301. Okinawa - The Typhoon of Steel
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Hello and welcome to Battleground 45 with me, Patrick Bishop. Today I'm talking to Saul David about the bloodiest battle of the Pacific War, the fight on air, land and sea to capture the strategically vital island of Okinawa, some 350 miles east of Japan, which was about to reach a victorious climax for the Americans exactly 80 years ago.

Everything about the Okinawa story was epic. The scale, the casualties, the pitiless nature of cruelty of the fighting, the hellishness of the conditions. The Japanese used kamikaze aircraft and child soldiers. Defeat ended in a wave of seppuku ritual suicides led by the top commander.

It's also notable for the death in combat of Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Bookner, Jr., the overall land commander of the campaign. All in all, then, a astonishing event and one that Saul's already mentioned

told in fantastic detail with great drama in his book Crucible of Hell which came out about five years ago so go up and have a look at that but let's start off by talking first about the importance of Okinawa and the islands around it. Yeah it's 100 miles south of Kyushu which is the most southerly of the so-called home islands which make up the sort of inner sanctum of Japan or Japan proper

And the plan ultimately by April 1945 was to get hold of Okinawa as a launching point for what was going to be the invasion of Japan. Now, we spoke about Operation Downfall on a recent podcast. That didn't take place. But of course, if we put ourselves in the minds of the senior commanders and politicians,

in America in April 1945. They didn't know that. They very much had to assume that an invasion would be necessary. And Okinawa was seen as the ideal launch pad, both because they could get hold of the airfields there, but also it was a perfect natural harbour from which the shipping that would be needed for the invasion could also be based. It's pretty large, 70 miles across, between 2 and 10 miles in width.

and the battle to take it, of course, they knew was going to be incredibly bloody. And as you've already pointed out, Patrick, so indeed it was. Yeah, but it wasn't, didn't go, it was a massive amphibious operation, wasn't it? I think the biggest amphibious operation of the Pacific War, the initial landing. But

I think readers might have in their minds the idea of a kind of D-Day style operation with troops wading ashore in the teeth of heavy mortar and machine gun fire. But it wasn't like that at all, was it? The Japanese game was very much to let them get ashore and then let the battle commence once they advanced inland towards their very carefully prepared positions.

Yeah, that's right. As we mentioned in a previous podcast, when we talked about the start of the Battle of Okinawa, the Japanese very cleverly or sensibly, given their obvious disparity in terms of manpower, material, they wouldn't have air superiority, of course.

If you just think of the scale of the operation for the American side for a moment, 20 aircraft carriers were involved in this operation, which meant that even before they got the airfields on the island itself, which they did within a day or two of arriving, they had complete air superiority. And eventually when the troops themselves landed, they were going to have an awful lot of artillery on the island. So the Japanese very sensibly decided not to contest the landings.

But I mean, the real point about the early stage of the campaign, Patrick, is that there were opportunities, I think, for Buckner to get the job done a little bit quicker. He was inexperienced. This was his first major field command, and he played it safe. He relied on artillery to get the job done, which is literally blasting the Japanese from their defensive positions. But

the defensive positions were very strong. So this turned into an attritional struggle in which individual US Marines and soldiers had to, you know, grapple almost hand to hand with the Japanese and winkle them out with explosives, flamethrowers, and pretty much anything else they could use, a so-called policy of corkscrew and burn.

But it was incredibly tough for, of course, both the Japanese defenders, but also for the Americans, the psychological damage done to them as they tried to force the Japanese to give in when, of course, most of them refused to surrender.

Let's say something about Buckner here because he is, of course, famous for being the most high-ranking military officer to be killed on the American side in the Second World War. He wasn't a particularly appealing character, was he? He was a bit of a disciplinarian. I've read one account of when he was in his previous command, which was overseeing the defenses of Alaska. He slept under a single sheet bed.

And he refused to allow his men to use deodorants on the grounds that a man, quotes, a man should smell like a man. His father was a Confederate general, so a bit of a character of the hard-bitten, ultra-super-martial American military man. But as you say, his style of actual leadership, or rather his tactical approach, wasn't particularly inspiring.

