However, just when the two sides were on the verge of breaking out, a shocking event occurred in the Ryukyu Islands, which caused a huge change in the entire Ryukyu landing battle.

On the night of June 28, 1944, more than 3,000 armed Ryukyu residents, led by hundreds of young men in black suits, attacked the Japanese naval port in Naha at night, damaging a cruiser, sinking a torpedo boat, and killing and wounding a large number of Japanese soldiers.

Lieutenant General Ushijima, who was in charge of the defense of Okinawa, was shocked when he heard the news and immediately sent troops to suppress it. However, to the anger of the Japanese army, the soldiers who suddenly appeared seemed to have disappeared suddenly, and no matter how much the Japanese army searched, there was no trace.

At this time, the defense of Okinawa was about to begin, and Lieutenant General Ushijima Mitsuru knew very well that there was such a mysterious force lurking on the island, and how much pressure it would cause to the defenders, so he ignored the adjutant's dissuasion and sent a large army to examine and screen all the residents of Ryukyu Island, and in a very short period of time, a large number of Ryukyu residents were seized by the military police headquarters, and some residents were considered by the Japanese army to have absconded in fear of crime because they were not at home, and their families and children were arrested and imprisoned.

Although the Japanese captured a lot of people, but still did not find the mysterious enemy army, just when the Japanese were about to put this in advance and concentrate on dealing with the Allied landing force, this force suddenly reappeared, this time their target was an ammunition warehouse on Ryukyu Island, an infantry squadron of defenders was completely annihilated, more than 100,000 tons of supplies were destroyed.

On June 30, MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Front, gave the order for a landing operation on the Ryukyu Islands. More than 300,000 troops, assisted by more than 1,000 warships of various types, launched landing operations in the southeast and southwest of the Ryukyus.

The troops that served as the first batch of landings were composed of the US 10th Group Army and the Ninth Group Army of the Chinese National Defense Forces, with four divisions under the jurisdiction of the US army of 130,000 troops, and the Ninth Army of the Chinese side under the jurisdiction of four integrated divisions and two artillery brigades totaling 150,000 troops. The Allied forces were covered and supported by the aircraft carrier mobile units of the US and British armies, as well as the 20th and 21st strategic bombing units of the United States.

Before the battle began, the Allies carried out large-scale air raids on Kyushu and Shikoku in order to contain various Japanese units. At the same time, the 34th, 35th, and 36th divisions of the Ninth Army, as well as the assault echelons of the 10th Army of the US Army, carried out sea crossings.

From 10 a.m. on the morning of the 30th, carrier-based aircraft groups and naval guns carried out advance fire preparations on the Kerama Islands and Okinawa Islands, destroying some airfields and exposed defense facilities on the islands. Eliminated the Japanese fleet of offshore assault boats.

3 p.m. The Allies began to land on the Kerama Islands, securing ship moorings and logistical supply bases. Preparations for direct naval artillery and aviation fire on Okinawa began. The 34th and 35th Divisions of the Ninth Army made a surprise landing in a section 9 kilometers north and south of Haguqi. On the same day, about 90,000 men from three divisions and a large number of tanks and artillery were put ashore, and a landing ground of 18 kilometers in front and 12 kilometers in depth, including two airfields, was established.

At the same time, the 2nd Marine Division of the United States carried out a feint over the waters of the Minato River southeast of Okinawa. Central Region. Cut off the island. And began to develop an offensive to the main positions in the north and south. So far. The tasks of the landing phase have been completed. The combined fleet of the Japanese Navy sailed from Japan to Okinawa in an attempt to engage in a decisive naval battle with the US forces.

The next day, the Chinese Navy's Heilongjiang Fleet Fast Aircraft Carrier Fleet spotted the Japanese naval forces from the radar. Immediately went to sea to meet the battle, and the two sides met in the southwest sea of Kyushu, and a great war broke out. After five hours of fighting, the Heilongjiang fleet sank two Japanese battleships, two cruisers and five destroyers, thus removing the threat from the sea.

The Japanese submarine unit was active in the vicinity of the Ryukyus, but due to the tight vigilance of the Chinese and American navies, they did nothing, and all but one of them returned home, and the remaining 14 ships were sunk. The Japanese army and navy aviation carried out 10 large-scale attacks on US warships, and although they achieved certain results, they did not play a decisive role in the overall situation of the war.

On July 1, the Allied forces had already made breakthroughs in many places on the Ryukyu Islands, obtained five large landing grounds, and more than 300,000 troops landed on the Ryukyu Islands before noon on July 1.

On July 2, two divisions of the U.S. 3rd Marine Corps advanced smoothly to the northern part of Okinawa Island, occupying the northern half of the island and Ie Island. The two divisions of the 24th Army attacked southward, but met with stubborn resistance from the Japanese army, and made slow progress, and began to break through the Makiko defense line on the 24th. After that, the U.S. military adjusted its deployment, and the 1st Marine Division and the 77th Infantry Division were put into operation on the southern front.

On July 3, the Japanese army launched a full-scale counterattack, dispatching more than 3,000 suicide planes and motorboats in one day, inflicting huge losses and casualties on the Allies.

