The Battle of Okinawa in 1945, with its 75th anniversary, was one of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific War, raging from the end of March through June 1945. It was a battle that set the definition as over 4,900 U.S. Sailors perished, the largest loss of life of any single battle, either on land or at sea, in the history of the Navy, while the U.S. Army and Marine Corps lost more men on land. The Japanese garrison of 77,000 was virtually annihilated, and the Okinawa civilian population suffered intense human loss, immediately minimized by about half during the fighting.
Okinawa was seen as a critical, strategic objective, and one that could be used to support the invasion of Japan as the point from which the invasion would move forward. The U.S. Navy thus had the monumental job of transporting, supplying, and defending over 500,000 personnel with the U.S. Army and Marine Corps over logistics lines thousands of miles long and vulnerable to enemy interdiction. Further complicating prospects for defending the island, the fanaticism of the Japanese meant that land-based aircraft using kamikaze tactics would dive-bomb the U.S. Fleet in much greater numbers than had ever been experienced in conventional attacks.
The Japanese strategy was to prolong the battle and continue maximizing casualties, establishing their intent to fight to their end. This was also characterized by kamikaze pilots who would throw their lives away and kill others to boot. While such tactics seemed truly strange to American sensibilities, U.S. sailors showed equal intent. Even as their ships burned around them, gunners continued to fire at kamikaze aircraft, while often enough, damage control teams performed near-miracles to save their vessels, at times giving their own lives in the process.
Severe burn injuries, including body burns, were unavoidable among the wounded because of the amount of fuel these planes carried. Although the Japanese lost the battle and the island, they did succeed in showing what an invasion of Japan would be like. The high toll of casualties on both sides showed what an invasion of Japan would cost.
Known as the “Floating Chrysanthemums,” the naval component of the Battle of Okinawa involved relentless kamikaze attacks against the U.S. Navy. There were over 1,400 kamikaze attacks on the U.S. fleet, which carried out operations at the end of a long logistics trail and always within range of Japanese aircraft. The hideous casualties did not, however, impinge on the valor of the crews on board these ships. The first two weeks: low casualties. The first large-scale kamikaze organized on April 6-7, 1945.
Operation Kikusui No. 1 sent in 355 kamikaze planes, coordinated with another 340 conventional strike and escort aircraft. The Americans had full warning of the attack and still inflicted severe damage, with the destroyers Bush and Colhoun being sunk after epic battles. The destroyer-minesweeper Emmons also went down, after a gallant struggle. Several other destroyers were saved by damage control, but they were so severely damaged as to be beyond repair. The suicide attacks continued for another two months, with Kikusui No. 1 being the biggest but not the costliest.
In an interrupting story, the super battleship Yamato steamed to its suicidal deployment as part of Operation Ten-Ichi-go. The Yamato-class battleships were built as a response to US naval dominance and, at the time, were the world’s largest and most powerful. So, their last sortied mission was to interrupt the Allies’ invasion on Okinawa. But the ship and its accompanying fleet were confronted by Admiral Marc Mitscher’s Task Force 58. Chances of the ship’s salvation were few, as successive waves of American aircraft overwhelmed the sinking Yamato with the aid of torpedoes and bombs on April 7, 1945.
In losing the Yamato, the cruiser Yahagi, and five destroyers, though, an age of battleship warfare truly came to an end. In that respect, the sinking of the ship brought the message home about the new age of sea warfare: air superiority made even the most powerful surface ship obsolete.
However, Russell Spurr’s “A Glorious Way to Die” gives a relatively accurate description of the final mission of Yamato, which should, however, be the subject of a certain degree of criticism for its sometimes journalism-like style and lack of strict historical citing. Criticisms aside, this book provides a poignant account of the going-ons leading to the ultimate end of Yamato, very much bringing about the human element in a tragedy at sea.
The Battle of Okinawa and the final charge of Yamato were poignant reminders of the many huge sacrifices that had to be offered in World War II. Such valor by both sides would remain etched in history forever as an account of human diversity against all odds.