Pod Insights Dan Snow's History Hit The Battle of Okinawa About this episode Warning: this episode contains descriptions of violence against children and suicide.
The Battle of Okinawa was the final, climactic battle of the war in the Pacific. The largest naval fleet in human history assembled to support the amphibious invasion of the island. But the Americans would learn the hard way that the Japanese intended to fight tooth and nail to protect their home soil. The gruelling battle that ensued would influence the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan and ultimately alter the course of history.
Joining us is Seth Paridon, a historian for the US Army and co-host of the podcast ‘The Unauthorised History of the Pacific War’. Seth provides an in-depth analysis of the battle's importance and how it played out, and explains its devastating human cost.
Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.
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2:31 Dan Snow? It was, perhaps, a strange place for the final set-piece battle of the war. Then again, that's war for you. It's like a lab experiment that escapes and runs wild. War is hatched in the minds of leaders, but it soon takes on a shape and a scale that they could never have imagined. And so it was that the appalling climax of World War II, World War II in the Pacific, history's bloodiest and most destructive conflict, it was fought on a sliver of twisted rock in the Pacific that had never really troubled the chroniclers before. It was fought in a place called Okinawa.
3:16 Dan Snow? Okinawa sits halfway between Taiwan and the main Japanese archipelago. It's halfway along a chain of islands called the Ryukyu Islands, and like all of those other islands, it is a mix of igneous rock, remnant of long-dead volcanoes, and coral, baked hard as iron by millennia. It is a crumpled mess of crags and ridges and caves and coves. It's a place seemingly designed by the Creator for defence. It's a place where the opportunities for a highly motivated, names of suicidal force
3:57 Dan Snow? of well-equipped men to sell their lives as dearly as possible, all those opportunities were as numerous as the gullies and outcrops that littered the island.
4:15 Dan Snow? You are listening to Dan Snow's History Hit. Today I am talking about this battle on this island, because it was here that a war that started in Poland, or on the steppe of northern China, that war which had spread via Hawaii and Egypt and the River Plate and the Arctic, it was here that the last great battle of that war was fought.
4:42 Dan Snow? A fact that most people would have found pretty unlikely, I think, years before, but one that became almost inevitable as the war had gouged its particular trajectory. Okinawa was the logical final stop on the road to the Japanese home islands. To capture it, the mightiest force of the US Pacific War was assembled, assisted by the most potent British and Commonwealth naval strike force ever, ever to set sail. That mass of ships and aircraft and men and guns and tanks set its eyes on this island. It was a well-placed island in the eyes of the planners. It was tragically placed for
5:26 Dan Snow? the civilians who called it home. This is the story of the grinding hell that was Okinawa, the Typhoon of Steel, the most terrible in that list of terrible battles fought in the Pacific. This is both the climax and the finale of combat operations in the Pacific, a last battle that no one, not one soul participating in it, had any clue would be so final. Joining me on the podcast is Seth Paridon. He's a historian for the US Army, he's co-host of a podcast called The Unauthorized History of the Pacific War, and his knowledge of that war is encyclopedic. I look forward to having him on again to quiz him on one
6:10 Dan Snow? of many other subjects. Here, 80 years on from the Typhoon of Steel, is the story of Okinawa.
6:24 Dan Snow? Seth, great to have you on the show. Is this the climax of the Pacific War?
6:29 Speaker 04 In many ways, yes, it is. In many ways, Okinawa is the, it's the ultimate battle, you know, it really is. It's the ultimate battle because it encompasses so many aspects of everything that we've learned from Guadalcanal in 1942, all the way till April 1945 here. Okinawa is all encompassing. It's land, it's sea, it's air, and it has far, well, theoretically, it would have had far-reaching after-effects after the campaign is over with. So, yeah.
6:55 Dan Snow? I always think that must be so brutal for the veterans knowing that. And then they had no idea the war was going to cut, you know, really just a few weeks later. It's crazy to have such a big and decisive battle right at the end of this massive conflict. Crazy.
7:08 Speaker 04 Right, it is, but you know, I mean, we didn't know. You know, we didn't know that the war was going to end a couple of months later or a month later. The campaign for Okinawa started off because we had to have it. You know, not, it wasn't just another, let's grab it because we want it. It's let's grab it because we need it. And Okinawa is a large island, you know, I mean, it's one of the larger islands that we've conquered as we've gone through our march across the Central Pacific. Nimitz's Central Pacific Drive is what wins the Pacific War. And, uh, you know, we were going to use Okinawa for a staging base for the eventual invasion of Kyushu, which was slated for November 1945, which would have been the first invasion of the Japanese home islands by the Allied forces. So Okinawa was going to be used as a staging point.