No, that's right. You've done some good research there, by the way, Patrick. But yeah, no, it absolutely accords with some of the details I found. I mean, when they're preparing for the operation in Hawaii, he insisted on all his staff going for these sort of mad 10 mile hikes through the hills. And

One of his deputies, his deputy assistant chief of staff, you know, said, well, why on earth do we need to do this? We're literally going to be at headquarters for most of the fighting. I mean, he liked to think that he would lead from the front and it ultimately explains his demise. But again,

This so-called fellow feeling for the ordinary soldier or Marine who served under him has to be taken with a bit of a pinch of salt, frankly, because the tactics he was using on the island were, as I've mentioned, very attritional and it meant an awful lot of people were going to lose their lives.

Should he have been a bit more imaginative? Well, that was the advice given to him by senior corps commanders and some of his divisional generals who said, actually, we need to go not batter our way through the Japanese defensive lines, but actually approach from the other side. In other words, a second landing on Okinawa might have produced dividends. And certainly the Japanese were keeping a lot of their troops

watching the coastline in the south because they feared that the Americans were going to do exactly that. But as the fighting increased in tempo and they needed more reinforcements for their defensive line, they took a calculated decision that the Americans weren't going to land and therefore moved those troops who were watching the beaches up to the main area of fighting. And that was the moment of opportunity. And there was actually intelligence coming into Buckner that that's what the Japanese were doing. They were moving some of these troops from the south

to the center of the island. And yet Buckner decided to do nothing. So his troops were forced to fight this incredibly bloody attritional struggle. And there's some wonderfully detailed and incredibly moving accounts of the fighting from people like Eugene Buckner.

who produced one of the most extraordinary memoirs of the Second World War, of his life as an ordinary Marine. He describes the fighting in the center of the island as the so-called cesspool of hell, as he puts it. The biggest problem for the Americans is not only the strength of the Japanese defensive positions, the weather got incredibly tough.

It was cold, it was rainy, and they were literally fighting with very little cover because the difficulty of the island was that it was coral rock and it was hard to dig into. So there was almost no way you could get away from the danger of mortar fire and artillery fire. And they were up against an implacable foe who refused to surrender. I don't think it's a coincidence, Patrick, that...

of the 75,000 American casualties during this campaign, this three-month campaign, a third of them were battle fatigue, which is effectively PTSD coming out of the line because you can't cope anymore. And I think that says it all.

Yeah, I read a description of the mud and the slime and the fact that it was presumably something to do with what you just referenced, all the hardness of the substrate, which meant that dead bodies on both sides just lay there unburied until they rotted. And so there are all sorts of ghastly things.

products, side products of that, maggots crawling everywhere, etc. I think anyone who went through it probably never forgot it. But let's talk a little bit about the Japanese, their attitude, their fighting posture, really based on absolute refusal to surrender, and also the principle that

any means were acceptable. We'll come on to kamikaze later on. But I was struck by the use of child soldiers. Now, these are, if I've got it right, these are local people from the islands, young boys from 14 to 17, who are basically just press ganged from their schools and put into frontline service. And they were

given the grand title of the Iron and Blood Imperial Corps in Japanese, apparently. But there's some extraordinary pictures of some of these captured kids, which is what they are. And they really are these lanky Americans towering over them. And they look utterly pathetic. A lot of them got killed, didn't they?

Yeah, in fact, Patrick, both female and male youths were recruited, the girls mainly for nursing work, but nevertheless, they were operating very close to the front lines and many of them died. I think the bigger tragedy for Okinawa, not just the fact that they're

young people were asked to fight for the emperor, but also the incredibly callous way that the Japanese authorities and the Japanese military treated the Okinawan civilians. They had convinced them that the Americans were going to burn, pillage and rape and that it was better for them to kill their own families than to allow them to be captured by the Americans. And I mean, can you imagine the scenario where as the Americans are moving in, the Okinawans are absolutely

actually murdering their own kind. I mean, there's incredibly heartbreaking stories in the book of descriptions. One 16-year-old Okinawan who's, you know, been convinced by this propaganda that this is what he must do. And he describes the act

of killing his mother and then his younger siblings, all completely unnecessary because the Americans, let's not kid ourselves, a number of Okinawans were just killed in the crossfire and the Americans have always been incredibly profligate with their use of munitions. So some were going to die anyway, but many, many more were killed either by their own hand, that is Okinawan hand, Japanese hands, but also because the Japanese refused to

