readx; By noon, a light rain had fallen, and the muddy ash had turned into sticky mud, and the attacking coalition soldiers' Marine boots were filled with this black paste, and with each step, there was a gurgling sound under their feet, which made people bored and helpless. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

Fighting in such a situation, the effect is naturally greatly reduced. The vanguard of the U.S. 72nd Division had approached Heights 382 near Wonsan Village, but they were repulsed by machine guns and mortars. In the evening, the unit rushed to the heights under the cover of aircraft. The army fought bravely, and the two sides launched a tragic white-knuckle battle. The heights were occupied, but the coalition forces were also crippled, with a total of 792 casualties.

The casualties of the coalition forces that captured Iwo Jima continued to mount in the United States. Especially between the Navy and the Army, the quarrel escalated again. San Francisco's Explorer newspaper ran a front-page editorial saying, "There are conclusive indications that the U.S. Marines attacking this volcanic island have paid a heavy price."

The newspaper also said that the Marines were in danger of being dragged down before the capture of the homeland. The newspaper then sang the praises of MacArthur, a five-star general in the Army, boasting that the general was the best and most successful strategic expert in the United States, and suggested that he be given the supreme command of the coalition forces in the Pacific, saying that he could win all battles and sacrifice the lives of many American soldiers, and called him the greatest military genius.

The opposite is true of another influential newspaper in San Francisco, the Chronicle, which says that since the outbreak of the Pacific War, it has been the Navy that has won victory after victory, and that it is the Navy that has turned the tide of the war and approached the mainland. The Army certainly captured the Philippines, but the Marines also participated in the campaign. Looking at the offensive in the Central Pacific, from the Gilbert Islands to the Marshall Islands, to the Mariana Islands, and finally to the current Iwo Jima, it is the navy that participates in this series of strategic offensives, and there is no half shadow of the army. There are many good generals in the Navy, and fighting on a coral reef island is a completely different thing than fighting on the vast expanse of the Philippines. To slander the Marines for the casualties of an attack on an island, and to compare their way of fighting with the hateful way of commanding a battle of General MacArthur is quite different, unacceptable, and an evil fantasy! This newspaper does not want to start a debate on the merits and weaknesses of coalition combat forces on various fronts. But when our American Marines are bleeding on the front lines, there are people who maliciously slander them and slaughter them, and we are outraged and certainly do not want to be silent!

On Iwo Jima, the coalition forces are also trying to avoid casualties. For this reason, the use of gas bombs, which already had a large stockpile in the United States, was considered. However, General Nimitz argued that "the United States should not break the Neva Pact first," and the proposal was scrapped.

General Smith's expectation of a 10-day end of the battle is clearly overly optimistic. He said that he still held half of Iwo Jima. It was only nine days after the landing of the coalition forces that the 3rd Division broke through Lieutenant General Kuribayashi's defensive line on the Wonsan Heights and rushed towards the village of Wonsan, which was already covered with rubble. The 4th Division surrounded the 382nd Heights, but it took two full days to capture it.

The strategic value of the coalition's capture of Iwo Jima was evident while the battle was still ongoing. On the night of 8 March, a B-29 Super Fortress bomber that malfunctioned during a sortie to Tokyo flew to Airfield 1, which had just been occupied, and naval engineers had repaired the runway and extended it to 5,000 feet. The "B-29" returned home after bombing Tokyo, and the fuel in the main fuel tank was depleted, but the valve of the conversion tank failed. Pilot Fred. Lieutenant Marlowe made three consecutive successful groundings, and the plane kicked up a large amount of volcanic ash and knocked down a makeshift electric pole before the large plane was forced to land at the end of the runway. After the valve was repaired, the plane successfully took off from Airfield 1 and flew back to the Saipan base. Lieutenant General Spruance and the rest of the Marine Corps generals were satisfied, proving that the Coalition had made a great sacrifice to capture the volcanic island worth it! It is correct that on the morning of 9 March, Lieutenant General Kuribayashi sent a lengthy telegram from Iwo Jima to the headquarters in Tokyo and to the army command headquarters in Tokyo, which he claimed was probably the last telegram sent by the army on Iwo Jima, stating:

"We are trying to destroy the invading enemy, but we have lost most of our artillery and all our tanks, as well as more than two-thirds of our officers and more than 70 per cent of our soldiers. It is likely that we will not be able to hold it for long, and I deeply regret that we have been subjected to indescribable shelling and bombardment for not being able to successfully defend the island, and we will die without complaint. Although the time of my death is near, I pray to God to bless my country for a bright future, and I would like to express my deep gratitude to my superiors and colleagues for their support to me, and I would like to say that until the last moment, we have worked well with the Navy."

