Corporal John C. Corbett of the 8th Marines had won a signal honor. He picked up a stone and hurled it with all his strength from the low cliffs of southern Okinawa into the blue waters which lapped the shore. That stone's splash meant that the eleven-week drive by U.S. forces from the center of the island had at last reached the southern tip.
The last-ditch Japanese defenders were split into pockets no more than a thousand yards square; Fleet Admiral Nimitz announced that organized resistance had ended. There was mopping-up still to be done: a few hundred of the...
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