Word: ryukyu
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...kind the burrowing Japs like. Among the ridges, spurs, knobs and gullies were innumerable caves and underground passages, to which the Japs added their own dugouts and pillboxes. In one tunnel they had laid narrow-gauge rails to move artillery. They moved into the stone tombs in which Ryukyu Islanders bury their dead, and reinforced them with concrete...
Initial Gains. Buckner's first target turned out to be Okinawa, central and largest island in the Ryukyu chain stretching from Japan to Formosa. There Admiral Nimitz mounted an amphibious operation, surpassed only by those of Sicily and Normandy, to hurl the troops ashore. And by week's end Buckner knew that his Tenth had caught the Japanese by surprise and had scored a smashing initial success...
...western Pacific U.S. forces stormed into the key Ryukyu Islands, less than 400 miles from Japan's heartland, against opposition which was, at least in the beginning, fantastically light. Ice-calm Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz relaxed his studied reserve enough to admit: "Our final decisive victory is assured...
Descendants of the ancient Ainus,* now mixed with Japanese, Chinese and Polynesian strains, the 600,000 people of the Ryukyu Islands had been treated as second-class citizens by the Japanese, and have little reason to love their rulers. But they have also been taught that Americans were barbarians who would violate and torture their women, torture and kill their men. And then the Americans came...
...attack narrowed down to the main objective: poverty-stricken, malaria-ridden, snake-infested Okinawa, largest and staunchest rung in the Ryukyu ladder. Once firmly established on Okinawa, Americans could climb up the 370 miles to Kyushu, Japan's southernmost main island, or climb down 365 miles to Formosa, potential springboard for landings in China...