Jerry Sanson
Louisiana Maneuvers and Military Museum
March 2026
As we approach Holy Week this year, it is well to remember that the last major battle of World War II began on April 1, Easter Sunday, 1945.
Okinawa’s 466 square miles of territory lay still and peaceful that morning as American troops approached the island, and the Fifth Fleet launched the war’s largest bombardment to support a troop landing. Many soldiers were apprehensive, expecting a bloodbath worse than D-Day when their commanders ordered them to hit the beach. Their commanders expected the same.
The stakes could not have been higher. The Japanese High Command knew that Okinawa was key to homeland defense. American commanders knew that taking control of Okinawa and its airbases as part of Operation Iceberg was critical to a successful invasion of Japan.
Feelings of surprise and relief must have rippled through American troops as they met little resistance on the beaches or even as they ventured inland. Troops, tanks, ammunition, and supplies were unloaded relatively quickly, and the soldiers occupied Kadena and Yontan airfields. Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. Mitsuru Ushijima’s
Japanese 32nd Army lay in wait.
Ushijima commanded a force of about 130,000 troops. His plan for defending Okinawa called for allowing Americans to land relatively unopposed and then waiting for them in an area that would give the Japanese strategic advantages. That location proved to be the rugged Shuri area in the southern part of the island where he established a triangle of defensive positions known as the Shuri Defense Line.
Some American troops headed north to the Motobu Peninsula where they won a decisive battle relatively quickly even while suffering more than 1,000 casualties while others faced the Shuri Line of heavily defended hills. The names of Kakazu Ridge, Sugar Loaf Hill, Horseshoe Ridge, Half Mood Hill, Hacksaw Ridge, and others entered the annals of U.S. Army and Marine Corps history, their names written in the blood of the soldiers who died there.
Japanese forces launched a series of deadly kamikaze attacks on April 4. Vice Admiral C. R. Brown described the strange fascination of watching a plane deliberately dive from the sky: “We watched each plunging kamikaze with the detached horror of one witnessing a terrible spectacle rather than as the intended victim. We forgot self for the moment as we groped hopelessly for the thought of that other man up there.” Despite desperate and heavy defensive fire, by the end of the attack days later the Fleet experienced 36 sunken ships, 368 damaged ships, 4,900 men killed or drowned, 4,800 men wounded, and 763 aircraft lost in this bloody part of the battle.
The great Japanese battleship Yamato approached Okinawa on April 7, sent to eliminate the U.S. Fifth Fleet and obliterate American soldiers pinned down on the Shuri Line. Once the flagship of the Japanese Combined Fleet and one of the two heaviest and most powerfully armed battleships ever built, the ship’s orders were to batter the Fifth Fleet and beach itself if necessary to continue the fight. American submarines and observation aircraft alerted the fleet of the Yamato’s approach, and airplanes from fleet carriers bombarded and sank the Japanese ship along with most of its crew.
American troops finally occupied Shuri Castle in late May. Japanese troops abandoned their strongholds and redeployed to the southern coast to organize their last stand. American General Simon Boliver Buckner encouraged their surrender by having millions of leaflets dropped explaining that the war was effectively over for Japan and that additional resistance was useless. Japanese troops had heard that Americans took no prisoners, however, so some 7,000 chose to commit suicide rather than surrender.
General Ushijima and his Chief of Staff. General Isamu Cho chose to commit suicide on June 22, effectively ending the Battle of Okinawa eighty-two days after it began.
Losses on both sides of the conflict were enormous. U.S. forces counted more than 49,000 casualties including 12,520 killed. American dead included General Buckner, killed in action four days before the battle ended.
Japanese losses numbered about 110,000 soldiers who died defending Okinawa. Between 49,000 and 150,000 Okinawa civilians lost their lives. The Battle of Okinawa is considered one of the deadliest in human history.
And what did it mean? Winning the Battle of Okinawa put the Allies close enough to Japan to begin formulating final details of invasion. The Japanese had to implement plans to stop the Allied invasion they could now envision.
President Harry Truman’s decision to use the new atomic weapons at his disposal made all those plans instantly obsolete as they disappeared in the afterglow of Little Boy exploding over Hiroshima. One of the reasons for Truman’s decision was the lessons learned from the determined resistance American troops encountered on Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The battles for control of those muddy hills in the Shuri District helped determine the unconventional end of World War II. If the Japanese were as willing as they proved to be to die for the defense of Okinawa, how much more would they be willing to die for the defense of their homes and families? How many Allied lives would it take to overcome that resistance? After the “Typhoon of Steel” on Okinawa, Harry Truman was not willing to risk those numbers.
Japanese hand grenades on display at the Louisiana Maneuvers and Military Museum illustrate a type of weapon used by the Japanese military to establish the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere envisioned by its government. Ironically, Japanese soldiers on Okinawa used them to commit suicide.
