BATTLE OF THE PACIFIC: End on Okinawa

Corporal John C. Corbett of the 8th Marines had won a signal honor. He picked up a stone and hurled it with all his strength from the low cliffs of southern Okinawa into the blue waters which lapped the shore. That stone’s splash meant that the eleven-week drive by U.S. forces from the center of the island had at last reached the southern tip.

The last-ditch Japanese defenders were split into pockets no more than a thousand yards square; Fleet Admiral Nimitz announced that organized resistance had ended. There was mopping-up still to be done: a few hundred of the enemy held out with machine guns, rifles and grenades. In the final pockets many of the enemy were killed; some committed hara-kiri with grenades or by jumping off the cliffs; some surrendered.

Credit Side. To the Japanese, the cost of defeat on Okinawa was staggering.

They had lost a base within 400 miles of their home islands, only 1,100 miles from Tokyo; this base would soon be the springboard for vast assaults on their homeland. They had lost (by preliminary count) 98,564 men killed and 4,500 captured.

Marine Lieut. General Roy S. Geiger quoted a captured Japanese captain: “The overwhelming equipment and fighting spirit of the Americans are such that any Japanese who thought he had a chance to win this war was just a plain, damned fool.”

Debit Side. To the U.S., the cost of victory on Okinawa was steep, and to some jittery observers it might even seem staggering. But the island had been secured in 82 days, only twelve days more than the time originally estimated for its capture. In overall U.S. casualties it was indeed the bloodiest campaign of the Central and Western Pacific, but in proportion to the harm done the enemy, it was far from being the most costly. At Tarawa, where an estimated 5,000 Japs died or were captured, 1,000 Americans died and 2,000 were wounded—an overall casualty ratio of 5-to-3. On Saipan the ratio was only 7-to-4; Palau, less than 2-to-1; on Iwo, 6-to-5.

But on Okinawa, though 6,990 Americans were dead or missing (4,417 soldiers, 2,573 marines) and 29,598 were wounded (17,033 soldiers and 12,565 marines), the ratio was almost 3-to-1 in favor of the Tenth Army.

One unexpected cost of the Okinawa battle had been caused by the Jap suicide planes, which forced the U.S. fleet to stand by and carry on what may well have been the most difficult and expensive air-support operation of the war. Kamikaze planes (59 were shot down in two days) were still attacking ships last week. But even with the Navy’s casualties off Okinawa included with those of the ground forces, the ratio in favor of the conquerors would still be 2-to-1.