Word: naha
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Dates: during 1945-1945
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Whoever held 300-ft. Sugar Loaf controlled the western approach to Shuri castle, as well as the eastern flank of Naha, Okinawa's capital city. Leathernecks of Major General Lemuel C. Shepherd's 6th Marine Division assaulted Sugar Loaf nine times, and were four times blown off the crest before they could move down the far side. Hundreds of Japs piling out of caves and tombs were slaughtered by the 6th's tanks...
...Shuri. For six days the 77th Infantry Division fought seesaw battles for the top, and finally won it. The Japs also counterattacked Conical Hill and clung to positions on the south slope, barring access to the west coast port of Yonabaru. On the east coast, Marine patrols found Naha a stinking, corpse-littered ruin...
Behind flame-throwing tanks, U.S. Tenth Army troops inched forward. On the west coast the crack, new 6th Marine Division fought its way into the suburbs of Naha. In the center the 1st Marine and 77th Army Divisions pressed closer to Shuri. On the east coast the 96th Army Division captured Conical Hill dominating the Yonabaru airstrip; then doughboys swept ahead to take the airfield itself. Again & again the Japanese came out of mud-filled foxholes and caves to counterattack...
...Okinawa the future moved in on the Japanese, gun in hand. New York's 27th Division, its regiments adding new laurels to laurels won in the Civil War and World War I, captured the northern half of the Machinate airstrip, reached within two and one half miles of Naha, the capital...
Right across the island, units were reporting the same kind of resistance. Along the ridge the Japanese had developed an elaborate interconnected system of caves and pillboxes, some of the pillboxes two and three stories deep in the ground. And beyond this ridge was another fortified ridge, from Naha to Yonabaru...