by Daniel Wrinn
Instead of the 1st Marine Division being surrounded and annihilated per the Japanese plan—they launched their own counterattack and advanced several hundred yards. The Thirty-second Army took 6,000 front-line troop casualties and lost sixty pieces of artillery in this disastrous counterattack. A tearful Ushijima promised Yahara he would never again disregard his advice. Yahara was the only senior officer to survive the counterattack and described this debacle as: “the decisive action of the campaign.”
General Buckner took the initiative and organized a four-division front. He tasked General Geiger to redeploy the 6th Division south from the Motobu Peninsula. General Shepherd asked Geiger to assign his Marines to the seaward flank, to continue receiving the benefit of direct naval gunfire support. Shepherd noted his division’s favorable experience with fleet support throughout the northern campaign. There was also another benefit: General Shepherd would have only one nearby unit to coordinate maneuvers and fire with—the veteran 1st Marine Division.
At dawn on May 7, General Geiger reclaimed control of the 1st Marine Division and his Corps Artillery and set up his forward command post. The next day, the 22nd Marines came in to relieve the 7th Marines on the lines north of the Asa River. The 1st Division had suffered over 1,400 casualties in the last six days while trying to cover a vast front. The two Marine divisions advanced shoulder to shoulder in the west. They were greeted by heavy rains and ferocious fire as they entered the Shuri lines. The situation was dire along the front. On May 9, the 1/1 Marines assaulted Hill 60 in a spirited attack but lost their commander, Colonel James Murray, to a sniper. Later that night, the 1/5 Marines joined in savage hand-to-hand fighting against a force of sixty Japanese troops—appearing like phantoms out of the rocks.
The heavy rains delayed the 22nd Regiment’s attempt to cross the Asa River. Engineers built a narrow footbridge under intermittent fire one night. Hundreds of infantry troops raced across before two enemy soldiers wearing satchel charges strapped to their chests darted into the stream and blew themselves and the bridge to pieces. Engineers spent the next night building a more stable “Baily Bridge.” Allied troop reinforcements and vehicles poured across it, but the tanks had a hell of a time traversing the soft mud along the banks. Each attempt was a new adventure. But the Marines were now south of the river in force: encouraging progress on an otherwise stalemated front.
On May 10, the 5th Marines finally fought clear of the hellish Awacha Pocket, ending a week of frustration and point-blank casualties. Now it was the 7th Marines’ turn to engage their own nightmarish terrain. South of their position was Dakeshi Ridge. Buckner urged his commanders to keep up the momentum and declared a general offensive along the entire front. This announcement was probably in response to the growing criticism Buckner had been receiving from the Navy and in the media for his attrition strategy.
But the rifleman’s war had progressed past high-level persuasion. The assault troops knew full well what to expect—and had a good idea of what the price in blood would be.
Sugar Loaf Hill
Colonel Edward Snedeker was a veteran commander with experience fighting on Bougainville and Guadalcanal. “I was fortunate on Okinawa,” Snedeker said, “in that each of my battalion commanders had fought at Peleliu. Still, our regiment had its hands full on Dakeshi Ridge. It was our most difficult mission.”
After a full day of ferocious fighting, Colonel John Gormley’s 1/7 Marines fought their way to Dakeshi’s crest but withdrew after enemy counterattacks swarmed them like a hive of angry hornets. The next day, the 2/7 Marines retook the crest and cut down the Japanese counterattacks pouring out from the reverse slope bunkers. Now the 7th Marines were on Dakeshi to stay—another major Allied breakthrough.
The Old Breed Marines briefly celebrated this achievement before the difficulties to come dawned on them. Advancing the next 1,200 yards would take eighteen days of brutal fighting. Their most formidable obstacle would be the steep and twisted Wana Draw rambling off to the south—a lethal killing ground surrounded by towering cliffs, pockmarked with caves and mines, and covered by interlocking fire at every approach. According to General Oliver Smith: “Wana Draw was the toughest assignment the 1st Division ever encountered on Okinawa.” The remains of the Japanese 62nd Infantry Division was prepared to defend Wana to the death.
