Operation Iceberg: 1945 Victory on Okinawa (WW2 Pacific Military History Series)

by Daniel Wrinn

  General Ushijima selected the best terrain to defend the Shuri highlands across the southern neck of the island. His troops dominated two of Okinawa’s strategic features: the sheltered anchorage of Nakagusuku bay (later called Buckner Bay) to the east, and the port of Naha to the west. Because of this, Allied troops would have to force their way into the enemy’s preregistered killing zones to secure their objectives.

  Everything about the terrain favored the defenders. The elaborate topography of ridges, draws, and escarpments grouped the battlefield into sections of small unit firefights. The lack of dense vegetation gave the Japanese troops full, interlocking fire and observation from immediate strong points.

  Like Iwo Jima, the enemy fought primarily from underground positions to counteract the Allied supremacy in supporting arms. The enemy modified thousands of concrete Okinawa tombs to use as combat outposts. While there were blind spots in the defenses, finding and exploiting them was costly in time and blood.

  The most savage fighting of the campaign took place on a compressed battlefield. The distance from Yonabaru on the east coast to the Asa River bridge on the other side of the island was only 9,000 yards. General Buckner advanced abreast with two Army divisions. By May 8, he’d doubled his force by adding two Marine divisions from IIIAC and sent them west. His two XXIV Corps Army Divisions were sent east. Each of these divisions fought brutal, bloody battles against disciplined enemy soldiers defending entrenched and fortified terrain.

  By rejecting the amphibious flanking plan in late April, Buckner had fresh divisions ready to deploy and join the general offensive against Shuri. The 77th relieved the 96th in the center, and the 1st Marine Division relieved the 27th Infantry in the west. Colonel Ken Chappell’s 1st Marines entered the lines on April 30 and took heavy fire the moment they approached. When the 5th Marines arrived to supplement the relief, enemy gunners were pounding anything that moved.

  PFC Eugene Sledge later wrote: “It was hell in there. We raced across an open field with Jap shells screaming and roaring around us with increasing frequency. The thunder and crash of explosions was a nightmare. I was terribly afraid.”

  General del Valle took command of the western zone on May 1 at 1400. He issued orders for a major assault the following morning. That evening, a staff officer brought a captured Japanese map annotated with all the American positions. Del Valle realized that the enemy already knew where the 1st Marine Division had entered the fight.

  At dawn, Marines attacked into a jagged country (known as the Awacha Pocket). With all their combat expertise, Marines were no more immune to the relentless storm of shells and bullets than the soldiers they relieved. This frustrating day was a forewarning of future conditions. It rained hard as Marines secured the closest high ground. They came under such intense fire from nearby strongholds and other higher ground that they had to retreat. Dozens of Japanese infiltrators snuck up on the withdrawing Marines and engaged them in savage hand-to-hand combat. According to a Marine survivor: “That, was a bitch.”

  The 1st Division’s veterans from Peleliu weren’t strangers to cave warfare. No other division had as much practical experience. While nothing on Okinawa could match the Umurbrogol Pocket’s steep cliffs, heavy vegetation, and array of fortified ridges, the “Old Breed” of the 1st Division faced a more numerous and smarter enemy. The 1st Division fought through four straight weeks of hell. The funnel created by the cliffs and draws reduced most of the Allied attacks to savage frontal assaults by fully exposed infantry/tank/engineer teams. General Buckner described this small unit fighting as: “a slugging match with temporary and limited opportunity to maneuver.”

  General Buckner captured the media’s imagination with his “blowtorch and corkscrew” tactics needed for successful cave warfare. But to the Marine and Army veterans of Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and Biak, he was just stating the obvious—flamethrowers were the blowtorch and demolitions the corkscrew. But both weapons had to be delivered from close range by tanks and exposed infantry covering them.

  On May 3, the rains finally let up, and the Marines resumed their assault. This time they took and held the first tier of vital terrain in the Awacha Pocket. But even after a methodical reduction of enemy strong points, it would take another full week of fierce fighting. Fire support proved to be an excellent asset. Now it was the Army’s time to return the favor of inter-service artillery support. The 27th Division’s Field Artillery Regiment stayed on the line with its forward observers and linemen familiar with the terrain.

