The Vortex

There were 50 Marines on top of Sugar Loai Hill. They had been ordered to hold the position all night, at any cost. By dawn 46 of them had been killed or wounded by Japanese hand grenades. Then, into the foxhole where the remaining four huddled, the Japs dropped a white phosphorus shell, burning three men to death. The last survivor crawled down to an aid station.

Fighting was like that last week on Okinawa. In one Jap counterattack, a U.S. company was reduced from 240 effectives to two, and three company commanders were killed by artillery. In another Jap assault, which lasted from dusk until the next afternoon, U.S. cooks, bakers and clerks were shoved into the fighting line.

Like Saipan and Iwo Jima, Okinawa was a base absolutely essential to the U.S. plan; it had to be taken, no matter how bloody the price. It was clear now that the final price would faithfully reflect Okinawa's ample size (921 square miles) and its suitable nearness to Japan (325 miles). For the moment, Okinawa was the vortex of the war.

The Stout Castle. The broken, ugly terrain--reddish clay, volcanic ash, coral outcroppings--was the kind the burrowing Japs like. Among the ridges, spurs, knobs and gullies were innumerable caves and underground passages, to which the Japs added their own dugouts and pillboxes. In one tunnel they had laid narrow-gauge rails to move artillery. They moved into the stone tombs in which Ryukyu Islanders bury their dead, and reinforced them with concrete.

For a bolt position in the center of their line, the Japs had the ancient citadel of Shuri, visited by Commodore Perry in 1853. In Shuri castle, biggest and stoutest structure on the island, the Ryukyu kings had lived before the Japs took over, a quarter-century after Perry's visit. Last week a U.S. battleship scored 25 direct hits on the castle, but the shells bounced off, said an observer, like "rubber balls."

Whoever held 300-ft. Sugar Loaf controlled the western approach to Shuri castle, as well as the eastern flank of Naha, Okinawa's capital city. Leathernecks of Major General Lemuel C. Shepherd's 6th Marine Division assaulted Sugar Loaf nine times, and were four times blown off the crest before they could move down the far side. Hundreds of Japs piling out of caves and tombs were slaughtered by the 6th's tanks.

Chocolate Drop, a 130-ft. reddish-brown mound, was another tough obstacle on the way to Shuri. For six days the 77th Infantry Division fought seesaw battles for the top, and finally won it. The Japs also counterattacked Conical Hill and clung to positions on the south slope, barring access to the west coast port of Yonabaru. On the east coast, Marine patrols found Naha a stinking, corpse-littered ruin.

The battle was being won slowly, by killing Japs. Some 48,000 out of the original defense force (80,000 to 85,000) had been put out of action. U.S. casualties were also high--more than 30,000 of whom 8,000 were dead or missing--but the U.S. units could expect reinforcements and the Japs could not. The Tokyo radio took a "grave view" of the situation on bloody Okinawa.

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