Okinawa

The USS Goodhue & A Torrent of Kamikazes at Okinawa

More than 60 years ago, in April 1945, the war in Europe was winding down to its inevitable conclusion. Read more

Okinawa

The Shinano Carrier: How Allied Forces Sunk Such a Secret

The first torpedo struck the Shinano carrier farthest aft. Over the next 30 seconds three more warheads detonated against the massive aircraft carrier’s hull, working their way forward. Read more

Okinawa

OSS Captain Frank Farrell Prosecuted Nazi Spy Ring In Postwar China

Marine Captain Frank Farrell stood in the open door of the Army Air Corps C-47 waiting for the “green light,” the signal to leap into space, on a mission that could mean life or death for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people. Read more

Okinawa

SEALs: the Birth of the Navy’s ‘Special Warfare’ Force

Today’s Navy SEALs (for Sea, Air, and Land special warfare experts) have a history shrouded in secrecy. Commissioned in 1962, they are the most elite shore-area Special Forces in the world, concentrating on very select and often-clandestine intelligence gathering and precision strike missions. Read more

Okinawa

The B-25 Mitchell Bomber and the Man Behind the Plane

During the 1920s, roughly two decades before the B-25 Mitchell bomber came into service, U.S. Army Air Service commander Brig. Read more

Okinawa

A List of American Commanders in WWII Who Lost Their Lives

General George S. Patton, Jr., once said, “An army is like a piece of cooked spaghetti. You can’t push it, you have to pull it after you.” Read more

Okinawa

Sugar Loaf Hill Survival: U.S. Marines in the Okinawa Campaign

The grimy, weary Marines heard with little emotion the instructions shouted by their officer. He wanted them to mount yet another charge to the top of the nondescript hill blocking their way, another collection of rock housing an enemy that tried to halt their advance. Read more

Okinawa

Speaking the Enemy’s Language

American soldiers of Japanese ancestry made remarkable contributions to the Allied victory during World War II. Read more

Okinawa

Lifting the Japanese Military

Japanese military successes in 1941 and 1942 shocked the West. Behind those successes lay a logistics effort not often appreciated, that of shipping. Read more

Okinawa

Hell’s Own Cesspool: Okinawa in WWII

On Easter morning, April 1, 1945, the Pacific island of Okinawa trembled beneath an earthshaking bombardment from American combat aircraft overhead and ships steaming offshore in preparation for an amphibious landing of unprecedented magnitude. Read more

Okinawa

U.S. Marine’s Legacy of Valor

By Dick Camp (Colonel, USMC, Retired)

The war in the Pacific was a bloody, protracted struggle between the Empire of Japan and the United States and her allies. Read more

Okinawa

The Battle of Iwo Jima: Red Sun, Black Sand

No foreign army in the 5,000-year history of Japan had ever successfully conquered Japanese territory. In late 1944, American war planners were about to challenge that statistic on the tiny Pacific island of Iwo Jima. Read more

Okinawa

Iceberg in the Pacific

The curious coincidence was obvious to everyone. April 1, 1945, was both Easter Sunday and April Fool’s Day. Read more

Okinawa

The Few, the Proud, the Black Marines in World War II

Prior to the summer of 1941, the United States Marine Corps did not want them. The Navy barely tolerated them in restricted capacities as cooks, waiters, servants for officers, and dockside stevedores. Read more

Okinawa

USS Hugh W. Hadley: Surviving the Kamikazes of Okinawa

Only 340 miles from the home island of Kyushu, the final objective of the American military surge across the Pacific during World War II, short of an invasion of Japan itself, was Okinawa in the Ryukyu archipelago. Read more

Okinawa

“I Survived the USS Franklin Inferno”

On March 19, 1945, the Essex-class carrier USS Franklin (CV-13), dubbed “Big Ben,” lay 50 miles off Honshu, one of Japan’s Home Islands. Read more

Okinawa

Desmond Doss

On April 1, 1945, the American X Army landed at Okinawa, just 340 miles from the home islands of Japan. Read more

Okinawa

Steel Typhoon at Okinawa

As one island or island group in the Pacific was fought over by American and Japanese forces, it became clear that Japan’s days as a combatant in World War II were numbered. Read more

Okinawa

The Amazing Voyages of the USS O’Brien

At exactly three o’clock in the afternoon on February 25, 1944, a crowd gathered at the Boston Navy Yard for the commissioning ceremony of the USS O’Brien (DD725), a destroyer of the Sumner class. Read more

Okinawa

Death of the Super Battleship Yamato and Musashi

Special Sea Attack Force (SSAF) was an ordinary-sounding name for the pitifully tiny remnant of what was once the mighty Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN). Read more