more at http://quickfound.net/links/military_news_and_links.html "On the activities of the 1st and 6th Marine Divisions on the island. A "Corsair" plane lays a smoke screen to protect tanks crossing a field north of Naha under Japanese artillery fire. Marines follow tanks across open terrain, and mop up Japanese hillside positions after the tanks' flamethrowers have been used. Artillery bombards Shuri. Heavy rains bury vehicles, artillery, and munitions in water. Food and ammunition is passed up a hill via a human chain; supplies dropped from "Corsairs" are collected. Bazookas are used against Japanese strong points to open a road west of Shuri. Demolished Shuri Castle is inspected and corpses examined. Artillery bombards Naha; Marines move into its outskirts firing rifles and machine guns; tank guns reduce enemy strongholds. Marines cross a pontoon bridge, laid over mud flats, and enter a suburb of Naha. Naval guns, mortar fire, and low-level bombing blast the city. Pack charges are used to detonate buildings during house-to-house fighting. An unopposed landing is made below Naha; Marines advance inland to high ground, carry their wounded to the rear, clean out caves with flamethrowers and satchel charges, and capture Naha airstrip. Tank flamethrowers and phosphorus grenades are used to fire cane fields driving Japanese from cover. Planes drop firebombs into wooded areas. Japanese POW's, stripped to their loin cloths, are marched to the rear." Public domain film from the US National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied. The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa The Battle of Okinawa, codenamed Operation Iceberg, was fought on the Ryukyu Islands of Okinawa and was the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific War of World War II. The 82-day-long battle lasted from early April until mid-June 1945. After a long campaign of island hopping, the Allies were approaching Japan, and planned to use Okinawa, a large island only 340 mi (550 km) away from mainland Japan, as a base for air operations on the planned invasion of Japanese mainland (coded Operation Downfall). Four divisions of the U.S. 10th Army (the 7th, 27th, 77th, and 96th) and two Marine Divisions (the 1st and 6th) fought on the island. Their invasion was supported by naval, amphibious, and tactical air forces. The battle has been referred to as the "typhoon of steel" in English, and tetsu no ame ("rain of steel") or tetsu no bōfū ("violent wind of steel") in Japanese. The nicknames refer to the ferocity of the fighting, the intensity of kamikaze attacks from the Japanese defenders, and to the sheer numbers of Allied ships and armored vehicles that assaulted the island. The battle resulted in the highest number of casualties in the Pacific Theater during World War II. Based on Okinawan government sources, mainland Japan lost 77,166 soldiers, who were either killed or committed suicide, and the Allies suffered 14,009 deaths (with an estimated total of more than 65,000 casualties of all kinds). Simultaneously, 42,000–150,000 local civilians were killed or committed suicide, a significant proportion of the local population. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki together with the Soviet invasion of Manchuria caused Japan to surrender less than two months after the end of the fighting on Okinawa...

• published: 01 Jan 2015
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