by Hugh Ambrose
The ships of the 1st Marine Division sailed in early March of 1945 out of the Solomon Islands. They sailed to Ulithi Atoll, the navy's new forward base, arriving on March 21. Colonel Shofner's view of the grand navy fleet changed hour by hour as hundreds of ships swung on their anchors. The most impressive sight, a line of Essex-class carriers like Hornet towering over the assemblage, appeared soon thereafter; it was nicknamed "Murderers Row." As Shofner contemplated his mission, he received some good news. Major General Pedro del Valle, commander of the 1st Marine Division, handed him his fitness report to sign. He had rated Shofner excellent in all categories except for "Loyalty," which was "outstanding." The general described him as "young, energetic, does a good job." Shifty was on his way back.
AT ULITHI, EUGENE SLEDGE AND HIS COMRADES WENT ASHORE TO ESCAPE THE confines of their troopship for a little bit and "enjoy some not so cold cokes and beer."465 On March 24, the carrier Franklin came to Ulithi. R. V. Burgin came "within thirty yards of the Franklin." It had been heavily damaged by enemy suicide planes a week earlier, when the carriers had steamed close to Japan and attacked its air bases. The condition reds that sounded most nights in the great bay of Ulithi warned the marines that enemy spy planes were keeping an eye on them.
The briefings on the battle of Okinawa were already in full swing with endless numbers of maps and photographs. King Company CO Stumpy Stanley told them about deadly snakes and warned all men not to "drink, wash or bathe in any water other than that issued by the purification outfits."466 Having had the hardest assignment on Peleliu, the First Marines would be in reserve; the Seventh and the Fifth would lead the assault. With all of the invasions taking place in the Pacific, the planning staffs had designated the invasion day as Love Day, instead of D-day, to avoid confusion. Everyone knew the beaches of Okinawa would be "heavily defended" on Love Day.467 Along with all of their talk of the preinvasion bombardment clearing their path, the briefers acknowledged that the Fifth Marines "were going to have to hit the beach here and go up ladders"; their landing zone "was supposed to be right at the base of the cliff at the base of the beach."468 Climbing a ladder meant extreme vulnerability. The job of being first up the ladder, though, fell to other companies. King Company would land in the fifth wave. It stayed aboard a troopship while those companies in the assault transferred to LSTs for the last leg of the trip.
In the several weeks since he had left Pavuvu, Eugene Sledge wrote a handful of letters. They sounded as though he had written them while lying on his bunk in a hot tent amid the coconut plantation. His insistence that war news not be sent to him from the States became rather strident. No matter what he or anyone he knew thought or said about the war, it "will end just as quickly." He requested his mother not to "ask me why they don't use certain weapons and tactics--I'm just one of the Americans fighting it & if I did know I couldn't tell you." Eugene Sledge's remarkable powers of observation had come, however, from his parents, so they might read his request for a "knitted cap" to be sent "via first class mail, if possible," as a signal of his departure from the heat of the tropics.
Mail call also found the #2 mortar squad aboard their troopship. Sergeant R. V. Burgin received "a letter from my dad, telling me that my brother . . . had been killed in France. He was killed in February, and here it was the latter part of March before I got word that he was killed." Burgin's family knew a little about Joseph's death because "the captain of the company wrote my mother and dad and told them that he was killed by artillery and died instantly." Burgin spoke to Sledge and his friends in the squad about his younger brother Joseph, just eighteen, and confessed, "I don't even know what company he was in--he had just got there, you know, he'd just been there a day or two when he got killed." It angered R.V. to think about his brother in combat as "a raw recruit" because Burgin knew that being the new guy meant Joseph "didn't have anybody."
Eugene received a letter about his brother Edward before the troopships weighed anchor at Ulithi. His older brother had added a Bronze Star to his Silver Star and two Purple Hearts. His mother wondered why Gene never found time to write him, so he promised he would congratulate Edward, "a brother to be proud of," as soon as he could. In the meantime, he begged his parents to get his dog, Deacon, "the best of treatments" for the heart trouble of which they had informed him. The troopships and the carriers and the support ships departed on different days, but by March 27, all were under way.
