Okinawa: A Decorated Marine's Account of the Last Battle of World War II

by Robert Leckie

Penguin delivers you to the front lines of The Pacific Theater with the real-life stories behind the HBO miniseries.Former Marine and Pacific War veteran Robert Leckie tells the story of the invasion of Okinawa, the closing battle of World War II. Leckie is a skilled military historian, mixing battle strategy and analysis with portraits of the men who fought on both sides to give the reader a complete account of the invasion. Lasting 83 days and surpassing D-Day in both troops and material used, the Battle of Okinawa was a decisive victory for the Allies, and a huge blow to Japan. In this stirring and readable account, Leckie provides a complete picture of the battle and its context in the larger war.

Genres: History, War, Nonfiction, Military Fiction, World War II, Japan, The World

224 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 25, 1995

About the author

Leckie was born on December 18, 1920, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He grew up in Rutherford, New Jersey. He began his career as a writer in high school, as a sports writer for ''The Bergen Evening Record'' in Hackensack, New Jersey.

On January 18, 1942, Leckie enlisted in the United States Marine Corps.He served in combat in the Pacific theater, as a scout and a machine gunner in H Company, 2nd Battalion 1st Marines Regiment 1st Marine Division (United States). Leckie saw combat in the Battle of Guadalcanal, the Battle of Cape Gloucester, and had been wounded by blast concussion in the Battle of Peleliu. He returned to the United States in March 1945 and was honorably discharged shortly thereafter.

Following World War II, Leckie worked as a reporter for the Associated Press, the ''Buffalo Courier-Express'', the ''New York Journal American'', the ''New York Daily News'' and ''The Star-Ledger''. He married Vera Keller, a childhood neighbor, and they had three children: David, Geoff and Joan According to Vera, in 1951 he was inspired to write a memoir after seeing ''South Pacific '' on Broadway and walking out halfway through. He said "I have to tell the story of how it really was. I have to let people know the war wasn't a musical His first and best-selling book, ''Helmet for My Pillow'', a war memoir, was published in 1957. Leckie subsequently wrote more than 40 books on American war history, spanning from the French and Indian War (1754–1763) to Operation Desert Storm (1991). Robert Leckie died on December 24, 2001, after fighting a long battle with Alzheimer's Disease.

Reviews

[Stefania Dzhanamova · Rating 4 out of 5]

On September 29, 1944, Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander of the Pacific Ocean Area, and Fleet Admiral Ernest King, chief of U.S Naval Operations, discussed in San Francisco the next steps to be taken to deliver the final blow to the staggering Japan. While this was the conference's official goal, the unspoken objective was to persuade the grouchy, often stubborn King to accept Nimitz' battle plan instead of King's own.
This would not be easy, for the lean, hard, humorless King was known to be "so tough he shaves with a blowtorch". (Indeed, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, his civilian chief, had ordered from Tiffany's a silver miniature blowtorch with that inscription on it.) Therefore, there was some fear among Nimitz and his Army chiefs, as well as Admiral Raymond Spruance, alternate chief of Nimtz' battle fleet. They knew that King was convinced the next operation in the Pacific should be landings on the island of Formosa off the Chinese coast. If Nimitz and staff could persuade King to accept General Douglas MacArthur's plan to invade Luzon in the Philippines instead, the conference would result in a rare interservice cooperation.

As the pink-cheeked, baby-faced Nimitz explained to the stern-faced King why his cherished invasion of Formosa would be impossible to mount at that time – the casualty estimate, based upon U.S losses of 17,000 dead and wounded eliminating 32,000 dug-in Japanese on island of Saipan, would reach 150,000 or more, a slaughter the POA's resources could not bear – Ernest King's face remained stony. Only at the introduction of MacArthur's name, one of the admiral's eyelids might have flickered, but Nimitz was prepared for that moment, ready to give an alternative to King's cherished plan. He suggested to his chief that if he acquiesced in MacArthur's liberation of Luzon and recapture of Manila, these victories would clear the Pacific for the direct invasion of Japan's home islands by seizing Iwo Jima and Okinawa and using them as staging areas. This would completely sever Japan from her oil resources in Sumatra, Burma, and Borneo, without which her airplanes could not fly, her fleets could not sail, her vehicles roll, or her industries produce. Also, from Iwo Jima and Okinawa the giant B-29s could intensify their bombardment of Japan and might even bomb Nippon into submission without invading her home islands.
Admiral King listened with raised eyebrows, and eventually – to Nimitz team's relieved surprise – agreed to substitute Iwo and Okinawa for his Formosa plan. Maybe Nimitz' proposal was attractive to him because it delayed the politically explosive question of who would be the Supreme Allied Commander in the Pacific: Nimitz or MacArthur? For years, Douglas MacArthur had sought the eminence, almost insanely jealous of the title of Supreme Allied Commander, European Theatre, held by his "former clerk", Dwight Eisenhower. To that end he had sought the support of powerful politicians, desisting only when exasperated FDR informed him that if the Pacific were to have a Supreme Commander, it would be Chester Nimitz.

So the conference in San Francisco ended on a happy note, with King returning to Washington to report his approval to the Joint Chiefs, and Nimitz with his flag officers going back to Hawaii to plan for the new operations and especially for Iwo and Iceberg, the code name for Okinawa.