7:51 Speaker 04 It was going to be used as, you know, for hospitals. It was going to be used as airfields. It was a very, very, very important base that would have been used had we had to have invaded Japan itself.
8:02 Dan Snow? An essential precondition to the invasion itself. You mentioned Guadalcanal there way back at the beginning of the Pacific War and then Nimitz's mighty thrust across the Central Pacific. Just explain if people don't know about this idea, this strategy of island hopping in the Pacific theater of World War II. What's the plan there?
8:19 Speaker 04 Yeah, so, I mean, Guadalcanal, I don't know if you'd necessarily want to call that part of the Central Pacific Drive because that's the first main American offensive in the Pacific in 1942, of course, August 7th. We had to start somewhere and Guadalcanal was vital to what we were doing at that time.
8:32 Dan Snow? Yeah, we should say that's down south, that's further south. It's almost part of the protection of Australia, New Zealand, that kind of campaign.
8:39 Speaker 04 Exactly. It's in the South Pacific and it borders on MacArthur's territory. And then actually to a point, it kind of gets into that territory. But the Central Pacific Drive really starts in November 1943 at Tarawa. And this is a drive, I say a drive because that's what the US Navy called it, but it was a theory. It was a complex plan that was derived as early as 1911. If we were, we being the United States, would ever have to fight Japan, that this is the best way to do it. You know, we go across the Central Pacific and we make a beeline towards Japan. We form a naval blockade and we win the war. And that's essentially what happens, you know, in 1943, when we get to Tarawa and all the way in 1945, when we get to Okinawa, obviously some deviations in the plan that occur. But I mean, that's essentially what it is. And of course, I'm talking about War Plan Orange.
9:24 Speaker 04 That's what everything revolved around was the pre-war US Navy doctrine on how to beat Japan in a war across the Pacific. And it unfolds almost exactly as we had planned it, but as I said, minor deviations here and there.
9:37 Dan Snow? And so there's a series of stepping stones ending up in the home islands of Japan themselves, the archipelago, and Okinawa was that last stepping stone. Were the battles for those islands tougher than the pre-war planners had assumed? I mean, people will be familiar with names like Iwo Jima and these other, these other ferocious battles. Had Japan made that plan pretty difficult to execute in terms of the defenses it had poured into those places?
9:59 Speaker 04 Yes, but getting back to what you were asked earlier about island hopping. Our intelligence was good in some locations and bad in others. For instance, after Tarawa, the next step in the drive was the Marshall Islands and Operation Flintlock in February 1944. And the original target islands were deemed too heavily defended for us to take. They would have been casualty prohibitive. We would have lost too many people. Admiral Nimitz understood this and he realized we can still capture this archipelago in the places that we want, i.e. the deepwater ports. But we don't have to take those really heavily defended islands. We'll take the lighter defended islands and we can let these guys wither on the vine. And that's what we do pretty much as we go across the Central Pacific. Cause after that, we go to the Marianas and of course Marianas were heavily defended.
10:42 Speaker 04 And those were all three of them, Saipan, Tinian and Guam, but especially Saipan, where, you know, it was a bloodbath, but we knew that, but we had to have it. It was a strategically important place. Of course, that's where the B-29s fly out of to bomb Japan. Of course, the Tinian is where the old gay and box car take off to deliver the nuclear weapons. And then after that, we go to Kellaloo, which was an absolute snafu. And, you know, we don't even need to talk about that because it was such a mess. And then Iwo Jima was captured mainly as a emergency strip resting area for the B-29s that were bombing Japan. It was another step. It was a target on the list for Nimitz in the Central Pacific, but it wasn't the main target, if you will, and only became the main target after things developed in the Marianas in 1944.
11:25 Speaker 04 And then of course, as I said, Okinawa, being so close to Japan, it's only 350 some odd miles as the crow flies from Kyushu. It was an absolute must have for the eventual invasion.
11:36 Dan Snow? So they're closing the noose on this short-lived Japanese empire of the Central and Southern Pacific. By the time they get to Okinawa, this is one of the finest honed amphibious forces. Well, probably the greatest in the history of the world. Give me a sense of what the US Pacific Fleet, or what just this, this part of the US Pacific Fleet looked like and numbered and was capable of by 1945.
