On 1 April 1945 the US Tenth Army landed on the Hagushi beaches on the west coast of Okinawa, the largest amphibious assault of the Pacific War. The troops expected a massacre at the water's edge and met almost no one. By nightfall more than 60,000 men were ashore and two airfields had been taken. The Japanese 32nd Army was waiting inland, in fortified lines across the south of the island, and the battle that followed lasted almost three months and became one of the deadliest of the war.
The largest landing in the Pacific
Okinawa was to be the last island battle before the planned invasion of Japan itself, and its airfields were a prize in their own right. The Tenth Army under Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. combined two corps, one from the Army and one from the Marine Corps. Before the main landing, American troops had already seized the Kerama Islands and other islets nearby.1
The US Army's official history of the battle notes that 1 April was Easter Sunday, and that dawn showed about 1,300 American ships off the island. From 05:30 battleships, cruisers, destroyers and gunboats shelled the beaches. The same history calls it the heaviest concentration of naval gunfire ever to support a landing of troops.2
Ashore without a fight
The first waves touched down at 08:30 along a front of about eight miles, two Marine divisions north of the Bishi River and two Army divisions south of it. The soldiers and Marines had been told to expect a fierce defense of the beaches. Instead there was only the occasional mortar or artillery shell. The National WWII Museum describes the landings as virtually unopposed.3
The troops moved inland and took both airfields within hours: Kadena by mid-morning and Yontan, also spelled Yomitan, before noon. By nightfall more than 60,000 men were ashore. The beachhead was about 15,000 yards long, and Kadena could already take emergency landings. At the same time the 2nd Marine Division staged a fake landing off the southeast coast to hold Japanese reserves in place. Its boats turned back at the last moment.4
Where was the enemy?
The empty beaches were a deliberate choice. Early in 1945 the 32nd Army under Lieutenant General Mitsuru Ushijima had decided not to fight at the shoreline, where American naval guns would destroy it, but to hold strong positions in the south around Shuri. The plan was to make the invaders pay heavily on land while kamikaze aircraft attacked the fleet offshore. Within days the Americans reached the first of these lines, and the advance slowed to a crawl at Kakazu Ridge and in front of Shuri.5
The kamikaze attacks began in earnest on 6 April, when, according to the National WWII Museum, 355 suicide aircraft struck the ships around the island. Over the whole campaign, the museum counts 36 ships sunk and 368 damaged.6
The cost
Organized resistance ended in late June, when the Japanese commander, Ushijima, took his own life. The National WWII Museum counts more than 49,000 American casualties, including more than 12,000 dead, among them General Buckner himself, killed by artillery fire on 18 June. The museum also counts nearly 5,000 sailors killed at sea, which made Okinawa the US Navy's bloodiest battle of the war.7
Japanese and Okinawan losses are far less certain. The museum puts the Japanese losses at about 90,000 combatants dead in one article and at over 100,000 casualties in another. Civilian deaths are the most disputed figure of all. The National WWII Museum gives some 50,000 Okinawans in one article and says in another that civilian deaths may have reached 150,000. The difference shows how hard it is to separate civilians from the Okinawans who were drafted into the Japanese forces. The whole battle is told in our article on the Battle of Okinawa.8
