Bloody Okinawa

Author : Joseph Wheelan
Publisher : Hachette Books
Page : 432 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2020-03-03
Category : History
ISBN : 9780306903212

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Bloody Okinawa by Joseph Wheelan Pdf

A stirring narrative of World War II's final major battle—the Pacific war's largest, bloodiest, most savagely fought campaign—the last of its kind. On Easter Sunday, April 1, 1945, more than 184,000 US troops began landing on the only Japanese home soil invaded during the Pacific war. Just 350 miles from mainland Japan, Okinawa was to serve as a forward base for Japan's invasion in the fall of 1945. Nearly 140,000 Japanese and auxiliary soldiers fought with suicidal tenacity from hollowed-out, fortified hills and ridges. Under constant fire and in the rain and mud, the Americans battered the defenders with artillery, aerial bombing, naval gunfire, and every infantry tool. Waves of Japanese kamikaze and conventional warplanes sank 36 warships, damaged 368 others, and killed nearly 5,000 US seamen. When the slugfest ended after 82 days, more than 125,000 enemy soldiers lay dead—along with 7,500 US ground troops. Tragically, more than 100,000 Okinawa civilians perished while trapped between the armies. The brutal campaign persuaded US leaders to drop the atomic bomb instead of invading Japan. Utilizing accounts by US combatants and Japanese sources, author Joseph Wheelan endows this riveting story of the war's last great battle with a compelling human dimension.

Author : Everest Media,
Publisher : Everest Media LLC
Page : 65 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2022-07-22T22:59:00Z
Category : History
ISBN : 9798822546431

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Summary of Joseph Wheelan's Bloody Okinawa by Everest Media, Pdf

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The American military leaders were debating what should come next after the capture of the Mariana Islands in 1944. Should American forces attack Luzon, the largest Philippine island, or invade Formosa. They decided to invade Luzon. #2 The American military had grown by leaps and bounds in just three years, and was now a world-striding giant wielding astonishing power. Japan was unsure of the Allies’ intentions, and had vacillated between preparing for landings on Formosa and Okinawa. #3 The US government began interviewing scholars and specialists about the history, culture, politics, and economics of the Ryukyu Islands in 1944, anticipating an invasion in the future. Okinawa was the most populous island to be invaded during the Pacific war by the Allies. #4 The native religion was a synthesis of indigenous Okinawa religions and Shintoism, Taoism, and Buddhism. The islanders were stoical and easygoing people known for their courtesy and gentleness. They were racially distinct from the Japanese, and were regarded as second-class Japanese citizens.

Author : Yunshin Hong
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 576 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2020-03-02
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9789004419513

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“Comfort Stations” as Remembered by Okinawans during World War II by Yunshin Hong Pdf

Okinawa, the only Japanese prefecture invaded by US forces in 1945, was forced to accommodate 146 “military comfort stations” from 1941–45. How did Okinawans view these intrusive spaces and their impact on regional society? Interviews, survivor testimonies, and archival documents show that the Japanese army manipulated comfort stations to isolate local communities, facilitate “spy hunts,” and foster a fear of rape by Americans that induced many Okinawans to choose death over survival. The politics of sex pursued by the US occupation (1945–72) perpetuated that fear of rape into the postwar era. This study of war, sexual violence, and postcolonial memory sees the comfort stations as discursive spaces of remembrance where differing war experiences can be articulated, exchanged, and mutually reassessed. Winner of the 2017 Best Publication Award of the Year by the Okinawa Times.

Author : George Feifer
Publisher : Houghton Mifflin
Page : 680 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 1992
Category : History
ISBN : UOM:39015046812973

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Tennozan by George Feifer Pdf

Tennozan offers a remarkable account of the battle of Okinawa, the largest land-sea-air engagement in history. It examines the disastrous collision of three disparate cultures--American, Japanese, and Okinawan--and provides the context for understanding the decision to drop the atomic bomb. 41 photographs.

Author : Waldo Heinrichs,Marc Gallicchio
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 640 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2017-05-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9780190616762

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Implacable Foes by Waldo Heinrichs,Marc Gallicchio Pdf