Historians have paid little attention to the 1st Division’s fight against the Wana Draw defenses. Mainly because the celebrated 6th Division’s assault on Sugar Loaf Hill happened at the same time. But the Wana Draw battle was just as deadly of a man-killer as the Sugar Loaf Hill battle. Colonel Arthur Mason (now leading the 1st Marine Regiment) began the assault on the Wana complex on May 12. All three infantry regiments took turns assaulting this narrow gorge to the south. The division made full use of their medium Sherman tanks and attached Army flame tanks. Both were instrumental in their assault and fire support roles. On May 16, the 1st Tank Battalion fired over 5,000 rounds of 75mm and 175,000 rounds of 30-caliber along with 650 gallons of napalm.
Crossing the gorge was a heart-stopping race through a gauntlet of enemy fire—and progress came slowly. Typical of the fighting was the division’s summary for its progress on the 18th: “Gains were measured by yards won, lost, and then won again.” On May 20, Colonel Stephen Sabol’s 3/1 Marines improvised a new method to dislodge enemy defenders from their reverse slope positions.
In five hours of grueling, muddy work, troops manhandled several drums of napalm up to the north side of the ridge. There, Marines split the barrels open and tumbled them into the gorge, setting them on fire by dropping white phosphorus grenades in their wake. These small successes were undercut by the Japanese ability to reinforce and resupply their positions during darkness—usually screened by small-unit counterattacks.
The close-quarters fighting was a vicious affair. General del Valle watched his casualties mount daily at an alarming rate. The 7th Marines lost 700 men taking Dakeshi and another 500 in the first five days of fighting for the Wana Draw. On May 16, Colonel E. Hunter Hurst’s 3/7 Marines lost twelve officers among his rifle companies. The other regiments suffered just as terribly. From May 11-30, the division lost 200 Marines for every one hundred yards gained.
Heavy rains started again on May 22 and continued in a torrential downpour for ten days. The 1st Marine Division’s sector had no roads. General del Valle committed his LVTs to deliver ammo and extract the wounded. Valle resorted to using replacements to hand-carry food and water to the front. This was not acceptable for General del Valle. He brought in torpedo bombers from Yontan Airfield and airdropped supplies by parachute. The low ceilings, heavy rain, and intense enemy fire made for hazardous duty. General del Valle did everything in his power to keep his troops supported, reinforced, supplied, and motivated—even through these grim and treacherous conditions.
To the west, the 6th Marine Division advanced south below the Asa River and collided into a trio of low hills in the open country leading to Shuri Ridge. The first of these hills was steep and unassuming (soon to be known as Sugar Loaf Hill). In the southeast was Half Moon Hill, and in the southwest was the village of Takamotoji and Horseshoe Hill. These three hills represented a singular defensive complex: the western anchor of the Shuri line.
An attack on any one of the mutually supporting defenses of these three hills would prove ineffective unless the others were simultaneously assaulted. Colonel Mita and his 15th Independent Mixed Regiment would defend this sector to the last man. Its anti-tank guns and mortars were expertly placed to cause maximum damage to the enemy. The western slopes of Half Moon Hill had some of the most sophisticated machine-gun nests the Marines had encountered in the Pacific War. Sugar Loaf Hill had intricate, concrete-reinforced, reverse-slope positions. All approaches to this complex lay within a no-man’s-land of heavy artillery from Shuri Ridge, dominating the battlefield.
Sugar Loaf Hill had an elevation of 245 feet, Half Moon at 220, and Horseshoe at 190. In comparative terms, Sugar Loaf though steep, only
rose fifty feet above the northern approaches—it was no Mount Suribachi. The significance of Sugar Loaf was in the genius of the defensive fortifications and the unbridled ferocity with which the Japanese would counter-attack every US assault.
The Sugar Loaf complex was like a smaller version of Iwo Jima’s Turkey Knob. As a tactical objective, Sugar Loaf lacked the physical dimensions to accommodate anything larger than a rifle company. But after eight days of fighting, that small ridge managed to chew up a handful of companies from two regiments.