However, the Allied side still did not retreat, and after seven days of hard fighting, they finally crushed the Japanese counterattack. After the defeat of the general counterattack, he retracted his position. Surrounded by the two flanks of the Allies, he abandoned the Shuri defense line on the 12th and moved to the southern defense line.

On the 13th, the commander of the US 10th Army, Buckner, was killed while inspecting the front line, and was replaced by Major General R.S. Geiger, commander of the 3rd Marine Army. On the 14th, a 50,000-strong uprising broke out in the Ryukyu Islands against the Japanese army, and surprisingly, the rebel army not only had a large number of advanced weapons and equipment, but also a large number of commanders.

With the cooperation of the local rebel forces, the Allies soon broke through the southern defense line of the Japanese army and divided and surrounded the Japanese army in various parts of the island. In the early morning of the next day, the commander of the Japanese 32nd Army, Mitsuru Ushijima, and his chief of staff committed suicide by caesarean section.

After three days of purging battles, the Allies finally took complete control of the Ryukyu Islands on July 19, and the battle ended.

In the battle, the Japanese army lost 66,000 killed, 37,455 were captured, and 17,000 were wounded. About 70,000 inhabitants of the island died, 7,830 aircraft were lost, 16 ships were sunk and 4 were damaged. The U.S. military suffered more than 50,000 casualties, including 12,513 dead and 38,916 wounded, lost 763 aircraft, lost 372 tanks, sank 36 ships, and damaged 168. The Chinese army lost more than 40,000 men in this battle, including 7,867 killed and 24,578 wounded, and 9 warships were sunk, 28 transport ships were damaged, and 112 bombers were shot down.

Although the Allied forces suffered heavy losses in this campaign, with a total of nearly 90,000 casualties between China and the United States, and nearly 200 warships and ships sunk and damaged, they opened the southwestern gateway to the Japanese mainland and obtained a sea and air base for attacking the Japanese mainland, thus creating favorable conditions for landing operations on the Japanese mainland.

During the campaign, the US military established a network of air bases on the islands of the Okinawa archipelago, stationed a large number of air forces, which could not only effectively intercept the incoming Japanese planes, but also take off and bomb the center of the Japanese mainland, further strengthening the strategic bombing of the Japanese mainland.

However, this battle also made the US army realize that the Japanese army's will to fight was still tenacious, with 100,000 defenders, in the face of the US army's absolute superiority of naval and air forces and ground forces, in the situation of almost isolation, insisted on fighting for nearly one month, although it ended in failure, but it caused huge losses to the allied forces, showing the high ability of the Japanese army to resist the landing and the tenacity of the will to fight.

The tactics adopted by the Japanese army in the anti-landing operations also provided useful experience for the inferior army in organizing an effective anti-landing war; the Japanese army mainly relied on tunnels, natural caverns, and mountain anti-slope positions to weaken the US army's firepower superiority as much as possible, and actively engaged in close combat and night battles, and organized small units to frequently carry out fierce counterattacks, thus consuming the effective strength of the Allied forces, and making the US forces profoundly aware that the landing on the Japanese mainland would encounter more fierce and brutal battles.

After the capture of the Ryukyu Islands, the Allies did not immediately begin a landing operation on the Japanese mainland, because according to the results of the Ryukyu landing battle, the US Joint Staff reported to Roosevelt a research report that if a full-scale landing operation was carried out on the Japanese mainland, the Allied death rate per 1,000 man-days would be as high as 1.78, and the death rate would be 7.45. This means that there will be 1.6 million Allied casualties from the beginning to the end of the landing operation in Japan, of which 400,000 will be dead or missing.

As for this report of the Joint Staff, the main US military in the Pacific Ocean is in agreement with the fact that although there is some gap with their casualty estimates, the gap is not very large, and this report is basically accurate.

Subsequently, the staff of U.S. Secretary of War Stimson commissioned William Stimson. Shockley completed a report in which he assessed that the conquest of Japan would result in 1.7 million to 4 million U.S. casualties, including 400,000 to 800,000 deaths. On the Japanese side, the number of deaths alone could reach 5 million to 10 million, and this assessment took into account the participation of ordinary Japanese citizens in the war.

Such a huge casualty estimate forced the U.S. government to suspend the landing operation against Japan and urgently contact the Chinese and Soviet sides to discuss the matter.

Chen Feng's meaning was very clear: either to carry out a landing operation or to find ways to force the Japanese government to surrender, in his words, China's 2 million national defense forces are ready for battle and ready to land on the Japanese archipelago at any time.

Stalin also felt that there was no need to tolerate too much for Japan, a small country, and now that the war in the European theater was over, the Soviet Union could send more than 1.5 million troops to participate in the landing operation in Japan in a short period of time, and if the United States had no better way, then it could only continue to carry out the landing operation.

In fact, Roosevelt was now very entangled, on the one hand, he was worried that the landing operation would cause huge casualties to the US military, and on the other hand, there was no good way to force the Japanese to surrender unconditionally, while China and the Soviet Union, as US allies, insisted on occupying the Japanese archipelago and completely clearing the mines in the Pacific region.

However, while Roosevelt was struggling, J.R. Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist in charge of the Manhattan Project, personally reported to Roosevelt that an experimental atomic bomb had completed its final assembly and requested an explosion test. Oppenheimer's debriefing gave Roosevelt a solution to the problem at hand, and he agreed to experiment. (To be continued......)