12:02 Speaker 04 This is a world-beating force. This is a world-beating force. This is a force that, you know, when people think of the United States on World War II, they immediately think of industrial production. We just made so much stuff. You know, we made so much stuff. We gave stuff to the UK. We gave stuff to the Soviet Union. We gave stuff to, we gave it everywhere. We made so much stuff. Well, it took a little while to get that stuff made. It didn't just occur. But by 1945, we have got so much material. We've got so many men. We've got so many ships. And I'm talking just transport ships, amphibious ships, warships. This is the strongest, most powerful fleet. At this time, it's under the commander, Raymond Spruance. The Fifth Fleet, the United States Navy, Task Force 58, under the commander, Mark Mitchell,
12:46 Speaker 04 is the most powerful fleet to ever set sail in human history. There's no arguing that. You're talking at any one time, anywhere between 12 to 16 aircraft carriers, eight to nine battleships, almost two dozen cruisers, 60 to 65, 70 destroyers, just in one fleet. I mean, it's unbelievable. It's absolutely mind-boggling. And that's the muscle, what we call the alligator navy. The amphibious forces that are going to bring the men ashore. Of course, you got to have that to capture these islands. There's no small fleet in and of itself. And, you know, it's over 600 ships for crying out loud. So, and that's just one operation. Admittedly, it's the last operation of the war. So we're throwing the kitchen sink into this thing. But it's a world-beating force.
13:30 Speaker 04 There wasn't anything on the planet that could touch this.
13:33 Dan Snow? And what I find so extraordinary, probably the strongest British fleet. And Britain had been the global hegemon on the seas for centuries. It's probably the strongest British fleet ever assembled, goes out to join that fleet, and it's just a drop in the ocean compared to that US fleet. So there's a Commonwealth fleet arrives, British, Australian, New Zealand, and some Canadian ships. I think even that is dwarfed by this American force. You mentioned there's a whole fleet of ships as well as those warships, those ships that can open fire on targets on the land, can launch aircraft, recover aircraft and shoot down enemy aircraft. You've got lots and lots and lots of ships just carrying the men.
14:06 Speaker 04 Right.
14:07 Dan Snow? Tell me about the 10th Army.
14:08 Speaker 04 Right, so 10th Army, this is the largest land force that Admiral Chester Nimitz has gotten his fingers on in the entire Pacific campaign. It is an army, it is a true army, it's commanded by a gentleman named General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. He's a United States Army General and you're thinking, you know, Admiral Nimitz, well, I mean, obviously that's United States Navy and when people think of Okinawa, and we can get to this in a few minutes, you think of the Marine Corps, United States Marine Corps, and rightfully so. However, the United States Army did the vast majority of the fighting on Okinawa, which a lot of people don't know. But Buckner is the United States Army General. He had been in command of different forces throughout. He's a West Point grad in 1908. He gets command of the
14:51 Speaker 04 operation to recapture the Aleutian Islands in 1943. Operation Land Crab is what it was called. So he, you know, he'd kind of been around the block, but he'd never seen a command quite as large as this. By July 1944, he's in Hawaii and he starts building 10th Army. And 10th Army, I mean, just flat out, it is absolutely tremendous. It consists of four United States Army divisions, infantry divisions, and two United States Marine Corps divisions. And these are among the finest divisions of the entire Pacific theater. You got the United States Army's 77th Infantry Division, which is probably the finest Army Division to see combat in the Pacific. It's commanded by a gentleman named Andrew D. Bruce. Nimitz
15:33 Speaker 04 regarded him as the greatest United States Army divisional commander of the entire war, which says a lot when you think about the lineage of US Army divisional commanders. You've got the 96th Infantry Division, they call them the Dead Eyes. These guys had been at Leyte, they had been in different aspects of the Philippines. They also had the 27th Infantry Division, which was the same unit that was at Macon Island in 1943 that went alongside Tarawa in November. And these are the same guys that go shore in Saipan and really get their plow clean. They really get their... Butt kicked in Saipan in June of 1944. And then also you have the 7th Infantry Division, which is a highly respected veteran unit that's going ashore here. These guys had fought in the
16:15 Speaker 04 Aleutians, they fought at Quadolin, they fought in the Philippines. Now here they are. And then rounding that out, you've got two US Marine Corps divisions. You've got the 1st Marine Division, which of course is known as the old breed. It's probably the most storied Marine Corps Division in history. These are the guys that were at Guadalcanal. These are guys that kicked Gloucester. These guys were at Pelelou, and now here they are on their 4th campaign at Okinawa. And then following them, of course, is the 6th Marine Division, which is a brand new Marine Corps Division, but it's replete with veteran cadre. There's a lot of green, young 17, 18-year-old Marines in there for sure. But they're NCOs, they're officers, company level and field grade. These are guys that were in the 4th Marine Raider Battalion. These are guys that had been wounded
16:58 Speaker 04 in Tarawa and are now stuck here. So I mean, these guys have got beaucoup combat experience. And even though it's a new unit per se, there is combat experience as you could possibly have a new unit be. So they are throwing the best of the best into this operation on April 1st, 1945.