Corporal James Day was a squad leader from Weapons Company 2/22. He “debatably” had the best seat in the house to watch the battle. Corporal Day’s squad spent four days and three nights isolated in a shell hole in Sugar Loaf’s western shoulder. On May 12, Day got orders to cross the Asa River and support Company G’s attack against the small ridge. Corporal Day’s squad arrived too late to do anything more than cover the fighting withdrawal of G Company. His company lost half their number in the all-day assault, including their gutsy commander, Captain Owen Stebbins (shot in both legs by a Japanese machine gunner). Corporal Day later wrote that Stebbins was: “a brave man whose tactical plan for assaulting Sugar Loaf became the pattern for all successive units to follow.”
Concerned about unrestricted fire from the Half Moon Hill area, Major Henry Courtney, battalion XO, took Corporal Day and his squad with him. They moved out on the morning of May 13 on a dangerous trek to reach the 29th Marines and coordinate the upcoming assault. The 29th Marines were then committed to protecting the 2/22 Marines’ left flank. Courtney tasked Corporal Day and his squad to support Company F in the following day’s assault.
Day’s rifle company comprised seven Marines. On the 14th, they joined Company F’s assault on Sugar Loaf Hill and scampered up the left shoulder. Day got orders to backtrack his squad around the hill and take up defensive positions on the right western shoulder—this was not easy. By late afternoon Company F had been driven off their exposed left shoulder, leaving Corporal Day with just two of his squad mates in a large shell hole on the opposite shoulder.
That evening, Major Courtney led forty-five volunteers from George and Fox Companies up the left shoulder of Sugar Loaf. In a frantic battle of close-quarters fighting, the Japanese killed Major Courtney and half of his force. According to Corporal Day: “We didn’t know who they were. Even though they were only fifty yards away, they were on the opposite side of the crest, we were out of visual contact. But we knew they were Marines, and we knew they were in trouble. We did our part by shooting and grenading every Jap we saw moving in their direction.”
Then, Corporal Day heard the sounds of Courtney’s force getting evacuated from the hill and knew they were alone on Sugar Loaf. Nineteen-year-old Corporal Day’s biggest concern was letting the other Marines know where they were and replenishing their ammo and grenades. “Before dawn, I went back down the hill and there were a couple of LVTs trying to deliver critical supplies to the folks who made it through the earlier penetration. But both had been knocked out just north of the hill. I was able to raid those disabled vehicles several times for ammo, rations, and grenades. We were fine.”
On May 15, Corporal Day and his men watched another Marine attack come from the northeast. This time Marines on the eastern crest of the hill were fully exposed to raking fire from the mortars on Half Moon and Horseshoe Hills. Corporal Day’s Marines directed their rifle fire into a column of enemy troops running toward Sugar Loaf from Horseshoe: “we really needed a machine gun.”
But good fortune provided them with a 30-caliber air-cooled M1919A4 left behind in the wake of the withdrawing Marines. Day’s gunner put the weapon into action on the forward parapet of their hole. But an enemy 47mm crew opened up from Horseshoe Hill, killing the Marine gunner and destroying the gun. Now there were only two riflemen left on the ridgetop.
Day and Bertoli
On May 15, tragedy struck the 1/22 Marines. A crushing Japanese bombardment caught the command group assembled at their observation post while they planned their next attack. Shellfire killed the CO, Major Tom Myers. Every other company commander was wounded, including the CO and XO of the supporting tank company. General Shepherd wrote: “it was the greatest single loss the division had sustained. Major Myers was an outstanding leader.”
Major Earl Cook, the battalion XO, took command and continued to make assault preparations. Division staff released a warning: “The enemy is able to accurately locate our OPs and CPs because of the commanding ground he occupies. The dangerous practice of permitting unnecessary crowding exposure in these areas will have serious consequences.”
That warning was worthless. Commanders had to observe the action to command. Exposure to interdictive fire was a risk you had to take as an infantry battalion commander. The following day, Colonel Jean Moreau, CO of the 1/29 Marines, suffered a serious wound when an enemy shell hit his observation post. His XO, Major Robert Neuffer, took over, and the battle raged on.
According to Corporal Day’s last surviving squad mate, Private First Class Dale Bertoli: “The Japs were the only ones up there, and they gave us their full attention. While we had plenty of grenades and ammo, it was still pretty hairy.”
