Operation Iceberg
The Invasion and Conquest of Okinawa in World War II
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
Gerald Astor, author of The Mighty Eighth, draws on the raw, first-hand accounts of marines, sailors, soldiers, and airmen under fire to recount the dramatic and gripping story of the last major battle of World War II.
“[Astor] is a master… This is oral history at its best—direct, illuminating, capturing sights and sounds and feelings and actions that never make it into official reports or more formal military histories… I recommend this book without hesitation or reservation.”—Stephen E. Ambrose
On the sea the Japanese rained down a deadly hail of kamikazes. On land the entrenched defenders had nowhere to retreat, and the US Army and Marines had nowhere to go but onward, into the thick of some of the of the most bloody close-quarters fighting in World War II.
This was Okinawa, the savage pitched battle waged just months before the US nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. Operation Iceberg, as it was known, saw the fiercest attack of kamikazes in the entire Pacific Theater of War. And here Gerald Astor lets the soldiers tell their stories firsthand: of flame-thrower attacks and hand-to-hand confrontations, of atrocities, deadly ambushes and brutal hilltop sieges that left entire companies decimated. Operation Iceberg is the raw, hard-edged account of war at its most brutal—and the last great battle of World War II.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
On April 1, 1945, a combined Army-Navy-Marine force landed on Okinawa for what turned out to be the last major battle of WWII. In Astor's panoramic overview, nearly 100 American and Japanese survivors recall the fighting, each voice bearing out the author's contention that ``the savagery of combat on Okinawa over a period of three months epitomized war at its worst.'' By June 20, 1945, General Simon Buckner's Tenth Army had conquered the island, though Buckner himself had been killed two days before. Statistics alone convey the epic scale of the battle: 12,520 American and 110,071 Japanese killed; 763 U.S. and 7700 Japanese planes destroyed. In this first-rate account of the tactical ebb and flow, Astor (Battling Buzzards) brings into focus the bitter rivalry between the Army and Marines during the campaign. And he incidentally tells the story of the last days of Ernie Pyle, the war's most celebrated correspondent, including details of Pyle's little-known sojourn with the Marines. Pyle was killed by a sniper on April 18, 1945. Photos.
