CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Okinawa
On March 14, 1945, the 1st Marine Division sailed from Pavuvu, bound for Okinawa, an island state of the Japanese Empire just 350 miles from Japan.
WAYBURN HALL
We left Pavuvu for the last time, went aboard ship, and sailed out through the bay. A joke went around that as we were leaving, a million of those land crabs had gathered on the beach. They were waving good-bye to us, shooting us the finger.
STERLING MACE
We left Pavuvu on a pretty good ship, a converted freighter, and went up to a gathering point at Ulithi in the Carolina Islands, north of Peleliu. As far as you could look in any direction, there were ships. We pulled into the harbor there and anchored.
JIM ANDERSON
This was the first time I absolutely knew for sure that the United States was going to win the war. As I looked out across the harbor, there was nothing from one end to the other but ships. Literally thousands and thousands of our ships were there.
WAYBURN HALL
One day we got up and went topside. We spotted this aircraft carrier off to our left, maybe five hundred yards away. It was the USS Franklin, the one that got shot up so bad by the Japanese. That was a sight to see. It’s a miracle it survived. I forget how many men they lost. The deck was just rubble. They finally towed it back to the United States.
R. V. BURGIN
While we were at Ulithi I got a letter from my Dad. It said that my brother, J.D., which stood for “Joseph Delton,” had been killed. He was in the Army and had just gotten to Europe when he was killed by artillery. I remember being up on the top bunk, just staring at the ceiling. It was pretty hard but I never did have time to really grieve his death. I still had business to take care of.
STERLING MACE
From the harbor, we headed up to Okinawa. We were in the high seas, rolling. The only excitement came one day when we sat at a mess hall table. The table was wet. The ship rose on the port side, and our cups of coffee on the table slid. The roll went through and the starboard side came up, and our cups came down. That was just the start. The waves got higher, because pretty soon dishes were sliding. Then we slid on our seats. Then one big wave came, and the whole cafeteria was thrown against the starboard wall. Dishes, tables, chairs, everything. We made a joke about it, laughing. But we decided we better get out of there. We didn’t want to end up in a cleaning crew.
HARRY BENDER
On the ship on the way to Okinawa, I had mess duty. I actually volunteered for that, the only time I volunteered for anything. I figured the guys on galley duty would have it okay. Turned out I was right. The only showers you could take onboard ship were with salt water. But we got fresh water in the galley. So you’d just strip down, and another guy would pour the water on you. It was a hell of a lot better than taking those saltwater showers. Then there’d always be these fresh loaves of bread or whatever going to the officers. A tray of those would come by the galley and we’d grab it first.
WAYBURN HALL
We got to the East China Sea, close to Okinawa. We pulled up and dropped anchor. The 1st Marine Regiment was in division reserve for the landing on Okinawa. So we were not set to land the first day. For a while all we did was hang out aboard ship.
STERLING MACE
A Jap seaplane came by, one of those observer planes that operates off a battle wagon. The Navy guys started shooting at it. We were ordered to go below deck. So we were below deck, and we heard the guns topside going like a son of a gun. It started a small riot with us, because we didn’t like what’s going on outside, and we were trapped inside.
So we went to the door. Now, if you turn the dials on the door to get out, there’s another guy on the other side trying to stop you. But we overpowered him and opened the door. Some lieutenant was going to arrest us. We told him, “You can do anything you want, but we’re coming topside! No way we’re going to be trapped!” We made it up to the fresh air.
JIM ANDERSON
Okinawa had been a Japanese possession for many years, although it was not originally part of Japan. The island is seventy miles long and varies in width. The north end is all mountainous. In the south, it’s rolling farm country. Just off Okinawa, still at sea, we was told it was going to be a terrible, terrible battle. So we were expecting something similar to Peleliu.
HARRY BENDER
While we were still on ship, they recommended cutting your hair short, even shorter than it already was. If there were head wounds on landing, it was better if a guy didn’t have a whole lot of hair. So a couple days before we landed, we started cutting hair.