Sugar Loaf Hill’s south slope was the steepest. Japanese troops swarmed from their caves on the reverse slopes but had a tough climb to get at the Marines on the ridge. Day and Bertoli greeted enemy troops scrambling up the rocks with grenades. The Japanese troops who survived this mini-barrage were backlit by flares as they struggled over and back down the ridge. Day and Bertoli were back to back in the dark side of the crater—an excellent position to shoot down fleeing Japanese troops.
According to Corporal Day: “I believed that Sugar Loaf would fall on the 16th. We looked back and down and saw the battle shaping up. A great panorama.” The two squad mates hunkered down while artillery, mortars, and tanks hammered the ridge. Day saw the fire coming from the enemy had not slackened: “Sugar Loaf’s real danger wasn’t the hill where we were, it was a 300-yard kill zone the Marines had to cross to approach the hill from the north. It was a grim sight. Men falling, tanks getting knocked out . . . division must’ve suffered over 600 casualties in that one day.” Looking back, the 6th Marine Division considered May 16 to be the bloodiest day of the entire campaign.
The battered 22nd Marines were down to forty percent effectiveness. General Shepherd relieved them with the 29th and installed fresh regimental leadership, replacing the CO and XO with Colonels Harold Roberts and August Larson. When the weather cleared during the late afternoon on the 16th, Day and Bertoli could see well past Horseshoe Hill and all the way to the Asato River. Steady columns of Japanese reinforcements surged northward through Takamotoji village and toward the battlefield. Day and Bertoli kept firing at them from 600 yards away, keeping a small but persistent thorn in the enemy’s defenses. Their rifle fire drew substantial attention from crawling squads of nighttime enemy raiders.
Corporal Day recalled: “They came at us from 2045 and on all night. All we could do was to keep tossing grenades and firing at them with our M-1s. Marines north of Sugar Loaf tried to help us with mortar fire, but it came a little too close, and both me and Bertoli were wounded by shrapnel and burned by white phosphorus.”
At dawn on the 17th, a runner from the 29th Marines scrambled up to their shell-pocked crater with orders to “get the hell out of there.” A massive naval, air, and artillery bombardment was underway. Day and Bertoli did not hesitate. They were exhausted and partially deaf, but still had the energy to stumble back down the hill to safety. Day and Bertoli endured a series of debriefings from staff officers, while a roaring bombardment crashed down on the three hills.
May 17 was the fifth day of battle for Sugar Loaf Hill. It was 2/29 Easy Company’s turn to attack the complex’s defenses. While brave and persistent, Easy Company’s several assaults fared little better than their predecessors. During one of these ferocious attacks, the 29th Marines reported to division: “E Company moved to t
he top of the ridge and had thirty men south of Sugar Loaf. [E Co.] sustained two close-in charges and killed a hell of a lot of Nips. Moving back to base to reform and at dusk, we are going again, We will take it.”
But Sugar Loaf did not fall. At dusk, after overcoming another savage onslaught of bayonets, flashing knives, and hand-to-hand combat against a brutal counterattack, Easy Company withdrew—taking 160 casualties.
May 18 marked the beginning of incessant rain. In this soupy mess, Dog Company, 2/29 Marines, attacked Sugar Loaf Hill. They were supported by tanks that braved the minefields on both shoulders of Sugar Loaf to penetrate the no-man’s-land just to the south. When the enemy swarmed out of their reverse-slope caves for another counterattack—tanks destroyed them. Dog Company earned the honor of becoming the first rifle company to hold Sugar Loaf overnight. Marines would not give up that bloody and costly ground.
The shot-up and exhausted 29th Marines still needed to take Half Moon and Horseshoe Hills. General Geiger adjusted the tactical boundaries westward and brought the 1st Marine Division into the fight for Horseshoe Hill. Geiger also released the 4th Marines from Corps reserve.
General Shepherd deployed the fresh Marines into the battle on the 19th. The battle raged, and the 4th Marines took seventy casualties just relieving the 29th Marines. But with Sugar Loaf now in Allied hands, the battle’s momentum shifted. On May 20, Colonel Reynolds Hayden’s 1/4 Marines (with help from the 2/4 and 3/4) made notable gains on both flanks. By the end of the day, Marines had secured Half Moon Hill and a good portion of Horseshoe.