For Extraordinary Heroism
The Secretary of the Navy awarded Presidential Unit Citations to the 1st and 6th Marine Divisions, the 2d Marine Aircraft Wing, and Marine Observation Squadron Three (VMO-3) for “extraordinary heroism in action against enemy Japanese forces during the invasion of Okinawa.” Marine Observation Squadron Six also received the award as a specified attached unit to the 6th Marine Division.
On an individual basis, 23 servicemen received the Medal of Honor for actions performed during the battle. Thirteen of these went to the Marines and their organic Navy corpsmen, nine to Army troops, and one to a Navy officer.
Within IIIAC, 10 Marines and 3 corpsmen received the award. Eleven of the 13 were posthumous awards. Most, if not all, deceased Medal of Honor recipients have had either U.S. Navy ships or Marine Corps installations named in their honor. The Okinawa Medal of Honor awardees were:
Corporal Richard E. Bush, USMC, 1/4; HA 1/c Robert E. Bush, USN, 2/5; [*]Maj Henry A. Courtney, Jr., USMC, 2/22; [*]Corporal John P. Fardy, USMC, 1/1; [*]PFC William A. Foster, USMC, 3/1; [*]PFC Harold Gonsalves, USMC, 4/15; [*]PhM 2/c William D. Halyburton, USN, 2/5; [*]Pvt Dale M. Hansen, USMC, 2/1; [*]Corporal Louis J. Hauge, Jr., USMC, 1/1; [*]Sgt Elbert L. Kinser, USMC, 3/1; [*]HA 1/c Fred F. Lester, USN, 1/22; [*]Pvt Robert M. McTureous, Jr., USMC, 3/29; and [*]PFC Albert E. Schwab, USMC, 1/5.
[*] Posthumous award
Sources
The Washington National Records Center in Suitland, Maryland, holds primary documents of the Okinawa campaign. The III Amphibious Corps After Action Report provides the best overview, while reports of infantry battalions contain vivid day-by-day accounts. The Marine Corps Oral History Collection contains 36 interviews with Okinawa veterans, among them Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr.; Pedro A. del Valle; Alan Shapley; Edward W. Snedeker; and Wilburt S. Brown. The Marine Corps Historical Center also holds Oliver P. Smith’s outspoken account of his Okinawa experiences as Marine Deputy Chief of Staff, Tenth Army, as well as the original interrogation report of Colonel Hiromichi Yahara, Operations Officer of the Japanese Thirty-second Army.
Among the official histories, the most useful are Benis M. Frank and Henry I. Shaw, Jr., Victory and Occupation, vol V, History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II (Washington: HistBr, G-3 Div, HQMC, 1968); Charles J. Nichols, Jr., and Henry I. Shaw, Jr., Okinawa: Victory in the Pacific (Washington: HistBr, G-3 Div, HQMC, 1955); and Roy E. Appleman, et al, Okinawa: The Last Battle (Washington: OCMH, Department of the Army, 1948). Two excellent unit histories provide detail and flavor: George McMillan, The Old Breed: A History of the 1st Marine Division in World War II and Bevan G. Cass, History of the 6th Marine Division (Washington: Infantry Journal Press, 1948). Jeter A. Isley and Philip A. Crowl provide an analytical chapter on Okinawa in U.S. Marines and Amphibious War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951). Robert Sherrod provides lively coverage of Marine Air units in the campaign in his History of Marine Corps Aviation in World War II (Washington: Combat Forces Press, 1948).
More recent accounts of note include George Feifer, Tennozan: The Battle of Okinawa and the Atomic Bomb (New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1992), and Thomas M. Huber, Japan’s Battle of Okinawa, April-June 1945 (Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas: U.S. Army Command and Staff College, 1990). A particularly dramatic, first-person account is “A Hill Called Sugar Loaf” by 1stSgt Edmund H. DeMar, USMC (Ret), in Leatherneck (Jun95).
The author benefited from interviews with LtGen Victor H. Krulak, USMC (Ret), BGen Frederick P. Henderson, USMC (Ret), Mr. Benis M. Frank, and Dr. Eugene B. Sledge.
The author is also indebted to MajGen James L. Day, USMC (Ret) and LtCol Owen T. Stebbins, USMCR (Ret), for extended personal interviews—and to the entire staff of the Marine Corps Historical Center for its professional, courteous support.
About the Author
Colonel Joseph H. Alexander, USMC (Ret), served 29 years on active duty as an assault amphibian officer, including two tours in Vietnam and service as Chief of Staff, 3d Marine Division, in the Western Pacific. He is a distinguished graduate of the Naval War College and holds degrees in history from North Carolina, Jacksonville, and Georgetown.
Colonel Alexander, an independent historian in Asheville, North Carolina, wrote Closing In: Marines in the Seizure of Iwo Jima and Across the Reef: The Marine Assault on Tarawa in this series. His book, Utmost Savagery: The Three Days of Tarawa (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1995), won the 1995 General Wallace M. Greene Award of the Marine Corps Historical Foundation. He is also co-author (with Lieutenant Colonel Merrill L. Bartlett) of Sea Soldiers in the Cold War (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1983).
THIS PAMPHLET HISTORY, one in a series devoted to U.S. Marines in the World War II era, is published for the education and training of Marines by the History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, Washington, D.C., as a part of the U.S. Department of Defense observance of the 50th anniversary of victory in that war.
Editorial costs of preparing this pamphlet have been defrayed in part by a grant from the Marine Corps Historical Foundation.
WORLD WAR II COMMEMORATIVE SERIES
DIRECTOR EMERITUS OF MARINE CORPS HISTORY AND MUSEUMS
Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons, USMC (Ret)
GENERAL EDITOR,
WORLD WAR II COMMEMORATIVE SERIES
Benis M. Frank
CARTOGRAPHIC CONSULTANT
George C. MacGillivray
EDITING AND DESIGN SECTION, HISTORY AND MUSEUMS DIVISION
Robert E. Struder, Senior Editor; W. Stephen Hill, Visual Information
Specialist; Catherine A. Kerns, Composition Services Technician
Marine Corps Historical Center
Building 58, Washington Navy Yard
Washington, D.C. 20374-5040
1996
PCN 190 003135 00
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors and unbalanced quotation marks were corrected.
To make this eBook easier to read, particularly on handheld devices, some images have been made relatively larger than in the original pamphlet, and centered, rather than offset to one side or the other; and some were placed a little earlier or later than in the original. Sidebars in the original have been repositioned between chapters and identified as “[Sidebar (page nn):”, where the page reference is to the original location in the source book. In the Plain Text version, the matching closing right bracket follows the last line of the Sidebar’s text and is on a separate line to make it more noticeable. In the HTML versions, that bracket follows the colon, and each Sidebar is displayed within a box.
Page [16]: “unleased” probably is a misprint for “unleashed”; “coming in take station” probably is a misprint for “coming in to take station”.
Page [31]: “the forthcoming attack on of Japan” was printed that way.
Page [50] (originally on page 49): “which later what would be called” was printed that way.