Okinawa

May 1, 1995
Larger in both number of troops and tonnage than the Normandy landing, the battle for Okinawa, April 1-June 21, 1945, was the last great campaign of WWII. Leckie here recreates the events, from the planning by American fleet admirals in a suite at San Francisco's St. Francis Hotel to the ritual suicide of Lt. Gen. Mitsuri Ushijima on a cliff overlooking the Pacific the day the Americans declared victory. Much of the succinct, fast-paced narrative deals with how the Army and Marine divisions cooperated as they applied the ``corkscrew and blowtorch'' methods necessary to dislodge the tenacious defenders of an island only 375 miles from their Japanese homeland. In a thought-provoking final section, Leckie discusses the still simmering questions of whether the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki compelled the Japanese to surrender, whether they would soon have surrendered anyway and whether the Okinawa campaign was in fact unnecessary. Leckie, a prolific author of popular military books, writes stirring prose; his fans will not be disappointed by this one. BOMC selection.