Okinawa lies at the midpoint of the Ryukyu Islands and almost between Formosa (Taiwan) and Kyushu. In 1945, Okinawa had a population of about five hundred thousand, of whom roughly 60 percent lived in the southern third, much more amenable than the mountainous north above the two-mile-wide Isthmus of Ishikawa. The best description of the country over which a modern, mechanized army would have to travel is an American soldier's wry comment: "Okinawa has an excellent network of bad roads."
Shuri Castle was the point of Okinawa's defensive arrowhead. Beneath it an ancient cave system was being extended and strengthened to provide a completely safe bomb- and shell-proof headquearters for the Japanese Thirty-second Army. Heavy guns positioned nearby could bombard any part of southern Okinawa. If the Americans, in spite of heavy losses, were able to penetrate Shuri's outer defenses, the Japanese could withdraw toward the center. As long as Shuri remained unconquered, so did Okinawa.
This, then, was the terrible fortified terrain that would confront the Americans when they came storming ashore in the spring of 1945. Even worse – for the seamen of the U.S Navy – would be the Japanese new weapon of kamikaze.
(The speed at which Americans were overrunning the Philippines had produced a mood of darkest despair at Imperial Headquarters in Tokyo in late 1944 – until reports of kamikaze success during December and January replaced the pessimism with bright hopes. By 1945 Headquarters had decided that the States would next attack Okinawa to seize a base for the invasion of the four Home Islands. It was now belived that the kamikaze corps could greatly improve the chances for a successful defense of Okinawa, so a plan called Ten-Go, or "Heavenly Operation", was devised. More than four thousand airplanes, both suicide and conventional, would launch an all-out attack, joined by hundreds of suicide motorboats operating from Okinawa and the Kerama Islands and followed by a suicide dash of Japan's remaining warships.)

No one – and especially not the members of Japanese Imperial General Headquarters or the U.S Joint Chiefs of Staff – expected Okinawa to be the last battle of World War II. The Joint Chiefs, having tragically underestimated enemy striking power at the beginning of the Pacific War, Leckie explains, had just as grievously exaggerated it at the end.
In early 1945, after the conquest of Iwo Jima by three Marine divisions, Japan had been almost completely severed from its Pacific empire. Leyete in the Philippines had been assaulted the previous October by an American amphibious force under Gen. Douglas MacArthur, and in the same month the U.S Navy had destroyed the remnants of the Japanese Navy in the Battle of Leyete Gulf. A week later Manila was overrun by those American "devils in baggy pants". In late March the American flag was raised atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo. Meanwhile, the huge Japanese merchant fleet, employed in carrying vital oil and valuable minerals to the empire singularly devoid of natural resources, had been steadily blasted into extinction by the torpedoes of the U.S Navy's submarines.

Yet, because for eight months following Pearl Harbor the victory fever had raged unchecked in Japan; because the Rising Sun flew above the Dutch East Indies and surmounted the French in Indochina; because Singapore, Burma and Malaya were also Japanese, Japan as a formidable foe still existed in the minds of United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, and it could be subdued, they thought, only by an invasion force of a million men and tousands of ships, tanks, and airplanes. To achieve final victory, Okinawa was to be seized as a forward base for this enormous invading armada. In the fall of 1945 an amphibious assault called Operation Olympic was to be mounted against Southern Kyushu, followed by a Operation Coronet in Spring of 1946, a massive spearborne assault on the Tokyo Plain. The whole operation would be under the command of MacArthur and Nimitz.
Okinawa would be the catapult from which the mightiest amphibious assault force ever assembled would be hurled...

Leckie's book tells the U.S Marines' version of the story of the Battle of Okinawa. The author relates main incidents of the four-month battle in brief chapters enlivened by anecdotes about marines, GIs, and sailors, and glimpses of Japanese generals planning impregnable networks of caves and tactics designed to repel the American invaders. Informative, engaging, and well-written account of the battle that warned the Allied strategists that an invasion of Japan could cause a bloodbath many times worse.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 Battle Stars for this stirring account of the Battle of Okinawa by a Pacific War veteran. Perfect blend of overall strategy, force movements and individual combat stories on both sides. Superb intro to this last huge battle, necessary for the eventual invasion of Japan.

The logistical scale of Operation Iceberg, just 9 months after D-Day, is astounding:
Never before-and God willing, may it never be so again-had there been an invasion armada the equal of the 1,600 seagoing ships carrying 545,000 American GIs and Marines that streamed across the Pacific in that fateful spring of 1945 bound for the island of Okinawa. In firepower, troops, and tonnage it eclipsed even the more-famous D day in Normandy on June 6, 1944. In that invasion, except for the enormous thirty-to-one preponderance in air power conferred upon him by 12,000 aircraft, General Eisenhower commanded only 150,000 Allied assault troops (compared to Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner’s attacking force of 184,000 (GI’s and Marines). True, Eisenhower’s supporting craft would eventually number 5,300, but most of these were far from being seaworthy. And the Allied naval forces off the five Normandy landing beaches could not approach the firepower of Admiral Spruance’s Task Force Fifty-eight. Nor was there any comparison in the distances traveled from staging area to battleground. Only about 30 miles of English Channel separated southern England from western France, or at most perhaps 400 miles to faraway ports in the United Kingdom, but ships leaving the West Coast ports of embarkation at San Francisco and Seattle sailed 7,355 miles to the target. Yet, in feats of unrivaled seamanship still not generally recognized, the 1,300 ships arriving off the Hagushi Beaches of Okinawa did get there in time for the landings. And there were still 300 left behind in the various anchorages stretching across the western ocean.

Vice Admiral Kelly Turner was not a popular leader with the ground forces that had to fight ashore:
Spruance commanded the Fifth Fleet, and there was the saltiest salt still giving orders to the expeditionary force. Vice Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner had brought the Marines to Guadalcanal and now, nearly three years later, still roaming his flagship bridge in an old bathrobe, still a profane perfectionist with beetling brow and abrasive tongue, a matchless planner who would also not scruple to tell the coxswain how to beach his boat, Kelly Turner was bringing the Tenth Army to Okinawa. Many of the officers and men aboard Turner’s ships-especially the Marines-were not ecstatic to have the Old Salt in charge.

