Enter the Giretsu

BATTLE OF THE PACIFIC

Our Giretsu (unsurpassed loyalists) special attack airborne units, commanded by Captain Michio Okuyama, daringly landed amid the enemy in Kita and Naka airfields on the main Okinawa Island. . . . Upon landing they promptly blasted grounded enemy aircraft, munitions depots and airfield installations in rapid succession and are achieving great war results by throwing the enemy into confusion--Japanese Communique.

It was a bright, moonlit night when antiaircraft guns around Yontan airstrip in west central Okinawa burst into their barking din. A brisk enemy air raid was on. Suddenly, to the amazement of Marine pilots and mechanics, a Japanese twin-engined bomber, its wheels still retracted, glided in and scraped down the runway to a fairish belly landing. This was the debut of the Giretsu branch of Japan's fantastic suicide warriors.

From the grounded plane scrambled some 15 Japanese soldiers. Like a football team, they huddled around an officer who shouted orders. Then they scattered toward the parked U.S. fighter planes and bombers. Rear-area technicians (some of whom had never before seen a Japanese close) grabbed carbines and rifles, pitched in to fight a battle that lasted almost two hours. The Japs managed to burn a few U.S. planes, but by dawn the invaders were dead, some of them by their own grenades.

Checking up later, U.S. officers found four more Japanese troop carriers crashed near the airstrip with some 70 occupants dead, and estimated that the original Giretsu attack had included up to twelve plane loads. Apparently the "unsurpassed loyalists" hoped to wreck the airfield, then filter into U.S. lines for sabotage.

In the Near Future. The crumpled Giretsu attack was part of a major Japanese air offensive on Okinawa. Eleven light naval units were damaged and a total of seven U.S. planes lost, but the foray cost the slipping Japanese air force 166 planes.

Nor were the Japanese more successful in the land fighting. While rain turned the ground into watery, reddish mud, and stalled virtually all transportation but weasels (tracked jeeps), U.S. troops wormed gradually around the Japanese defense line in the south. In the east infantrymen captured the seaport village of Yonabaru and swept on in a flanking drive. The Japs withdrew hastily, for the first time abandoning large supply dumps intact. On the west marines secured Sugar Loaf and Half Moon Hills, at week's end held half of Naha.

Vice Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner, commander of the U.S. Pacific Amphibious Forces, inspected the land front. Said he: Okinawa will be completely won in the "comparatively near future." Less inhibited prophets were betting on two to three weeks.

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