Okinawa (15 page)

Erection of numerous pontoon causeways from the reefs to solid ground helped ease the continuing problem of moving supplies from ship to shore. LCTs—Landing Craft, Tank—and LSMs could tie up to the small ones, transferring their cargo directly into trucks. The bigger ships at the bigger causeways used cranes. Red Beach 1 opposite Yontan Airfield had the largest causeway: 1,428 feet long with a pierhead 45 by 175 feet. During the first few days sixty thousand men and 110,000 tons of cargo crossed the piers.

The most serious shortage was in shells for the 81 mm mortars—those unlovely “stovepipes” that probably have killed more soldiers than any other weapon devised—caused by the loss to
kamikaze
April 6 of those two ammunition ships. But the ever-resourceful Admiral Turner quickly put in an emergency request to Guam, and 117 tons of mortar shells were airlifted to Okinawa, enough to keep the stovepipes firing until many more tons could arrive by ship. Yontan and Kadena Airfields were kept so well supplied that not a single plane was grounded for lack of fuel during the entire campaign.

Fifth Fleet and TF 58 were supplied by a force of cargo ships and oilers commanded by Rear Admiral D. G. Beary from his flagship in the old light cruiser
Detroit.
When Beary received requests from carrier groups for oil and/or ammunition, he would send formations of the necessary ships hurrying to the flattop fleets to begin replenishment at dawn and complete it by dusk. Long before Okinawa, the Navy had perfected the system of refueling at sea, and eventually replacement ships were trained to fill the carriers’ every need—even such bulky items as crated airplane engines or jeeps for use on flight decks. Weapons, bombs, and bullets were soon added, and thus at Okinawa TF 58 could remain almost indefinitely at sea—a fact that might be a boon to Admiral Mitscher, but a bore to his “swab-jockeys” weary of sea duty and eager for a little fun ashore. In the immemorial rhythm of “for want of a nail a shoe was lost,” the most serious problem was inadequate supplies of 3½- and 4-inch Manila line, and this would not be solved until the Philippines were completely reconquered.

Supply of the bombardment warships off Okinawa was made easy by Admiral Turner’s foresight in seizing the Keramas not only for a ship’s hospital but also to keep the big naval guns bellowing. A new class of LST ammunition ships equipped with mobile cranes shuttling between the Keramas and Ulithi and the Marianas was able to deposit cargos directly onto the decks of bombardment warships. They also were “type loaded,” that is, carrying ammunition for just one class of ship—say, five-inchers and 40 mm for destroyers.

Fuel for all these ships together with about a thousand carrier aircraft was supplied both by Admiral Beary and fleet tankers sailing from Guam to Okinawa or meeting thirsty ships at sea. Two huge fleet tankers left Guam every three days. Every day during the peak period of April 4-24 an average of 167,000 42-gallon barrels of fuel oil was consumed by the ships at and around Okinawa, plus 385,000 gallons of aviation gasoline. By May 27 nearly 9,000,000 barrels of oil had been consumed and 21,000,000 gallons of aviation gasoline, to say nothing of the delivery of less-vital but still-important items as 2,700,000 packages of cigarettes, 1,200,000 candy bars, and over 24,000,000 pieces of mail—to “gladden the heart” of American servicemen there. Suggestive of the extent of the logistical triumph occurring at the Great Loo Choo was the fact that four escort carriers were employed to protect replacement planes and pilots being ferried to the battle area, with seventeen more on the same mission between the West Coast and the Marianas.

Aside from the loss of those two ammunition ships, Japan’s naval and air forces did next to nothing to interfere with this enormous supply pipeline. Because Admiral Beary’s fleet operated about two hundred miles south of Okinawa with air cover from two escort carriers, it was rarely attacked. One lone
kamikaze
did score a hit on the fleet oiler
Taluga,
but this minor damage was quickly repaired.

The failure of the Japanese counter-attack on April 12-13 had convinced Major General John Hodge that the time had come for a major breakthrough in Ushijima’s Naha-Shuri-Yonabaru line. It was scheduled for April 19.

In the interval, the Seventy-seventh Infantry Division landed on Ie Shima just off the western tip of Motobu Peninsula, about to fall to the Sixth Marine Division. Ie was a fair-sized island with a completed airfield. Landing on April 16, the Seventy-seventh fought a savage four-day battle, killing 4,706 Japanese—many or perhaps even most of them uniformed civilians—while losing 258 soldiers killed or missing and 879 wounded. Marching with the Seventy-seventh was Ernie Pyle.