The Leathernecks could not forget his monstrous blunder at Guadalcanal, when he was the Amphibious Force commander at this first invasion in the long-awaited American counter-offensive. In the night of August 8-9, 1942, the Battle of Savo Island, better known to the sailors and Leathernecks involved as “the Battle of the Four Sitting Ducks”-Turner had lost four cruisers: Astoria, Quincy, Vincennes, and the Australian Canberra, while a fifth, Chicago, had its bow blown off. He lost them because he violated a commander’s basic principle: never act on the premise of what you think the enemy will do but what he has the capacity to do. Thus, he was unprepared for battle when a Japanese task force led by Rear Admiral Gunichi Mikawa, the hero of Pearl Harbor, came tearing down the Slot the day after the Americans landed to surprise Turner in a disaster that might have been a catastrophe. Guadalcanal might have been reconquered by the enemy but for the tenacity of the Marines whom Turner quickly abandoned-and wisely so, his fire support force having been almost annihilated-sailing away with empty transports and some supply ships not even half unloaded, others still deep in the water. And the US. Navy did not return to Guadalcanal in force until three months later. But for Turner’s friendship with Nimitz, he might have lost his head just as Admiral Husband Kimmel did at Pearl Harbor. But he did come back again and again-risking his Ships in the submarine-infested waters of the Coral Sea, to bring reinforcements and badly needed supplies to Major General Alexander Vandegrift.

No glamorous battle venues to be found in the Pacific theater:
All of these troops, and especially the replacements who fleshed out formations left understrength by battle losses, disease, or accident, hated the Pacific with a fierce, personal venom. Upon arriving in the islands, they stood breathless at the rail of their transports, drinking in the beauty of a tropical paradise seen from the sea, especially at sunrise or sunset. But then, when they went ashore-even on a peaceful island-they saw the backside of beauty, a face as hideous as Medusa’s. The first to be so disillusioned by the ambivalent South Seas were the men of the First Marine Division when they came on deck the morning of August 7, 1942, who stood at the rail of their ships studying Guadalcanal. My buddies and I-waiting to follow our machine guns down the cargo nets to the wooden Higgins boats waiting and wallowing in the swells-were enchanted until after we landed. Years later, I remembered that scene:

She was beautiful seen from the sea, this slender long island. Her towering central mountains ran down her spine in a graceful east-west keel. The sun seemed to kiss her timberline, and lay shimmering on open patches of tan grass dappling the green of her forests. Gentle waves washed her beaches white, raising a glitter of sun and water and scoured sand beneath fringing groves of coconut trees leaning languorously seaward with nodding, star-shaped heads.

She was beautiful, but beneath her loveliness, within the necklace of sand and palm, under the coiffure of her sunkissed treetops with its tiara of jeweled birds, she was a mass of slops and stinks and pestilence; of scum-crested lagoons and vile swamps inhabited by giant crocodiles; a place of spiders as big as your fist and wasps as long as your finger, of lizards the length of your leg or as brief as your thumb; of ants that bite like fire, of tree-leeches that fall, fasten and suck; of scorpions without the guts to kill themselves, of centipedes whose foul scurrying across human skin leaves a track of inflamed flesh, of snakes that slither and land crabs that scuttle-and of rats and bats and carrion birds and of a myriad of stinging insects. By day, black swarms of flies feed on open cuts and make them ulcerous. By night, mosquitoes come in clouds-bringing malaria, dengue or any one of a dozen filthy exotic fevers. Night or day, the rains come; and when it is the monsoon it comes in torrents, conferring a moist mushrooming life on all that tangled green of vine, fern, creeper and bush, dripping on eternally in the rain forest, nourishing kingly hardwoods so abundantly that they soar more than a hundred feet into the air, rotting them so thoroughly at their base that a rare wind-or perhaps only a man leaning against them-will bring them crashing down.

And Guadalcanal Stank. She was sour with the odor of her own decay, her breath so hot and humid, so sullen and so still, that all those hundreds of thousands of Americans who came to her during the ensuing three years of war cursed and swore to feel the vitality oozing from them in a steady stream of enervating heat.

The enervating tropical heat could make a guy go crazy:
The same reaction was felt by Buckner’s troops at the same island-then a huge staging area-and from the same division. Staff Sergeant George McMillan wrote of the Marine replacement on Guadalcanal who ran from his tent at dusk and began to pound his fists against a coconut tree. “I hate you, goddamit, I hate you,” the man cried, sobbing, and from another tent came the cry: “Hit it once for me‘.”

Many accounts of the “Divine Wind” the Japanese hoped would defeat the invasion forces. The aircraft inflicted a lot of damage but not enough to deter the invasion fleet.
Simultaneous with the agony of Abele, a flight of conventional kamikaze found Rear Admiral Deyo’s gunfire support force patrolling waters off the Motobu Peninsula. When they struck, Deyo fortunately had his ships concentrated and they were ready for the Divine Winds, which could do little more than stagger a destroyer and crash a 40 mm mount aboard battleship Tennessee. One sailor who was blown into the air landed atop a five-inch gun turret, where he crouched while calmly stripping off his burning clothing to await a cold bath from the nearest fire hose. Marine Corporal W. H. Putnam either fell or was blown overboard, surfacing near a big life raft. He clambered aboard, finding unusual company in the presence of the headless torso of the kamikaze who had crashed his ship.