Lieutenant General Kurithayashi Nakamichi was so full of words that night that Kubo decided that the situation was hopeless, and he called Kuritabhi to ask for permission to launch a final attack. Kuribayashi angrily calls back, demanding that he definitely hold his ground, as leaving the cave will only hasten the fall of Iwo Jima. However, Kubo, who once fought in Shanghai, China, has a more rebellious surname, saying that his subordinates, like him, were unwilling to hide in caves and become roast pigs or be buried alive. In the afternoon of the same day, he gathered the remaining 300 or so officers and men of the Special Marine Corps under his command into a large cave in his headquarters, which was so large and deep that it looked like a large labyrinth. The cave was stuffy and filled with the smell of sulfur. The officers and men of the Navy had become impatient to burrow into the ground like ground rats for a long time, and in the scorching heat of 120 degrees Fahrenheit, Kubori Osaku gave them the order to attack generally. Officers and soldiers pass several water glasses to each other to toast to signify acceptance of orders. Kubori Osa thanked the officers and soldiers, and he said:

"Gentlemen! See you at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo! ”

At 11 o'clock in the evening, the officers and men of the navy, some with two grenades, some with sabers, some with explosive bags tied to their bodies, and each with a strip of white cloth with the sun flag on their heads, poured out of the cave and rushed into the coalition positions in a frenzied and chaotic manner. As Lieutenant General Kuribayashi expected, the attack was fruitless and a purely suicidal act, with the Americans sweeping them all down in an open field with tanks, machine guns, and flamethrower guns. None of them were able to approach the coalition positions, and all of them were killed, including their commander Kubo Osa.

By March 11, the defenders of Iwo Jima had been compressed by the coalition forces into two small positions. One is a position in the northeast of the island, and the other is a small hill in the northwest of Iwo Jima. Vice Admiral Kuribayashi and Rear Admiral Ichimaru, the governor of the Volcanic Islands, held out in a cave deep on the hill, and they and their few remaining men continued their hopeless and decisive resistance.

In a cave on the other side of the hill where tanks were once hidden, Nakasa waited for nightfall to make the last attack of his life. When the headquarters was transferred yesterday, they were strafed and bombed by US planes, and in the darkness and confusion, the chief of staff of the digging river and the chief of Kuribayashi were separated.

But it doesn't matter anymore, everyone is going to die in battle anyway, and there are no troops to command. After midnight, carrying a box of explosives, he climbed out of the cave and found the bodies of five fallen soldiers in a wilderness, most likely by coalition tanks. Digging into the foul-smelling pile of corpses, he disguised himself with blackened blood and dirt, then lay down and waited quietly for the Allied tanks and soldiers to appear, thinking that tomorrow he would be one of the corpses, perhaps more ugly than the dead corpses. He waited all day, the sun was so hot that he almost fainted, he didn't eat or drink, countless green-headed flies circled around him, and several times he wanted to give up the operation, but he endured. Wondering if his education and training were just to lie in the pile of corpses and wait for the enemy to arrive? Childhood memories and undulating thoughts continue to erode his resolve to commit suicide. Why believe propaganda that encourages death in battle? If you die, will you win? His faith was shaken.

Throughout the day, no enemy passed. When it was dark, hungry and thirsty, he crawled back into the cave, but the stench of the mixed corpse could not be dispersed. He pondered the meaning of life over and over again, but one thing he was sure of was that he wouldn't go back to being a human bomber in the corpse heap.

At dawn the next day, two more separated soldiers came to the cave, and now there were three people in the cave. The hole is not very large, it could have hidden 2 medium tanks, but it was actually a semi-hidden bunker. All three of them were so tired that they ate a little compressed biscuit and fell asleep. At dawn, the sound of tank engines woke him up, and he looked closer to the cave to see that a coalition of troops had surrounded the cave under the cover of a tank. He heard a sizzling sound, and a grenade flew in, and he hurriedly rolled backwards, and a soldier named Kitano put a blanket on the grenade and rolled to the other side.

