(See Cover)
A ruddy-faced, white-thatched, driving apostle of the vigorous life sent the new U.S. Tenth Army driving deeper into Okinawa last week. Commands flowed from him in his normal conversational tones—roars, shouts and bellows. His celebrated laugh rolled out. Said one who had heard it: "It starts with a little chuckle in his throat and then he really lets go and shakes the walls."
The staff, hearing that laugh, knew that Lieut. General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr., after 37 years of soldiering, was content with his first taste of major battle. Until now, fate had teased him. He had learned to fly in World War I, then had been denied overseas service. At the start of World War II, commanding in Alaska, he was sitting in a strategic hot spot, seemingly destined for speedy, decisive action; but the war, lightly singeing his area, had swirled southward, leaving him in the quiet northern shadows.
Impatiently Buckner had stamped over the tundra, tended Alaska's defenses and watched the war. He played no part when U.S. forces cleared the lower Solomons. He and his men stood aside while troops and ships put out from California to drive the Japanese off Kiska and Attu islands, in his own front yard.
Buckner was still in Alaska, still watching, when Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz launched the drive across the Central Pacific that was to cut a fiery path through Tarawa, Makin, Kwajalein, Eniwetok, Saipan, Tinian, Guam, Peleliu, Angaur, Iwo Jima. Battles were fought with companies, regiments, divisions. That march was still in progress last June, when Buckner at last got the word to go to Washington, then to Hawaii to organize a full-fledged army.*
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.
His units had surged forward from their beachheads against a scattered, disorganized resistance, swiftly capturing more than a fourth of the 60-mile-long island. Under Major General Roy S. Geiger, the leathernecks of the III Marine Amphibious Corps had pressed north, reached through the Ishikawa Isthmus to the neighborhood of Kin. Under Major General John R. Hodge, the doughboys of the XXIV Army Corps had moved south toward Naha, the island's capital.
At first the Japs faded before these thrusts. Casualties were light. Yontan Airfield, one of the most valuable military objectives on the island, was taken at a cost of two dead and nine injured. A Marine battalion, hunting the elusive enemy, managed to find and kill but four in 24 hours. Wrote one-Army colonel to another: "Please send us a dead Jap. A lot of my men have never seen one. We'll bury him for you."