The Mind-Boggling Fighting
The months of April, May, and June of 2020 mark the 75th year since the Battle of Okinawa in what is known today as the concluding phase of World War II. It’s hard to imagine that it felt like a “concluding phase" at the time.
Okinawa, the 82-day fight on that weirdly shaped tropic paradise, was not only the largest battle of the Pacific War, the World War II ocean life-and-death struggle between Imperial Japan and the United States.
Okinawa was the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific War, a swift reminder of the Normandy Invasion of the Allies against Nazi Germany half a world away, which had occurred on D-Day, less than a year prior.
And the Battle of Okinawa was larger than the Normandy Invasion in a sense as the Allied naval force brought together for the Okinawa landing was even larger than the one at the coast of Northern France – even if the invasion force was somewhat smaller. In fact, it was the largest naval force to have ever been assembled for battle.
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