijima shared none of Tokyo’s illusions that Japan could avoid the same disastrous defeat. Yes, he thought, one more miscalculation.
Ushijima walked slowly, carefully, through a shallow pool of water that spread down through the main headquarters cave, a gently flowing creek that poured into the cave from the earthen walls near the main entrance, thought, how many miscalculations does it