Comparing The Savagery Of The Battle Of Peleliu And Okinawa

The Pacific Theater of World War II was known for its savage, close quarters fighting where neither side was willing to give an inch to the other. United States soldiers were ambushed at almost every point during their island hopping campaign in the Pacific. The battles of Okinawa and Iwo Jima were textbook examples of how much blood had to be shed in order to take a small island away from the Empire of Japan. In my essay, I will examine the savagery of the fighting through the lens of the Battle of Peleliu and Okinawa.

Firstly, the Battle of Peleliu took place between September 15th, 1944 and November 27th of that same year. The island was small and many military officers considered it a safe target to practice the strategy of island hopping,

With the enemy so close to your own camp, it’s hard to not be filled with immeasurable dread and fear as you go through your down time at camp. The Japanese attitude towards surrendering added to the savagery of the fighting. Part of the indoctrination into the Japanese military was the idea of Bushido, a code developed by Japanese samurai in how to govern themselves. The Empire of Japan modernized its teachings to apply to the modern world. One aspect of this new code was the idea of it being far more honorable to die in battle than to surrender to an enemy force. This led to many Japanese soldiers and officers either killing themselves when the battle was lost or engaging in a final suicide charge at the United States soldiers. Fake surrendering, letting yourself be run over by a tank to blow up its tracks, and ambushes where the Japanese would charge with reckless abandon to fight the soldiers in hand to hand combat were all commonly deployed at both Peleliu and beyond. Many of the American soldiers began to mistrust every “surrendering” soldier they came across and would kill them purely as a preventative measure. When the United States did take prisoners,

What made Okinawa unique was it was the second of two battles fought on original Japanese soil. The first battle was the Battle of Iwo Jima. The battle of Okinawa saw similar fighting to that at Peleliu, with two noticeable differences. Firstly, the Japanese were much more desperate to defend their homeland than the other islands, so suicide attacks and ambushes were much more frequent than ever before. The Japanese would use their knowledge of the terrain and environment to their advantage, creating ambush points out of the nearby jungle foliage and setting up tripwires for unlikely combatants. These traps would infuriate the Allied soldiers as they felt they could never fight the Japanese army head on, instead slowly grinding down their forces in these calculated ambushes by the Japanese defenders. Sledge wrote that due to his experiences in battling the Japanese at Peleliu, he had found the terrain itself to be the maddening part of the battle. The second factor that made Okinawa particularly bloody was the weather. Constant rain and mud throughout the island made it difficult for the modern United States army to push through the island. Oftentimes, men would have to camp on wet, uneven ground. Another issue with the fighting at Okinawa was this battle featured more night skirmishes than previous battles. Japanese night raids on Allied camps were prevalent throughout the war but at Okinawa,