17:18 Dan Snow? In the skies above them, thousands of aircraft, more aircraft in this operation than most of the world's air forces can muster. I mean, it's just, we're talking astonishing force. What is the Japanese defensive force? What do they number and what condition are they in?
17:31 Speaker 04 So it's hard to distinguish exactly. Numbers on Japanese defenders are kind of, as we say, fuzzy, you know, if you will. But they're under the command of a gentleman named Ushijima. He's from Kagoshima, Japan. He had been a combat officer before. He's in the Imperial Military Academy, graduates, again, like Buckner in 1908. They're the same age or roughly the same age. He saw extensive unit combat in China from 1937 to 39. He plays, you know, a leading role in the Battle of Shanghai in 1937. So I mean, he's a very experienced commanding general. He's one of the few, and I'd say this with all respect, he's one of the few Japanese commanding officers who cares deeply about his men. He's really concerned about needless casualties.
18:15 Speaker 04 He does not necessarily believe in throwing away human life, whereas other Japanese army commanders frankly did not care. His executive officer, his XO, is a gentleman named General Cho Isamu, and he's completely opposite. He doesn't care about, you know, he's very offensively minded. Ushijima is very smart. He understands that the United States has such material power that he could never try to defend Okinawa on the beaches because his people would get wiped out. If he's got people in pillboxes on the beach, you know, the United States Navy is going to shell them with battleships and cruisers and destroyers. And if that doesn't get them, then naval aviation is going to come swooping down
19:01 Speaker 04 from aircraft carriers and drop bombs and rockets and nade bomb and everything else on them. Ushijima believes that the best way to hold Okinawa is to hold it from the inside. Okinawa is a naturally pretty rugged place. It has a lot of coral ridges à la Saipan, à la Peleliu. He decides he wants to dig in his defensive forces in there and hold up and basically let the United States come to him. His executive officer Cho is completely opposite of that. He wants to meet the US on the beaches. He wants to fight us tooth and nail. And it goes back and forth. It's a very unhealthy relationship, shall we say. But, you know, I mean, there's a lot of guys on here. There's a lot of Japanese on this island.
19:44 Speaker 04 There's also a lot of Japanese civilians on this island. And as the battle continues to progress, the Japanese army impresses a lot of these civilians. I say Japanese civilians, they're Okinawan civilians. They would pitch a fit if we're called Japanese in those days. But they're Okinawan civilians and they're pressed into service. And a great majority of them are killed in the process, either by Japanese tactics or US tactics, either way. But there's tens of thousands of Japanese defenders on this island that are going to fight tooth and nail. And they're not going to give up until the very, very end of the campaign, which is an interesting aspect. We can talk about that too for a good time.
20:22 Dan Snow? You're listening to Dan Snow's History. We're talking about Okinawa, all coming up.
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23:17 Dan Snow? So who wins the fight within the Japanese High Command? Tell me about the initial landings. Where did the Japanese put their strength?
23:22 Speaker 04 So, Ushijima had his, what they called a planning officer. It's a colonel. It's a young colonel named Yahara. And Yahara also believed he was on Ushijima's side, that Okinawa needed to be defended on the interior. Did not need to be met on the beaches because we would obliterate them. So through a lot of infighting back and forth and back and forth, Ushijima basically tells Yahara, "This is what I want you to do, and this is what you're going to do." And Yahara says, "Yes, sir." And they do that very thing. They defend from the interior. They set up reverse slope positions on a lot of these coral ridge lines to which our artillery can't reach it very well, our naval gunfire can't reach it very
24:02 Speaker 04 well, airstrikes can't reach them very well. We don't see them until we roll up on these positions in many instances, and it turns into an absolute bloodbath. And the thing is, is that aerial recon of Okinawa before we land is eerily reminiscent to Iwo Jima. And that months previous, when we'd flown recon over Oki, we had seen Japanese. We'd seen military equipment. We'd seen positions similar to Iwo Jima. In the weeks before we attack Okinawa, just like Iwo Jima, there's nobody there. There's no Japanese infantry, or very few. There's no exposed positions. There's no artillery. Nothing. And that should
24:43 Speaker 04 have rung a bell in the head of Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. and said, "This might not be a cakewalk."