Before Pyle left Ulithi to join the First Marine Division, another correspondent yelled at him jokingly, “Keep your head down, Ernie.” Snorting in disdain, the GI’s Friend replied: “Listen, you bastards—I’ll take a drink over every one of your graves.” But it was Ernie’s last resting place that was dug on Ie Shima. As it always was with Pyle, he was at the front—driving there with a battalion commander. Suddenly a Japanese machine gun opened up, and the driver with his two passengers dived into a ditch. After the machine gun fell silent, the commander and Pyle raised their heads—and the gun chattered again. Pyle slumped back into the ditch. Bullets had entered his forehead just below his helmet. Over his grave his new comrades in the Pacific placed a monument with the inscription: “On this spot, the 77th Infantry Division lost a buddy, Ernie Pyle, 18 April, 1945.”

Two days later the defending Japanese mounted a desperate counter-attack in an effort to recover ground lost during April 20 to the Americans. After dark that night infiltrators in company strength and in small groups—a total of about 500 men—launched a screeching assault on the front of the 307th Infantry’s G Company. Many of them penetrated, actually overrunning a battalion command post, and might have broken through but for the efforts of two machine gunners: Staff Sgt. Anthony Cernawsky and Pfc. Martin May. Both men emptied their heavy machine guns repeatedly until they had no more belts left, after which they struck at the enemy with grenades and carbines, until May was wounded by a mortar shell and the enemy driven off. They returned to the attack, and once again May fought them off—but this time he received his mortal wound, and his Medal of Honor was awarded posthumously.

 

On the following day General Hodge’s bellowing, three-division assault began. Its objective was to penetrate defenses around Shuri to seize the low valley and highway linking Yonabaru on the east coast with the capital of Naha on the west. Admirals Spruance and Turner were eager to seize Naha with its excellent port, the very harbor in which Commodore Perry had cast his anchors en route to opening Japan to world trade.

Even though General Hodge was hopeful, he had no illusions about the formidable positions that his troops would be attacking. “It is going to be really tough,” he said. “There are sixty-five thousand to seventy thousand fighting Japs holed up in the south end of the island, and I see no way to get them out except blast them out yard by yard.” He also said that because he faced a bristling front without flanks stretching from the Pacific Ocean on the east to the East China Sea on the west, there was simply no opportunity for large-scale maneuver. Instead, Naha-Shuri-Yonabaru had to be cracked by weight of metal.

All previous Pacific War bombardments were surpassed by the concentration of explosives—land, sea, and air—that preceded the attack. Twenty-seven battalions of Army and Marine artillery ranging from 105 mm to 8-inch howitzers—354 pieces in all—produced a barrage of 75 pieces per mile, the proportion increasing as the array moved from east to west. Bursting on the enemy with a horrible roar at dawn of the nineteenth, a rain of howling shells struck Japanese emplacements for twenty minutes to the front of the Seventh and Ninety-sixth Divisions. Six battleships, six cruisers, and nine destroyers firing on call thickened the cannonade with projectiles ranging up to one thousand eight hundred pounds, while 650 Navy and Marine aircraft either flew close-up air support for the waiting troops or punished the enemy’s outposts and Ushijima’s Shuri headquarters with rockets and one-thousand-pound bombs. Meanwhile, troops boated in transports covered by planes and warships made another feint at the Minatoga Beaches in the south, hoping to draw off some of the enemy’s strength. But Ushijima was not deceived and gave no such orders. Instead, he reiterated his instructions to all commanders to keep their men safely below ground. Needless to say, they were strictly obeyed even when, after its opening twenty-minute explosions, the American artillery lifted its fire to begin pummeling the rear areas for ten minutes, while American troops feinted at the Japanese front, hoping to deceive the Japanese into believing the bombardment had ceased and thus lure them above ground. But they still remained invisible, so that when their enemy’s fire returned to their front again, no one was caught above ground.

Actually, few Japanese were killed and wounded by this massive artillery assault, even though nineteen thousand shells had been fired at them. Brigadier General Joseph Sheetz commanding Twenty-fourth Corps artillery said that he doubted that as many as 190 Japanese—one for every one hundred shells—had been killed in the bombardment.

Nevertheless, the assault went forward—and began to measure its gains in yards.

