Discovering Cultural Japan : A Guide to Appreciating and Experiencing the Real Japan Book

This was a difficult book for me to finish. I have read a lot of military history, but this had the same effect as reading about Verdun or Stalingrad. It is largely composed of first person narratives from survivors of the battle, and they are so unrelentingly violent, brutal, and chaotic that I had to set it aside at times and do something else until I was ready to start reading again. There is a searing, nightmarish quality to these accounts: agony, death, dismemberment, exhaustion, confusion, and hopelessness, but there is also courage, comradeship, and resolve. When ordered to go forward into the valley of death again and again the Marines always went, because they were Marines. In the end they were victorious, but at such a terrible cost: companies reduced to platoon size, and led by corporals or PFCs. It is a sobering thought that if the war had not ended a few weeks later, the horrors of Okinawa would have been repeated throughout Japan.