by Daniel Wrinn
Naval gunfire support had never been so effective. Over 4,000 tons of munitions were delivered on L-Day. Frontline regiments received direct support from a “call-fire” ship and one illumination ship throughout the campaign. The quantity and quality of naval gunfire was summed up in this message from General Shepherd: “The effectiveness of our naval gunfire support was measured by the large number of Japanese encountered. Dead ones.”
Even through the most intense Kikusui attacks in early April, the fleet still unloaded over half a million tons of supplies onto Hagushi’s beaches to support the Tenth Army. They opened the port of Nago by clearing mines and obstacles under fire. The only direct consequence from the massed kamikaze attacks was the April 6 sinking of ammunition ships Hobbs Victory and Logan Victory. This caused a shortage of 155mm artillery and delayed General Buckner’s first offensive against Shuri by three days. But the Fifth Fleet deserved its nickname “The fleet that came to stay.”
But as April dragged into May, the Tenth Army was bogged down because of lackluster frontal assaults along the Shuri line. Admiral Spruance pressured General Buckner to speed up his attack to reduce the fleet’s vulnerability. Nimitz was concerned and flew to Okinawa to “counsel” Buckner. Nimitz said: “we’re losing a ship and a half each day we’re out here. You gotta get this thing moving.”
Senior Marine commanders urged Buckner to play the “amphib card” and execute a massive landing on the southeast coast to turn the enemy’s right flank. Several Army generals agreed with this recommendation and mentioned that continuing to assault Shuri with frontal assaults was like putting forces through a meatgrinder.
General Vandegrift, Commandant of the Marine Corps, visited the island and seconded the recommendations given to Buckner. Vandegrift pointed out that Buckner still controlled the 2nd Marines. This veteran amphibious outfit had already demonstrated its capability against the Minatoga Beaches on L-Day. Buckner had sent the 2nd Marine Division to Saipan to reduce their vulnerability from kamikaze attacks. But the 2nd Division still had combat-loaded ships at hand and could have opened a second front in Okinawa within days.
General Buckner was a capable and popular commander, but his experience with amphibious warfare was limited. His staff warned of a potential logistical nightmare in opening a second front. His intelligence predicted stiff resistance around the Minatoga beachhead. Buckner knew the high cost of the bloody Anzio operation and the consequences of an amphibious landing far from the main effort. Buckner believed the defenses on Shuri would soon crack under a coordinated application of his massive infantry firepower. Buckner rejected the amphibious option. Admirals’ Nimitz and Sherman agreed. But not Admirals Turner and Spruance or the Marines.
Spruance wrote in a private letter: “There are times when I was impatient for some of Holland Smith’s drive.” And General Shepherd stated: “General Buckner did not cotton to amphibious operations.”
Even Colonel Yahara of the Thirty-second Army, conceded later under interrogation that he’d been puzzled by the adherence to a wholly frontal assault from north to south: “The absence of a landing in the south puzzled the Thirty-second Army. Especially after the beginning of May, when it was impossible to put up anything more than a token resistance in the south.”
But by then, the 2nd Marine Division was feeling like a yo-yo preparing for their assigned missions. Colonel Samuel Taxis had sharp words after the war about Buckner’s decision. “I will always feel that the Tenth Army should’ve been prepared the instant they were found bogged down. They should’ve thrown a left hook down there in the southern beaches. They had one hell of a powerful reinforced division down there—trained to a gnat’s whisker.”
General Buckner stood by his decision. There was to be no “left hook.” Instead, both the 1st and 6th Divisions joined in the Shuri offensive as infantry divisions under the Tenth Army, and the 2nd Division would remain in Saipan.
Blowtorch and Corkscrew
According to the Tenth Army’s after-action report: “Japanese defensive efforts and continued development and improvement of cave warfare was the most outstanding feature of enemy tactics on Okinawa.”
General Ushijima selected the best terrain to defend the Shuri highlands across the southern neck of the island. His troops dominated two of Okinawa’s strategic features: the sheltered anchorage of Nakagusuku bay (later called Buckner Bay) to the east, and the port of Naha to the west. Because of this, Allied troops would have to force their way into the enemy’s preregistered killing zones to secure their objectives.
Everything about the terrain favored the defenders. The elaborate topography of ridges, draws, and escarpments grouped the battlefield into sections of small unit firefights. The lack of dense vegetation gave the Japanese troops full, interlocking fire and observation from immediate strong points.
Like Iwo Jima, the enemy fought primarily from underground positions to counteract the Allied supremacy in supporting arms. The enemy modified thousands of concrete Okinawa tombs to use as combat outposts. While there were blind spots in the defenses, finding and exploiting them was costly in time and blood.
