Okinawa 1945 : Final Assault on the Empire

London: Arms and Armour, 1994. Near Fine condition in bright, shiny Near Fine Dust Jacket. No chips. No tears. No creases. No owner's name or bookplate. No remainder marks. Clean, square, tight, and unmarked. Illustrated with 64 pages of photos. Maps. Appendices. Select bibliography. Index. History of the action at Okinawa that focuses on the naval fighting. From the Dust Jacket: "Using official U.S. Navy and Marine Corps sources, as well as British Admiralty and Japanese records, Simon Foster has produced a dramatic narrative that fully reflects the hard-fought carrier actions, air strikes, Kamikaze assaults and battleship bombardments. Although the cost was indeed high, the success of [code-name Operation] 'Iceberg' convinced the Japanese that the Allies would not stop short of invading the mainland, convinced the Allies that such an invasion was inevitable -- but also convinced President Truman that the atomic bomb must be used against Japan." Continued: "Okinawa -- even more than Guadalcanal, Leyte and Iwo Jima -- this 60 mile long island in the Ryukus island chain typified the nature of the savagely fought Pacific War. The invasion of Okinawa by the Americans in April 1945 was the climax of the campaign against the Japanese that had begun more than three years earlier. It was the largest and most complex amphibious operation undertaken by the Americans in World War Two --and the most fiercely contested action in all the 'island-hopping' campaigns that had taken the Americans to the shores of Japan. Okinawa lies only 325 miles from the Japanese mainland and hence would make a superb staging post from which the B-29 bomber fleets could pound Japanese cities, and from where the inevitable and costly invasion of Japan itself could take place. Its capture was vital. So too, for the Japanese, was its defence, as part of the Absolute National Defence Zone, and the 32nd Army was created specifically to turn the island into a fortress. Together with the British Pacific Fleet, the American Task Force 58 launched the invasion -- code-named `Iceberg' -- on 1 April, and there followed 81 days of continuous fighting as the Japanese allowed the Americans to get a beachhead before following a policy of absolute resistance over every yard of the island. Attrition became the nature of the conflict -- by the end of the campaign for the island in June, Allied casualties were close to 50,000 men, with 22 ships sunk, more than 250 damaged, and over 500 aircraft lost. Few if any of the defending Japanese surrendered: the 77,000 strong 32nd Army had ceased to exist. This lively new study of the action at Okinawa emphasizes the naval fighting which was at the heart of the remarkable US operation. Only via absolute command and defence of the seas around Okinawa could the vast Task Force be supplied and maintained as an efficient fighting force. It is a tribute to the logistics support operations that such a large formation could be sustained and win a vital struggle." Keywords: WW2. WWII. Naval operations. Military history. . 1st ed? (No additional printings listed). Hard Cover. Publisher's blue boards/Jacket not priced or clipped. Illus. by Burton, Peter (maps). 8vo. 192pp. + 64 pages of photos.