On May 8, 1945, Victory in Europe Day-shortened to "V.E. Day"-brought with it the demise of Nazi Germany. But for the Allies, the war was only half-won. Exhausted but exuberant American soldiers, ready to return home, were sent to join the fighting in the Pacific, which by the spring and summer of 1945 had turned into a gruelling campaign of bloody attrition against an enemy determined to fight to the last man. Germany had surrendered unconditionally. The Japanese would clearly make the conditions of victory extraordinarily high. In the United States, Americans clamored for their troops to come home and for a return to a peacetime economy. Politics intruded upon military policy while a new and untested president struggled to strategize among a military command that was often mired in rivalry. The task of defeating the Japanese seemed nearly unsurmountable, even while plans to invade the home islands were being drawn. Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall warned of the toll that "the agony of enduring battle" would likely take. General Douglas MacArthur clashed with Marshall and Admiral Nimitz over the most effective way to defeat the increasingly resilient Japanese combatants. In the midst of this division, the Army began a program of partial demobilization of troops in Europe, which depleted units at a time when they most needed experienced soldiers. In this context of military emergency, the fearsome projections of the human cost of invading the Japanese homeland, and weakening social and political will, victory was salvaged by means of a horrific new weapon. As one Army staff officer admitted, "The capitulation of Hirohito saved our necks." In Implacable Foes, award-winning historians Waldo Heinrichs (a veteran of both theatres of war in World War II) and Marc Gallicchio bring to life the final year of World War Two in the Pacific right up to the dropping of the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, evoking not only Japanese policies of desperate defense, but the sometimes rancorous debates on the home front. They deliver a gripping and provocative narrative that challenges the decision-making of U.S. leaders and delineates the consequences of prioritizing the European front. The result is a masterly work of military history that evaluates the nearly insurmountable trials associated with waging global war and the sacrifices necessary to succeed.

Author : Saul David
Publisher : Hachette Books
Page : 448 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2020-05-05
Category : History
ISBN : 9780316534659

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Crucible of Hell by Saul David Pdf

From the award-winning historian, Saul David, the riveting narrative of the heroic US troops, bonded by the brotherhood and sacrifice of war, who overcame enormous casualties to pull off the toughest invasion of WWII's Pacific Theater -- and the Japanese forces who fought with tragic desperation to stop them. With Allied forces sweeping across Europe and into Germany in the spring of 1945, one enormous challenge threatened to derail America's audacious drive to win the world back from the Nazis: Japan, the empire that had extended its reach southward across the Pacific and was renowned for the fanaticism and brutality of its fighters, who refused to surrender, even when faced with insurmountable odds. Taking down Japan would require an unrelenting attack to break its national spirit, and launching such an attack on the island empire meant building an operations base just off its shores on the island of Okinawa. The amphibious operation to capture Okinawa was the largest of the Pacific War and the greatest air-land-sea battle in history, mobilizing 183,000 troops from Seattle, Leyte in the Philippines, and ports around the world. The campaign lasted for 83 blood-soaked days, as the fighting plumbed depths of savagery. One veteran, struggling to make sense of what he had witnessed, referred to the fighting as the "crucible of Hell." Okinawan civilians died in the tens of thousands: some were mistaken for soldiers by American troops; but as the US Marines spearheading the invasion drove further onto the island and Japanese defeat seemed inevitable, many more civilians took their own lives, some even murdering their own families. In just under three months, the world had changed irrevocably: President Franklin D. Roosevelt died; the war in Europe ended; America's appetite for an invasion of Japan had waned, spurring President Truman to use other means -- ultimately atomic bombs -- to end the war; and more than 250,000 servicemen and civilians on or near the island of Okinawa had lost their lives. Drawing on archival research in the US, Japan, and the UK, and the original accounts of those who survived, Crucible of Hell tells the vivid, heart-rending story of the battle that changed not just the course of WWII, but the course of war, forever.

Author : D. Kirk
Publisher : Springer
Page : 148 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2013-10-17
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781137379092

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Okinawa and Jeju: Bases of Discontent by D. Kirk Pdf

This book investigates for the first time the parallels between two island appendages of much larger governments - Okinawa, Japan's southernmost island prefecture, in ferment over historic US bases; Jeju embroiled over a new South Korean naval base. The people of Okinawa and Jeju share a common fear of bloody conflict again erupting around them and suspect their governments would sacrifice their interests in a much larger war in a fight for regional control between the US, Japan, and China.

Author : Arnold G. Fisch
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 370 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 1988
Category : Government publications
ISBN : UIUC:30112105160920

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Military Government in the Ryukyu Islands, 1945-1950 by Arnold G. Fisch Pdf

Military government on Okinawa from the first stages of planning until the transition toward a civil administration.

Author : R. E. Appleman
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 1964
Category : World War, 1939-1945
ISBN : OCLC:1344451548

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Okinawa by R. E. Appleman Pdf

Author : Steven Casey
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 409 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2021-04-05
Category : History
ISBN : 9780190053659

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The War Beat, Pacific by Steven Casey Pdf

The definitive history of American war reporting in the Pacific theater of World War II, from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After almost two years slogging with infantrymen through North Africa, Italy, and France, Ernie Pyle immediately realized he was ill-prepared for covering the Pacific War. As Pyle and other war correspondents discovered, the climate, the logistics, and the sheer scope of the Pacific theater had no parallel in the war America was fighting in Europe. From Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, The War Beat, Pacific provides the first comprehensive account of how a group of highly courageous correspondents covered America's war against Japan, what they witnessed, what they were allowed to publish, and how their reports shaped the home front's perception of some of the most pivotal battles in American military history. In a dramatic and fast-paced narrative based on a wealth of previously untapped primary sources, Casey takes us from MacArthur's doomed defense on the Philippines and the navy's overly strict censorship policy at the time of Midway, through the bloody battles on Guadalcanal, New Guinea, Tarawa, Saipan, Leyte and Luzon, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, detailing the cooperation, as well as conflict, between the media and the military, as they grappled with the enduring problem of limiting a free press during a period of extreme crisis. The War Beat, Pacific shows how foreign correspondents ran up against practical challenges and risked their lives to get stories in a theater that was far more challenging than the war against Nazi Germany, while the US government blocked news of the war against Japan and tried to focus the home front on Hitler and his atrocities.

