Private First Class Eugene B. Sledge of the 1st Marine Division had been fighting in 1945 on the miserable island of Okinawa for six weeks. Continuous rain transformed the terrain into a sea of mud that clutched soldiers’ boots and stalled large vehicles, while Japanese mortar and artillery shells poured down in a violent fury that mangled bodies and twisted weapons.

The island, according to Sledge, was ‘the most ghastly corner of hell I had ever witnessed….Every crater was half full of water, and many of them held a Marine corpse. The bodies lay pathetically just as they had been killed, half submerged in muck and water, rusting weapons still in hand. Swarms of big flies hovered about them.’ Wherever he looked, Sledge saw ‘maggots and decay. Men struggled and fought and bled in an environment so degrading I believed we had been flung into hell’s own cesspool.’

For almost three months, Army and Marine divisions battled to wrest the island from Japan’s tenacious grasp, and when the final shot had been fired, more men had fallen there than at any other Pacific battleground. Army and Marine troops would long retain haunting memories of that island only 360 miles southwest of Japan. It was called Okinawa.

The U.S. military wanted Okinawa for three reasons. American medium bombers could reach the Japanese home islands from Okinawa, its seizure would sever the remaining southwest supply lines to resource-hungry Japan, and Okinawa could be used as a support base for the scheduled November invasion of Japan proper.

A huge assemblage of American forces from both Admiral Chester W. Nimitz’s Central Pacific drive and General Douglas MacArthur’s Southwest Pacific thrust converged on Okinawa. Army Lt. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner commanded more than 180,000 troops from four Army divisions (the 7th, 27th, 77th and 96th) under Maj. Gen. John Hodge and three Marine divisions (the 1st, 2nd and 6th) led by Maj. Gen. Roy S. Geiger.

They would need every man, for more than 100,000 Japanese troops of Lt. Gen. Mitsuru Ushijima’s Thirty-Second Army patiently waited in hidden bunkers and on fortified ridges for the Americans to land. Ushijima, who stationed the bulk of his strength in Okinawa’s hilly southern region rather than its flat northern area, planned to let the Americans rush ashore uncontested before commencing his defense from an intricate system of two concentric defense lines constructed in and among a favorable series of hills, ridges and draws–the Machinato Line and, behind it, the even more fortified Shuri Line. Tokyo needed time to prepare for the expected American invasion of the home islands, so Ushijima wanted to make his adversary wrench each hill and ridge from his well-armed men.

American troops secured two positions before the actual assault of Okinawa began on L-day, which was designated as Easter Sunday, April 1. Five battalions of the Army’s 77th Infantry Division stormed ashore on five islands of the Kerama Retto group on March 26. Within three days, the 1,000 Japanese defenders had been routed, and all eight islands had been secured. Happily for the forces about to hit Okinawa, the invaders also destroyed more than 350 suicide boats, called renraku tei. The Japanese had planned to run those boats, measuring 18 feet long and 5 feet wide, alongside American ships and explode them–and hopefully the American vessels–by detonating charges.

One day before L-day, soldiers from the 77th Division seized Keise Shima, a smaller group of islets six miles off Okinawa’s southwest coast. Large artillery placed on Keise Shima would add invaluable punch to the coming offensive against General Ushijima’s force.

Everyone anticipated a bloodbath on L-day. One briefing officer told Marines, ‘This is expected to be the costliest amphibious campaign of the war’ and added that they should count on ‘80 to 85 percent casualties on the beach.’ A pre-invasion bombardment would hopefully dampen the Japanese opposition, but assault troops entered the landing craft with ominous feelings. The fact that L-day also happened to be April Fool’s Day did not reassure anyone.

Surprisingly, Marines and GIs could have waded ashore in leisurely fashion, since Ushijima bided his time behind the devilish defense lines to the south. While the 2nd Marine Division feinted toward the southeast coast, Marine and Army units headed for beaches on Okinawa’s west coast, near the village of Hagushi. Rather than scrapping for each yard, elated troops jumped off their landing craft and quickly moved inland toward key airfields at Yontan and Kadena. Within three hours, Marines from the 6th Division had secured Yontan, while soldiers of the 7th Infantry Division advanced beyond Kadena–locations which strategists had figured would take three days to seize. By day’s end, 75,000 troops had established a beachhead nine miles wide and three miles deep against sporadic opposition at the cost of 28 dead and 104 wounded.

‘The carnage that is almost inevitable on an invasion was wonderfully and beautifully not there,’ wrote America’s beloved war correspondent Ernie Pyle. Troops raced eastward in an attempt to reach the eastern coast and split the island in half. In four days of rapid advance, American forces seized what planners had assumed would take three weeks. ‘I’ve already lived longer than I thought I would,’ uttered a relieved infantryman from the 7th Division.

Marines of the 6th Division who headed into Okinawa’s northern two-thirds continued to encounter light opposition. By April 13 they had advanced 40 miles and reached the island’s northern tip at Hedo Misaki. Only at the Motobu Peninsula along the western coast, where 2,000 well-entrenched Japanese battled the Marines for 12 days, was significant resistance encountered, especially on precipitous Mount Yaetake. In a preview of the ghastly fighting to occur in the south, Marines finally secured Motobu on April 20, at the cost of 213 killed or missing and 757 wounded.

While the Marines hammered their way through Motobu, starting on April 9 Army forces encountered stiff resistance from Ushijima’s first defensive positions in southern Okinawa–the Machinato Line. This line–anchored on the Machinato Inlet and a series of fortified ridges, particularly Kakazu Ridge, which blocked movement along the west coast–stretched from one side of Okinawa to the other. The bloody fighting required to neutralize each emplacement made GIs yearn for the relatively peaceful first week on the island.

For the next 2 1/2 months a seemingly endless succession of heavily defended ridges, draws, cliffs and caves stalemated Buckner’s drive. A typical ridge had Japanese machine-gun nests on the forward slope and on nearby rises that intersected each trail, while deadly mortar shells from invisible positions on the reverse slope rained on advancing GIs. Artillery, located on higher elevations to the rear, produced a terrifying carnage that swelled the death toll and sent large numbers of shellshocked troops to aid stations with neuropsychiatric conditions.

Buckner threw two divisions against this first line. While the 7th Infantry Division tried to punch through on Okinawa’s east side, the 96th Infantry Division assaulted Ushijima’s western half. At first, neither met with any success in the face of opposition from ridges that bristled with Japanese.

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