The morning before the battle, you get steak and eggs for breakfast. Bill Leyden, my buddy who was a veteran of Peleliu, pulled me aside and said, “When you go through the mess hall line, get some extra pieces of bread, and we’ll make some steak sandwiches to eat once we’re on the beach. Beats the hell out of C rations.” So we did.
R. V. BURGIN
I was always very confident I was going to survive. I knew there was a possibility that I could get killed. But I always figured it wasn’t going to happen to me. Even being wounded—all the way along I never figured it would happen—until we got to Okinawa, my third battle. Then I started figuring—well, you keep sticking your chin out, somebody’s bound to hit it.
April 1, 1945, was both Easter Sunday and April Fool’s Day. Together, the 1st and 6th Marine divisions landed on Okinawa’s western beaches, along with two Army divisions.
WAYBURN HALL
The military feared that the Japs would attack the transports and try to sink the ships with all the troops aboard, so they ordered us ashore.
We went over the side of the ships about noon on that first day of the invasion. You crawl down these rope ladders with all your gear on.
STERLING MACE
We went down the side of the ship on ropes. You go down on this net and get to a Higgins boat. The Higgins boat is rising and falling with the swells. One minute you’re ready to get in it, the next moment it drops five feet. So you’ve got to watch the swells. Just another little hazard.
WAYBURN HALL
We were in that landing craft probably four hours. We were in a larger boat this time. I don’t know how many troops were on there, but it was a lot. We were packed in there pretty tight, but you could still take your helmet off, set it on the bottom of the boat, and rest on it for a while. I was sick to my stomach, I have to admit it. After the experience I’d had on Peleliu, I was scared to death, fearful of what was coming.
Late in the evening we pulled up in the area opposite the Yontan Airfield, the landing area for the 1st Marine Division. We had the Army on our right flank and the 6th Marine Division on our left flank.
We went ashore, wading across the coral reef. It was anywhere from six inches to two feet deep. If you were careful to not step in a chuckhole, you were all right. If you stepped in one, you’d go down under and come back up all soaking wet. The enemy aircraft activity had picked up by then, but we made it onto the beach with no problems, no casualties. The landing went smooth, without opposition, which was a great surprise to everyone.
STERLING MACE
It was a soft landing. We were in the seventh or eighth wave. The Japs were intermittently throwing shells at us. We were told we’d need to use ladders to get over a seawall that was there, but the seawall had been destroyed where we were, knocked down to ground level. This kid from Ohio, Bob Whitby, said, “Boy, this is a piece of cake.” It was his first campaign. People were all over the place. We saw this actor, part of a camera crew, and waved to him.
We moved up, through this brush area, to a clearing. There, a sixteen-inch shell that had come in must have hit a whole platoon of Japs and just blew them all apart. Big mess. Bodies. A head here, an arm here, a shoulder, whatever. I called Whitby over and said, “Bob, come here, I want to show you something.” He came over. I said, “This is what you call a piece of cake.” He couldn’t believe what he was looking at. So he got an eyeful of that. We moved on.
JIM ANDERSON
We just fell into columns and marched, without any return fire. The Japanese pulled an April Fool’s Day joke on us. There was a reason for this. The 32nd Japanese Army was on Okinawa with about 110,000 men. But they had pulled down to the southern end of the island.
WAYBURN HALL
From the water’s edge, we climbed up on this ridge. We hiked up there toward the airfield. A revetment was there, where the Japs had stored their planes, and we bivouacked in there for the night, kind of hiding.
Sometime before dark, a Jap Zero tried to land on the airstrip. It came zooming down there, and all the firing you ever heard took place. They knocked the plane out before it quit rolling. So that was the first close-up I’d ever seen of a Jap plane.
The night got real chilly. We’d been used to heat where we’d come from, but this was cooler. They’d issued us a light jacket and we had our blanket rolls with us, so we were okay.
