the more numerous and formidable became the defenses-in-depth, the more difficult the terrain.
On May 11 the First began bucking at Dakeshi Ridge and Dakeshi Town. Both fell after a seesaw three-day battle, the Americans plodding forward by day, the Japanese counterattacking by night. Platoons took a position at the cost of three-fourths of their men, then tried to hang on with the survivors. Sometimes they could not. Daylight sometimes meant a fresh attack to recover ground surrendered during the night. In Dakeshi Town the Marines found a labyrinth of tunnels, shafts and caves, with snipers everywhere among the ruins—crouching behind broken walls, hidden in wells or cisterns. But Dakeshi Town also fell and on May 14 the First Marine Division entered Wana Draw.
Wana Draw was a long, narrowing ravine running east to Shuri. It was formed by the reverse slope of Wana Ridge on its left and the forward slope of another ridge to the right. All its low, gently-rising ground was covered by gunfire, from its mouth 400 yards wide to the point at which, 800 yards east, it narrowed sharply between steep cliffs under the heights of Shuri.
Although neither Shuri nor Shuri Castle was in the zone of the First Marine Division, but rather in the 77th Division’s, the plunging fire that fell from them was meant for the First Division’s left flank. It was necessary for the First to face left, or east, and attack up Wana Draw—both to remove that thorn from its flesh and to knock out those powerful positions menacing the entire western half of the Tenth Army front. Any attack south past Shuri would be struck in both flank and rear.
On May 14, the day on which Major Courtney led the charge on Sugar Loaf which was to bring him the Medal of Honor, the First Marine Division began “processing” Wana Draw.
A few tanks slipped into the ravine. They probed for the caves. Antitank fire fell on them. Supporting riflemen took the Japanese gunners under fire. Suicide troops rushed the tanks hurling satchel-charges. Again the supporting riflemen protected the tanks. But sometimes the antitank guns knocked out the tanks, sometimes the Japanese infantrymen drove the Marine riflemen back, sometimes the satchel-chargers blew up a tank. But when the tanks did gain a foothold, then the more vulnerable flame-throwing tanks rumbled in. They sprayed the hillside with fire, particularly those reverse slopes which could not be reached by bombs or artillery.
Squads of foot Marines went in after them, men with bazookas, flame-throwers, hand grenades, blocks of dynamite —peeling off, team by team, taking cave after cave, crawling up to them under the protective fire of riflemen kneeling in the mud. More and more men went into Wana Draw. Day after day the Division bucked against this barrier, but soon there were whole companies working up the slopes, “processing” caves and pillboxes, calling down their mortars and rifle grenades on the machine guns and mortars sure to be nesting on the reverse slope. It was war at its most basic, man-to-man, a battle fought by corporals and privates. And these were the men who won the Medals of Honor while the First Division processed its way into Shuri: Private Dale Hansen, using a bazooka, a rifle and hand grenades to knock out a pillbox and a mortar position and kill a dozen Japanese before he lost his own life; Pfc. Albert Schwab, attacking machine guns alone with his flame-thrower, silencing them even as he perished; Corporal Louis Hauge, doing the same with grenades, and also dying. With these men were their indomitable comrades of the Navy Medical Corps, men such as Corpsman William Halyburton, who deliberately shielded wounded Marines with his own body until the life leaked out of it.
This was the fight for Wana Draw, that elemental blood-letting which took place while the very elements howled about these struggling men in muddy green floundering up the forward slopes, these men in smeared khaki sliding down the reverse slopes. At night, under cover of smokescreens, the men in khaki crept forward again to close with the men in green, to fight with bayonets and fists and strangling hands. But the men in khaki were losing the fight for Wana Draw. The Marines drew closer to Shuri. The soldiers of the 77th Division on their left were thrusting toward Shuri and Shuri Castle from the eastern gate. On the east flank the 7th Infantry Division was back in the line and smashing into Yonabaru; the Sixth Marine Division was again on the march to Naha on the west. All along the line division and corps artillery were battering Ushijima’s strong points, the Tenth Army’s Tactical Air Force roved over the battlefield at will—and the warships of the fleet were slugging away with the most formidable supporting fire yet laid down in the Pacific, for they had caught the hang of pasting those reverse slopes which land-air pounding could not reach.
