World Battlefronts: To the Death

The biggest and fiercest battle in the post-V-E world was in progress last week in Okinawa. U.S. troops were advancing in the oldfashioned, inescapable .way, one foot at a time, against the kind of savage, rat-in-a-hole defense that only the Japanese can offer. From the detached, historical point of view (a luxury no man in battle can afford), the whole thing was an elaborate real-estate transaction. The U.S. wanted so much ground for bases. The Japs fought to the death because of the obvious fact that if the Americans could take Okinawa, eventually they could take Japan.

Behind flame-throwing tanks, U.S. Tenth Army troops inched forward. On the west coast the crack, new 6th Marine Division fought its way into the suburbs of Naha. In the center the 1st Marine and 77th Army Divisions pressed closer to Shuri. On the east coast the 96th Army Division captured Conical Hill dominating the Yonabaru airstrip; then doughboys swept ahead to take the airfield itself. Again & again the Japanese came out of mud-filled foxholes and caves to counterattack.

The battle raged with parallel violence in the sea and sky around Okinawa. Since March 18 Japan had lost more than 3,168 planes in almost continuous attacks, many of them by Kamikaze suicide pilots, upon the fleets supplying and protecting the Tenth Army. That was a high rate of loss: best estimates placed Japanese plane production, before the 6-295 began hammering the aircraft factories, at from 1,200 to 1,500 a month.

Total U.S. casualties on Okinawa have reached 23,188, of whom 3,877 are dead and 2,611 missing. At sea at least 25 ships, most of them light units, have been sunk; many more, including some major units, have been damaged. "We will take our time," said the Tenth's Lieut. General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr., "and kill the Japanese gradually." Meanwhile the ship-plane battle went on. Admiral Nimitz's communique announced that a major warship had been damaged during an air attack.