On the morning of April 1 the great cacophony opened up. It exceeded the invasion of Peleliu in all aspects: the amount of shelling, the number of aircraft overhead, the number of ships--the word was there were more ships here than had been in the Normandy invasion--but the veterans of King Company watched from their troopship APA 198 unmoved.469 They knew none of this mattered. The enemy was underground, waiting for the marines to arrive. When they climbed down the cargo nets and into Higgins boats, they once more left the protective custody of the great ships and soon the only protection they would have from flying metal would be their cotton dungarees. Sledge thought, "we all hated the idea of the invasion being on Sunday, much less Easter. General Stonewall Jackson [the Confederate general] never initiated battle on Sunday and said something like this, 'he who presses battle on the Sabbath Day invites God's wrath.' " Sergeant Burgin, however, thought of the way the Japanese had butchered marines--had hacked off hands, heads, and genitals--and resolved "to kill every last one of them." As for his own fate he gave himself over to his Maker. "God, take care of me, I'm yours."
By nine thirty a.m., the 3/5's boats were at the reef about four thousand yards from the beach. The Higgins boats they were in could not cross it, necessitating their transfer into amtracs. The amtracs had come from the beach. Somebody asked a crewman, "What's it like?" He said, "You guys are walking in, no problem."470
The veterans of Peleliu arrived on the beach at about ten thirty a.m. and were astonished. Everyone was standing up. No shells rained down. No great wall had to be scaled. Men and tanks and 75mm howitzers were coming ashore as if borne by a giant conveyor. The navy's big guns had certainly cleaned out the beachhead. No one knew what the Japanese were up to, but the fact that it was April Fools' Day drew many a comment. With the mouth of the Bishi Gawa River off to their right, they were where they were supposed to be. Companies of the 1st Battalion could be seen on the high ground in the distance, pushing methodically forward through a patchwork of tiny farms. Gene could only conclude, "God must be with us, for he has certainly treated us well and looked after us here."
They formed up. The 3/5 followed four hundred yards behind the 1/5, which would hold the right flank of the entire division. K Company had the right side of their battalion's line. Thousands of marines marched forward into a strange, unexpected world, along tiny little dirt roads, or across farmland and pastures. Progress was at a plodding pace, though much faster than expected. The shelling faded away quickly. The skeletons of houses and villages dotted the landscape, 90 percent of the buildings destroyed.471 The inhabitants had seemingly fled, but a few civilians had to be rounded up and delivered to the regimental HQ.472 As the day wore on, word came of marines getting attacked by small groups of enemy soldiers. The battalion HQ had been attacked by a handful of diehards, apparently bypassed by 1st Battalion, and the 3/5's CO had been wounded and was evacuated. Major John Gustafson had taken them all the way across Peleliu and he disappeared on a clear, breezy day when everything seemed to be going well.
Looking westward toward the setting sun, the #2 gun squad saw the ocean below them, a great navy riding the swells. Overhead, an airplane streaked westward toward the ships in the distance. Burgin and Sledge watched it. It was Japanese. The ships began firing, their antiaircraft guns pumping faster and faster. They waited for the plane to be hit by one of the puffs of black flak, but it kept boring in. A moment later, the kamikaze flew into what looked like a troop transport. Smoke and flame roiled up. Burgin let out a quiet, "Oh hell."473
They dug their mortar positions in a barley field. Sle
dge donned several layers of wool under his field jacket to ward off the chill. As darkness brought Love Day to a close, the anticipation of a banzai attack began to make everyone jumpy. Even the vets got nervous in the service. Marines in the rifle platoons threw grenades at any noise in the darkness.474
In the morning, Love Day plus 1, the strange noises turned out to be sheep and goats bleating.475 Orders from above placed 3rd Battalion on the right flank of the division, moving abreast of the other two battalions. K Company would assume the right of the battalion, making it responsible for guarding the division's right flank.476 They launched their attack at seven forty a.m., but it turned into a long walk. The weather was pleasant, even chilly at times. They walked through farm country, with livestock and gardens and occasional civilians. The Japanese had erected lots of dummy gun emplacements in the area through which they passed. Snipers and holdouts were expected behind every wall and on every hill. The enemy had tens of thousands of men on the island. The war had to break out at any moment.