The grenade exploded, no shrapnel flew out, and all 3 people were intact. But the blast shook them to a stupor, and their bodies seemed to be crushed by a supernatural force. A figure blocked the light from entering the cave, and then another, and Dujiang barely opened his eyes, and in the haze, he saw several black hole submachine guns pointed at him. He even saw the glow of the rising sun reflecting off the steel helmets on the heads of the coalition soldiers.

Faced with the muzzle of a gun that could shoot lethal bullets at any moment, Dijiang's will collapsed, and he sat on the ground, involuntarily raising his hands in the air. He heard someone speaking, but he didn't hear what was being said. He saw Kitano and another soldier named Migata undressing, and he understood that the coalition forces were afraid that they still had explosives bags tied to them or something, and that they were now prisoners.

Di Jiang felt that everything didn't matter, whether he died or was a prisoner, it was the same thing. He struggled, his hand stretched back, he tried to hold on to the ground and get up, but his action caused a misunderstanding, a coalition soldier rushed over, and the butt of a submachine gun smashed the head of Nakasa, who only felt his head buzz, and with a huge pain, he fainted.

The dazzling and dazzling sunlight and the gentle sea breeze brought the river to its senses. Struggling to prop up his upper body, he found him lying on a piece of sand with cold, damp grains of sand underneath. He looked to the left and right, and he saw about 200 or so soldiers in civilian clothes of the coalition army, squatting or sitting, as if they were in peace with their lives. Only then did he realize that he was almost naked, and that what was on him was a set of civilian clothes of a coalition soldier. The sandy area is about 300 square meters, surrounded by barbed wire, and there are four machine guns, more than 20 coalition soldiers, and three military dogs, staring at them with a tiger's eye.

"Taken prisoner!"

This was the first thought that came to his mind when he woke up, but so what? The defeat of Ben is a sure thing, and if he leaves a useful body, he may make some contribution to the re-excavation of the empire! Thinking so, he began to put on his shirt and pants. The jacket seems to be a little smaller, and the pants are too long, but it doesn't matter, these are no longer important, and he is comfortable as a prisoner of war.

On March 14, a small group of Marines raised a huge Star-Spangled Banner on a bombed-out pillbox, and when the trumpeter blew the trumpet and the flags of China and the United States were raised, General Smith, the "roaring madman," burst into tears of excitement, and tears flowed involuntarily. He told his lieutenant that it was the hardest battle he had ever fought in his life, and that rare bravery had become a common virtue among the Marines involved in the attack on Iwo Jima.

The commander-in-chief of the Central [***] team, General Ma Debi, stood in front of a line of soldiers standing upright with guns, and he was commissioned by General Nimitz to read out the proclamation of the five-star admiral:

"The coalition forces under my command have occupied all of the volcanic archipelago. This is where the administrative power of the Masato in the volcanic archipelago ends. I have been appointed governor of the volcanic archipelago by the Governor of the United States of America, and am responsible for exercising full administrative powers. I hereby declare that the subordinate commanders, in exercising executive powers by their own orders, have appointed Colonel Kospel to act as a proclamator and to exercise the duties of overseer."

Deep underground, about 500 meters away from the flag-raising point of the coalition forces, a flag-handling ceremony was also carried out. Lieutenant General Kuribayashi ordered that the flags of all divisions and wings and two national flags be burned together so as not to fall into the hands of the enemy. Lieutenant General Kuribayashi and Admiral Ichimaru and the remaining officers stood upright, all the flags burning in the flames, and the officers and soldiers burst into tears. This means that this force no longer exists, and the fall of Iwo Jima is a fact. They were left with only one last reason, to fight to the end "for the honor of the emperor [***] people".

But the battle is still fighting, and the army is still resisting. This resistance continued until March.

On March 27, Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, who had been seriously wounded, and his temporary chief of staff, Kaneji Nakane, met for the last time in the cave. Lieutenant General Kuribayashi faced north, snapping down in the direction of the palace in his mind, he bowed solemnly three times, and then stabbed himself in the abdomen with his command knife, his head hanging down. Holding his saber aloof, Nakane Osaku cleanly cut off the lieutenant general's head, and with the help of a military officer, they buried the body of Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi in a pile of rubble at the entrance of the cave. Then, Nakane Daisa ordered Juncao to go down the mountain to surrender to the coalition forces, and he himself pulled out his pistol and shot himself.