The most savage fighting of the campaign took place on a compressed battlefield. The distance from Yonabaru on the east coast to the Asa River bridge on the other side of the island was only 9,000 yards. General Buckner advanced abreast with two Army divisions. By May 8, he’d doubled his force by adding two Marine divisions from IIIAC and sent them west. His two XXIV Corps Army Divisions were sent east. Each of these divisions fought brutal, bloody battles against disciplined enemy soldiers defending entrenched and fortified terrain.
By rejecting the amphibious flanking plan in late April, Buckner had fresh divisions ready to deploy and join the general offensive against Shuri. The 77th relieved the 96th in the center, and the 1st Marine Division relieved the 27th Infantry in the west. Colonel Ken Chappell’s 1st Marines entered the lines on April 30 and took heavy fire the moment they approached. When the 5th Marines arrived to supplement the relief, enemy gunners were pounding anything that moved.
PFC Eugene Sledge later wrote: “It was hell in there. We raced across an open field with Jap shells screaming and roaring around us with increasing frequency. The thunder and crash of explosions was a nightmare. I was terribly afraid.”
General del Valle took command of the western zone on May 1 at 1400. He issued orders for a major assault the following morning. That evening, a staff officer brought a captured Japanese map annotated with all the American positions. Del Valle realized that the enemy already knew where the 1st Marine Division had entered the fight.
At dawn, Marines attacked into a jagged country (known as the Awacha Pocket). With all their combat expertise, Marines were no more immune to the relentless storm of shells and bullets than the soldiers they relieved. This frustrating day was a forewarning of future conditions. It rained hard as Marines secured the closest high ground. They came under such intense fire from nearby strongholds and other higher ground that they had to retreat. Dozens of Japanese infiltrators snuck up on the withdrawing Marines and engaged them in savage hand-to-hand combat. According to a Marine survivor: “That, was a bitch.”
The 1st Division’s veterans from Peleliu weren’t strangers to cave warfare. No other division had as much practical experience. While nothing on Okinawa could match the Umurbrogol Pocket’s steep cliffs, heavy vegetation, and array of fortified ridges, the “Old Breed” of the 1st Division faced a more numerous and smarter enemy. The 1st Division fought through four straight weeks of hell. The funnel created by the cliffs and draws reduced most of the Allied attacks to savage frontal assaults by fully exposed infantry/tank/engineer teams. General Buckner described this small unit fighting as: “a slugging match with temporary and limited opportunity to maneuver.”
General Buckner captured the media’s imagination with his “blowtorch and corkscrew” tactics needed for successful cave warfare. But to the Marine and Army veterans of Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and Biak, he was just
stating the obvious—flamethrowers were the blowtorch and demolitions the corkscrew. But both weapons had to be delivered from close range by tanks and exposed infantry covering them.
On May 3, the rains finally let up, and the Marines resumed their assault. This time they took and held the first tier of vital terrain in the Awacha Pocket. But even after a methodical reduction of enemy strong points, it would take another full week of fierce fighting. Fire support proved to be an excellent asset. Now it was the Army’s time to return the favor of inter-service artillery support. The 27th Division’s Field Artillery Regiment stayed on the line with its forward observers and linemen familiar with the terrain.
Here, Japanese defensive discipline began to crack. General Ushijima encouraged discussion and debate from his staff regarding tactical courses of action. These heated discussions were generally between chief of staff, Lieutenant General Cho and conservative operations officer, Colonel Yahara. So far, Yahara’s strategy of a “delay and bleed” holding action had prevailed. The Thirty-second Army had resisted the massive Allied invasion for over a month. With their Army still intact, they could continue to inflict heavy casualties on their enemies for months while massed kamikaze attacks wreaked havoc on the fleet.
But maintaining a sustained defense was not Bushido and against General Cho’s code of honor and morals. He argued for a massive counterattack. Against Yahara’s protests, Ushijima sided with General Cho. The great Japanese counterattack of May 4 was ill-advised and foolhardy. Manning the assault forces would forfeit Japanese coverage of the Minatoga sector and bring Ushijima’s troops forward into unfamiliar territory. To deliver the mass of the fire necessary to cover the assault, Ushijima brought most of his mortars and artillery pieces into the open. He planned to use the 26th Shipping Engineer Regiment and other elite forces in a frontal attack. At the same time, a waterborne double envelopment would alert the Allied forces to a massive counteroffensive. Yahara winced in despair.
General Cho’s recklessness was now clear. Navy “Flycatcher” patrols on both coasts interdicted the first flanking attempts by Japanese raiders in slow-moving barges and canoes. On the west coast, near Kusan, the 1/1 Marines and the 3rd Armored Amphibian Battalion greeted the enemy trying to come ashore with deadly fire—killing 727. Farther down the coast, the 2/1 Marines intercepted and killed another 175, while the 1st Reconnaissance Company and the war dog platoon hunted down and destroyed the last sixty-four men hiding in the brush. The XXIV Corps took the brunt of the overland assault. They scattered the Japanese troops into small groups before ruthlessly shooting them down.
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 ho
urs 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.