Ushijima’s barrier line was buckling.
On the night of May 22, while Marines of the Sixth Division crossed the Asato River and the Division was poised to break into Naha, there was another conference under Shuri Castle. Lieutenant General Ushijima had decided to retreat. He could no longer hold his Yonabaru-Shuri-Naha line. He would have to withdraw south of the Yonabaru-Naha valley, abandoning even that fine cross-island road. Where to? Should it be the wild, roadless Chinen Peninsula on the east coast, or southernmost Kiyamu Peninsula? The wrangle began. In the end, the Kiyamu was chosen because of the strength of the Yaeju-Yuza Peaks and the honeycombs of natural and artificial caves which could accommodate the entire 32nd Army for its final stand.
Next day Ushijima began reinforcing his flanks again to hold off the Americans while his withdrawal began, but he was too late to prevent the turning of the west flank at Naha. The Sixth Division burst into the city’s ruins and began its reduction.
Ushijima still counterattacked the 7th Division on the east flank at Yonabaru, trying to relieve the pressure there, but the 7th’s valiant dogfaces held fast.
A nocturnal
The most ferocious display of antiaircraft power yet seen in the Pacific broke up a daring airborne attack on Yontan and Kadena Airfields. It was an unusually clear night and there were thousands of witnesses to this small savage setback which the suicide spirit was able to inflict on the Americans.
Perhaps 20 twin-engined bombers came gliding through a fiery lacework woven by American antiaircraft gunners. Eleven of them fell in flames. The rest, except one, fled.
That solitary Sally bomber skidded on its belly along one of Yontan’s runways. When it stopped, eight of 14 men of the Japanese 1st Air Raiding Brigade were dead in their seats, but six of them were alive, tumbling out the door, coming erect and sprinting for parked planes while hurling heat grenades and phosphorus bombs. They blew up eight airplanes, damaged 26 others, destroyed two fuel dumps housing 70,000 gallons of gasoline and killed two Marines and wounded 18 others before they were finally hunted down and killed.
In the morning the Tenth Army was still grinding down toward the heart of Ushijima’s defense in Shuri Castle. Marines of the First Division in Wana Draw began to draw swiftly closer to the city and its heights to their east. They began to notice Japanese sealing off caves and quitting the draw. At noon of May 26 Major General del Valle asked for an aerial reconnaissance over the Yonabaru-Naha valley. He had a hunch the Japanese were pulling back from Shuri, trying to sneak out under cover of a heavy rain.
A spotter plane from the battleship New York reported that the roads behind Shuri were packed. Between 3,000 and 4,000 Japanese were on the rear-march with all their guns, tanks and trucks. In thirteen minutes, despite rain and bad visibility, the warships of the fleet were on the target. Soon 50 Marine Corsairs were with them, rocketing and strafing, and every Marine artillery piece or mortar within range had its smoking muzzle pointed toward the valley. They killed from 500 to 800 Japanese and littered the muddy roadways with wrecked vehicles.
Three days later the Marines took Shuri Castle.
It was not supposed to be theirs to take; it was the objective of the 77th Division, the very plum of the Okinawa fighting, but the First Marine Division took it anyway.
General del Valle sent a battalion of the Fifth Marines climbing into Shuri on May 29. He wanted to get around and behind the Japanese still holding out in Wana Draw. The First Battalion quickly stormed Shuri Ridge to the east or left of the draw—so quickly that Lieutenant Colonel Charles Shelburne asked permission to go on to the castle 800 yards east. Del Valle granted it. The 77th Division was still two days’ hard fighting from the castle, and the chance was too good to ignore. The light defenses around Shuri might be only a temporary lapse.
Company A of the Fifth Marines under Captain Julius Dusenbury began slogging east in knee-deep mud. Inside Captain Dusenbury’s helmet was a flag, as had become almost customary among Marine commanders since Suribachi. While the Marines marched, del Valle was just barely averting the 77th’s planned artillery and aerial strike on Shuri Castle—and then Dusenbury’s Marines overran a party of Japanese soldiers and swept into the castle courtyard, into the battered ruins of what had once been a beautiful palace with curving, tiered roofs of tile. They ran up to its high parapet and over this Captain Dusenbury flew his flag.