At about 11 o'clock that night, Admiral Ichimaru and the last 30 or so soldiers, holding bamboo spears and bayonets, rushed out of the cave, and the coalition forces took down the rear admiral and all his men with a burst of machine guns and submachine guns. At this point, the resistance of the Japanese army on Iwo Jima was over.

In the battle of Iwo Jima, the two Chinese [***] teams took nearly a month, with 4,554 dead, 363 naval sailors killed and about 7,000 wounded.

It was the largest number of allied casualties in many battles of the Pacific War. Of the more than 23,000 defenders, 18,000 were killed and 216 were captured. The remaining 4,800 officers and men were trapped in stuffy, hot, sulphur-filled bunkers and burrows with no water or food, sealed by the coalition forces with rocks, mud, and volcanic ash. In fact, these people should be included in the list of the dead, because they were buried alive. As it turned out later, except for a few who were particularly lucky and escaped by digging holes through their own unremitting efforts, more than 98 percent of the people died.

The Battle of Iwo Jima is over, the coalition forces have taken a big step closer to Tokyo, and the final victory is already in sight!

As the last shots dissipated, the Battle of Iwo Jima ended with a coalition victory.

On 29 March, in the Pacific Ocean near Iwo Jima, Task Force 32 and Task Force 38 converged. The powerful maritime steel phalanx composed of nearly 2,000 warships of the two fleets is indeed powerful and majestic. To celebrate the capture of Iwo Jima by the coalition forces, all the warships fired their guns in unison, and the scene was spectacular. But the 32nd Task Force is about to be asked again, this fleet is tasked with rushing to the direction of the Philippine Islands, MacArthur's Army units have departed from Leyte Island, this fleet will go to cover the US Pacific Theater Army Supreme Commander General MacArthur Five-Star Admiral and his men to the Sulphur Islands.

Task Force 38 will also carry U.S. Marines to Okinawa. The allied forces in the Central and Southwest Pacific finally met again, and their troops were directed at Okinawa Island in the Ryukyu Islands, the last sea fortress outside the mainland. This can be said to be the last battle before landing on the mainland of the four islands, and the last offensive of the coalition forces on the islands in the Pacific.

"Enterprise" was in the queue of heavy aircraft carriers of the 38th Task Force. Indeed, outwardly, the warship is in some respects less modern than its new partner, and some of its capabilities and equipment are somewhat outdated. But it also attracted the attention of the sailors, who were also proud of the officers and men who served on the Enterprise. The officers and men of the fleet often shouted:

'Look! Old E is coming! The personification of warships is a very special phenomenon, which is worthy of deep reflection and recollection. Anyone who has been to the sea, even if he doesn't know much about the things at sea, will definitely intuitively feel this kind of personified existence. The same is true for airplanes, where pilots often name their aircraft and try to personify it as much as possible. But after all, the plane is too small, even a super air fortress like the "B-29" cannot be compared with a huge warship, and it is easy to be damaged in battle, and its life is not too long. So it is impossible for an airplane to be truly personified.

However, warships are different, although they are also a combination of various materials and parts, but they are indisputably endowed with a certain meaning of life.

People often attribute this phenomenon to the result of people's long-term dealings with various machines, materials, and more. As far as the sky and the sea are concerned, they both contain infinitely deep secrets for human beings, but the sky seems to be a bit ethereal, while the ocean is real. Everything related to marine life, especially when people's understanding of the sea was still relatively superficial, gave the sailors an indescribable sense of friendship. A warship is a living thing, and it has seen everything it has experienced, and these things have become an integral part of the warship's surname. For the Enterprise, you can smell the stench emanating from the charred corpses of the Pearl Harbor incident; At the same time, the pale faces of the pilots who escaped death in the sea and air battle at Midway Island were recorded; It can remind people of the endless nightmares on the island of Guadalcal; The same can be seen for the most primitive and adventurous bombing of Tokyo; and the most brutal, yet ingenious, 'island-hopping' operations in the Pacific; Seeing the Allied fleet ploughing out an ever-increasing number of tracks on the sea, these tracks were gradually approaching the homeland; Seeing the U.S. Navy's ever-increasing fleet of ships, these fleets swept through the infallible and outer lines of the Pacific Ocean with a thunderous force, crisscrossing the rough Pacific Ocean.