let them surrender to the Americans and that herded them all the way down to the bottom of the island, which is where the final stand took place. And the smaller the area they got compressed into, the more likely they were going to die from crossfire. But it's also true that an extraordinary number took their own lives at the behest of the Japanese. I mean, it's hard to get your head's

around this now, Patrick. But there was very much a kind of sense, and I'm sure we'll get on to this with the whole kamikaze idea, there was very much a sense of self-sacrifice for the honour of the emperor or the empire more generally. That was very much a thing in Japanese society and culture. And the Okinawans very much bought into this too. Just say something about the relationship of Okinawa and the surrounding countries.

to the home islands and the political center? I mean, were they fully Japanese citizens or were they kind of colonials, if you like? Well, they were very much second-class citizens. I suppose a good analogy, Patrick, given your own background, is islands to...

to the UK during that kind of 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. So this is technically part of the political structure of Japan. In fact, Okinawa was the most southerly of the prefectures that made up the political structure. And yet its local inhabitants were always treated as second class citizens. They weren't fully ethnically Japanese. They were a sort of mixture of their own

local culture, China, Chinese heritage, and also Japanese. So it was a mixture of all three. And I suppose the important point to make is that Okinawa, the Okinawan islands, or the Ryukyu Islands, as they were known as the collective, had been independent with their own king up until the late 19th century. So they're really part of the growing Japanese empire and were treated as such.

Well, that was fascinating, really enthralling stuff. Do join us after the break to hear what Saul had to say next.

Hello everyone, it's Gary Lineker here from The Rest Is Football. Just a quick message to tell you all about the Club World Cup tournament that's taking place in the US at the moment. It's 32 of the best teams from all around the world battling it out to be crowned the best side on the planet. We've reached the knockout stages of the competition which means all the big guns will be going head to head. Manchester City, Real Madrid, PSG, Chelsea,

and Bayern Munich are just some of the sides vying to lift the trophy. Join myself, Alan Shearer, Micah Richardson, our expert out in America, Alex Aljo, as we guide you through the explosive final stages of the tournament. To make things even better, if you're watching the video version of the show on Spotify or YouTube, you can also watch all the goals and the best bits of the action as we discuss the games tomorrow.

a first for podcasting. Just search The Rest Is Football wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. Now let's move to the naval battle, Saul, because this was pretty epic as well. Of course, there'd been decisive clashes before,

early on in the Pacific War, Coral Sea, then the Battle of Midway back in the summer of 1942, which kind of overturned Japanese naval power, didn't it? But not completely. So they've still got big resources to bring to bear here, including most notably the biggest battleship in the world, which is the Yamato. So even with their depleted resources, they were still able to mount a pretty massive

extraordinary Operation 10-Go, driven by that kamikaze spirit, which was an attempted attack to break through the Allied shipping and get to the island. This was led by the super battleship, the Yamato, commanded by Admiral Seiichi Ito. And they're

orders were ready to fight through the enemy naval forces, then beach Yamato on the shore of Okinawa and use her guns as coastal artillery, a madcap scheme. It might have ended disastrously, didn't it? Yeah, I mean, Yamato, the Yamato operation, I think, says it all in relation to Japanese sea power by the spring of 1945. They had had a

formidable navy of course deployed against the Americans in Pearl Harbor in 1941 but the gradual erosion of firepower as far as the Japanese were concerned particularly in terms of aircraft carriers starting at midway were really culminating in the great battles of 1944 the Philippine Sea and then Leyte Gulf and that pretty much wipes out their air power carried by aircraft carriers so

By the time of the Okinawan operation, they don't really have a navy that can take on the Americans. Why? Because the Americans have so many aircraft carrier and they can use these planes to knock out any capital ships coming towards them. And that's exactly what happened with Yamato. So Yamato is sent on effectively a one way mission. It's going to beach itself if it gets to Okinawa and be used as a kind of immobile artillery platform. It's huge 18 inch guns.

It was an engineering marvel, Patrick, an incredibly beautiful ship. But unfortunately, by the time of the Second World War, air power is really dominating naval warfare. It needs aircraft carriers in support of it. In other words, to be able to defend it from enemy air power. And this was not the case at Okinawa. So really the inevitable happened.

