2. Battle of Okinawa

Landing on Zamami Island ...

Taking Okinawa

A bit of History to put ourselves in context …

Historical background:

Since the 1900s Japan has been ruled by an imperialist military regime. The submission of the Japanese people to the omnipotence of the emperor is required and any deviation is repressed by the army and the secret police: the Kempeitai. In 1942, the Japanese Empire ranges from Manchuria (north) to the Philippines and Malaysia (south). Japan maintains its hegemony by a regime of terror like his allies, the German Nazis and the Italian Fascists. (I make a small parenthesis here: in this regard the historical museums in Japan seem to ignore this old, cumbersome friendship ...) Well, lets come back to this later on. 

In 1941, Japan wants to eliminate its expansionist rival in the Pacific, the United States, and attacks by surprise the American fleet at Pearl Harbor (Hawaii), the same as it had done with the Russian Fleet in Port Arthur, Manchuria, 1904. Follows the entry into war of the USA, which triggers the offensive against Japan where it quickly gains the advantage thanks to its industrial power. In 1943, Japan loses the supremacy of the air: the Americans had managed to capture an airplane Zero intact in 1942 and then produced a more efficient airplane, the killer of Zeros, the Hellcat, which decimated the flagship of Japanese aviation. Japan quickly loses all its "colonies” and resources. Its army, increasingly under-equipped, rapidly depletes. In this context, the Japanese command, locked up in a delusional attitude, is ready to sacrifice all Japanese until the last rather than surrender. With this attitude, it develops the strategy of suicide missions in 1944, in the Philippines. Excessively inflating the result of these first suicide attacks, the military government institutes the generalized program of special attacks forces (Tokkō Tai in Japan or Kamikaze in the West) and embarks the country in a descent to Hell.

The Battle of Okinawa took place in this context.

The situation of Okinawa in World War Two Japan:

The Okinawa archipelago comprises some twenty islands. It is located 700 km to the south, halfway between Japan and China, with which there has always been an important cultural and commercial exchange link. This strategic location was coveted by the Japanese as a commercial and tactical gateway to the inexhaustible resources of its great neighbor. Okinawa, which was a small independent kingdom inhabited by the Ryukyu people who had their own language, was logically annexed to Japan by force in the late 1800s. Becoming part of the Nippon empire, and forced to adopt the Japanese language and customs, they are considered by the latter to be second-class citizens.

Former Japanese Navy Headquarters Museum

The battle of Okinawa, the forces in attendance:

We are now in 1945, it is a rainy and cold spring. I was there in mid-March in 2015, 70 years later, and it was actually very cool for these latitudes; 12 degrees Celsius at the coldest with rain. Nothing to do with the uniforms provided for the tropical conditions ... This puts in the mood.

On the Japanese side, they make Okinawa an entrenched camp. The commander predicts that the Americans will land on the west coast of the island, where the great beaches are, north of Naha, the capital. He decides to leave this perimeter defenseless and builds a deep subterranean fortress south of Naha, digging on a terrain dotted with hills, caves and sharp rocks where it will be more difficult to get dislodged. The population, rather than being evacuated, is forced to contribute to feed, and hide soldiers, dig tunnels and defend certain positions with derisory means: women are armed with carved bamboos. The order is clear: resistance at all costs to save the motherland, in this case Japan. Rather die than surrender to the "American monsters who in case of capture will exert the worst horrors on their prisoners"*. The hungry population finds themselves "hostage" between the USA and Japanese military. Having no place to shelter to, civilians are terrified. To avoid capture, women throw themselves from the cliffs with their children. Those who attempt to escape or surrender are bayonetted by Japanese soldiers who fear that the population will disclose their positions**. Those who obey are fighting a disproportionate opponent who at first does not differentiate between the Okinawan population and the Japanese, and shoots up the place.

The horror of war.

on April 1st, on the American side, intent on avoiding heavy casualties, as was the case at Iwo Jima, the headquarters pounded the landing area with an intensity rarely reached: the Tetsu mae (steel rain, almost 3 Million bombs *** from April to June 1945). This is followed by the largest deployment of troops of the Pacific War. The American firepower on the ground is 6 times larger than the Japanese, excluding its air and naval fleet; 183 000 soldiers against 67 000.

Surprised to find no resistance, except for a few peasants armed with white weapons, the Americans progress quickly to Naha where they get stuck in the mud before the Japanese army's relentless resistance. On the landing beaches, the Kamikaze air raids from Kyushu Island (seven attacks involving 1,500 planes) destabilizes and slows down the invader without really diminishing it’s military power. On the Japanese side, the Ten-Go mission, sent as a reinforcement, involving the world's biggest battleship, the Yamato (the classic name of Japan), is a predictable and abominable failure (see the Kure page to come). Fighting is raging in the south of the island, where resistance is fierce, and suicide attacks of all kinds are holding back the American advance. It is only three months after the invasion, at the end of June 45 that Okinawa passes under the control of the American army. Admiral Minori Ota and his 4,000 men kill themselves with grenades rather than surrender and a handful of Japanese soldiers are encircled at the southern tip of the island and captured alive. The official surrender ceremony will take place on September 7, 1945. There was a total of 80 000 Japanese, 14 000 Americans and allies and 150 000 civilians deaths. Excluding wildlife, 90% of the territory had been completely destroyed, Cultural and historical heritage of the Ryukyu people wiped out.

* The controversy of MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology), I read a paper on this matter in the Okinawan Press, I quote here an article Of Wikipedia which also speaks of this controversy. I advise you to read it is rather enlightening about the forced suicides of the people of Okinawa and the revisionist trend of the current Japanese government. See MEXT Controversy page

** source: Peace Museum of Okinawa Prefecture, city of Itoman.

*** 1,179,000 unexploded bombs are still on Okinawa, source: Museum of the former Japanese Navy HQ, Town of Tomishiro.

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