The Battle for Okinawa: A Japanese Officer’s Eyewitness Account of the Last Great Campaign of World War II

Description

Author: Yahara, Hiromichi (Colonel) (1902-1981)

Publisher: John Wiley

Pub Date: 1995

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Book: Good.  Binding tight.  No marks, tears, bends or folds.  Very light edge and corner wear.  Appears unused.  Dust Jacket: Fair to Good.  NOT price clipped.  Some edge wear along upper front cover.

Notes: Yahara was the highest ranking Japanese officer to survive the battle for Okinawa during World War II.  The battle lasted for more than three months, cost the lives of more than 12,000 Americans, and probably ten times that number of Japanese soldiers and Okinawan civilians.  Robert Leckie, who fought with the Marines at Okinawa, in his history of the battle, called Yahara the only realist among the Japanese General Staff.  “I considered all the possible scenarios by which the war in the Pacific might reach the Ryukyus, and arrived at the following forecast.  There were two principal axes of operations along which the American forces could move….Advancing along one axis, the American forces would capture the Marianas and proceed on a direct course to the Ryukyus.  Even if the Marianas were taken a direct attack on the Ryukyus would require crossing two thousand kilometers of open seas.  U.S. forces in the Marianas would need time to prepare for such a difficult undertaking.  An attack from that direction would probably not come before the autumn of that year (n.b. 1944).  The other probable axis of operation would follow the chain of islands from New Guinea through the Philippines and Taiwan to the Ryukyu Archipelago.  This attack would also proceed in leapfrog fashion and require the capture of all but a few islands along the way….I judged this latter axis of operation to be the more probable.   At every available juncture I openly declared that the fate of our army would be decided when the cherry trees blossomed in 1945.”  (Page 7)  After the war Yahara was accused of dishonor and betrayal, for his failure to die with other members of the General Staff of the Japanese 32nd Army.