Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945 (The Pacific War Trilogy Book 3)

by Ian W. Toll

Naval gunfire and air support were valuable on Okinawa, but they never superseded the bravery, initiative, and grit of individual infantry units. In the end, the soldiers and marines had to dig their enemies out of the ground and kill them. There was no other way. Rarely could they gain an advantage through flanking maneuvers. On the constricted terrain around the Shuri ridges, each battalion was wedged into a densely populated section of the line—on average, a thousand troops for every 600 yards—and the only way to hit the enemy was by frontal assault. They might briefly seize control of the top of a facing ridge, but then be driven back by heavy artillery fire from positions farther south, or by Japanese infantry counterattacks in superior force. That was a recurring pattern on Okinawa: the high ground often changed hands, in a succession of attacks and counterattacks, sometimes as many as a dozen times. American and Japanese dead were splayed side by side on the battlefield. All foliage had been blasted or burned away from the once-verdant landscape, and the zones between the opposing lines were a scarred and denuded wasteland.