24:51 Speaker 04 So when we land on the first of April, which happened to be Easter Sunday and obviously April Fool's Day, we're expecting this Peleliu-esque, Iwo Jima-esque bloodbath at the water's edge. And we land ashore and there's nothing, there's nothing going on. There's a firefight here and there, but it's nothing like massively significant. And as a matter of fact, as we start to push inland, there are units that make up their D plus five objectives within the first hour of landing because we land and there's literally, there's nobody there. So, you know, pedal to the floor, you just go. And I mean, it was to an extent where the sixth Marine Division turns and they
25:33 Speaker 04 go north and they go to the Matobu Peninsula and they do wind up within a few days of getting into a pretty nasty scrape up there. But the first Marine Division, the old breed, the veteran of veteran units in the entire island, they got nothing to do. They're sitting around having barbecues. Honest to God, I knew a lot of guys that were in that unit who took part in this campaign and they literally were having barbecues on the beach and they were just pulling really good duty. They thought this was the greatest thing in the world. However, a couple of weeks or about 10 days really, after the landings, the United States Army starts to push into the interior of the island and they start to run into some of these Japanese reverse slope positions
26:12 Speaker 04 on these different ridges and things just grind to a halt. Any progress that was made is just immediately stopped and it just becomes this slow, bloody grind. Really, from the first time we reach Japanese positions, it's just, it's a slog from there on in.
26:31 Dan Snow? So the Japanese are pre-prepared, they're underground, their artillery is zeroed in on avenues of approach the Americans are going to have to take. They've used every single fold of the ground effectively. It just, it must have just been absolutely horrific.
26:45 Speaker 04 Absolutely. Yeah. And I mean, so they're dug in on the southern side of the island, exactly to your point. And this is one island that the Japanese have a lot of artillery. They have a very large artillery park on Okinawa and they utilize it a lot. But these things are They're hidden. They're hidden in caves. They're hidden in the backsides of these ridges to where they'd roll out, shoot, and then they'd roll back in and they're gone. And you can't very well direct counter battery fire. It's something that you don't know where the heck it came from. So it becomes increasingly frustrating. There were American veterans that said that until they got face to face with these people, it was like chasing ghosts. Because they'd be taking fire, heavy fire, and they'd capture the same ridge four, five, six times and have to give it up.
27:27 Speaker 04 And they hardly ever see the people that were shooting at them. And it was absolutely infuriating. And one of the things that you see later on in the campaign on Okinawa, more than any other campaign through the war, is a lot of battle fatigue, a lot of PTSD cases for the United States Army and the Marine Corps, especially the Marine Corps. Because the fighting was just so severe and it was incredibly frustrating. You had to take the same position a dozen times before it actually stuck.
27:52 Dan Snow? Through April, May, June, you also see at sea, some of the infamous kamikaze attacks, well over a thousand, right? Targeting US vessels. How much of a serious impact that have and how much of a psychological?
28:06 Speaker 04 Both, yes.
28:08 Dan Snow? Yeah, yeah. Not that psychological isn't serious as well. Yeah.
28:11 Speaker 04 Yes. So the overall number, we don't, again, we don't have an exact number. The overall estimate of kamikaze, just kamikaze, mind you. Kamikaze strikes, or what Japanese called special attack, is over 8,000 aircraft. 8,000 aircraft. And that's just special attack. And I say that because the Japanese also launched conventional attacks to against American shipping. Again, in our minds, I, we're always thinking I'm going after American aircraft carriers, and they certainly did that. But through the Okinawa campaign, as it starts to devolve, especially into the middle of April, the beginning of May, the Japanese are focusing on the ships and shipping.