It doesn't even get anywhere close to the islands before it's beset by an enormous number of American torpedo bombers and also traditional bombers, dive bombers. After this incredibly harrowing battle in which it's destroyed by a number of attacks on it, it finally sinks with almost all hands. You know, something like 2,700 Japanese seamen go to the graves immediately.

And that just summed up the attitude of the Japanese at this point, which is that we don't really have a Navy that we can use to take on the Americans. So we're going to have to try other methods by the use of pretty much any plane they can get up into the air. You strap a 500 bomb onto it and then you expect the pilot to fly into an American ship. This was going to be the big force equalizer for the Japanese. They've got a lot of people who are prepared to do this.

for the reasons I've already spoken about, this kind of sense of self-sacrifice that was interwoven into Japanese culture. They didn't really have a sense of suicide being a bad thing. That's a Christian Judeo tradition. It was almost the opposite very much. If you gave your life in the service of the emperor and the empire, that was to be applauded and

Ultimately, it would mean that you would go to, you know, you would effectively become a god and you would go to the Yakusuni shrine, which is still a kind of area of controversy in Japan today. Anyone who dies in the service of the empire in war, technically their souls will go to the Yakusuni shrine. So that was why so many, up to 2,000 pilots were prepared to risk their lives as kamikazes during the three-month-long battle for Okinawa.

And they did have some success, didn't they? I mean, they did considerable damage to hundreds of vessels, American and British, it must be said, because we actually made a contribution, the Royal Navy made a contribution to the Okinawa Sea Battle. We had aircraft carriers present, but of course not decisive. I'm not sure they actually sank a capital ship. I think the USS carrier Bunker Hill was pretty bad.

badly damaged after being hit by two suicide planes relatively late in the battle, 11th of May. But it was despairing throw the dice, wasn't it? It wasn't going to turn the tide.

No. And as I mentioned, the sheer amount of firepower the Americans had, I mean, they had 20 aircraft carriers. That's fast aircraft carriers. That doesn't include the smaller version. And each one of these had about 150, 200 planes on board. So enormous amount of firepower. You mentioned the Bunker Hill. That was one of the more successful kamikaze attacks.

hit by two kamikaze and 396 men lost their lives, including 14 on the staff of Admiral Mitchell, who was the admiral in charge of the fast carrier fleet. And most of those were killed with smoke inhalation and a further 264 wounded. Horrendous casualties, although the Bunker Hill wasn't sunk. It's forced to go back to the US for repairs and it is pretty much out of action for the rest of the war. But Mitchell...

just transfers his flag to another aircraft carrier, the Enterprise, and he's got plenty more. So it's really a pinprick. And as you say, Patrick, not a single capital ship, either an aircraft carrier or a battleship, is sunk during these kamikaze operations, although they do sink 36 ships, including a number of destroyers.

and damage another 300 or so. So enormous, a lot of success, I suppose, in one sense, but it doesn't really change anything. The casualties also on the American side were pretty horrendous.

10,000 total naval casualties, including 5,000 killed. Wow, that is really impressive, isn't it? But then when you think of the imagery that we've all seen from some of the famous footage, colour footage of kamikaze planes coming in, filmed from the deck of an aircraft carrier, you see this curtain of fire going out to meet them, incredible sound effects.

It does put you in the place, doesn't it? Give you some idea of the drama and the fear that must have been gripping everyone as they see what they identify as an aircraft with a pilot who is very willing and happy to die if he takes a few Americans with him hurtling towards them. It's a long, long battle, isn't it? I think 82 days from beginning to end. The Americans must have been pretty

exhausted in those final weeks and days. How does it actually finish or describe when the flag goes up, the US flag? I believe it was a Confederate flag that was first flown. Over what and in what circumstances?

Well, there are two moments, the so-called raising of the flag. So this imagery is most famous on Iwo Jima, of course, in fact, the Iwo Jima story, because the famous raising of the flag, probably the most iconic photo of the Second World War to come out of America.

was the raising of the flag in Iwo Jima. And this took place just a few days into the campaign. And the reason it's a posit is there was a very similar premature raising of the flag also during the Okinawan campaign when they captured the main defensive position known as the Shuri line, which is in the Shuri fort.