By the end of March 1945, the planes on the "Enterprise" alone had sunk 74 warships and 1,476 enemy planes, including the "Musashi," a super battleship of the Saimoto Navy. The brother aircraft carriers such as the USS Lexington, USS Yorktown, and USS Hornet have all sunk into the abyss of the sea. For a while, the United States had only the USS Enterprise left in the Pacific, the only aircraft carrier left, but this aircraft carrier took on the task with its scarred body.

It single-handedly survived the hardest of times. The first enemies of the "Enterprise", such as the "Akagi", "Kaga", and "Shozuru", were all killed, and the "Duatsuru" was the last enemy ship to be sunk by the "Enterprise", and it sank in the waters of Cape Enga. Only the Enterprise is still cruising on the sea. Each time it recovers, it returns to the battle queue. Veteran officers often say that the Enterprise was built in peacetime, when there was the most abundant time, and that every part of it was carved with great care like making a violin. It can withstand any blow, and this warship is the pride of the US Navy.

On the morning of March 30, 1945, the gunfire on Iwo Jima fell silent and the smoke gradually cleared. The Enterprise anchored about 2 nautical miles from Iwo Jima. The warship was bathed in the faint morning light, and in the blue sky floated a few puffy clouds, which were bordered with gold by the morning light, and the clouds themselves had just turned pink, fiery red, red, white, and gold. The sea breeze blows lightly.

The whole body of the "Enterprise", even every screw cap was polished to a shiny light, like a brand new warship that had just been launched from the slipway. The glass windows on the island and the guns on the gun emplacements reflected a red glow. The officers all wore white officer uniforms and lined up in two rows on the flight deck according to their rank and position. In the middle of the queue was a red carpet about 50 meters long and 4 meters wide, and next to the No. 1 elevator on the right side of the warship's flight deck, the military band was ready. On the high and low ship island and the string of the "Enterprise", the sailors were neatly lined up at their respective posts.

The soldiers were dressed in clean sailor uniforms and their faces were cleanly shaved. The sea breeze whipped the streamers behind the military caps and the hems of the officers' dresses on the deck. At 8 o'clock, a battleship slowly approached the "Enterprise", this is the battleship "New Jersey", it slowly approached, the helmsman skillfully used every wave, it seems that the officer commanding the battleship is experienced and skillful.

The two ships were fixed at a distance of 3 meters from each other, and the sailors tied their cables, set up the gangplank, and everything was as accurate as time. On the deck of the Enterprise, the band played a welcome song, and from the "New Jersey" to the "Enterprise" came up with five generals.

At the head was Admiral Redstler, Acting Secretary of the Admiralty, then Admiral Nimitz, Commander of the Pacific Fleet, followed by Vice Admiral Vandergrifft, Commander of the U.S. Marine Corps and Commander of the 1st Marine Division, followed by Vice Admiral "Bull" Halsey and Lieutenant General Madetu, Commander of the Lieutenant [***] Team.

In short, almost all the important generals of the coalition forces in the Pacific theater have arrived. They came to read out the decisions made by the US political axe, the Congress, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to commend and commend the aircraft carrier "Enterprise" and the officers and men who served on it for their outstanding contributions in the Pacific War, which lasted for more than three years.

The group stepped on the red carpet, and in the sound of music, Admiral Redstel and all the generals solemnly raised their hands and saluted, and the officers on the "Enterprise" on both sides returned the salute in unison. At the head of the queue was the 53-year-old Rear Admiral Sherman, the first captain of the Enterprise, who had arrived from Guam three days earlier for the ceremony. In second place was John, the second captain of the "Enterprise". a。 Rear Admiral Mitchell, who had been in command of Task Force 32 but had been transferred to command Task Force 38, had designated USS Enterprise as his flagship, and the blue flag now flying on USS Enterprise Island belonged to Rear Admiral Mitchell. Behind them was the current captain of the "Enterprise", Colonel Haslet. And Huang Lin is in 4th place, and on the "Enterprise", his status is second only to the captain and higher than the deputy captain.