  Here, Japanese defensive discipline began to crack. General Ushijima encouraged discussion and debate from his staff regarding tactical courses of action. These heated discussions were generally between chief of staff, Lieutenant General Cho and conservative operations officer, Colonel Yahara. So far, Yahara’s strategy of a “delay and bleed” holding action had prevailed. The Thirty-second Army had resisted the massive Allied invasion for over a month. With their Army still intact, they could continue to inflict heavy casualties on their enemies for months while massed kamikaze attacks wreaked havoc on the fleet.

  But maintaining a sustained defense was not Bushido and against General Cho’s code of honor and morals. He argued for a massive counterattack. Against Yahara’s protests, Ushijima sided with General Cho. The great Japanese counterattack of May 4 was ill-advised and foolhardy. Manning the assault forces would forfeit Japanese coverage of the Minatoga sector and bring Ushijima’s troops forward into unfamiliar territory. To deliver the mass of the fire necessary to cover the assault, Ushijima brought most of his mortars and artillery pieces into the open. He planned to use the 26th Shipping Engineer Regiment and other elite forces in a frontal attack. At the same time, a waterborne double envelopment would alert the Allied forces to a massive counteroffensive. Yahara winced in despair.

  General Cho’s recklessness was now clear. Navy “Flycatcher” patrols on both coasts interdicted the first flanking attempts by Japanese raiders in slow-moving barges and canoes. On the west coast, near Kusan, the 1/1 Marines and the 3rd Armored Amphibian Battalion greeted the enemy trying to come ashore with deadly fire—killing 727. Farther down the coast, the 2/1 Marines intercepted and killed another 175, while the 1st Reconnaissance Company and the war dog platoon hunted down and destroyed the last sixty-four men hiding in the brush. The XXIV Corps took the brunt of the overland assault. They scattered the Japanese troops into small groups before ruthlessly shooting them down.

  Instead of the 1st Marine Division being surrounded and annihilated per the Japanese plan—they launched their own counterattack and advanced several hundred yards. The Thirty-second Army took 6,000 front-line troop casualties and lost sixty pieces of artillery in this disastrous counterattack. A tearful Ushijima promised Yahara he would never again disregard his advice. Yahara was the only senior officer to survive the counterattack and described this debacle as: “the decisive action of the campaign.”

  General Buckner took the initiative and organized a four-division front. He tasked General Geiger to redeploy the 6th Division south from the Motobu Peninsula. General Shepherd asked Geiger to assign his Marines to the seaward flank, to continue receiving the benefit of direct naval gunfire support. Shepherd noted his division’s favorable experience with fleet support throughout the northern campaign. There was also another benefit: General Shepherd would have only one nearby unit to coordinate maneuvers and fire with—the veteran 1st Marine Division.

  At dawn on May 7, General Geiger reclaimed control of the 1st Marine Division and his Corps Artillery and set up his forward command post. The next day, the 22nd Marines came in to relieve the 7th Marines on the lines north of the Asa River. The 1st Division had suffered over 1,400 casualties in the last six days while trying to cover a vast front. The two Marine divisions advanced shoulder to shoulder in the west. They were greeted by heavy rains and ferocious fire as they entered the Shuri lines. The situation was dire along the front. On May 9, the 1/1 Marines assaulted Hill 60 in a spirited attack but lost th
eir commander, Colonel James Murray, to a sniper. Later that night, the 1/5 Marines joined in savage hand-to-hand fighting against a force of sixty Japanese troops—appearing like phantoms out of the rocks.

  The heavy rains delayed the 22nd Regiment’s attempt to cross the Asa River. Engineers built a narrow footbridge under intermittent fire one night. Hundreds of infantry troops raced across before two enemy soldiers wearing satchel charges strapped to their chests darted into the stream and blew themselves and the bridge to pieces. Engineers spent the next night building a more stable “Baily Bridge.” Allied troop reinforcements and vehicles poured across it, but the tanks had a hell of a time traversing the soft mud along the banks. Each attempt was a new adventure. But the Marines were now south of the river in force: encouraging progress on an otherwise stalemated front.

  On May 10, the 5th Marines finally fought clear of the hellish Awacha Pocket, ending a week of frustration and point-blank casualties. Now it was the 7th Marines’ turn to engage their own nightmarish terrain. South of their position was Dakeshi Ridge. Buckner urged his commanders to keep up the momentum and declared a general offensive along the entire front. This announcement was probably in response to the growing criticism Buckner had been receiving from the Navy and in the media for his attrition strategy.