HARRY BENDER
When we landed, there was no resistance at all. No enemy anywhere. But everybody was still as nervous as a sinner in church. We stopped and dug in for the night and ate our meal. Guys were throwing grenades and shooting off their weapons at any little thing that moved. That shook me up more than anything.
I had turned eighteen on March 8, 1945. I was ready to see enemy soldiers. But there was no way in hell I was ready for what I saw next.
The next morning when we started to move out, we went by a shack belonging to some Okinawan civilians. In the courtyard were two little girls, maybe nine and eleven, all dressed up in kimonos. They were dead. We had done it, yes. I’m sure of it. There was nobody else around. No adults. Just the two little dead bodies. They were really dressed up, too. I don’t know whether it was for some ceremony or what. You could see their wounds, where they’d taken fire. So this was very sobering, right early on. All the guys were feeling the same thing, I think. We weren’t prepared for this. Goddamn, I was throwing up that steak sandwich.
The 1st Marine Division had its mission: to race across the island and cut it in half. Meanwhile the 6th Marine Division on their left flank would peel north to clear the upper island, while the Army divisions on their right flank would steer south where the enemy was reportedly waiting.
WAYBURN HALL
Next morning they moved us out. The rifle companies were ahead of us. We struck out to cut across the island and isolate the Japanese on the northern part of the island from those on the southern part. We walked down to a little town called Kolbe and marched down the streets of this little old town. There were two or three dead Jap soldiers in uniforms spread out in the streets. And one woman was there who’d been killed, I don’t know how. That was the first dead people I’d ever seen up close like that.
JIM ANDERSON
We walked right across the island. I was still a runner for company headquarters. The biggest combat at first was fighting all the fleas that were there. I don’t recall exactly how long it was before we ran into Japanese troops. That tells you something.
Compared with New Britain and Peleliu, Okinawa seemed pleasant to the Marines. Pine trees dotted the hills and Easter flowers bordered the cold streams, filling the air with a clean scent.
WAYBURN HALL
While we were going, we found some horses and commandeered them. We used them to pack our mortar equipment. They were kind of a raunchy bunch, but we slung our equipment on the back of those horses and made out all right.
STERLING MACE
It was too quiet. Guys were getting complacent. When guys are bored, they do anything to pass the time. We’d take a cigarette and blow on it, trying to blow sparks on another guy.
WAYBURN HALL
We set up trip wires for night defense purposes. You stretch out a wire six inches off the ground and put a grenade on the other end of it. Well, one of the guys was messing with one of the horses we had. Riding him or something, and he tripped that damn wire and almost took our lieutenant out. Luckily no one got hurt. That was a scary thing to have happen, right off the bat.
JIM ANDERSON
The Okinawans were peaceful people who had small farms and raised sweet potatoes, chickens, pigs, and ponies. We used some of these ponies, but officers later on took them away from us, because we had pony races at times when there wasn’t any action.
On April 4, their fourth day on the island, the Marines reached the island’s eastern coast.
HARRY BENDER
By April 6, we were on the beach, on the other side of the island. We were told there was a possibility the Japanese were going to make a landing right where we were. So we dug in, right on the beach, waiting. There wasn’t much food, but we’d come across a nice big hog, and we shot it and skinned the sunovabitch. That’s when we had our first casualty.
STERLING MACE
The First Platoon found and butchered a pig. They had it strung between two poles to eat later. Two guys were carrying it. The guy in the front was from Indiana. As he walked, the pin came loose from one of his hand grenades.
HARRY BENDER
When you take a grenade out of the canister, what you usually do is take the tape that comes from the canister and wrap it around the spoon to make sure the pin don’t slide out. Most of us took our medical packs—where you have your first aid supplies on your belt—you take that stuff out and two grenades fit in that medical pack real good. That’s where most of us carried them.
