Okinawa

shambles of cracked and twisted steel plates. Her big guns would not work. The watertight wireless room was filled with water, and an explosion had wrecked the emergency dispensary and killed everyone inside.

At two o’clock the final attack began.

Hellcats and Avengers plunged from the skies to strike at the hapless ship. Yamato was shaken fore and aft and the entire battleship shuddered violently. Communications with the bridge were cut off, the distress flag was hoisted, the steering room became flooded, and with the rudder jammed hard left, mighty Yamato sagged over to a list of thirty-five degrees.

“Correction of list hopeless!” the executive officer cried.

Down came the Americans for the death blow.

“Hold on, men!” Ariga shouted. “Hold on, men!”

Bombs were striking around and upon Yamato, raising a giant clanging, flinging waves of roaring air across her decks, jumbling men together in heaps. Out of one pile crawled high-ranking staff officers. Admiral Ito struggled to his feet. His chief of staff arose and saluted him. The two men regarded each other solemnly. Ito turned, shook hands with each of his staff officers, wheeled, and strode into his cabin, either to embrace death or await it—the world will never know which. Admiral Ariga rushed to save the emperor’s portrait, but met death instead.

Yamato was dying slowly, like the giant she was. Her decks were nearly vertical, her battle flag all but touched the waves, explosions racked her monster body, her own ammunition began blowing up—and all around her were her sister ships in death agonies. Yahagi was sinking, Isokaze, Hamakaze, Asashimo, and Kasumo had received their death blows.

At twenty-three minutes after two Yamato slid under, a full day’s steaming from Okinawa.

Japan had lost her navy, the suicide battleship had failed, and it was now up to the kikusui and the men of Lieutenant General Mitsuru Ushijima.

Fiery Failure at Kakazu Ridge CHAPTER ELEVEN

The honeymoon had been brief for Major General John Hodge’s Twenty-fourth Corps—hardly more than a weekend.

The day after Love Day, the Twenty-fourth’s spearheads raced across the island, Seventh Division on the left, Ninety-sixth on the right, turning to their right (or south) the next day for the anticipated rapid down-island advance. Their progress seemed as bloodless as the Marine drive in the north.

But on April 4 they found resistance “stiffening.”

It grew stiffer daily until, on April 8, “greatly increased resistance” was reported. They had come into the outerworks of Ushijima’s Naha-Shuri-Yonabaru Line, and probably its most formidable position: Kakazu Ridge.

At first glance, Kakazu (pronounced “Cock-a-zoo”) did not seem especially difficult: neither unusually high nor uncommonly steep. Three-quarters of a mile south the Urasoe-Mura Escarpment seemed a much more difficult natural barrier. That was what Colonel Eddy May thought when he prepared to send his 383rd Regiment of the Ninety-sixth Division against it. Studying Kakazu from his headquarters atop another ridge, he considered its seizure a preliminary to an assault on Urasoe-Mura. His maps suggested no other conclusion, although Colonel May was not aware that the map was probably made from photographs taken when the entire area was obscured by clouds. Kakazu was a rough coral hogback about a thousand yards long running from the coastal flats in the west on a northwest-southeast keel. It was formed by two hills of the smaller Kakazu West on May’s right flank, and the larger Kakazu Ridge proper to his left.

What Colonel May—and General Hodges—also could not suspect was that Kakazu’s defenders under Colonel Munetatsu Hara had been fortifying their position for months. Assisted by Okinawan laborers, they had constructed a subterranean honeycomb of caves, tunnels, and passageways. This would not be the first such “impregnable” position encountered by Americans in the Pacific War: what made it unique was its complete camouflage, its incredible variety and number of fortified positions, its depth, its abundance of supplies and ammunition—including a spigot-mortar unit launching huge 320 mm shells—its network of mutually supporting emplacements firing interlocking fire, and its absolute invulnerability to those nineteen-hundred-pound shells hurled at it by the battleship Colorado cruising offshore.

Because Colonel Hara had buried his headquarters deep below the main ridge, he had complicated his communications: his only problem. Although many tunnels had interconnecting passages and there were also voice tubes, some underground positions were isolated, compelling Hara to use runners who would be exposed to enemy fire once they appeared above ground. Hara had no fear of the Americans’ plentiful and powerful tanks, so superior to the Japanese diminutive “kitchen sinks” that had been nevertheless unstoppable against inferior or lightly armed troops in the Manchuria-Burma-Philippines campaigns. Fronting Kakazu Ridge and running its entire length was a deep gorge cut into the coral by the immemorial passage of a narrow stream. The gorge was a natural antitank obstacle, impassable to tracked vehicles. For tanks to attempt to turn either flank of the ridge would bring down on them a storm of artillery.

Finally, Colonel Hara had emplaced outposts in tombs and concrete pillboxes on the ridge’s northern face. Most effective of all, he had cleverly emplaced most of his infantry and all of his mortars on the southern or reverse slope of the ridge. They were thus in untouchable defilade, shielded from enemy troops, artillery, and even American battleships. Not even enemy mortars, with that weapon’s high, looping trajectory, could reach them. Moreover, the Americans were absolutely unaware of this reverse-slope concentration; while Hara, of course, had his entire front registered by his own guns.

Thus, Kakazu Ridge.

Colonel May was sometimes called “a soldier of the old school”—meaning that he believed that the brave charge could usually carry the day. This does not suggest that he would not maneuver, only that faced by such a forbidding unflankable position, he would instinctively fall back on the frontal assault. So he ordered two of his three battalions to storm Kakazu Ridge and Kakazu West on April 9, actually expecting both to fall by the following morning. This meant that—in accordance with American infantry doctrine—a battalion of three companies would use two of them in attack with the third in reserve, and thus, two companies would strike the main ridge and two more Kakazu West, with the remaining two on call in their rear. To achieve surprise, there would be no artillery preparation beforehand, and all units would attack before daylight.

Right at the start one of the companies assaulting Kakazu West was late moving out and did not march until daylight, when it was sighted and promptly pinned down. The other company was commanded by a born fighter and leader, First Lieutenant Willard Mitchell, a powerfully built southerner who had played both football and basketball for Mississippi State. Idolized by his men and called “Captain Hoss,” he was also beloved for his un-bashful battle cry: “Watch out! Here comes ‘the Hoss’—and God is on the Hoss’s side!” Mitchell returned their affection by calling them his “Lardasses,” a fondly derisive and droll nickname that they loved.

Mitchell’s Lardasses were quick to ascend Kakazu West under cover of darkness, and not particularly dismayed to learn that they were alone on its crest and that their supporting comrades were pinned down below. They also found that the position was composed of two knolls—one on the north, and the other to the south, forming Colonel Hara’s reverse slope. Between them was a shallow saddle of land. The moment that the Japanese emerged from their steel-and-coral fortress, Mitchell quickly formed his company into a perimeter on the saddle, just deep enough to conceal a prone man. He hoped to riddle them if they charged forward to clear both saddle and northward knoll. But the enemy refused to oblige, opening fire from their own position and showering the saddle with hand grenades and satchel charges, bags stuffed with explosive. Mitchell’s men fought back with the same weapons, and a furious battle raged back and forth all morning long—with men killed and wounded on both sides.

Throughout the action, Mitchell roved the besieged saddle, hurling grenades and firing his carbine, his battle cry booming from his lips. His men were his gallant equal, and one of them —Pfc. Joseph Solch—spotted an enemy