Hard to understand the mindset that decided to send the last remaining warships, including the most powerful battleship in the world, the Yamato, to an impossible attack:
There had been a ceremony. At six o’clock, all men and officers not on duty had been broken out on deck. A message from Admiral Jisaburu Ozawa, chief victim of the Americans’ “Marianas Turkey Shoot,” was read:

“Render this operation the turning point of the war.” The men sang the somber National Anthem, “Umi Yukaha”:

Across the sea, corpses in the water,
Across the mountain, corpses in the field.
I shall die for the Emperor.
I shall never look back.

Next the ship’s company, convinced to the man that they would never survive this voyage, gave three Banzais for the emperor and returned to quarters. At ten o’clock, Yamato was in the Pacific Ocean-racing down Kyushu’s eastern shores with her consorts gathering about her, shooing the American submarine Hackleback away, swinging to starboard off Kyushu’s southern nose to sail west through Van Diemen Strait into the East China Sea.

The deadly effective defensive tactics developed by Col Yahara were put aside by the higher command for a glorious attack on the American forces. The attack was seldom successful, and here was just one small vignette in the larger battle:
General Fujioka next tried to roll up his enemy with two companies following an artillery barrage against Kakazu Ridge. A small force staged a diversion around the western flank of Kakazu West while the main body tried to overrun the draw between that point and Kakazu Ridge. First to meet them was Pfc. William Daily at the trigger of a heavy machine gun in the draw. Unable to depress his gun enough to strike the approaching enemy below him, Daily began tossing grenades. Their explosions alerted Staff Sergeant Beauford “Snuffy” Anderson, holed up in a tomb with his light mortar section. Anderson left the tomb to hurl all of his grenades at the Japanese, and then emptied his carbine. Glancing about him, his eye fell on a dud enemy mortar. Seizing it he spiraled it football-style into the draw and was rewarded by an explosion and screams. Rushing back into the tomb he collected his own mortars, wrenched them from their casings, yanked out the safety pins, slamming the shell against a rock to release the setback pin, and spiraled this heavier and more lethal “football” into the draw. Again an explosion and screams . . . With this impromptu “passing attack,” Anderson sent all of his fifteen lethal footballs spinning into the darkness below, and by this effective exercise in Yankee battle ingenuity he stopped an entire enemy platoon. In the morning he counted twenty-five enemy bodies, plus seven abandoned knee mortars and four machine guns. For his bravery and quickness of thought, Anderson received the Medal of Honor.

[Jill H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This small but important book on the last battle in the Pacific of WWII, is informative and easy to read. The author, a veteran of the Pacific theater, allows the reader to see the horror of the island to island fighting that marked the end of the war and the lengths to which Japan would go before surrendering. (Of course we know that it took two atomic weapons to accomplish surrender.) The Japanese troops fought like demons and their attitudes of glory for the Emperor and "no surrender" were foreign to Americans new to the battle. The veterans had seen this in previous battles and knew what to expect. The use of the kamikazi or "divine wind" was only one of the weapons that put the fear of God in Allied troops although it was not a very effective technique but rather one of desperation.

The author does let some of his biases show, especially his intense dislike of General Douglas MacArthur but that is a minor fault in an otherwise enthralling account of men at war.

[Patrick McCoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed Robert Leckie's autobiography, Helmet for My Pillow (one of the biographies that inspired the HBO miniseries The Pacific). So when I found out that he had written a book on the battle of Okinawa, Okinawa: The Last Battle of World War II (1996), before I was scheduled for my second visit to the island I knew it would be my background reading there. Leckie points out some astonishing facts: "Never before...had there been an invasion armada the equal of the 1,600 seagoing ships carrying 545,000 American GIs and Marines that steamed across the Pacific. In firepower, troops, and tonnage it eclipsed even the more famous D day in Normandy." Furthermore, 100,000 Japanese soldiers and 80,000 civilians (many by suicide) were killed. The Japanese lost 7,830 aircraft and 180 ships. The US saw 12,520 killed (5,000 at sea-the most ever for the Navy) and 37,000 wounded. The invading force lost 800 aircraft and 36 ships. He charts the movements of the invading force as well as those of the Japanese. Particularly unnerving are all of the "kikusui" defensive kamikaze attacks the largest with 300 at one time as well as sacrificing their largest ship the Yamato, which was sunk before it could do any damage. There also were fast hard to control single engine planes called "baka bombs" (baka means stupid in Japanese) being deployed, sometimes with great damage. There were many descriptions of valor. For example, Desmond Doss, a conscientious objector, who joined as a medic was awarded the Medal of Honor for his courageous actions in the campaign. There are some fascinating descriptions of battles and attacks: 20 Japanese twin engine bombers attacked an airfield late in the war and only one got through and crash landed and only 6 of the crew of 14 survived and attacked the field with grenades and blew up eight planes, damaged another 26, blew up two fuel dumps with 70,000 gallons of fuel, killed two and injured 18 before being hunted down and killed. Leckie adds an analysis of the significance of the battle, which he narrates authoritatively that the Japanese were defeated at the time, but no one knew it, which I think is a bit misleading. That analysis I think was written a bit too authoritatively in my opinion. However, overall I think it was well researched and a compelling narrative.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent account of the battle for Okinawa by a participant. Very clearly written and lays out the background of the battle well at the start.

[Jeff Mauch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm slowly trying to learn more about the historic events of the past that I feel were glossed over or too briefly covered during my education both in high school and in college. Now I'm not saying we didn't cover WWII, we definitely did, but it seems that other than Pearl Harbor and dropping the bombs on Japan, we mostly ignored the Pacific side of the war. I took courses in college that solely covered WWII and even than, the focus was mostly on the Eastern front, the politics, and the dropping of the bombs. It was almost like Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Midway, Okinawa, and a number of other battles on other no name islands were merely an afterthought.