28:54 Speaker 04 Around Okinawa, in particular, American, what we called radar picket destroyers that were out in this like fan around Okinawa that were there to warn Task Force 58 that A, the bad guys are coming and O, also warn the Alligator Navy, Kelly Turner's Transport Fleet and everything else back there, oh hey, the bad guys are coming. The Japanese realized this and they start trying to attack these picket destroyers. And we had run into kamikazes before. We'd seen the kamikaze, we'd seen the Divine Wind as early as October 1944, because that's where it's first deployed in the Philippines. It was a known thing, but never before had we seen it in such numbers as you see them here. The kikasui raids are what the Japanese called them, kikasui 1, 2, 3, 4, and on and on and on. And I mean,
29:39 Speaker 04 these are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of planes are being thrown in wave after wave after wave at the American fleet. Their thought is if we throw enough stuff at the wall, some of it's bound to stick. If we throw 700 aircraft at the American fleet in a couple of hours, which they do, some of those guys are bound to break through and hit American ships and if not sink them, at the very least, put them out of the war for a few months and buy us a little time. It becomes wearing on the American sailors and Marines that are aboard these ships, because there were, of course, Marines on US Navy warships as well. Most of those guys were acted as gunners, especially the Marines, because there's no break. There's literally no break. It is 24 hours a day, sometimes five, six days on end. They're
30:23 Speaker 04 at what the US Navy called GQ, General Quarters. You know, these guys might take a break for 35 minutes, go get something to eat, and then boom, the clacks and start sounding again and they're back at their stations. If they ever even left, they might have just had, you know, sandwiches given to them at their gun positions. Because these attacks occurred not just during the daylight, although most of them did. There were some that occurred at night, at dawn, and at dusk. So I mean, these guys are at their stations 24 hours a day. Without much sleep, it starts to wear on you and then every bird you see becomes a Japanese kamikaze aircraft heading for your ship. And it starts to wear on you. And then the casualties were significant. The US Navy took more casualties at Okinawa than any other campaign of the war, save Guadalcanal. Guadalcanal, they suffered more casualties.
31:07 Speaker 04 But it's interesting to think that the bookends, Guadalcanal in the beginning, Okinawa in the end, are the two highest casualty rates for the US Navy in the entire Pacific War.
31:17 Dan Snow? Meanwhile, back on the land, it's equally grim. There's names that will be familiar to fans of military history, whether Hacksaw Ridge, Sugarloaf Hill, Tombstone Ridge. The Americans are grinding onwards, but is it just a matter of bringing down fire, steady use of flamethrowers, use of armor, just grinding attritional stuff?
31:36 Speaker 04 It becomes that, yes. Initially, no, but it becomes that. When you look at a land campaign, it's easy to look at it from a 40,000-foot view and think of the 96th Divisions here and the 7th Divisions here. I like to look at it from a personal view. It wasn't just the 96th ID, it wasn't just the 7th ID, it's the 96th Infantry Division at Kakazoo Ridge. It's people like this that are just going to be hammered over and over and over and over again. We start initially when we run into these Japanese defenses, and these are the United States Army divisions that are doing this now. They're the first ones to run into these reverse slope positions. We do what we always do. We get into contact and we pull off the hill and we just bring the thunder down. Truckload of shells and
32:20 Speaker 04 we shoot as many as we can because if we throw enough stuff at the wall, much like the Japanese, some of it's bound to stick and we're going to hit something and something's going to go kaboom, and then we'll open up a hole in the line and we'll pour through. Well, it doesn't work like that here because you have to see it in order to hit it. And if you can't see it, you can't hit it. And it becomes a, it's an infantry men's campaign because it's up close and personal where you are killing the guy, you're six feet from him at some points or closer. And it's just, it's infuriating because it's back and forth. Take the hill, lose the hill, take the hill, lose the hill, take the hill, lose the hill, over and over and over again.
32:58 Dan Snow? So at that pace, the American forces pushing across the island, they're coming across children who have been pressed into service, boys and girls. It's not surprising when you read about this stuff, it's not surprising that that's when the battle fatigue, the PTSD really kicks in for so many of these guys.
33:12 Speaker 04 Yeah, and you know, we knew that there were civilians on this island and we knew that there were a lot of civilians on this island and we prepared for it. You gotta remember, you know, when we hit Saipan in June of 1944, you know, of course, there's the horrible episodes of the civilian suicides on Marvie Point. And of course, the same thing happens on Tinian and suicide cliffs on Tinian, where whole families are throwing themselves over the cliffs and committing suicide rather than being captured by the American Devils. I mean, that's a Japanese call. It's similar things happen on some of the outlying islands around Okinawa. And it's also important to note, it wasn't just Okinawa. There were several islands that were in the vicinity of Okinawa that were part of the campaign. Iyashima is one. That's where Ernie Pyle, the American correspondent, is killed as a matter of fact. But we run into several instances where Japanese families commit
33:57 Speaker 04 suicide rather than be taken prisoner by the Americans or are forced to commit suicide by Imperial Japanese Army soldiers. It's a horrible scene, but we were prepared for this to a degree, but there's only so much you could prepare somebody for when it comes to this. So when we land initially, we start setting up basically camps, holding areas for civilians because immediately we run into these on the first day. And, you know, we capture these people and we immediately get them the heck out of here because it's like, we don't want you to get killed. So we're going to go put you in this camp. Oh, and by the way, we're going to give you medicine and we're going to feed you. And the thought is, is that hopefully word will eventually trickle down to other civilians that, hey, look, these guys are not going to kill us and eat us. They're going to take care of us and feed us. So get the hell out of the line of fire and get back to these camps
