NOTES ON THE WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 146, 22 June 1945, Page 4

NOTES ON THE WAR

OKINAWA WON

WHAT VICTORY MEANS

The great battle of Okinawa is over and, according to the day's news, only two small enemy pockets remain to be liquidated. Thus ends a battle which has lasted 82 days—since the beginning of April—the bitterest conflict in all the Pacific War, and a struggle comparable with the fiercest and most prolonged encounters in Europe— Stalingrad, Normandy,. Bologna, Cassino. Konigsberg,' Breslau, and Berlin. In this long narrow island of Okinawa, the strategic key to the China Sea and the approaches to Japan, large armies fought to a finish with all arms and every weapon on a terrain where little manoeuvre was possible. The Japanese lost a whole army—between 80,000 and 90,000 killed, hundreds of aircraft, and several important naval units. The American losses have not yet been* finally announced, but they also were heavy in men and ships, probably 9000 to 10,000 dead, and many vessels sunk or damaged. But Okinawa was so vital to the campaign against Japan that it was well worth the cost. When the Americans landed on April 1-2, after a terrific air and sea bombardment, the Tokio newspaper "Yomiuru Hochi" declared that the loss of Okinawa would leave Japan with "no hope of turning the course of the war. . . . The entire strategy of the Pacific is based on the battle of Okinawa.. The loss of Okinawa will mean the collapse of the vanguards of Japan." ' . At the same time Hanson Baldwin in the "New York Times" of April 3, commenting on the news of the landing, said: "The invasion of the island of Okinawa, in the Riukiu Group, 330 miles from Japan's southernmost island of . Kyushu, brings the war in the Pacific to a new crisis for Japan. . . . The battle for the island may be a protracted struggle, and it certainly involves the largest number of troops yet used on any island of similar or smaller size in the Pacific. While it may be a costly campaign, the struggle 'for Okinawa can have only one conclusion; our control of the sea makes it possible for us to overwhelm the Japanese garrison by sheer weight. Capture of the island, therefore, can be anticipated." A Bitter Struggle. The prediction has been fully borne out by events. The first stages were easy. The Americans, landing on the west coast, about two-thirds of the way down from the northern tip to the southern extremity, cut across the narrow waist of this elongated island, and then turned north and south to clear the country. The Japanese concenr trated all their forces in the naturally , best-defensible arid most heavily-for-tified southern third of Okinawa, with its capital, Naha, and main airfield, the medieval walled fortress of Shuri in the centre, and the eastern port of Yonabaru. Here they fought through more than ten weeks with the' valour of desperation. The Americans pounded them with heavy naval artillery . and land guns of all calibres, while aircraft bombed every possible target. It may be that not even at Stalingrad, Konigsberg, or Cassino was so much metal dropped on so limited an area. To suicide tactics on land the Japanese added suicide attacks by air on the American naval and convoy units standing off the island to.aid and supply the marines and soldiers of the invading army. Places changed hands many times and casualties were inevitably heavy in frontal attacks, for the island was too narrow for envelopment or encirclement. And the Japanese had to be killed off, for there were few surrenders. The end was inevitable, but on the eve of victory the American commander of the invasion forces, MajorGeneral Simon Bolivar Buckner, was killed by a shellburst while watching operations in the front line. He was a fearless and inspiring leader, who was never afraid to go anywhere the men he had trained had to go. To him and his men goes the credit of the victory. The British Fleet in the Pacific played an important part at one critical stage of the operation by shelling and bombarding from the air the neighbouring Sakishima Islands, from which the Japanese might otherwise have harassed the American sea forces from the air more than they did. British units suffered damage and casualties, but were not .disabled. Strategic Options. Okinawa has many possibilities for expediting and facilitating the campaign against Japa«. As Baldwin puts it, "the capture of Okinawa will give us the choice of great strategic options and will leave Japan powerless to halt the further development of our strategy of victory. . . . Stretching before Japan are the sombre prospects of bombings many times heavier than she has yet experienced, and of a sea, air, and sub-sea blockade so tight that her seaborne lines of supply will _be completely cut off, and even her vital links with the Asiatic mainland imperilled. And in time, when this stranglehold has weakened her, she faces the sure prospect of the invasion of her home islands and/or of her vital continental holdings in China Since that was written, the effect of the invasion of Okinawa can be seen in many of the ways predicted. The home islands of Japan have been bombed with increasing violence and regularity and the Japanese are on the defensive in China. But, as a British commentator broadcast today, if Japanese resistance on the small island of Okinawa is repeated on the main islands of Japan itself in corresponding scale, what a battle it will be!