And that's the point at which they raised this flag, which was probably a Confederate flag later replaced with the Stars and Stripes. But all that signified was the capture of the main defensive position. The Japanese have very cleverly and covertly managed to withdraw their remaining forces to the south of the island. So that original flag waving ceremony took place in late May. And it wasn't until the 18th, 19th and 20th of June that

that the final embers of Japanese resistance were snuffed out in the south of the island. And during that period, you've got a series of really quite extraordinary events, including Patrick Buckner's death. Yeah, talk us through that. Well, I mean, I hinted before that it was very much in keeping with his gung-ho mentality. He used to refer to his soldiers as my boys. On that particular fateful morning on the 18th of June, pretty much as the campaign was winding up, they're right at the south border.

end of the island. He tells his staff that he wants to go and see some of the fighting quite close up. And the unit he's chosen is a unit he'd met as he was doing a tour of inspection before the campaign began earlier in the year. It was part of the 2nd Marine Division. He was hugely impressed by the

discipline and sort of just the general turnout of this division. And this regiment itself was the eighth Marine. So he wants to go and see them advancing. They'd made a very big advance the day before. They'd actually only just come into the line. So they were pretty determined to, you know, make an impression if they could. And he makes the mistake, Patrick, of going a little bit too close to the front line. The sequence of events are he arrives at the regimental command post and

and says he wants to see some of the fighting. He wants to witness it with his own eyes. So they think, okay, well, we'll send him out to the regimental observation post and surely that will be safe. And with him, there is the regimental commander, the ops officer, various other people. And the position he actually takes up with full view of the battlefield in front of him, literally you can see the troops advancing ahead of him down a valley, is between two coral boulders and the

Those are obviously for protection and you just kind of peer over the top of them and you're going to be safe. And literally 15 or 20 minutes before the incident that is going to lead to his demise,

someone ahead of the troops attacking spots the three stars on his helmet. Now there's been this plan before the operation takes place at which all the senior commanders are told don't wear your helmets without covers on because you know if you're a general they'll literally be able to see your stars glinting in the sunshine. He pays no attention to this order that goes out and as a result Patrick on that fateful day he's wearing his helmet with the three stars. Now

the message comes back, we can see the stars. So at this point, he finally takes off his helmet and lays it on the ground, lays it on one of the rocks, actually, and puts on a normal helmet. And there's a famous picture, actually, just before he's killed, in which you can see him wearing the helmet without the stars, which made some people question whether he really was wearing the helmet with the stars that day. But there's no doubt that he was.

The Japanese had probably spotted him, therefore targeted that position. A shell comes in, lands at the base of those two rocks. It's the impact from that shell, both the shrapnel, but also the tiny bits of rock which were blasted by the shell that embed into his chest. And although there's some talk of getting him to a field hospital, maybe they can save him, it's already too late. He's mortally wounded and he bleeds out just the other side of the ridge line where they take him down.

to try and tend him. Any famous last words that you could imagine? He was conscious. I've seen this in certain other situations where people are mortally wounded. You would have thought all you'd want to do is just lie there and conserve your strength in this battle to live. But actually he tries to get up. And this does seem to be a bit of a theme when people are literally about to die. They try and get to their feet. This attempt to fight off what's happening to you.

and he's restrained. You know, there's a very kind of poignant moment when a Marine literally holds his hand. This is just an ordinary private Marine, but he's holding his hand for the last couple of moments. No words, nothing poignant said, just a kind of gradual realization. His eyes go glassy, and he dies. And as you say, Patrick, the most senior American serviceman to be killed in the Second World War, there was one other lieutenant general, that was McClendon,

McNair, who's killed in the D-Day campaign, a story I'm about to write about actually in my forthcoming book, Twilight of the Gods. McNair is killed by friendly fires, tragically, bombs falling short during the attempt to break out from the Normandy beachhead. McNair himself has got a little bit too close to the fighting and he's killed by an American bomb. That's right, that's outside St. Louis, wasn't it, if I remember correctly.

