The battle of Okinawa
Information
The Battle of Okinawa began in April 1945. The capture of Okinawa was a three-part plan. Okinawa was to prove a bloody battle even by the standards of the war in the Far East but it was to be one of the major battles in ww2.Okinawa is about 60 miles long and between 2 to 18 miles wide through out.There were four airfields on the island that America needed to control. The Americans wished to destroy what was left of Japanese merchant fleet to use airstrips in the region to launch bombing raids on Japan’s industrial heartland. Okinawa is the largest of the Ryukyus islands at the southern tip of Japan. America also faced the problem that they had not been able to get much intelligence information about Okinawa.
The plan
More than 100,000 Okinawan civilians perish, with over 72,000 American and 100,000 Japanese casualties. The two highest-ranking officers that die during the Second World War were the commanders on Okinawa, General Simon B. Buckner and General Mitsuki Ushijima , when General Roy Geiger, a Marine aviator, assumed temporary command until General Joseph W.Stilwell arrived. It was the first time that a Marine would command a fighting force as large as a field army.