Author : Sam Daugherty
Publisher : AuthorHouse
Page : 234 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2003-03-06
Category : Military engineers
ISBN : 9781403352460

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On Hostile Shores by Sam Daugherty Pdf

Nada, one of thirteen nutria brought to Avery Island (not an island, but a salt dome) by E. A. McIlhenny (Mr. Ned) for experimental stock breeding purposes, is the runt of the group and is blind in one eye. During a hurricane, the nutria pen topples over, and Nada and her friends escape. Nada runs under Mr. Ned's house, but the others run off in different directions. The next day, Nada sets off to find her friends. Nada's search takes her to four other salt domes. She finds each of her friends, but they have been influenced by the life on the salt domes and have become very different in their behavior. Nada wants her friends to return to live together on Avery Island where they can teach the young all of the nutria traditions. But she fails. Nada finds her way into a rice paddy where Gertrude Gallinule attacks her. She escapes. With the help of Lawrence Lizard, her friends come to visit and cheer her up. An egret comes to tell of strange goings on at Jefferson Island and that all the nutria must go there immediately because Lothario's family is in danger. Nada saves Lothario's wives and children who are trapped under the Joseph Jefferson House that is collapsing. When the nutria see how Nada risks her life for them, they are ashamed of their behavior and agree to stay together on Avery Island where they live happily ever after. This book is aimed at 8-12 year olds, but its serious moral nature will appeal to all ages.

Author : Thomas Helling, M.D.
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 475 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2017-01-04
Category : History
ISBN : 9781476664217

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Desperate Surgery in the Pacific War by Thomas Helling, M.D. Pdf

Caring for the wounded in the World War II Pacific Theater posed serious challenges to doctors and surgeons. The thick jungles, remote atolls and heavily defended Japanese islands of the Pacific presented dangers to medical personnel never before encountered in modern warfare, as did the devastating new kamikaze attacks. Sophisticated treatments, including complex surgery, were by necessity far removed from the fighting, requiring front line doctors to do the minimum--often under fire--to stabilize patients until they could be evacuated: "damage control," it would later be called. Navy doctors responsible for thousands of sailors aboard fleets in battle found caring for the wounded daunting or nearly impossible. Yet to save lives, medical resources had to be kept as close as possible to the action. This book systematically details the efforts and innovations of the doctors and surgeons who worked to preserve life under extreme peril.

Author : Davinder L. Bhowmik
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 249 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2008-08-18
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781135973018

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Writing Okinawa by Davinder L. Bhowmik Pdf

Writing Okinawa is the first comprehensive study in English of Okinawan fiction, from it’s emergence in the early twentieth-century through its most recent permutations. It provides readings of major authors and texts set against a carefully researched presentation of the region’s political and social history; at the same time, it thoughtfully engages with current critical perspective with perspectives on subaltern identity, colonialism, and post-colonialism, and the nature of "regional," "minority," and "minor" literatures. Is Okinawan fiction, replete with geographically specific themes such as language loss, identity, and war, a regional literature, distinct among Japanese letters for flourishes of local color that offer a reprieve for the urban-weary, or a minority literature that serves as a site for creative resistance and cultural renewal? This question drives the book’s argument, making it interpretative rather than merely descriptive. Not only does the book provide a critical introduction to the major works of Okinawan literature, it also argues that Okinawa’s writers consciously exploit, to good effect the overlap that exists between regional and minority literature. In so doing, they produce a rich body of work, a great deal of which challenges the notion of a unified nation that seamlessly rises from a single language and culture.

Author : Charles Joseph Gross
Publisher : Texas A&M University Press
Page : 396 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2002
Category : History
ISBN : 1585442550

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American Military Aviation by Charles Joseph Gross Pdf

Discusses major developments in aircraft, doctrine, training, and operations. The author also provides discussions of airlife, in-flight refueling, military budgets, industry, and inter-service squabbling. He deftly sketches the evolution of the air arms of each of the different services and provides clear analyisis of military budgets.

Author : Anne Sharp Wells
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 521 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2023-12-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9781538102565

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Historical Dictionary of World War II by Anne Sharp Wells Pdf

Historical Dictionary of World War II: The War Against Japan, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, a bibliography, and more than 500 cross-referenced entries on the military, diplomatic, political, social, economic, and scientific aspects of the war, in addition to the lives of the people who participated in and directed the war.