Compared with the three captains in front of him, the vibrant, youthful, firm and intelligent face of the Chinese ace pilot Liu Xirui is indeed more visible than the wrinkled faces of the three captains. After all, this super ace pilot, who has shot down a total of 179 enemy planes, is only 24 years old. No wonder General Nimitz joked after the ceremony:

"We are all old, and it is time to leave the ocean for which we have fought all our lives, the sea is so alive and unpredictable. It doesn't belong to us old guys anymore, it belongs to a young generation like Colonel Liu, this is their stage, and we should take a curtain call! ”

The salute sounded, and the huge fleet on the ocean sounded the whistle to salute the "Enterprise", and indeed, the "Enterprise" deserved their respect. In the four-year sea battle, it survived, and it stubbornly resisted the attacks of the other party, but instead gave the opponent a major counterattack. It personally drove the Yamaben Navy into the abyss and contributed to the death of the Empire, as noted in the Commendation Order read out by Admiral Redstell:

"The spirit of the Enterprise is unyielding, and it represents the spirit of the United States of America. All of us are proud of the wisdom and steadfastness and courage of the officers and men who served on it! Thank you, the American people! May God bless this warship forever"

From the sea off the island of Jiuzhou, there is a string of 790 miles of islands stretching out to the island of Taiwan, China, this series of islands large and small, there are more than 140 in total, this is the Sulfur Islands. In the middle of this string of islands is Okinawa, the last and most important fortress to defend the mainland. The island is somewhat of an irregular rectangle, about 60 miles long from north to south and only 2 miles wide in the middle. Moreover, the terrain is flat, which is conducive to the construction of an airport. There are also two deep-water ports where large warships can be moored. Okinawa has a subtropical climate, and due to the influence of the Pacific Gulf Current and the warm current of the Ogasawara Islands, the rainfall is high throughout the year, and the air humidity is high and changeable. Sometimes one day's rain is equal to a month's total. Between May and November every year, there are at least two typhoons.

Okinawa Island has a very special geographical location, this island is as far away from the mainland of Japan, Taiwan Island and Chinese mainland, it can be said that it is a three-way junction. As early as 1372, China's Ming Dynasty occupied the island, turning the islands into China's overseas possessions. The island pays tribute to the Central Dynasty of China every year, and goes to the dynasty every year. Until 1572, he occupied Okinawa, but he could not afford to provoke the great power of China, and they still recognized the archipelago as a Chinese dependency and allowed the island to continue to pay tribute to the central government of China. This strange dual affiliation continued after 1875, when the grandfather of the current emperor, Hirohito, simply sent troops to occupy Okinawa completely.

Four years later, Emperor Meiji officially declared the archipelago to be the territory of the island, stipulating that all the inhabitants of the island were Tsukomoto himself, and that only the only official language, "Tsuchiyu", could be used, and the governor was sent to replace the king of Okinawa. In this way, he forcibly annexed an overseas colony that originally belonged to China. At that time, China's centralized dynasty was like a hollowed-out tree, unable to care for its overseas colonies, so it had to acquiesce in this fact, and its weak protests were quickly ignored by the international community. In this way, he extended his territory to the southwest for a full 500 nautical miles.

A number of years have passed, and Okinawa is one of the 47 prefectures in Japan, and has an equal status with other prefectures. For example, Okinawa has members and representatives of the Diet, and Okinawans are also first-class citizens. But because these islands are isolated from the sea, most people ignore their existence. The island's inhabitants also profess allegiance to the emperor, but most of their customs have been inherited from China. They have a god position, a "heaven and earth monarch teacher", a ancestral hall of the clan, and a family tree. Moreover, stone lions are placed in front of the door and on the roof to deal with those unfriendly intruders, and there is even a 'Taishan Stone Dare to Dang' to ward off evil spirits. All this proves that the ancestors of the Okinawans are Chinese to the fullest.

Although Okinawa was almost forgotten in peacetime, after the outbreak of the Pacific War, especially when the Americans had already come to the door, Okinawa's status suddenly became "prominent".

