| The last major land battle in the Pacific led President Harry Truman to hope for ways of preventing "an Okinawa from one end of Japan to the other." Uneventful landings on April 1, 1945 masked the horror that was to come. As American forces entered the ridges and caves in the middle of the island, they faced wave after wave of Japanese attacks. The Okinawa Peace Memorial Museum lists 240,931 killed during the battle including 14,009 Americans. |