I was really turned on the this author after he was portrayed in the HBO miniseries "The Pacific" which was a sequel of sorts to the "Band of Brothers" miniseries. The Pacific was an incredible presentation that tied together the stories of a handful of men that fought in the pacific war, island by island. I found it most interesting that it relied heavily on first person source material via the memoirs of these soldiers. One of those soldiers was Robert Leckie, the author of this book, who went on to be a distinguished author after the war. His book, "Helmet for my Pillow" told of his war experiences and was used heavily for the HBO miniseries. He went on to write over 40 books on military/war history. I read his memoir a year or so ago and really enjoyed his candid thoughts on his experiences.

Okinawa is not a memoir. It is more a military history of the battles surrounding and on Okinawa and why they were important. There was also a large focus here of the Japanese side of the war, which we almost never hear in our America first culture. I found the in depth look at the Japanese kamikaze tactics to be both eye opening and sad. The glimpses of humanity among the Japanese leadership on the island is also something we don't see in the movies and stories about this side of the war.

While I did find this to be a very informative, albeit a bit dry, book. I think it struggles to convey tactics to the reader without visuals. I read this on a kindle, so maybe the paper copy includes maps or diagrams that my copy didn't. I also found it hard to keep track of who was going where at times because of all the different companies, regiments, battalions, and of course different military branches. It was also hard to follow the names of all the different ships involved, the author easily named over a hundred of them. I think that this is more of a matter of being an very thoroughly and meticulously researched subject than it was the author just throwing information out there. This is clear by his source material. Overall, I know a lot more about a large portion of the Pacific war side of WWII and I will definitely be reading more of Leckie's works in the future.

[Shannon Callahan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, the book was stale in my opinion. Cause this book was written in two views from the author's view on both of them. Then add with so many jargons accord to formats and groups etc etc. Due to that, the talk about movements and clashes in the Okiwana was so foreign to me. This book gave zero visual materials like a map, line of maneuvers, frontlines, or demonstration of geography. Without those materials make it hard to imagine facing the battle or intense that this battle was supposed to give in the narrative. That's why I felt it was stale in some ways where the narrative gave a lot of information but zero follow up materials.

[Amber · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the last little WWII book I had stockpiled away to read while I watched "The Pacific." It was a very much a strategic and military history (more than say a personal war account, although there were a few of those mixed in) and therefore was a little hard for me to follow at times. It was remarkable in that it followed both the strategic moves of the Japanese AND the American forces on Okinawa. The two biggest things I learned were 1) what a huge part Kamikaze played in the last effort of the Japanese to take back the Pacific and 2) the grace, selflessness and courage of so many of the American GIs and Marines. I'm usually not so long winded in a review, but I wanted to share this footnote told by Robert Leckie about a personal experience he had after sharing a story about a young Medal of Honor recipient.

"Here is perhaps the most moving of all the phenomena of the war: the self sacrifice of noble and brave young American fighting men who smothered enemy grenades with their bodies to save their buddies. Yet, discussing this once with a group of teachers, I had just begun to quote Jesus Christ's dictum "Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends," when one of then angrily interrupted me. "Nonsense!" he cried in scorn. "Who would do such a crazy thing?" Glaring at me, he asked with heavy sarcasm, "Would you?" I replied, "I might. But never to save someone like you.""

[Mark Merritt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another good Robert Leckie book, essentially an overview of the Okinawa campaign in 1945. This was an incredibly difficult and complex operation that resulted in the highest casualties ever suffered by US forces in the pacific. The Kamikaze attacks unleashed by Japan at the US 5th Fleet resulted in many US ships being sunk or damaged, and a great many casualties to boot. Le kid does a great job of blending the land campaign and the Kamikaze attacks into the narrative. He also details the discussions and disagreements within the Japanese high command on their decisions that affected the battle as well. I particularly like the fact that he mentions each US Medal of Honor awardee and the actions that those men did, usually at the cost of their life, to be so awarded.

The only knock, a complete lack of maps. I read the electronic version of the book, so maybe the print versions had maps. But that wasn’t a big deal, the narrative was lively enough to keep you interested.

This is a relatively short book, and is not filled with lots of first person accounts, just Leckie’s fine writing.

Overall, a good book.

[Gustavo Yepez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here is a book that is easy to read (unless you end up reading about the gruesome death of an ancestor of yours), although it has not aged well. You certainly would not find a book with this vocabulary being written nowadays, but we shall give it a pass for "historical" reasons.

My main motive behind not giving it four stars is the constant sense of superficiality that permeates the second half of the book. In some parts it felt as if we were merely grazing over events and situations that certainly could not have been as straightforward in real life. So it feels as if something is being hidden from us, the readers, which becomes a bit worrisome when you start questioning if you are reading a simplified historical account or just propaganda. The feeling of unease is reinforced with the epilogue, which switches from the aforementioned historical account to a short (and still superficial) position paper on the merits and necessities of dropping the atomic bombs. I almost felt as if the author was saying "I wrote a fun book for you to read, now pay me back by agreeing with me on this one point".

You know when someone tells you something that you already agree with, but they present it in such a one-sided manner that you actually start questioning your original opinion? That's the sort of bad taste that this book left my mouth with, and therefore I cannot give it a higher rating. However, I did enjoy the added knowledge it brought me on many aspects of the Pacific theater.

[Nate · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm glad to see a historian pay careful detail to Okinawa. It's been my experience that it tends to get glossed over. A very well researched account.