My squad leader had taken the tape off a grenade and had not put it back on. The next morning we started moving out and heard a Pop! (the sound of the grenade’s fuse lighting). There was no other warning. I guess he knew what was coming because he ran and jumped in a ditch to get away from us. The grenade went off in his pouch. There was a big explosion that killed him instantly. About six guys were wounded.* Some of the shrapnel went into my pack. Fortunately it didn’t break any skin or anything. Then it set off some ammunition. He had a Thompson, and some of that ammo went cooking off.
WAYBURN HALL
We spent a couple days there on the other side of the island. Somebody took a prisoner. This Jap was sneaking around and they captured him. They brought him up to our platoon. I guess they were going to interrogate him or send him down to battalion headquarters. But the guy broke loose and started running. He ran across a field into a bunch of houses.
Somebody shot him. But he kept going. So the lieutenant said, “I’ll take some men and go down there and get him.” Everybody was eager to go. Four or five of us went down there and went looking in those houses.
Two Okinawan women were sitting outside on the doorstep of a house. We spotted some steps going into that house. So one of the guys went in there. A couple others followed him. Suddenly there was a pistol shot. Ours. A pistol shot went off again. We got the prisoner out of there, and he was on his death throes. So we just went ahead and took him out. I’ll put it that way.
During the second half of April, the 1st Marine Division patrolled and cleared central Okinawa.
STERLING MACE
We were soon relegated to patrols. Rounding up civilians at night to ask questions. One day we went out on patrol with the Third Platoon. My squad brought up the rear. The whole thirty-six of us in the platoon were in a column file, walking through a wooded area. Thirty-two of the men went by without seeing nothing. My fire team came up. Will Banks, my BAR man, looked into the wooded area and saw four Japs sitting there. So he swung his BAR around, emptied it out, and killed all four. Then he and this other guy ran down there like kids to have a look-see.
I chewed their asses out. “Good thing you killed all four!” I told them. “But how the hell do you know there aren’t more of them somewhere who have got you in their sites?” We saw this happen once on Peleliu when these two Marines went over to this dead Jap and wanted to take his gold fillings out. Nearby was a Jap, not more than fifteen feet away. He killed the two Marines.
WAYBURN HALL
A day or two later we started moving back across the island toward where we’d come. We stayed on the same airfield a couple days. We set up there on a ridge.
During daytime, we’d go out on patrols. We went by this courtyard more than once where a Jap body lay. It was starting to swell up in the heat, and each time we passed it, it had swollen up a little more. After a while a lieutenant called me over and said, “Take a couple men down and go bury that body.” So we got some long poles, drug the body outside to a field, and buried it. Talk about holding your nose.
In the evenings, the Jap planes were always trying to attack our new airfield. They’d turn their landing lights on because that’s what our planes did, and then they’d come down our runways strafing. One evening, a Jap Zero did that, and our guys down on the field started shooting at him. The plane came over this ridge where we were bivouacked, and I bet you he wasn’t more than twenty-five feet off the ground trying to clear that ridge. I could see the pilot’s face clearly. He was looking back, really hauling Jack.
There was a 20mm anti-aircraft gun down on the airfield, shooting at him, and that stuff was flying up toward us, trying to shoot the plane. We could hear—and feel—those bullets coming toward us. Luckily they missed us and hit the Jap. I said to the man next to me, “I swear if I had my hand on my tommy gun, I could have shot him down myself.” The Jap pilot cleared the ridge and was gone. But I don’t think he made it far.
STERLING MACE
We were up north looking south. Every night the sky would be all lit up, like the sound of a thunderstorm. The Army must have been running into hell. That was all part of the Japs’ strategy—first, to let us come onto the beach with no problem. Second, the kamikazes would take care of our fleet. Third, we’d be up north without any big support, and the Japs from the south would come and wipe us out. It was already starting. The kamikazes were coming in every night. Our guys were taking a beating down south. Finally at the end of April, they told us to load on trucks. We were going south into all that shit.
* Mace would remember, “A guy, Warren Euber, I met him again on a visit to Parris Island sixty years after the war, he was still being treated from his leg wound from that hand grenade. All those years later.”