by Daniel Wrinn
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 phosphoru
s.”
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 the 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.
Enemy reinforcements funneled into the fight from the southwest. The Marines prepared for nighttime visitors at Horseshoe Hill. Japanese troops came in massive numbers: 700 sailors and soldiers smashing into Marine defenders throughout much of the night. Colonel Bruno Hochmuth’s 3/4 Marines had six artillery battalions in direct support of the attack and fifteen battalions at the height of the fighting. Throughout the crisis on Horseshoe, Hochmuth kept in radio contact with Colonel Bruce Hemphill, who commanded the support artillery battalions.
This exchange between commanders reduced the number of short rounds and allowed Marines to provide accurate fire on the Japanese. This hellish rain of shells blew massive holes into the ranks of every Japanese advance: Marine riflemen met those who survived with their bayonets. The enemy counter attackers died to the man.
The victory at Sugar Loaf lacked a climactic finish. There was no celebration ceremony here. The sniper-infested ruins of Naha loomed ahead, with Shuri Ridge in the distance. The 1st Marine Division sidestepped the last of the Wana defenses to the east. The 6th Marine Division crept west while the 4th Marines crossed the chest-high Asa River on May 23. The III Amphibious Corps stood primed on the outskirts of Okinawa’s capital city.
The Army’s XXIV Corps matched the Marines’ breakthroughs and success. On the east coast, the 96th Division secured Conical Hill (opposite Sugar Loaf on the Shuri anchor line) after weeks of fierce fighting. On May 22, the 7th secured Yonabaru.
Now, the Japanese Thirty-second Army faced a real risk of being cut off from both flanks. General Ushijima (this time) took Colonel Yahara’s advice. Instead of fighting to the death at Shuri Castle, the remaining Japanese troops took advantage of the awful weather. They streamed southward to their last line of prepared defenses in the Kiyamu Peninsula. General Ushijima masterfully executed this maneuver. While Allied pilots spotted and interdicted the southbound columns, they reported other columns moving north. General Buckner believed the Japanese were rotating units in defense of Shuri. But these northbound troops were ragtag units tasked with a suicide rearguard action. At this, they succeeded.
On May 29, a South Carolina company commander raised the “Stars and Bars” Confederate flag over the abandoned Shuri Castle. According to General del Valle: “every damn OP that could see that flag started telephoning me and raising Cain. I had one hell of a hullabaloo on the telephone. I agreed to replace that rebel flag with the Stars and Stripes, but it took two days to get it through the Japs rear guards.”
On May 31, Colonel Richard Ross, CO of the 3/1 Marines, raised the Stars and Stripes over Shuri Castle and then took cover. Unlike Sugar Loaf Hill, Shuri Castle could be seen from all over southern Okinawa. Every Japanese gunner within range opened up on the hated American colors. Even though the Stars & Stripes fluttered over Shuri Castle, and the formidable enemy defenses had been breached, the Japanese Thirty-second Army still remained as deadly a fighting force as ever. The enemy would sell their lives dearly for the final eight shell-pocked, rain-soaked miles of southern Okinawa.
Screaming Mimi
Withdrawing Japanese troops did not easily escape from their Shuri defenses. US Navy spotter planes found the southbound column and called in a devastating fire from every available attack craft and half a dozen ships.
Soon after, many miles of that muddy road were littered with wrecked field guns, trucks, and corpses. General del Valle congratulated the Tactical Air Force: “Thanks for the prompt response this afternoon when the Nips were caught on the road with their kimonos down.”
Still, most of General Ushijima’s Thirty-second Army survived and made it to their “Alamo” on the Kiyamu Peninsula. The Tenth Army missed an opportunity to end the battle a month early—stalled by heavy rains and deep mud—simply too encumbered to swiftly respond.
Allied infantry trudged south, cursing the weather but glad to be past the Shuri line. Every advance exacted a price in blood. A Japanese sniper killed Colonel Horatio Woodhouse, CO of the 2/22 Marines (and General Shepherd’s cousin) as he led his battalion toward the Kokuba Estuary. Shepherd grieved privately at the loss of his young cousin and put the battalion XO, Colonel John G. Johnson, in command.
As troops of the III Amphibious Corps continued south, Marines came upon a series of east-west ridges that dominated open farmlands. Colonel Snedeker wrote: “The southern part of Okinawa consisted primarily of cross ridges that stuck out like the bones of a fish.” In the meantime, divisions from the Army’s XXIV Corps carefully approached the towering escarpments in their zone. The remaining Japanese troops had gone to ground again along the ridges and peaks—lying in wait to ambush the Allied advance.
Rain and mud plagued the advancing Allied forces. In Eugene Sledge’s book, he described this battlefield as a “five-mile sea of mud.” PFC Sledge wrote: “The mud in camp on Pavuvu was a nuisance. But the mud on that Okinawan battlefield was misery beyond description.”
The 96th Division reported the results of a full day’s efforts under these conditions: “those on the reverse slope slid back and those on the forward slope down—otherwise no change.”
Marines chafed at the heavy-handed controls of the Tenth Army, which seemed to stall at each encounter with a Japanese outpost. General Buckner preferred a massive application of firepower and destroying every obstacle before committing troops into the open. Colonel Shapley, CO of the 4th Marines, disagreed: “I’m not too sure that sometimes when they whittle you away, ten to twelve men a day, that maybe it would be better to take a hundred losses a day to get out sooner.”
Colonel Wilburt “Bigfoot,” Brown, CO of the 11th Marines (legendary veteran artilleryman) believed the Tenth Army relied too he
avily on firepower. “We dumped a tremendous amount of metal into those Jap positions. Nothing could have lived through that churning mass of roaring and falling shells—but when we advanced, the Nips were still there—and mad as hell.” Colonel Brown also had strong feelings about the overuse of star shells for night illumination: “It was like we were the children of Israel in the wilderness: living under a pillar of fire by night and a cloud of smoke by day.”
This heavy reliance on artillery support stressed the amphibious supply system. The Tenth Army’s demand for heavy ordinance grew to over 3,000 tons of ammunition per day. Each round had to be delivered to the beach and distributed along the front. This reduced the availability of other supplies, including rations. Frontline troops began to go hungry. Partial support came from the friendly skies when Marine torpedo-bombers air-dropped rations during the first three days of June.
Offshore, the fleet endured waves of kamikaze attacks. On May 17, Admiral Turner announced an end to the amphibious assault phase and departed. General Buckner now reported to Admiral Spruance. Admiral Harry Hill assumed command of the enormous amphibious force still supporting the Tenth Army. On May 27, Admiral “Bull” Halsey relieved Spruance. And the Fifth Fleet officially became the Third Fleet: same crew, same ships, different designation. Turner and Spruance began plotting their next amphibious assault—Operation Downfall—the invasion of the Japanese home islands.
General Shepherd appreciated the vast amphibious resources available and decided to inject some tactical mobility into this sluggish campaign. For the 6th Division to secure the Naha Airfield, Shepherd had to first overcome the Oroku Peninsula. The hard way of achieving this would be to attack from the peninsula’s base and scratch seaward. Or Shepherd could launch a shore-to-shore amphibious assault and surprise the enemy on their flank. “The Japanese expected us to cross the Kokuba,” Shepherd said. “I wanted to surprise them.”