Читать книгу The Final Campaign: Marines in the Victory on Okinawa - Joseph H. Alexander - Страница 8
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The Japanese Forces
Marines and Army infantry faced strong opposition from more than 100,000 troops of Lieutenant General Mitsuru Ushijima’s Thirty-second Army, although American intelligence initially estimated Ushijima’s strength at only 60,000 to 70,000. Most of the Thirty-second Army’s reinforcing organizations had traveled to Okinawa from previous posts in China, Manchuria, and Japan.
The first to arrive was the 9th Infantry Division, a crack veteran unit destined to be the backbone of Ushijima’s defense forces. The next reinforcement was the 44th Independent Mixed Brigade which lost part of its strength when one of the ships carrying the brigade to Okinawa was torpedoed. Next, the 15th Independent Mixed Regiment was flown directly to Okinawa and was added to the remnants of the 44th. The next large unit to reach Okinawa was the 24th Infantry Division, which came from Manchuria. Well equipped and trained, it had not yet been blooded in battle. Lieutenant General Takeo Fujioka’s 62d Infantry Division was the final major infantry unit assigned to the Thirty-second Army. It was a brigaded division, consisting of two brigades of four independent infantry battalions each. Two more of these battalions arrived on Okinawa in September 1944 and one was allocated to each brigade.
Because Imperial General Headquarters (IGHQ), the joint Army and Navy command in Tokyo, foresaw the battle of Okinawa as one of fixed defenses, Ushijima was not assigned any appreciably strong armored force other than the 27th Tank Regiment. In view of the hopeless situation in the Philippines and the inability to deliver supplies and reinforcements, IGHQ diverted large weapons shipments, if not troops, to Okinawa. The Thirty-second Army thus possessed a heavier concentration of artillery under a single command than had been available to any other Japanese organization in the Pacific at any one time. The total enemy artillery strength, less the 42d Field Artillery Regiment, which was organic to the 24th Division, was grouped within the 5th Artillery Command. In addition to the comparatively weak 7th Heavy Artillery Regiment, Major General Kosuke Wada’s command consisted of two independent artillery regiments, and the artillery elements of the 44th Brigade and the 27th Tank Regiment. In addition, he had the 1st and 2d Medium Artillery Regiments with 36 howitzers and the 100th Heavy Artillery Battalion with eight 150mm guns. Wada also had in his command the 1st Independent Heavy Mortar Regiment, which fired the 320mm spigot mortar earlier encountered by Marines on Iwo Jima. Although the 1st and 2d Light Mortar Battalions were nominally part of Wada’s organization, their 96 81mm mortars were assigned in close support of the infantry and controlled by the defense sector commanders.
The reserve of potential infantry replacements varied from good, in the 23d and 26th Shipping Engineer Regiments, to poor, at best, in the assorted rear area service units. The largest number of replacements, 7,000 men, was provided by the 10th Air Sector Command, which was comprised of airfield maintenance and construction units at the Yontan, Kadena, and Ie Shima air strips. Another source of infantry replacements were the seven sea raiding squadrons, three of which were based at Kerama Retto and the remainder at Unten-Ko in the north of Okinawa. Each of those squadrons had a hundred picked men, whose sole assignment was to destroy American amphibious invasion shipping during the course of landing operations by crashing explosives-laden suicide craft into the sides of attack transports and cargo vessels.
Ushijima’s naval component consisted of the Okinawa Naval Base Force, the 4th Surface Escort Unit, and various naval aviation activities all under the command of Rear Admiral Minoru Ota. In this combined command were approximately 10,000 men, of whom only 35 percent were regular naval personnel. The remainder were civilian employees belonging to the different sub-units of the Naval Base Force. Part of Ota’s command consisted of torpedo boat, suicide boat, and midget submarine squadrons at the Unten-Ko base on Motobu Peninsula.
Rounding out the Thirty-second Army was a native Okinawan home guard, whose members were called Boeitai. These men were trained by the army and were to be integrated into army units once the battle for Okinawa was joined. The Boeitai provided Ushijima with 17,000–20,000 extra men. Added to this group were 1,700 male Okinawan children, 14 years of age and older, who were organized into volunteer youth groups called “Blood and Iron for the Emperor Duty Units,” or Tekketsu—Benis M. Frank