For the less military oriented readers like myself the parts detailing the movements and battle formations can be dry.

The last chapter was especially well-written and informative. In my experience it's uncommon for a historian to question the necessity of not just one of the A-bombs but both. He calls the argument that 'Japan would not have surrendered without the bombs' one of the War's greatest myths.

[Ryuji Ishida]

This is a incredible book I recommend this book if you are interested in the history about world war 2 .I like this book mainly because it focuses on both sides of the war and it only tells stories about the pacific theater.My dad was born in 1943 so he knew a lot of world war 2,so one day when we were shopping at the local book store my dad saw this book and told me i should read it and i bought it and read it.This book is amazing because it goes in depth of how the people would die and told how scared the civilians were during the battle and that's why i think the author made this book is so that noting more terrible would ever happen in the future.

[Umar Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

My grandpa fought in the Battle of Okinawa with the 1st Marines, so I've tried to read up on the battle and other aspects of his service as much as possible. This was a smooth and easy read that will give readers a good general understanding of the American perspective of the Battle of Okinawa with some local history added in.

[natasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

the coolest history lesson from the coolest guy. i’m so sad this concludes my hbo war reading journey. it took me 3 months but i did it. highly recommend this book if you want an easily digestible personal history of the battle of okinawa.

[Ron · Rating 2 out of 5]

Robert Leckie was a marine in the Pacific during WWII. He has written a number of books, perhaps most notably "Helmet on My Pillow," a WWII personal memoir which served as one of the primary references for the HBO 2010 mini-series "The Pacific." He died in 2001 so would not know that his material would have renewed and important life given to it. As I learned from reading PT Deutermann's "Sentinels of Fire," the kamikaze was a devastatingly effective weapon of war against the American fleet in the final months of WWII. We see that in this book also, although Deutermann did a much better job of explaining it and how it was done.

This was published in 1995, the 50th anniversary of the Okinawa campaign which began in April 1945. America lost her President, FDR, that month, after this battle had begun. There are interesting stories in here. Again and again when reading these books I am struck by the senseless death that comes, but also by the unbelievable bravery of soldiers. Correspondents also. Ernie Pyle died here. The casualties on both sides were terrible.

The book didn't engage me the way I want books to do. There's a lot of set-up here in the book before the actual battle itself and some of it seemed only marginally relevant, if at all. The writing style was uneven and distracted me, annoyed me a little, sometimes a lot. The author's hatred for the Japanese is so thick it is difficult to believe. If this were written as a propaganda piece in April 1945 I might understand it, but 50 years later? I felt like Leckie was still fighting this war 50 years after it was finished. Bothersome were other different things, lingo, acronyms, choice of wording, scene setting, highly opinionated views and what felt like lecturing to the reader. I got bored numerous times.

There were a selection of photos included, rather random but interesting. Something I found extremely strange however is that there is not a single map in the book.

There's an interesting epilogue to the story which discusses the value of Okinawa and the still continuing debate over the use of atomic weapons in August 1945. Although there was some good information in the book, the storytelling is so poor I would not recommend this. To be fair there are some parts in here that I thought were pretty good, but overall I disliked this and found it to be a disappointing book.

[Evan · Rating 2 out of 5]

My wild guess is, please help me out here, that Robert Leckie has made a mistake in his book. In CH 24, he says "Ushijima...their headquarter under Hill 95...". Actually, Ushijima's final HQ was in Hill 89, not Hill 95. The Peace Memorial Park at Okinawa says it was Hill 89. The USMC's Okinawa: Victory in Pacific says Hill 89 (page 248). Hill 95 is actually 2.3 miles northeast to Hill 89, very close to Hanagusuku. Hill 95 is not even in Mabuni area. If I'm right, and if the Park official and USMC archive are right, then I don't understand why Robert Leckie can make a mistake like this.
on page 56 Robert says Yontan Airfield is on East coast; actually it is on west coast.
On page 74 Robert says the Seventh (7th Division, Army ) at the east is on the RIGHT of American line; actually the 7th is on the LEFT of American line.
Another thing is the Third Amphibious Corps, usually referred to as III AC, is referred to by Robert Leckie as the Third Corps, which can be very confusing. As a Marine himself, Robert should know a lot better.
Here is another issue: dates about Sugar Loaf Hill. Robert says on page 111 that “…(Sugar Loaf) was not suspected until the main position (Sugar Loaf) was reached on the morning of May 14, after a righting crossing of the Asa River….”
This is not entirely correct. In fact, Platoon 1 and Platoon 2, Company G, the 22 Marines, of the 6th Marine Division, began their attack on the underestimated Sugar Loaf Hill at around 1400, May 12, and the attack disintegrated soon. It was the first attempt to take the hill. The second attempt was taken by the same units at 1600 the same day. It is obvious that Robert made yet another mistake.

[Harry Rubin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a short overview of America's last battle of WW2. It's definitely not a deep dive into the Pacific Theater of the war. It's really what I wanted after reading Robert Leckie's memoirs of the his time in the Pacific. It is also the perfect thing to read before I read With The Old Breed by Eugene Sledge. The only issue I have are place names and general geography. This is an issue for me because I am a geoscientist that looks at maps. I don't know anything about the geography of Okinawa so I felt lost when he would talk about certain parts of the battle. In general, this is a short book about a horrible battle.

[Chris Reznor · Rating 2 out of 5]

An exceptionally biased piece of historical literature. Given that the author fought in the theater being examined (though not in Okinawa itself) this is hardly a surprise though the occasional racists epithets cannot be excused. Still, there is the expression about history being written by the victors, of which this is a glowing example (though not to take away from the immense bravery of American troops who served).