  But the rifleman’s war had progressed past high-level persuasion. The assault troops knew full well what to expect—and had a good idea of what the price in blood would be.

  Sugar Loaf Hill

  Colonel Edward Snedeker was a veteran commander with experience fighting on Bougainville and Guadalcanal. “I was fortunate on Okinawa,” Snedeker said, “in that each of my battalion commanders had fought at Peleliu. Still, our regiment had its hands full on Dakeshi Ridge. It was our most difficult mission.”

  After a full day of ferocious fighting, Colonel John Gormley’s 1/7 Marines fought their way to Dakeshi’s crest but withdrew after enemy counterattacks swarmed them like a hive of angry hornets. The next day, the 2/7 Marines retook the crest and cut down the Japanese counterattacks pouring out from the reverse slope bunkers. Now the 7th Marines were on Dakeshi to stay—another major Allied breakthrough.

  The Old Breed Marines briefly celebrated this achievement before the difficulties to come dawned on them. Advancing the next 1,200 yards would take eighteen days of brutal fighting. Their most formidable obstacle would be the steep and twisted Wana Draw rambling off to the south—a lethal killing ground surrounded by towering cliffs, pockmarked with caves and mines, and covered by interlocking fire at every approach. According to General Oliver Smith: “Wana Draw was the toughest assignment the 1st Division ever encountered on Okinawa.” The remains of the Japanese 62nd Infantry Division was prepared to defend Wana to the death.

  Historians have paid little attention to the 1st Division’s fight against the Wana Draw defenses. Mainly because the celebrated 6th Division’s assault on Sugar Loaf Hill happened at the same time. But the Wana Draw battle was just as deadly of a man-killer as the Sugar Loaf Hill battle. Colonel Arthur Mason (now leading the 1st Marine Regiment) began the assault on the Wana complex on May 12. All three infantry regiments took turns assaulting this narrow gorge to the south. The division made full use of their medium Sherman tanks and attached Army flame tanks. Both were instrumental in their assault and fire support roles. On May 16, the 1st Tank Battalion fired over 5,000 rounds of 75mm and 175,000 rounds of 30-caliber along with 650 gallons of napalm.

  Crossing the gorge was a heart-stopping race through a gauntlet of enemy fire—and progress came slowly. Typical of the fighting was the division’s summary for its progress on the 18th: “Gains were measured by yards won, lost, and then won again.” On May 20, Colonel Stephen Sabol’s 3/1 Marines improvised a new method to dislodge enemy defenders from their reverse slope positions.

  In five hours of grueling, muddy work, troops manhandled several drums of napalm up to the north side of the ridge. There, Marines split the barrels open and tumbled them into the gorge, setting them on fire by dropping white phosphorus grenades in their wake. These small successes were undercut by the Japanese ability to reinforce and resupply their positions during darkness—usually screened by small-unit counterattacks.

  The close-quarters fighting was a vicious affair. General del Valle watched his casualties mount daily at an alarming rate. The 7th Marines lost 700 men taking Dakeshi and another 500 in the first five days of fighting for the Wana Draw. On May 16, Colonel E. Hunter Hurst’s 3/7 Marines lost twelve officers among his rifle companies. The other regiments suffered just as terribly. From May 11-30, the division lost 200 Marines for every one hundred yards gained.

  Heavy rains started again on May 22 and continued in a torrential downpour for ten days. The 1st Marine Division’s sector had no roads. General del Valle committed his LVTs to deliver ammo and extract the wounded. Valle resorted to using replacements to hand-carry food and water to the front. This was not acceptable for General del Valle. He brought in torpedo bombers from Yontan Airfield and airdropped supplies by parachute. The low ceilings, heavy rain, and intense enemy fire made for hazardous duty. General del Valle did everything in his power to keep his troops supported, reinforced, supplied, and motivated—even through these grim and treacherous conditions.

  To the west, the 6th Marine Division advanced south below the Asa River and collided into a trio of low hills in the open country leading to Shuri Ridge. The first of these hills was steep and unassuming (soon to be known as Sugar Loaf Hill). In the southeast was Half Moon Hill, and in the southwest was the village of Takamotoji and Horseshoe Hill. These three hills represented a singular defensive complex: the western anchor of the Shuri line.