34:42 Speaker 04 since the Americans are setting up for us and we'll all be okay. And to a degree that happens every now and then. And American soldier, all good armies are renowned for their love of children. And when American soldiers and Marines would come across Okinawa and children, immediately scoop them up, pull them out of the way. I mean, there's pictures of this stuff. There's footage of this, you know, Americans carrying babies, getting them out of the line of fire, all kinds of things like that. However, a lot of these civilians, as the battle line is slowly starting to move further south towards the main line of Japanese defense, these civilians are being herded southward by the Japanese army. And I'm talking men, women and children, old men, old women, little babies, especially
35:24 Speaker 04 young girls, because the young girls were pressed into the nursing corps, a lot of them anyway, several hundred. The younger boys, teenage-ish boys, you know, 12, 14, 15, 16, they're pressed into military service and they're either hauling ammunition or they're frontline infantry who just of course get annihilated by American fire because they don't know what to do. They're not trained. And we don't know this, you know, we don't know that these are Okinawan civilians. All we see is people in ground uniforms with Arasakas. And then airstrikes don't differentiate and artillery doesn't either. So the casualty rate for the civilians on Okinawa steadily grows. The further south we push and all these people, it's like a funnel, you know, it's trying to push 80 pounds of material
36:06 Speaker 04 into a 10-pound sack, it's going to burst at some point. And there's too many people in one small area. And as we get closer to the end of the campaign, we just start bringing down artillery fire left and right, everywhere. People get killed. And then, especially in the Marine Corps sector, and why in the Marine Corps sector, nobody knows. Nobody knows. And it did happen to the Army, but more so in the Marine Corps sector, specifically the 1st Marine Division. The Japanese, Imperial Japanese Army, in order to try and break through Marine Corps lines, they start using human shields. They bring down entire Okinawan families, mostly women and children, push them in front of the Japanese infantry, of course, thinking that the Americans are going to let the civilians go through the
36:46 Speaker 04 line, which in many cases we do, until we find out that there's infantry behind these people or intermixed with them. And then the firing starts and innocent people die. And then it gets to the point where later on in the campaign, that if you hear a noise out in front of you, it doesn't matter if it's man, woman, child, Japanese soldier or an ox, you open fire and you kill it. And in the middle of the night, you can't see what you're shooting at. In the morning, you've got a dead family in front of your 19, 1930 caliber. And now you're remembering that for the rest of your life, you know? So I mean, it's absolutely abject horror.
37:23 Dan Snow? More Okinawa after this. Don't go anywhere, folks.
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39:03 Dan Snow? Tell me about the final resistance, the final suicides, the last days of the battle.
39:09 Speaker 04 Man, it's terrible. It's absolutely terrible because, you know, as I said, we've pushed these people to the very end of the island, to the point where on different ridges, you could see the water. So I mean, it's like, we know that we're at the end of the island. We know we're nearing the very end of this campaign. And the killing ramps up to a degree that we had not seen because, again, as I said, I mean, there's only so many places these people can hide. And I'm not just talking civilians, I'm talking Japanese soldiers, infantry. And I forget what the killing rate was at one point, but as the campaign reaches closest to its end, there's something like 4,000 Japanese a day are being killed, not just dying, being killed by American fire. And that's just servicemen. That's not civilians.
39:54 Speaker 04 But it's also at this point in the campaign where the Japanese who have a little more sense of the war situation, understand that why am I dying here? For what? They're not stupid. You know, the infantry that had been placed there, brought over from Japan, knew how close Okinawa was to Japan. They traveled there, you know, they can read a map. They know how close it is. It's very evident that the next step is gonna be Japan and that more than likely, if the United States has pushed through us this far after this long, we're not going to win this battle, much less the war. So why do I need to fight and die? And we receive, by Pacific War standards, large numbers of surrendering Japanese infantry
40:38 Speaker 04 in the thousands, actually, which doesn't sound like a lot, but when you compare it to Tarawa, where we took, I think, 17 prisoners of war, that's a lot of guys, you know? And it shows you that at this state of the war, specifically this campaign, and even the Japanese infantry, hardcore Japanese infantry, realize that this ain't working. This is not turning out well. And if I want to live to see another day, I gotta get out of here. And that's exactly what happens. Now, that being said, of course, there's always your holdouts. The further south we push, and a lot more suicides. And that's one thing, too, that the Japanese did not do on Okinawa, at least not very often, was the banzai charges that
41:21 Speaker 04 you see in other places during the Pacific War. Ushijima forbade that. He's like, we're not doing this because it's a waste of manpower. Why throw 4,000 guys at marine lines or army lines to run into machine guns and 37 millimeter canister and get chopped to pieces? It's a waste of time, human lives and effort. And again, not to say it didn't happen because it did. There were two Japanese counterattacks on Okinawa, both of which resulted in just absolute abject failure. But at this stage of the campaign, Ushijima's will, if you will, is winning and the Japanese are, they're not doing that. And instead, each commander or company commander, whatever the case may be, is being left to his own devices. And some of these guys are killing
42:06 Speaker 04 themselves. Some of these guys are coming out of their holes to fight, mono, mono, whatever the case may be. Ushijima and his executive officer, second in command, Cho, they wind up committing ritual suicide, literally, probably an hour before Americans take their position. They never do find the bodies of Cho, I believe. But it's literally within an hour or two before these guys wind up killing themselves. And that's to the bitter end.