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Author Bob Leckie closed like a veteran out of the bullpen, nailing a big victory.
The former WWII Marine turned post-war sportswriter and multi-book author kept his Okinawa going all the way through with excellent writing, continuity, and statistical use in this 1995 edition of 210 pages. He was already finished with combat when the Army, Navy, and Marines invaded Okinawa on April 1, 1945. His last fight was at Peleliu, but he had plenty of familiar faces to serve as sources from Okinawa.

The Okinawa landing force was larger than that which hit the Normandy beaches a year earlier in Europe, and this would be the last huge battle of the war. But no one knew it that day.

Japanese kamikaze planes sank 36 U.S. ships, which supported the invasion, contributing much to the devastating psychological damage there. Leckie trod lightly over that compared to other writers who've made it their lead, or near top, agenda. Leckie sympathized with the commanders and especially the sailors who found rest between attacks nearly impossible.

"Those who survived the suiciders' screaming dives went for days on end without sleep, their nerves exposed and quivering like wires stripped 0f insulation. Lying wide-eyed in their bunks, they waited to hear the dreaded telltale click and static of the ship's bullhorns being activated -- like a starter's gun sending them leaping erect and running so that they were already in motion when the shrill, strident notes of 'General Quarters,' burst in their ears."

Marines and soldiers, with their own daily life-and-death struggles often lost sleep, too, watching the kamikazes attack.

Leckie still, and already well understood the horrors faced by all on and around Okinawa, and they certainly didn't escape this veteran journalist's sights. Often U.S. forces gained control bit by bit, finally establishing peace after the Japanese surrendered.

Leckie found an instant of humor in the deadly fight. A Marine officer had kept a special flag for important ceremonial moments, but it was the Stars and Bars that was raised when Shuri Castle was taken. Original plans had called for the Army's 77th Division, Desmond Doss's division, to the significant old castle of the Ryuku Empire, but the 77th was slowed by the familiar knee-deep mud.

Thoughts turned to the expected coming invasion of Japan when the noises of almost three months of battle eventually died. But the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in effect, ending the war.

And here, Leckie also showed a different perspective, not often heard. He noted that Japan was already a beaten country, and might've surrendered, anyway. There was a major political battle going on between the Japanese government warhawks, and the new Peace Party. Leckie said the bombs, and one might've been enough, allowed Emperor Hirohito to come down on the side of the Peace Party, and accept the offered surrender terms.

However, that left an argument whether Okinawa was a necessary battle, or not. One unseen factor was Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's aggressive tones, and the bomb seemed to keep him, temporarily at bay.

"...if the Japanese had won this biggest battle of the Pacific War, the hold of the War Lords would have been so strengthened that even the influence of Hirohito could not have persuaded the Imperial Conference to accept the Allied surrender offer. Thus the war would have been prolonged.."

[Brendan Steinhauser · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recently finished this book about the Okinawa campaign of World War Two. Interestingly enough, I happened to be reading the book during the campaign's 75th anniversary. (The campaign was from April 1st to June 21st, 1945.) My grandfather served in the U.S. Army (96th Division) in Okinawa, so I enjoyed following the passages that covered the 96th Division/382d Regiment in particular. Okinawa was indeed the last battle of the war, and it would have been the staging ground for the invasion of the Japanese mainland. But President Truman's decision to drop two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki helped convince the Japanese regime to finally surrender.

The author, Robert Leckie, was a U.S. Marine who served throughout the Pacific theater, from Guadalcanal in 1942 to Okinawa in the Spring of 1945. He is an excellent writer, and has a penchant for telling a good story. Although the book is a bit more favorable towards the Marines than the Army (that is to be expected, given the rivalry) it is still a fantastic read. Leckie does a great job outlining the naval battle that occurred during this campaign, as well as the ground war. He highlights individual heroism, self-sacrifice, leadership, and courage, as well as the grim, horrific, terrifying reality of war -- both of which are important elements that readers need to understand.

In conclusion, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about the Okinawa campaign, the war in the Pacific, or WW2 more broadly speaking. This is a book that deserves a space in your military history library, even if you are more partial to the Army than the Marines.

[Emmy Lou Musgrave · Rating 3 out of 5]

War is bad, mkay?

This book was an informative look at the 83-day battle that took place in Okinawa, Japan. It was a horrific and bloody battle that took the lives of 100,000 Japanese and almost 50,000 Americans. This book began at the planning stage of the invasion of Okinawa and concluded with the dropping of the atomic bombs and the surrender of Emperor Hirohito. The author did a fine job outlining the timeline of Okinawa and went into great detail about the island's geography (which was a major advantage for the Japanese, as the island is covered in caves that provided excellent cover). Leckie also describes the actions of American soldiers that won them Medals of Honor and Purple Hearts. There are times, too, when Leckie describes accounts but adds a note explaining why this account is likely falsified, which can be a bit confusing in my opinion, but I understand the reasoning behind it.

He does a good job of describing both sides of the battle, though. He goes into detail about the Samurai concept of Hara-Kiri and the use of Kamikaze bombers. So many Japanese men lost their lives through "honorable suicide". Horrible, in my opinion, but I won't be dismissive of culture.

All in all, this book shattered my soul and reinforced my anti-war philosophy. Hundreds of thousands of people dead, all because some MEN couldn't sit down and talk with each other. (I know war is more detailed than that, don't come at me, but fuck man, war is BAD and an entire population was decimated in the name of some man's honor. Ridiculous)

[DonHeimscheißer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a powerful and intense read. Okinawa: A Decorated Marine's Account of the Last Battle of World War II gave a raw, firsthand look into one of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific. What stood out most was the way it broke down the different roles the U.S. Navy, Army, and Marines played, and how they just kept pushing forward no matter how brutal things got. The tactics, the terrain, the constant rain, it really made me appreciate how tough and relentless the fight was.

