It was an extremely costly engagement, too, for the U.S. An estimated 100,000 civilians also perished, either caught in the crossfire between the two armies or through forced mass suicide. Japan sacrificed even more men: at least 110,000 soldiers, many after the battle was lost.
The United States suffered death on a staggering scale: 7,500 Marines and soldiers and another 5,000 sailors. The Marines and Army endured gruesome casualties-physically and psychologically-as they slugged it out with an enemy bent on a suicidal defense of the small island. The Americans wanted to seize the main airfield on Okinawa to launch bombers against enemy industrial sites the Japanese were prepared to fight to the last man to prevent the capture of their home soil. The island was to be a preview for the invasion of Japan, only 350 miles away. “Brains and blood were splattered all over the Marine’s rifle, boondockers, and canvas leggings.”Ĭomrades of the shell-shocked Marine took his arms and led him away to an aid station. “I winced each time it came down with a sickening sound into the gory mass,” Sledge later wrote in his memoir of the war. A fellow Marine with a dazed look on his face approached one of the corpses and repeatedly plunged his rifle into the dead man’s head. Two Japanese soldiers with samurai swords had attacked his unit’s position on Okinawa in June 1945 but had been killed before they could cause harm. Marine Private Eugene Sledge watched in stunned horror.
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