The Battle of Okinawa: The Blood and the Bomb Book

A compelling narrative of civilians and combatants from both sides but most importantly, this book provides the extremely rare perspective of the Japanese soldier. For history lovers of the Pacific War, this is the missing piece of the puzzle because in all previous battles, nearly all Japanese combatants perished. Finally, the story of the Japanese combatant is told and what a miserable, horrific story it is. Living underground in caves like a troglodytes for months in an environment that an American or any sane person couldn't stand for ten seconds. Some banzai charges may have been motivated by a soldiers desire for one last breath of fresh air followed by a quick merciful death. Civilians begged soldiers for grenades so they could commit mass suicide rather than fall Into the hands of the Marines. The lucky ones had no access to grenades or their grenades became too wet to explode.

The Japanese soldiers that did surrender mentioned that they were never treated as well by the Imperial Japanese Army as they were treated in the American POW camps. Within days they lost their hatred of their adversary.

This was the last battle of WW2. As the greatest armada in the history of warfare approached Okinawa the brainwashed or naïve Japanese enlisted man and civilians alike thought "now we've got them." Everyone expected the IJA to prevail. They all thought that a relief flotilla would arrive at any moment. They were uninformed and couldn't imagine losing let alone surrender. This is important to understand because the majority of the Japanese on the mainland most likely felt the same way and would of turned this tenacity into a hard fought blood bath for at least another year. The atomic bomb was important because it brought about a quick change of minds starting at the very top.

Okinawa was different than the other island hopping battles. The Japanese didn't contest the landings. Instead they waited inland at the heavily fortified series of caves called the Shuri line. Once this line was breached, the army retreated in disarray toward the southern half of the island. The men considered this a mistake. It was a blow to morale and the command structure broke down. The soldiers fell back to caves occupied by civilians. They stole their food and water and threatened to kill any civilian that tried to surrender. This was hell on earth for all but exacerbated the suffering of the civilians of which 150,000 would perish.

The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki convinced the Japanese to surrender. Author George Fiefer said that only one US veteran of the Okinawa campaign that he interviewed thought that the deployment of the A-bombs were probably unnecessary. That veteran arrived after the island was secure and didn't have the same experience as the men who breached the Shuri line. Those who understood Japanese tenacity on the battlefield and experienced it first hand knew that an invasion of the Japanese mainland meant their eventual death. Not one of the veterans who saw actual combat regretted the use of the bomb. To me, this was not a surprise. The surprise to me was that some Japanese, in hindsight, were glad the US dropped the bombs because it brought an almost immediate end to hostilities. If the allies would have invaded mainland Japan the US predicted 1 MM allied casualties. In the war in the Pacific, for every death of a US servicemen, 20 Japanese perished. An Allied invasion would have prolonged the Japanese agony for at least another year. The bomb saved tens of millions of lives.