battle of okinawa

The Battle of Okinawa (Japanese: 沖縄戦, Hepburn: Okinawa-sen), codenamed Operation Iceberg, was a battle of the Pacific War fought on the island of Okinawa by the United States Army and United States Marine Corps forces against the Imperial Japanese Army.

The initial invasion of Okinawa on 1 April 1945 was the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific Theater of World War II. The 82-day battle lasted from 1 April until 22 June 1945. After a long campaign of island hopping, the Allies were planning to use Kadena Air Base on the large island of Okinawa as a base for Operation Downfall, the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands, 340 mi (550 km) away.

The battle has been referred to as the "typhoon of steel" in English, of which the Japanese original phrase was "tetsu no bōfū". The nicknames refer to the ferocity of the fighting, the intensity of Japanese kamikaze attacks and the sheer numbers of Allied ships and armored vehicles that assaulted the island. The battle was the bloodiest in the Pacific, with around 50,000 Allied and 84,166–117,000 Japanese casualties, including Okinawans conscripted into the Japanese Army. According to local authorities, at least 149,425 Okinawan people were killed, died by coerced suicide or went missing.

In the naval operations surrounding the battle, both sides lost considerable numbers of ships and aircraft, including the Japanese battleship Yamato.

After the American victory in the battle, which was very costly (50,000 U.S. soldier casualties, includeed 12,500 killed and missing as well as 36,122 wounded), Okinawa provided a fleet anchorage, troop staging areas, and airfields in proximity to Japan for US forces in preparation for the invasion of the Japanese home islands.

The high number of U.S. casualties in this battle was one of the reasons for their Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the Pacific war.