WORLD WAR II in the Pacific was unlike anything else experienced in the history of warfare. It covered distances that even today boggle the mind. In a sense, the front, if you will, was thousands of miles long and mostly water, with the fighting taking place at sea and on a host of islands that most Americans had not heard of before 1941.
Also, what was rather special in this conflict was that for the most part, the fighting didn't take place on the home soil of either of the major combatants. It was usually fought on someone else's territory or at sea.
But when it did reach the home shores of either the United States or Japan, the intensity of the reaction often stunned the invader.
For instance, when the Japanese captured two of our islands in the Aleutians, the United States reacted overwhelmingly. It's still hard to say just how strategically important these islands were, but having any portion of the United States occupied by our enemy was unacceptable. But our reaction was measured compared with that of the Japanese later in the war.
The Japanese didn't have to face an assault on their home soil until late in the war. The invasion of Iwo Jima, which occurred in February 1945, was arguably the first attack on what Japan considered its home turf. And the Japanese fought to the last man to defend it. The U.S. Marines will gladly attest to this.
But Iwo Jima was still a long way from Japan. It was very small, and it had no civilian population. However, Okinawa, the next island the American forces invaded, had been, since 1879, administratively and politically a part of Japan. This added a new mind-set, and fierceness, to the Japanese defense--something that shocked even the most hardened American veterans of the war.
The U.S. landings on Okinawa began 60 years ago in what was called Operation Iceberg. The island of Okinawa is about 400 miles from Japan and is a part of what's called the Ryukyu Islands. They form a chain of islands that run from the southern Japanese island of Kyushu all the way to Taiwan.
With two large airfields and a harbor, Okinawa was considered critical as a staging base for the eventual U.S. invasion of Japan.
The Battle of Okinawa was the largest single battle of the Pacific war, was one of its most costly, and for all practical purposes was also its last. Some 12,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines died on Okinawa, while Japanese losses reached 110,000. Civilian deaths among the islanders were possibly as high as 150,000. What this proved was just how far the Japanese, however irrationally and brutally, were willing to go to defend their home territory.
It also represented the most sustained and effective use of the kamikazes. This is a concept that is still foreign to the Western mind, but was an integral part of the Japanese strategy. Suicide pilots, all of whom supposedly volunteered, would get into their planes, convinced they were on a divine mission, and fly their explosives-laden aircraft into our ships. The losses were staggering. Thirty ships were sunk, and another 223 were damaged.
Another unique aspect to the Okinawa campaign was the application of a fairly sophisticated Japanese defensive strategy. Rather than meeting the American forces on the beaches, as they had throughout the war, they waited until our forces moved inland.
Then, with pre-established fortifications and well-planned fields of fire, they could have more control of the battle. It was an effective approach, and while the U.S. Marines and soldiers prevailed, through shear will and courage, it was an expensive campaign.
But the Japanese weren't content with a military-to-military battle. They also showed just how effectively they could brainwash their population. The Okinawans were told that U.S. military personnel, along with raping their women, would also cook and eat the civilians.
So, rather than be captured, tens of thousands committed suicide. This offered a bizarre twist of barbarism in what was already an unsettling battle.
Perhaps the most telling part of the conflict can be found in our own casualty reports. The number of noncombat injuries, in this case severe psychological stress, was the highest of any campaign of the war. This wasn't a normal battle. With its kamikazes and mass civilian suicides, it wasn't like anything we had experienced so far, and the pressures of this kind of combat took a psychological toll.
The Battle of Okinawa took place in three phases, and lasted several weeks. It began as a joint Army and Marine operation, but about midway through the battle, the Marines took over responsibility for all the fighting. The battle finally ended in late May, but the experiences of Okinawa had a profound impact on U.S. strategy from then on.
When the first atomic weapon was exploded in New Mexico in July, there were still many who were reluctant to use it on Japan. The invasion of Japan, Operation Olympic, was well into the planning stages, and many in the U.S. military preferred the conventional approach to winning the war.
But the lesson of Okinawa was that a landing on Japan would be expensive. In fact, shortly after the initial phases of the Battle of Okinawa, U.S. military planners raised the estimated number of American personnel likely to be killed in an invasion of Japan by another 100,000.
While it's likely that President Truman would have ordered the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki even if the Battle of Okinawa had been different, there is no doubt that the grim reports of this last battle of the Pacific war helped resolve any lingering doubts he might have had.
DAVID KERR of Stafford County is a congressional aide.