Customer Reviews

OKINAWA: April - June 1945

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Okinawa 1945 by T. M. Huber is an authoritative and detailed recounting of the last campaign of World War II to take place in the Pacific Theatre. This was a battle so brutal that it convinced President Harry Truman to deploy atomic weapons in Japan as a preferable alternative to the utter bloodbath and the estimated hundreds of thousands of American deaths that a "D-Day" style invasion and conquest would bring. Black-and-white photographs embellish a wealth of details, all of which presented in a smooth narrative style. A superb study that makes history, in all its gritty reality, truly come alive, Okinawa 1945 is a welcome and highly recommended addition to World War II Military History reference collections and reading lists.

The author wrote a brief rehash of an all too frequently overlooked campaign in the waning months of the Pacific War. The recent movie, Flags of Our Father's and the accompanying Hollywood hyperbole only serves to push Okinawa along with Peleliu out of the public memory.
Okinawa was more brutal and longer than Iwo Jima, cost more casualties in terms of lives lost. 100,000+ vs 20,000 for the Japanese, 12,000 vs 6,800 American Casualties, and between 100,000 and 200,00 civilian casualties. Better more humanistic accounts have been written, With the old Breed by Eugene Sledge and Good By to Darkness, by William Manchester. The treatments Typhoon of Steel and Tennozan (aka, Okinawa, the Blood and the Bomb)dealt more into the realm of oral history of the Battle. While Battle for Okinawa is the only account written from the Japanese side. Penned by the highest ranking survivor of the battle, Col Yahara, Ushijima's chief of staff. For a cold dispassionate account buy or download the US Army's official account, Okinawa, the Last Battle. Or the Marine Corps account, Okinawa, Victory in the Pacific. They are all more in depth and informative than this thin treatise.