Top Photo: A Marine dashes through Japanese machine gun fire while crossing a draw, called Death Valley by the men fighting there. Okinawa. May 10, 1945. National Archives

On April 1, 1945, more than 60,000 soldiers and marines of the US Tenth Army stormed ashore at Okinawa, in the final island battle before an invasion of mainland Japan. After a largely unopposed initial advance, US forces soon encountered a network of Japanese inland defenses. Savage fighting erupted at the island’s southern end. Heavy rains and rugged terrain impeded easy movement, and natural defensive positions covered the island. A vicious land, sea, and air battle raged for nearly three months. Like the bloodshed on Iwo Jima, Okinawa’s savagery forecast a terrible death toll in the anticipated invasion of Japan’s home islands.

Moving Inland

While marines overcame Japanese defenses in northern Okinawa by April 18, opposition in the south proved formidable. The Japanese anchored their defenses at historic Shuri Castle, supported by a series of well-defended high ridges. These defenses, combined with sporadic Japanese counterattacks, held up the American advance. Finally, under relentless assault by the Tenth Army, Shuri Castle fell on May 29 and marines seized the airfield at Naha through an amphibious assault commencing June 4, 1945.

Kamikaze Attacks

Suicide plane attacks began during preliminary operations at Okinawa on March 26, 1945. Five days after the initial American landing on April 1, a wave of 355 Japanese army and navy kamikaze aircraft struck the armada of Allied ships supporting the invasion, and further attacks continued into June. By war’s end, Japan would launch almost 2,000 suicide attacks against the Allied fleet, including manned rocket-powered Ohka flying bombs. The attacks tested the nerves of even veteran sailors as 36 ships were sunk and another 368 damaged.

Terrible Losses

Victory at Okinawa cost more than 49,000 American casualties, including more than 12,000 deaths. Among the dead was Tenth Army’s commander, Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., killed on June 18 by an artillery shell during the final offensive. He was the highest-ranking American officer killed in action in the Pacific Theater. About 90,000 Japanese combatants died in the fighting, but deaths among Okinawan civilians may have reached 150,000. The Allies now braced for even greater carnage on Japan’s home islands.