  An attack on any one of the mutually supporting defenses of these three hills would prove ineffective unless the others were simultaneously assaulted. Colonel Mita and his 15th Independent Mixed Regiment would defend this sector to the last man. Its anti-tank guns and mortars were expertly placed to cause maximum damage to the enemy. The western slopes of Half Moon Hill had some of the most sophisticated machine-gun nests the Marines had encountered in the Pacific War. Sugar Loaf Hill had intricate, concrete-reinforced, reverse-slope positions. All approaches to this complex lay within a no-man’s-land of heavy artillery from Shuri Ridge, dominating the battlefield.

  Sugar Loaf Hill had an elevation of 245 feet, Half Moon at 220, and Horseshoe at 190. In comparative terms, Sugar Loaf though steep, only rose fifty feet above the northern approaches—it was no Mount Suribachi. The significance of Sugar Loaf was in the genius of the defensive fortifications and the unbridled ferocity with which the Japanese would counter-attack every US assault.

  The Sugar Loaf complex was like a smaller version of Iwo Jima’s Turkey Knob. As a tactical objective, Sugar Loaf lacked the physical dimensions to accommodate anything larger than a rifle company. But after eight days of fighting, that small ridge managed to chew up a handful of companies from two regiments.

  Corporal James Day was a squad leader from Weapons Company 2/22. He “debatably” had the best seat in the house to watch the battle. Corporal Day’s squad spent four days and three nights isolated in a shell hole in Sugar Loaf’s western shoulder. On May 12, Day got orders to cross the Asa River and support Company G’s attack against the small ridge. Corporal Day’s squad arrived too late to do anything more than cover the fighting withdrawal of G Company. His company lost half their number in the all-day assault, including their gutsy commander, Captain Owen Stebbins (shot in both legs by a Japanese machine gunner). Corporal Day later wrote that Stebbins was: “a brave man whose tactical plan for assaulting Sugar Loaf became the pattern for all successive units to follow.”

  Concerned about unrestricted fire from the Half Moon Hill area, Major Henry Courtney, battalion XO, took Corporal Day and his squad with him. They moved out on the morning of May 13 on a dangerous trek to reach the 29th Marines and coordinate the upcoming assault. The 29th Marines were then committed to protecting the 2/22 Marines’ left
flank. Courtney tasked Corporal Day and his squad to support Company F in the following day’s assault.

  Day’s rifle company comprised seven Marines. On the 14th, they joined Company F’s assault on Sugar Loaf Hill and scampered up the left shoulder. Day got orders to backtrack his squad around the hill and take up defensive positions on the right western shoulder—this was not easy. By late afternoon Company F had been driven off their exposed left shoulder, leaving Corporal Day with just two of his squad mates in a large shell hole on the opposite shoulder.

  That evening, Major Courtney led forty-five volunteers from George and Fox Companies up the left shoulder of Sugar Loaf. In a frantic battle of close-quarters fighting, the Japanese killed Major Courtney and half of his force. According to Corporal Day: “We didn’t know who they were. Even though they were only fifty yards away, they were on the opposite side of the crest, we were out of visual contact. But we knew they were Marines, and we knew they were in trouble. We did our part by shooting and grenading every Jap we saw moving in their direction.”

  Then, Corporal Day heard the sounds of Courtney’s force getting evacuated from the hill and knew they were alone on Sugar Loaf. Nineteen-year-old Corporal Day’s biggest concern was letting the other Marines know where they were and replenishing their ammo and grenades. “Before dawn, I went back down the hill and there were a couple of LVTs trying to deliver critical supplies to the folks who made it through the earlier penetration. But both had been knocked out just north of the hill. I was able to raid those disabled vehicles several times for ammo, rations, and grenades. We were fine.”

  On May 15, Corporal Day and his men watched another Marine attack come from the northeast. This time Marines on the eastern crest of the hill were fully exposed to raking fire from the mortars on Half Moon and Horseshoe Hills. Corporal Day’s Marines directed their rifle fire into a column of enemy troops running toward Sugar Loaf from Horseshoe: “we really needed a machine gun.”