It was also crazy to see how the Japanese were so deeply influenced by the samurai mindset and Bushido code. The banzai charges, kamikaze attacks, and Operation Kikusui, sending pilots off drunk on sake, knowing it was a oneway trip, showed a level of devotion that was hard to wrap my head around, but also kind of haunting. That mindset probably cost them in the long run.

Some of the military terms went over my head at times, but the heart of the story still hit. And reading about the Medal of Honor recipients? Unreal. Brave beyond words. These weren’t just servicemen, they were legends in the making.

Overall, a gritty, eye opening account that reminded me how much was sacrificed on both sides. Definitely worth the read if you're into military history or want to understand the human side of war.🇺🇸

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here are the strengths of this book - Leckie has written a very readable account of the Okinawa campaign. This account has great authenticity because Leckie was a Marine combat veteran of WW2 in the Pacific.
The downside is that Leckie and decisive in sharing his opinions - for instance in his introduction of Kelly Turner - saying that it was shocking that Kelly Turner kept his job because he was responsible for the debacle of the battle of Savo Island and he made the decision to abandon the marines on Guadalcanal (including Leckie). Leckie does not bring up that Crutchley was actually in command of the forces, nor does he address Fletcher's decision to leave with the carriers and how that impacted Turner's decision to withdraw the supply ships.
Leckie similarly in the epilogue provides a casual one page discussion on his views on the decision to drop the atomic bomb. If you can get past his snap judgements and take them with a grain of salt, there is a nice, readable account of the Okinawa campaign here.

[Rich · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a solid book on the battle of Okinawa. For those who may not know Leckie was featured in the h.b.o. mini-series The Pacific, about the Marines and the island hopping campaign of WWII. Leckie gives insight and thoughtful analysis from both sides of the battle. In that regard, this is a refreshing take on the battle of Okinawa. War is written by the victors, and far too often the accomplishments of the defeated go unrecognized. Obviously, I personally was not a fan of Imperial Japan or the fanaticism they represented during WWII, but it would be foolish not to recognize their courage and determination to defend their homeland--which Okinawa was considered to be. Leckie's take that the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki was a message to the Soviet Union and Stalin was interesting. However, for being a shorter book of just a few hundred pages, for me anyway there were times it dragged and I had to punch my way through certain sections. Overall, I give this book a thumbs up, and recognize the bravery and sacrifice of a fantastic soldier, writer, and American.

[A.G.R. Goff · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Ex-Marine and Pacific War veteran Robert Leckie, who is telling this story died in 2001. He wrote a considerable amount of books on military history. He started writing when he was 16. He then enlisted with the United States Marine Corps, the after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Which changed the subjects he was writing about later. However, he did not participate in the Okinawa invasion. So, this book is not from his perspective even though he is a skilled military historian having been involved in military action himself. His style of writing is very matter of fact. He analyses the men involved fighting on both sides and suceeds in giving the reader an almost accurate account of what has happened and what it meant for the further course of the war. If you like true military and war stories this is certainly a book not to be missed.

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okinawa: The Last Battle of World War II written by Robert Leckie who was a veteran of Guadalcanal and Peleliu details with great clarity the struggle to take the last hostile Japanese held island in WWII. The book is written with the styling of a sports reporter which makes for a quick read. He outlines the greater advances of the Marines and Army without getting bogged down in the minutia of every single action that other authors tend to put into their accounts of the stories. Okinawa also saw the final reporting of Ernie Pyle who had covered the war as a correspondent from the GI's arrival in North Africa, Italy and England to the final days of the Pacific war. I'd say this was a pretty good book and I'd recommend it to anybody who is interested in history with an emphasis on the American role in the Pacific during WWII.

[Adelyne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Military history books are always a bit of a hit and miss for me – and unfortunately I think this one I’d call a miss. The book is deceptively long for its size, it looks tiny for its 200 pages, and while I cannot quite identify what went wrong I just found that I couldn’t really get into the narrative. Leckie is a war veteran himself who writes with a lot of detail and passion, but I couldn’t help feel that this one presented a somewhat biased view, and speculative in parts. It was, however, a good introduction to the Battle of Okinawa for a non-military expert like myself, and I am now interested to read the parallel story written from the Japanese point of view by Hiromichi Yahara among other books on the topic. 2 stars

[Emily Petroff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book gives a really clear, albeit somewhat technical, overview of the battle of Okinawa including the logistical aspects and the conditions on the ground. The author didn't fight at Okinawa but was a Marine in WWII and clearly has a very close connection with the American (victorious) side and writes as such. It's not that he doesn't present the Japanese side, but has a tendency to already paint them as the inevitable losers. But this book was really interesting. I've wanted to know more about Okinawa for a long time and this is a great overview read to get the sense of the why and the how.

[Braden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another great read from Robert Leckie, you can tell in the way he writes that he too experienced the things that his fellow servicemen were going through on Okinawa. His own personal experiences make the narrative compelling. The presentation of the history in conjunction with the stories of the various servicemen and their bravery made the pacing feel much quicker. It was excellent I quite enjoyed the read.

[Andy Todd · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this after watching Andrew Garfield's terrific performance in 'Hacksaw Ridge'. This is a comprehensive account of the campaign on Okinawa, the final battle of WWII told by a war veteran who skilfully deploys his extensive research. Overall, though, we become weighted down by the sheer detail.