Japan Marks 70th Anniversary of Battle of Okinawa Tuesday June 23,2015

 

Japan marks the 70th anniversary Tuesday June 23,2015 of the end of the Battle of Okinawa, the bloodiest episode in the Pacific War, which killed a quarter of the island's population.

More than 100,000 Okinawans and 80,000 Japanese troops died in the 82-day battle for the strategically placed island chain.
Over 12,000 American soldiers also perished in what many feared was a foretaste of the fight they would have to wage for the Japanese mainland.

Note

The Battle of Okinawa, codenamed Operation Iceberg,was fought on the Ryukyu Islands of Okinawa and included the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific War during WWII

The 82-day-long battle lasted from early April 1945 until mid-June 1945 - April 01 to June 22,1945

The battle has been referred to as the "typhoon of steel" in English, and tetsu no ame ("rain of steel") or tetsu no bōfū ("violent wind of steel") in Japanese.The nicknames refer to the ferocity of the fighting, the intensity of Kamikaze attacks of from the Japanese defenders, and to the sheer numbers of Allied Ships and armored vehicles that assaulted the island

Japan lost 77,166 soldiers, who were either killed or committed suicide, and the Allies suffered 14,009 deaths (with an estimated total of more than 65,000 casualties of all kinds)

Simultaneously, 42,000–150,000 local civilians were killed or committed suicide, a significant proportion of the local population