At the beginning of March 1944, when the U.S. forces were attacking Iwo Jima, the 32nd Army was deployed in Okinawa. This corps was a full-strength army, with three full divisions and one mixed brigade. But in February of '44, the 9th Division, which was the most elite part of the army, was transferred to the Chinese island of Taiwan. This is because the Army Command believes that the next target of the Americans' offensive is very likely to be Taiwan, and it is necessary to first strengthen the defense of the island of Taiwan.

The defense of Okinawa was weakened, but despite this, the commander of the 32nd Army, Lieutenant General Mitsuru Ushijima, still had a force to be reckoned with, the 24th Division was part of the Kwantung Army, with a total of more than 14,000 people, the 62nd Division had more than 12,000 people, the 44th Reading Force Mixed Brigade had 5,000 people, and a tank wing with 14 medium tanks and 13 light tanks, as well as an artillery unit with a variety of varied, hodgepodge of artillery such as: 105 mm howitzers; 75-mm infantry guns, 81-mm mortars; 24 320-mm shore defense guns, 22-mm machine guns, and more. In addition, General Ushijima had two ship-engineered brigades equivalent to the regimental size, various logistics units, and a militia of 20,000 men who swore allegiance to the emperor.

As for the planes, this is "secret," and of course there are airfields in the two big cities on the island of Okinawa, Naha and Shuri, but people have not seen the shadow of half of the planes, especially the "Zero" fighters, which may or may not be, but General Ushijima Mitsuru and his staff officers know very well that whether there are planes or not is actually the same, and the air supremacy in the Ryukyu Islands, especially in the sky of Okinawa, will certainly not be their own.

Lieutenant General Ushijima's defensive guiding ideology was exactly the same as that of General Kuribayashi Tadamichi on Iwo Jima, and he did not intend to expose his troops to the beaches and become a living target for the artillery and locust-like planes on the coalition warships.

Naha and Shuri had the ideal terrain for defense, and the army established a defensive system here, the core of which was a series of concentric garden-style bunkers, all of which were shot in a southeasterly direction. The bunkers stretch across the island, and their depth is made up of numerous caves, bunkers, and hidden forts. These fortifications are connected by intricate tunnels underground, and even the ancient Chinese cemetery in the shape of a lyre, which is densely packed in the countryside and resembles a lyre, was not spared by General Ushijima Mitsuru, who converted all of them into fortifications despite the protests of the elderly on the island of Okinawa.

Ushijima's tactics were as simple but more practical than those of Lieutenant General Kuribayashi Nakamichi, putting the enemy ashore and engaging the enemy in a position that had already been prepared. By mid-March of '45, all nearly 100,000 soldiers, including more than 20,000 militiamen armed with bamboo spears, were in place. The main line of defense was defended by the 24th and 62nd Divisions, which had considerable experience, while the newly formed 3rd Division and the 44th Mixed Brigade were responsible for defending the southern end of the island, which was a cliff near the sea, and it was estimated that the Allied forces would not be able to land there. In the southeastern part of the island, the defense was completely abandoned, and there was Wataguchi Beach, a wilderness that could not be defended. The Americans will definitely land there. Therefore, two battalion-level brigades were arranged only symbolically, ready to retreat after a little resistance, and lure the enemy deeper. Lieutenant General Ushijima correctly predicted the landing of the Americans, but this did not mean that he could win the battle, and he knew that he was just doing his best!

The Americans gave the campaign to attack Okinawa an elegant but inexplicable code name as Operation Iceberg. No one knows that it was the name given to the plan by the staff officer, and why it was called "iceberg?"

But it is clear that this is a large-scale joint operation of the army and navy. The commander-in-chief was General Spruance, a lieutenant general known for his caution in combat.

The commander of the landing operation was Simon, commander of the Army's 10th Army. Boliva. Lieutenant General Buckner, a tough and ferocious, strong-willed but extreme-minded general, was one of the few ace generals under Admiral MacArthur.

Buckner's hatred for himself probably stems from his father, who was one of the Southern generals in the American Civil War and escaped after being captured by the North. Therefore, Buckner's hatred for the enemy can be said to be innate.

He will command 6 divisions that are quite capable of fighting to attack Okinawa. There are 3 divisions that are Army, while the other 3 divisions are Marines. In charge of transporting and covering the landing force was Major General John A. Mitchell!

(To be continued)