On April 17, 1945, as the war in the Pacific neared its crescendo, a tall nineteen-year-old farm boy from a small town outside Lexington, Tennesee, stood on the deck of the USS Trousdale (AKA-79), bound for Okinawa. His name was Preston Nowell, a quiet son of the South turned Navy man, staring into the thick haze of war. The Battle of Okinawa had already been raging for over two weeks. The horizon was lined with the silhouettes of warships, the air occasionally pierced by the dull thud of distant artillery or the shriek of aircraft. He must have felt the weight of it–the scale, the stakes, and the sobering knowledge that every crate offloaded, every landing craft deployed, was feeding a battle that had already cost thousands of lives. He may have thought of home, of quiet fields and familiar voices, now replaced with the steel clang of ship decks and the ever-present hum of danger. But like countless others of his generation, he stayed at his post and did his duty.
The USS Trousdale was a Tolland-class attack cargo ship, built in Wilmington, North Carolina, by the North Carolina Shipbuilding Company, designed to support amphibious assaults with troops, equipment, and supplies. These vessels weren’t meant to make headlines– they were workhorses of the fleet, essential to every landing, every push inland. When the Trousdale arrived off Hagushi Beach, it joined a massive naval force supporting American troops on the ground, who were fighting desperately for control of Okinawa’s rugged terrain. Nowell and his shipmates began unloading supplies under the cover of battleships and destroyers firing inland. But as the sun set on that first day, another threat emerged from the skies.
The Trousdale and the Road to Japan
Okinawa was the last stepping stone before the Japanese mainland–just 350 miles from Kyushu. Its airfields and harbors would be essential for staging a full-scale invasion. For both American and Japanese commanders, Okinawa was do-or-die. The island’s strategic value turned it into a crucible of desperation and sacrifice.
The danger intensified as the kamikazes came. Okinawa saw the largest and most sustained wave of kamikaze (Japanese for ‘divine wind’) attacks in the entire war–a grim testament to Japan’s desperation.
By the time the Trousdale arrived offshore, three organized kamikaze operations had already taken place. The ship would remain off Okinawa during Operation Kikusui IV (‘Floating Chrysanthemums’), a massive aerial assault involving hundreds of Japanese Navy aircraft–including 115 kamikaze planes. These suicide pilots concentrated their fury on the very ships the Trousdale stood among: the transports, landing ships, and supply vessels that were vital to sustaining the American push inland. For sailors like my great-grandfather, every hour on deck was spent under the looming threat that their ship could be next.
Under a Kamikaze Sky
At the time, the kamikaze threat was both deadly and new. The Japanese had only begun deploying suicide aircraft in October 1944, during the lead-up to the liberation of the Philippines. By April 1945, the tactic had become central to Japan’s last-ditch defense strategy. We now have the hindsight of eighty years to understand these suicide pilots in a similar light as we understand Al-Qaeda’s suicide bombers: fanatics weaponizing their own death as a tool of terror. But for the American fleet, this was an unprecedented problem. An April 1945 memo from United States Fleet Headquarters said: “The suicide attack represents by far the most difficult antiaircraft problem yet faced by the fleet. The psychological value of AA, which in the past has driven away a large percentage of potential attackers, is inoperative against the suicide plane. If the plane is not shot down or so severely damaged that its control is impaired, it almost inevitably will hit its target.”
No amount of training or gunnery skill could erase the terror of facing an enemy with no intention of surviving the encounter.
These weren’t theoretical threats; they were real, low-flying Japanese planes, loaded with explosives and piloted by men determined to die. For sailors aboard the Trousdale, every sudden drone of an engine could be a harbinger of death. Lookouts scanned the skies nervously, and gunners remained at the ready, their hands sweating on hot steel. There was no time for reflection when the alarm sounded–only action. The tension was suffocating, the stakes absolute. One missed shot, one delayed warning, and a plane could plunge into the deck, killing dozens and sending the ship–and all aboard–into a watery grave. Even when the skies cleared, the dread remained. Sleep came only in fits, interrupted by the knowledge that the next wave might come before dawn.
The Battle of Okinawa would last nearly three months, becoming the bloodiest conflict of the Pacific War. More than 240,000 lives were lost–Americans, Japanese soldiers, and Okinawan civilians caught in the crossfire. It was a grim and final test of wills, a warning of what an invasion of the Japanese home islands might look like. And it changed the course of history. The staggering casualties and the relentless Japanese resistance helped shape President Truman’s decision to use atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki later that summer. In that sense, Okinawa was not just a battle; it was a brutal calculus that forced the world to the edge of modern warfare.
Eighty Years On: What We Must Remember
But for me, the Battle of Okinawa is not just a turning point in a textbook–it is part of my family’s story. Nowell survived those days off Hagushi Beach. He remained aboard the Trousdale through the war's end and into the occupation period, spending the autumn of 1945 ferrying supplies and occupation forces to Korea and transporting U.S. Marines to China. He was honorably discharged from the Navy in March 1946 and, just a few months later, married Jewell Dean McDaniel–known simply as Dean–on June 26. The following year, in October 1947, they welcomed their only child, Janice Kay Nowell, who has always gone by Kay and is my maternal grandmother. Preston returned to civilian life in Henderson County, Tennessee, and built a quiet, skilled career as an industrial sewing machine technician. The Trousdale, having completed its mission, was decommissioned in 1946.
He passed away in December 1999, when I was just fifteen. I remember him as a reserved but joyful man with steady hands and kind eyes, never boastful or dramatic. Like many veterans of his era, he didn’t talk much about the war. I wish I had asked more. I wish I had known the right questions. But I have a photo of him–tall and composed in his dress whites, standing next to a fellow sailor. It’s a moment frozen in time, and a window into the courage of a generation that bore liberty’s weight on its shoulders.
Yesterday, April 17 marked eighty years since the Trousdale arrived at Okinawa. America is on the precipice of celebrating 250 years since its own birth, and eighty years since the war that shaped the modern world order. As we recall great movements of history, we should also remember the young men who made them possible–not only the generals and admirals, but also the farm boys from Tennessee, the shipbuilders from coastal towns, and the sailors standing night watch under a kamikaze sky. Their courage helped end a world war. Their legacy lives in every moment of peace we enjoy today. And their stories are worth remembering.
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