42:32 Dan Snow? After three months, the island was in US possession, pretty much all of it. What do you think are the best figures we have for casualties?
42:42 Speaker 04 Ah geez. At the end of the campaign, you're looking at roughly 107,000 Japanese military personnel are killed on Okinawa, 107,000. Around 7,000, 7,400 are taken prisoner overall, which is a huge number in the Pacific. American losses, just ashore, sit at 12,000, little over 12,000, killed in action and a further 36,000 wounded. And that does not count PTSD. That does not count what they called at that time, non-battle injuries. So if you look at the 12,000 killed,
43:21 Speaker 04 36,000 wounded, that's double Iwo Jima, and that's 12 Tarawas. So I mean, this is by far the bloodiest campaign of the war for the United States military in the Pacific. And then on top of that, you've got roughly just a shade over 100,000 Okinawan civilians that are killed too. So I mean, this is by far the bloodiest campaign of the Pacific War on both sides, Japan and the United States.
43:47 Dan Snow? It's tough not to think that this influenced President Truman, his decision to use atomic strikes on Hiroshima.
43:53 Speaker 04 Absolutely did.
43:54 Dan Snow? The idea, if they're going to fight this hard for an offlying island, not even really part of the core Japanese homeland, you'd have to believe that the invasions of the home islands would be at least as ferocious as this, but on a not even greater scale.
44:08 Speaker 04 There is no question at all that Okinawa and to a lesser extent Saipan, but especially Okinawa influenced Harry S Truman to give the green light to drop the atomic weapons on, let's just say Japan, because they didn't know exactly where they were going to bomb then. But regardless, because he said specifically, referring to the invasion, Operation Olympic, which would have been the invasion of Kyushu slated for November 1945, he said, I do not want 10 Okinawas on mainland Japan. He knew, everybody knew. I mean, we were estimating over a million casualties to in Japan for crying out loud, just on our side. So over 100,000 KIA they were talking about potentially for
44:48 Speaker 04 the United States alone. So it would have been biblical, honestly. And the casualties for the Japanese would have been astronomical, because they were training, we point this out all the time, but it's God's honest truth, they were training Japanese children to charge American lines with bamboo spears. That's not going to work out, man. That's not going to work out for anybody. And it's a very touchy subject, but it's true. I mean, it's almost undeniable that the atomic weapons saved lives on both sides, gruesome as it was. But yeah, there's no question that Okinawa absolutely influenced Harry Truman to give the green light to drop bombs.
45:27 Dan Snow? Seth Parren, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Make sure everyone goes out and listens to Unauthorized History of the Pacific War, where you can, well, you can hear a lot of Seth on there, everybody.
45:39 Speaker 04 Whether you want to or not.
45:40 Dan Snow? Well, they're all going to want to after this. Thanks so much for coming on, and I would love to do more in the future. Thank you.
45:45 Speaker 04 Absolutely. Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you.
45:58 Speaker 07 This is a paid partnership with Apple Card. The coolest flex at brunch these days is not the Bloody Mary with the bottomless gold flake caviar topping. It's not whipping out your wallet to pay. It's not having a wallet at all. Jack's been an Apple Card user since 2019. That's the same year he tossed his wallet in the trash. Because Apple Card holders earn 2% daily cash back on purchases made using Apple Pay. It's the only credit card designed for the iPhone. I tap to pay with Apple Card at the grocery store, at the gas station, at restaurants. And yes, I use it at my second home, the farmer's market. Jack tapping to pay with his Apple Card with Apple Pay is his favorite thing to do. And the pleasant vibration and chime sound? Means I just got 2% daily cash back on my latest purchase. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval.
46:41 Speaker 07 Apple Card, issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.
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