OKINAWA 1945

The last great battle of the Second World War.

" Typhoon of Steel ". That is the name by which the Battle of Okinawa is known. The deluge of fire that American forces rained down on the Japanese defenders of the island between April and June 1945 does indeed seem to justify the epithet. For the United States, it was a matter of seizing a stepping-stone before launching the final operation: the conquest of Japan. For Japan, on the contrary, the aim was to inflict such bloodshed among the GIs and Marines that Washington would abandon its invasion plans and also accept the abandonment of the unconditional surrender principle — which would allow the preservation of the imperial institutions.

For these reasons, the fighting that took place in the air, on land, and at sea in the Ryukyu archipelago took on a fierce and merciless character. For the first time in history, waves of hundreds of kamikaze aircraft were launched against the American fleet before the incredulous eyes of the Navy's sailors. The soldiers of the Japanese 32nd Army, entrenched in the remarkable defensive system they had constructed, were determined to sell their lives dearly, and the capture of each hill and each ridge exacted extremely heavy losses on both sides.

Somewhat overshadowed by the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Battle of Okinawa nonetheless deserves to be better known — not only for its titanic dimensions, but also because it constitutes the last great battle of the Second World War, thus closing, in blood, a cycle that had begun at the end of the 1930s.

An officer and doctor of history, Ivan Cadeau is head of the Doctrine, Operations and Intelligence Bureau at the Service historique de la Défense. A specialist in the Indochina and Korean Wars, he is a regular contributor to lectures for army officers and is the author of numerous articles and books. His most recent work, Cao Bang 1950. Premier désastre français en Indochine (Perrin), was published in June 2022.