LIEUTENANT COLONEL SHOFNER, HIS MPS, AND THE MILITARY GOVERNMENT team landed on Love Day plus 1, among the last of the division's units to land. The HQ had been established amid the ruins of the town of Sobe.477 Shofner found about five hundred civilians had been rounded up already. The Okinawans were older people and mothers with young children. They had spent the night on the beach without cover. What food they had received had been proffered by passing marines. The medical teams of the division complained that these conditions were unsatisfactory. The lawyers of the MG staff agreed. Although the people his men guarded looked harmless, the provost marshal had to assume the locals were hostile. The older Okinawans spoke a dialect of Okinawan, not Japanese, so the Nisei translators had trouble. Shifty's A Detachment and the army's B Detachment worked together and moved the civilians into the remains of the buildings in the town of Sobe.
The lack of resistance from regular Japanese military units created a great deal of confusion. The rapid advance of the U.S. military across the island had also begun to stretch the logistical network. The trucks of supplies created traffic jams that needed MPs to unsnarl them.478 Amid a sea of trucks, the MPs could not locate any transportation to move the elderly and the wounded. For a few days, the MPs and MGs had difficulty locating food and could serve their captives only one meal per day. The MPs lacked wire with which to create an enclosure. Just as the MGs' supply problems eased, the rifle companies moved beyond the supporting range of the artillery, which now had to be moved forward. No one could spare a truck to move civilians. In order to function at a basic level, Shifty's MPs "commandeered" a DUKW. They used it to move civilians, leaving the MG units to conduct scouting and liaison work with field units on foot.
In the next few days, some ten thousand civilian refugees became Shifty's problem. The 1st Division, meantime, had displaced its HQ far to the east, as its rifle companies approached Okinawa's far shore. The support and supply teams on the beaches and in Sobe were working at breakneck speed to support the advance. Many of the "roads" on the island turned out to be "paths." The MPs were hard- pressed to guide the flow of trucks.
Shofner left Sobe in care of the B Detachment, as per the plan, and took his men forward and established a new camp at Ishimiwe Kutoku, nearer the "front line." He found more traffic jams and "a sizable number of marines who had become separated from their units." The MPs gathered in more and more civilians, most of them elderly and fragile. Only a few of them looked like potential POWs. Their numbers and their needs overwhelmed the MPs, even as Shofner felt a duty to stay with his division. By Love Day plus 10, the MPs and the military government teams supervised fourteen thousand civilians at two camps: one in Sobe, the other at Gushikawa, near the 1st Division's HQ on the east coast, a quiet, pastoral area with few roads.
The 1st Marine Division had accomplished its objective easily, within a few days. In the meantime the other U.S. divisions of the Tenth Army had located and engaged the IJA in the northern part of the island and also in the southern half of it. While others fought the battle, the 1st Division secured the center of the island and waited. It seemed like the perfect time for Shofner to turn over control of the prisoners to C Detachments, from the amphibious corps headquarters, as the plan ordered. The challenges presented by the massive numbers exceeded his unit's capacity to care for them, much less to evaluate each individual. The Nisei language officers Shifty had on his team could communicate with the Okinawans with some difficulty. The Nisei had not, however, been trained in the art of translation, the procedures of intelligence gathering, or the practice of interrogation, making it difficult for the MPs to secure the rear areas from saboteurs.479
The Okinawans eagerly cooperated to the best of their ability. Moreover, the U.S. intelligence officers had also learned that the Japanese military on Okinawa had conscripted all male Okinawans between the ages of seventeen and forty-five. These facts, however, did not liberate Shifty from his duty. As he put it, "a large, potentially pro-Japanese population could not be allowed to roam freely between the invasion beaches and the front lines." He wanted to turn over his charges to a competent authority. However, the staff of the amphibious corps, as well as the staff of the Island Command, made up reasons why the C Detachments were not able to assume responsibility. Worse, their replies indicated that they were not likely to do so in the near future.480
THE 3/5 HAD REACHED THE EASTERN COAST OF OKINAWA, MUCH TO ITS COLLECTIVE amazement, in four days.481 The entire Fifth Regiment had killed twenty-one enemy and captured four POWs.482 The Fifth had lost four marines and twenty-seven wounded, most of those to accidents. The numbers of refugees coming through their lines went from a trickle to a flood on the fourth day. On the dirt paths and small roadways, the marines came upon groups as large as seventy-five people, made up of the very old, the very young, and the wounded. The adults carried a few belongings in knapsacks or baskets. Many walked barefoot. The officers grew nervous with thoughts of what would happen if the Japanese attacked and the shooting started while their marines sifted through a throng of villagers.
