Few battles in human history were as brutal as the
US invasion of Okinawa,
but what happened to the bodies of the countless soldiers
and civilians who died?
The Battle of Okinawa was the last major conflict of
World War Two,
ending a mere two months before the US dropped atomic
bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the Western Front.
Germany surrendered in May 1945 right in the middle of
the battle,
meaning that Okinawa was essentially the conventional combat capstone to
both the Pacific theater of operations and the war as
a whole.
It was also one of the most brutal battles of
the war.
Japanese soldiers proved more than willing to defend the island
or die trying.
Kamikaze rockets, torpedoes, ships, and planes bombarded US vessels,
and the situation on land wasn't much better.
U.S. Marine Eugene Sledge described the battle in his book
With the Old Breed,
which would later become the basis for the HBO series
The Pacific,
he wrote. The scene was nothing but mud,
shellfire, flooded craters with their silent,
pathetic, rotting occupants, knocked out tanks and
Amtrak's and discarded equipment. Utter desolation.
There's not a day goes by that I don't think
about it.
Nearly 1/4 of a million Japanese soldiers and civilians died
over 83 days on Okinawa,
and the US suffered one of the costliest battles in
the country's history.
In fact, the fighting was so vicious that it left
President Truman rattled.
As Joseph Whelan explained in his book Bloody Okinawa,
The Last Great Battle of World War Two,
Whelan wrote, they could see how costly it would be
to invade the mainland.
The island would just be a charred cinder.
In this sense, the brutality of Okinawa,
as well as Iwo Jima before it directly influenced the
decision to drop atomic bombs of Japan.
Death was everywhere in Okinawa.
The battlefield was full of the residue of battle,
as one 77th Infantry Division soldier once wrote,
including the bodies of Japanese soldiers and civilians lying torn
asunder.
Ghastly as it sounds, the front lines were close enough
for the living to head out every single day,
retrieve what remains it could,
and bring them back for burial.
These remains were interred at temporary cemeteries further away from
the combat areas.
There were six such cemeteries in total across Okinawa,
and
they were just snuffed out.
After Japan officially surrendered on September
2nd, 1945, the United States Department of War set about
retrieving the men who'd been buried at these temporary cemeteries.
In total, authorities recovered
10,243 such individuals and sent their remains to Saipan,
north of Guam in the Pacific Ocean.
At that point, next of kin determined whether they wanted
to remain sent back to the US or kept in
a military cemetery overseas.
Official death tolls for U.S.
troops from Okinawa reached about
12,575 hundred ground units and 5000 soldiers.
Given the number of bodies recovered,
this means that over 2000 Americans never made it to
EU s s temporary cemeteries.
The Battle of Okinawa might have been the final major
battle of World War 2,
but it was the first and last battle of the
war fought within Japan's national borders.
Okinawa itself had been absorbed into Japan in
1875. Prior to that, Okinawans were their own people who
had lived in their own Kingdom for over 400 years.
When the US attacked Okinawa in
1945, all of its history ended up in the crossfire
as well as hundreds of thousands of civilians.
Many more Okinawan civilians died during the Battle of Okinawa
and the Japanese soldiers up to
150,000 civilians versus more than 70,000 soldiers.
As a battle raged on,
locals could do nothing but flee S through active battlefields
until there was nowhere left to run,
PBS quotes wanted survivors saying.
We saw dead bodies, crying and screaming people,
and a person who was begging to be shot to
death.
It was total chaos. It fell to those same locals
to gather the dead.
After the war ended. They built monuments around Okinawa as
they burned the fallen until the Japanese government finally intervened
in
1955. Uncollected remains were gathered together in Naha,
Okinawa's capital, but the actuary there proved too small.
The bones were then moved to Itoman,
South of Naha, where they were collectively cremated and interred
as part of a memorial complex.
Not all of those who died during the Battle of
Okinawa were moved to temporary cemeteries on the US side
or collected and burned on the Japanese side.
Numerous sources provided glimpses into the worst possible outcome for
many of the deceased on both sides.
Desecration teeth, skulls and ears were the US military's most
commonly collected form of so-called war trophies and often carried
around by combatants and in some cases,
sent back home. Life magazine's May
22nd, 1944 Picture of the Week famously featured a young
US woman gazing at a Japanese skull on her desk,
sent to her by her Navy boyfriend,
staggering testament to how normalized abuse of human remains became
during the Pacific War.
For 70 years, they didn't hear anything,
and then they get a phone call to say their
relative had been found.
It was like their father was coming home.
The remains of those who fell in Okinawa continue to
be found to this day,
largely thanks to active search efforts.
In 2021, for example, 8 individuals were found in a
cave in Okinawa,
S, an Okinawan official told the Asahi Shimbun.
In the past seven to eight years,
the remains of one to three people are typically found
in a single location.
Finding more than five remains is unusual.
More recently, in 2023, the remains of 46 women and
one child were discovered together.
The nonprofit Kuentai USAA Joint Japanese American Venture,
remains devoted to uncovering and repatriating those still unaccounted for
on Okinawa and other Pacific islands.
Formed in 2014, they found
16,000 soldiers in the Philippines and 800 in Saipan.
To date, they have since turned their attention to Okinawa.
The organization even holds a list of named still missing
US servicemen.
The clock is ticking, too.
In 2021, the Japanese Ministry of Defense announced the plan
to build a new US military base on Okinawa.
Public protests aimed at the development pointed out that construction
is likely to damage the remains of those killed during
the war.
Even the remains left elsewhere are now almost 80 years
old and rapidly decomposing.
As Quinta USA says, if the remains are not repatriated
sooner,
there would be nothing to identify when the remains are
all disappeared.