80th anniversary of the Battle of Okinawa
- Tony Boccia
- Apr 2
- 5 min read
I sent the below text in email format to the Sailors of VRM-50, marking the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the Battle of Okinawa. I hope you enjoy it.
On this day in 1945, 180,000 American Marines, Sailors, and Soldiers invaded Okinawa and engaged the 75,000 Imperial Japanese Army and Navy troops there. This is the endgame of the Pacific War, and the numbers are truly staggering.Over the course of the next 2 months and 3 weeks, the Americans would field 250,000 combat troops and suffer 20,000 dead. The Japanese lost their entire garrison. Alongside the dead were 40,000 Okinawan forced conscripts and an uncounted number (likely in the thousands) of women and children. On this 80th anniversary, we would do well to pause and reflect. Here’s something to get you started.
Okinawa, situated at the southern end of the Ryukyu Archipelago that stretches from southern Japan into the East China Sea, was the center and capital of the Ryukyu Kingdom beginning in the 15th century. During this time, the Kingdom served as a tributary and vassal state to Imperial China, and later, the Satsuma Domain and Tokugawa Shogunate in Japan. Following the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the Ryukyu Kingdom was abolished by the new government, and it was annexed outright in 1897, becoming one of Japan’s 47 Prefectures.
The value of the Ryukyu island’s geography is easy to see. The islands have several large, deep and warm-water harbors and dozens of anchorages. Okinawa, the main island, hosts lush tropical jungle, farmland, and access to fishing grounds. The islands are situated at the economic crossroads of the northeast Pacific Ocean, standing as a guard between Japan and Taiwan; essentially this is a naturally occurring defensive fortification that, when taken in hand with Japan’s annexation of Taiwan in 1895 and Korea in 1910, shows just how much of a stranglehold Japan had on East Asia in the early 20th century. The culture of Okinawa is not quite Japanese and not quite Chinese. To this day, the Ryukyu people chafe at being labeled Japanese; a visit to the island immediately following a trip to mainland Japan will show that Okinawa stands apart from the other prefectures in terms of traditions, architecture, and other markers of civilization.
The Japanese colonized the Ryukyus in much the same way that they colonized Taiwan, and later the South Pacific Mandate. Generally speaking, the Japanese colonial administration of the various territories up to the 1930’s was cold but not brutal, and Okinawa enjoyed a rise in most socio-economic metrics such as domestic output, life expectancy, literacy, and so on. The Japanese administration built roads, established schools and hospitals, and overhauled agricultural systems. Okinawa also served as a place for Japanese immigrants from the mainland to put down roots and escape the economic strains of the other prefectures. During the opening days of the First World War, Japan defeated the Germans in China and later took possession of their possessions in Micronesia, including Saipan, Palau, and Chuuk (called Truk at the time). Many of the immigrants brought from Japan to colonize these islands came from Okinawa. At the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 (which later developed into the Second World War in 1941), Okinawa had a population of 435,000 people, up from 225,000 in 1897.
If I were to characterize the Pacific theater of the Second World War, I would say that the war was likely over after Midway, essentially over after Guadalcanal, and definitively over after Saipan. Despite the facts on the ground, Japan stubbornly fought on, even though American B-29’s were a common site in the skies following the fall of the Marianas. It was clear to the U.S. Navy and Army leadership that reaching Japan was crucial, and although they had competing plans for how to get there, both services recognized that if Japan were to surrender, Okinawa would have to be taken first. U.S. forces had experienced fighting on sovereign Japanese land before; (for example, the islands previously mentioned; Saipan, Palau, and Chuuk). They had fought on Iwo Jima, part of Japan since the 17th century. However, the battle for Okinawa would be the first waged on Japan proper, among Japanese citizens. After the heavy losses taken on Saipan, Guam, Peleliu, and Iwo Jima, the Admiralty and General Staffs were under no allusions that the fight for this island would be bloody and long.
American intelligence analysts got this one right. To the High Command in Tokyo and the Showa Emperor, the Ryukyus were symbolic and the military strategy on Okinawa was to bleed the Americans dry and force a better hand at the negotiating table (the same strategy taken at Peleliu and Iwo Jima). The sources on this have become clearer as the years pass; it is now known that many people in the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy knew that the war was lost after the fall of Saipan in July 1944. However, by this point also, the entirety of the Japanese leadership had become obsessed with the idea of redemption and victory through national suicide. As the kamikaze pilots were readying for their attacks at Okinawa, women and children across Japan were taught to make bamboo spears and homemade grenades and told to prepare for an American invasion.
The battle for Okinawa lasted 82 days and cost an estimated 100,000 Japanese and Okinawan lives. 12,000 Americans were killed in the fighting and 36,000 wounded, of which nearly 5,000 dead were U.S. Navy Sailors, largely the result of Kamikaze attacks on the 36 ships that were destroyed by suicide attack. More than any other battle of the Pacific War, Okinawa showed American planners and strategists just how far the Japanese would go; that Tokyo was willing to sacrifice every last man, woman and child to the war. This was a brutal campaign that weighed heavily on the minds of the men who would later scrap Operation Downfall, with its land invasion of Japan, in favor of atomic weapons.
Today, on the 80th anniversary of the start of the battle, we owe it to ourselves to pause and think of the sacrifices these people made, regardless of the uniform, and reflect on the cost of war. Okinawa still bears many of the scars of war, occupation, and the cold reality of a strategic location. Thank you for your time.
All my best,
LT Tony Boccia
Sources:
Books:
Bix, Herbert “Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan”
Dower, John “Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II”
Hornfischer, James D. “The Fleet at Flood Tide: America at Total War in the Pacific 1944-1945”
Ugaki, Matome “Fading Victory: the Diary of Admiral Matome Ugaki”
Hando, Kazutoshi and Hoshino, Yukinobu: “Japan’s Longest Day: A Graphic Novel About the End of WWII: Intrigue, Treason, and Emperor Hirohito’s Fateful Decision to Surrender”
Websites:
H-048-1: Kamikaze Attacks on U.S. Flagships off Okinawa – Naval History and Heritage Command
Okinawa: The Costs of Victory in the Last Battle – National World War II Museum
Kamikazes and the Okinawa Campaign – U.S. Naval Institute
Japan’s slide into war chronicled in Emperor Hirohito’s memoir - Reuters
Interrogations of Japanese Officials - Vols. I & II - United States Strategic Bombing Survey [Pacific]
Saipan: The Beginning of the End
History of the U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II – Internet Archive
Okinawa Peace Museum and Memorial
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