Since he saw only the very old and the very young, R. V. Burgin wondered if all the younger, able-bodied civilians were aiding the enemy. He had also heard, though, that the Japanese had raped and tortured the Okinawans, killing any that offended them. From what he could see, the Okinawans "were happy that we were there. They wanted us to liberate them from the Japs. They were sick of the Japs. They didn't like them." E. B. Sledge found the Okinawans "pathetic." He saw "fear, dismay, and confusion on their faces."483
The land the marines had hiked across reminded Sledge of North Carolina, with streams running through the valleys and pines growing along the ridges. Cart paths connected small villages to the farms. They had heard of skirmishes, but had not seen any. During a march on April 6, a fragmentation grenade exploded accidentally. A corporal in one of the rifle platoons had hooked it to his belt.484 "After that you didn't have to tell anyone about 5-pace interval," one marine noticed. "Everybody was about 15 paces between men. It shook us up."485 That evening, 3rd Battalion set up a perimeter around the village of Inubi to protect the regimental headquarters located in the town.486 Delighted not to be in combat, Eugene noticed that the buildings in the village tended to have tiled roofs, while in the countryside the farmers' houses had thatched roofs resting upon rock walls. The farms grew crops with which he was familiar, like barley, as well as the terraced paddies for rice.
For the next ten days, they stayed in one bivouac, and this allowed them to set up their pup tents. As the days passed, the marines began to raid the farms. At first they checked for eggs in the henhouses, dug up potatoes, and cut lengths of sugarcane, but this quickly gave way to helping themselves to the Okinawans' cows and pigs. The mortar squad eventually gathered six horses for carrying their gear, which they thought was terrific. They also provided for a bit of fun, as Sledge and the others went riding. On horseback, he continued to survey the new terrain. The pine trees seldom grew more t
han twenty feet tall, and he noticed that the doves in the fields were "very similar to those in Alabama although these here have lighter speckle backs and sail quite a bit while in flight."
Reveling in the peaceful countryside, Sledge revised his opinion of the Okinawans. He sought out opportunities to meet them. Their black hair framed faces of olive skin and dark eyes. Most of them were shorter than Eugene, who thought they looked like Indians, except they wore kimonos tied with sashes and clad their feet in shoes made of wood. The Okinawans welcomed his kind attention. One young girl tried to teach him how to count to ten, but he could not get beyond three. All of the women seemed to have a baby on their back, to the point where he suspected "farming and children are the island's main products." Quaint customs, like washing their feet before entering their homes, endeared them to him. He obtained one of their kimonos and its silk sash, rolling them up and putting them in the pouch that formerly had held his gas mask. He had another gift for his mother.
These easy days of living in a pup tent and accompanying the occasional patrol had a somewhat unreal quality to them, since none of the veterans ever doubted that the Japanese were going to fight for their homeland. Word of the fighting down south--the army divisions down there had run into stiff opposition--reached the mortar squad. They could hear the distant thunder and flash of artillery, see the planes going over, or look offshore and see spotlights searching the sky. Not everyone took the hint. It seemed to the veterans that every night, "all the new kids said, 'Come on, you guys keep telling us about the war. This is a picnic.' " To which the vets replied, "Yea, wait, wait, wait, wait!"487