Okinawa is the largest island in the Ryukyu Islands, located at the midpoint of the island chain between Kyushu and Taiwan Province Province of China, about 370 nautical miles away from each other. Okinawa is about100km long and10km wide, with a total area of1100km2. Compared with neighboring Iwo Jima, it can be regarded as a giant. Okinawa is shaped like a lying silkworm with its back arched, its tail pointing to Kyushu, China, and its head pointing to Taiwan Province Province, lying on the edge of the East China Sea. The island is densely forested, with rugged terrain and limestone caves all over the island, which is especially suitable for defense.
For Japan, Okinawa is the last pass in the Pacific Ocean. Once Okinawa falls, the control of the sea and air along the coast of China, North Korea and China will all be lost, and the maritime communication line to Southeast Asia, on which Japan depends, will be completely cut off.
1945 on the eve of the battle of Okinawa, both the United States and Japan are preparing for this battle. The Japanese base camp decided to revise the "Tian" operational plan that had been formulated, and prepared to concentrate 3,000 aircraft, more than half of which were special attack aircraft, deployed in the Strait of Taiwan Province Province, Ryukyu Islands and Kyushu, China.
On the morning of April 1945 and 1, the US military began to carry out a powerful naval gun and air fire assault on Okinawa Island, and carried out maritime mine clearance and underwater blasting operations to clear the way for amphibious tanks and other vehicles to land. At 8 o'clock sharp, more than 1 ships of the 6th and 1 divisions of the US Marine Corps and the 7th and 96th infantry divisions lined up in black from north to south, divided into eight landing waves, and pressed against the white sand beach head 9 kilometers north and south of the plume. At 8: 30, the amphibious armored assault vehicle LVT carrying infantry took the lead in rushing to the beach under the guidance of amphibious tanks. When the vanguard troops landed on the scheduled beach, the tank battalion of the first echelon division began to land. Surprisingly, the landing process did not encounter any resistance, just like an exercise in peacetime.
With the retreat of the Japanese army, the fate of the fall of Okinawa has been doomed, and the Japanese army began to force Okinawa residents who did not want to commit suicide to "dedicate themselves" to the emperor. According to the statistics of post-war Okinawans, 45 of the 130 residents in a small village in Kyushu, Okinawa were forced to commit suicide. About 65,438+0,200 people were killed in Zuojianwei village, which consists of 265,438+0 small islands, among which 402 people were forced to commit collective suicide by the Japanese army. On the Qingliangjian Islands in Okinawa, the phenomenon of collective suicide among residents is more common and serious than other places.
The battle of Okinawa lasted for three months, and a total of about 450 thousand Okinawa residents died 94 thousand people. According to post-war statistics, most Okinawa residents who died in this battle were not killed by American guns, but were forced to commit suicide or killed by Japanese troops. This painful history has become a haze that Okinawa people can't dispel. In the Okinawa Museum, there is still a sculpture, which vividly depicts the scene of Japanese soldiers violently forcing seven Okinawa people to commit suicide with bayonets.