So, as you say, the last bits of Japanese resistance have been crushed. What is in the Americans, the senior commanders' minds now? Okay, we've got this jumping off point. We've got this anchorage. We've got this sort of floating aircraft carrier. And, of course, his opposite number also.

his end on Okinawa, doesn't he? He does. And it's what makes Okinawa unique in Second World War campaigns. The two army commanders both died during the battle. Ushijima, Lieutenant General Ushijima, commanding the Japanese 32nd Army on Okinawa.

admittedly by his own hand. It was fairly typical. But it's a particularly dramatic moment, actually, because just before Ushijima and his chief of staff, and his chief of staff, Cho, decide to take their own lives because they've done their bit, the

The battle is over. But of course, it's disgraceful to survive a battle as far as senior Japanese commanders are concerned. It was expected of them that they would take their own lives. But shortly before they decide to do that in the early hours of the 22nd of June, by which time all Japanese resistance on the island has ceased,

they actually get the news in a final signal that comes in from Tokyo that Buckner himself has been killed and Cho's absolutely delighted. Isn't this glorious? We've managed to kill the American commander during this battle. But Ushijima, who's a slightly more sensitive soul, actually is quite saddened by the news of Buckner's death. And the

actual mechanics of committing Harry Kiri or ritual suicide, seppuku, as it was known, are quite grim, I have to say. There's a lot of ritual involved. You know, you have to be dressed in certain sort of white ceremonial shirt. You then kind of open that up so that you can actually do the killing blow. This is using a short sword, uh,

Patrick into the stomach. Now you would have thought this is going to be a pretty agonizing death as indeed it would have been. So there is a bit of a twist because shortly after you plunge the sword into your lower stomach, one of your aides standing close by with a samurai sword then beheads you. And that's what happened to both

Cho Ushijima first. And as soon as that took place, it pretty much all bets are off. So all the staff officers who survived up to that point, then it's their responsibility to try and get away. It's every man for himself, which is what Colonel Yahara does. Colonel Yahara being the chief of operations.

And the reason that Yahara is important, certainly from historians, is because one, he's right at the center of events as chief of operations. And two, he survives. He's been told by Cho, try and get back to Tokyo, report on what happened, which indeed he does. He's pretty much shunned by his military colleagues when he does get to Tokyo. It's kind of felt that he too should have committed suicide. But what's

historians are very glad that he did not because he then writes an incredibly detailed account of this sequence of events from his arrival on Okinawa in the summer of 1944 to, of course, the end of the battle in the summer of 1945. And we have a firsthand account from a very senior Japanese commander that gives us the Japanese side of the battle, which is very unusual for the Pacific War.

Yes, terrific stuff. Okay, Saul, just one final thought. Where are we now? What's the thinking of the senior commanders as they survey the battlefield, knowing that they've now got their aircraft carrier, their floating aircraft carrier, they've got their anchorage? What's the next part of the plan?

Well, they've now got their jumping off point, Patrick, as you say, and it's full steam ahead to planning the invasion of the Japanese home islands proper. Now, we know that something's going to intervene, of course, but they didn't know it then. And it's interesting that a lot of the servicemen on the island, Eugene Sledge included, are

thinking about what is to come next. And although the campaign in Okinawa is over, they are pretty depressed at the prospect of invading the Japanese home islands because their calculation is very few of them are going to survive. And then that indeed almost certainly would have been the case. The estimation among senior members of the American military is about a million casualties if they invade the home islands. They're going to do it in two parts, as we explained on

Operation Downfall. They're going to attack Kyushu in the 750,000 men are going to land on Kyushu in the autumn of 1945. And then in the spring of 1946, 2 million servicemen, including British and Commonwealth, actually, Patrick, are going to land on Kyushu, the main island, and try and take Tokyo. So it would have been an absolute bloodbath. We know what happens next, which is the use of atomic weapons. But certainly they didn't realize that on Okinawa. If you

want to get into the rights and wrongs, and we dealt with this in previous podcasts, of the use of atomic weapons, you need to consider the feelings of those servicemen who were about to attack and not a single one of them thought it was a bad idea to use nuclear weapons.

Fantastic. Well, that was full of drama, full of thought-provoking stuff, and we painted a very colourful picture there. So anyone who wants to read in more detail, remember Crucible of Hell by Saul David, which came out in 2020. That's it for us from this week. Do join us next week, next Wednesday, for another episode of Battleground 45. Goodbye. Bye.