At the outset all seemed well. Major General George Griner’s Twenty-seventh Division, entering Okinawa combat for the first time, had been assigned a pre-dawn assault on the extreme right flank of the Twenty-fourth’s front. Griner hoped to outflank the enemy by a night attack, having read a captured 62nd Division intelligence report stating “the enemy generally fires during the night, but very seldom takes offensive action [then].” In his night attack Griner would have to cross Machinato Inlet and to do this would need to construct bridges and improve the road leading to the water. This could not be done by day, for the Japanese had complete observation of the terrain north of the Urasoe-Mura Escarpment. So the bridges were built farther back, and the engineers trained in assembling them and breaking them down. Meanwhile, a bulldozer was assigned to widen and repair the narrow, shell-pocked little jeep road leading to the inlet.

By day, in full view of the enemy, the bulldozer retrieved upended or mired jeeps, by night the driver worked tirelessly to make the road passable for Griner’s troops. Thus, before dawn of the Nineteenth the Twenty-seventh’s spearheads did indeed cross Machinato Inlet unseen. With dawn, however, they were detected, and a rain of fire struck them to the ground and kept them there. This was the high point of Hodge’s massive, three-division assault. All that the night attack had achieved was to allow the Americans to move undetected over the low ground intervening between their jump-off point and their objective.

Elsewhere the assault did not even get that close. It had been hoped that the new flamethrowing tank assigned to the Seventh Division on the left flank would easily destroy Ushijima’s outposts. In essence, the new weapon was an old Sherman tank with a flame spout projecting from inside the barrel of its 75 mm cannon. It fired a stream of fiery fluid of mixed napalm and gasoline. The napalm was a soapy, granular flammable substance that would stick like jelly to whatever it hit: tanks, pillboxes—and men. The flamethrower was the only weapon that terrified the Japanese. First widely used on Peleliu, it was usually carried by a big strong man firing a tube connected to a tank on his back. It sometimes backfired, for a bullet could ignite the tank, incinerating everyone in the vicinity, while charring the man who fired it. Adapted to a tank, it was thought to be much harder to stop than a man.

It seemed so when three of these flame-belching monsters and two regular tanks joined the Seventh’s attack and clanked toward the coastal flats dotted with fortified tombs and pillboxes beneath Skyline Ridge. Long, hissing jets of orange flame issued from the mouths of the 75s directed into every opening. Soon clouds of greasy black smoke billowed skyward, and the GIs who had been watching in fascination at this incineration of their enemies cheered wildly. Now possessing a foothold below, the Americans began climbing the ridge—straight into an enemy hurricane. First, preregistered mortars fell upon them flashing and crashing, and then, boiling over the crest of the ridge, charging up from the reverse slope, and even rushing into their own mortars to close with the enemy, came a horde of screaming Japanese hurling grenades and satchel charges. Twice they came in counter-attacks, and each time the GIs clung desperately to their weakening hold on the forward slope.

Higher up on Skyline Ridge other soldiers of the Seventh advanced unmolested for five hundred yards—an ominously easy ascent that should have warned them—but when they moved into ground also preregistered, the same rain of enemy fire stopped them cold. Pinned down throughout the day, all formations of the Seventh were retreating into their former positions by shortly after four o’clock.

They had gained not a yard.

 

In the center of Hodge’s assault the Ninety-sixth Division found its experience even more frustrating than the Seventh’s. The objective was the Tanabaru-Nishibaru ridge line, which joined Skyline Ridge, Hill 178, and Kakazu Ridge to form the zone defended by General Fujioka’s Sixty-second Division. Repeated local attacks gained no more than outpost ground. Only one serious attempt to penetrate enemy defenses was made: by a platoon led by First Lieutenant Lawrence O‘Brien of Colonel Mickey Finn’s Thirty-second Regiment. O’Brien tried to move onto Skyline Ridge and thence westward to the towering mass of Hill 178. Apart from an exploding shell that killed one man and wounded three others, O‘Brien’s men moved rapidly up Skyline’s steep forward slope, then swung right toward 178. A Japanese machine gun chattered, and the Americans took refuge in an abandoned pillbox. From a ridge above, the Japanese hurled grenades and fired knee mortars. O’Brien was pinned down. Major John Connor, the battalion commander, sent a platoon to the rescue, but this unit also came under enemy fire so scourging that only six men of the platoon returned to base alive and unwounded. With this Connor recalled O’Brien. In another demonstration of how dangerous the forward slopes of the ridges could be with the rear slopes unconquered, Connor had lost eighty men and gained not an inch.