Resuming its attack on 21 June the Fourth Marines turned from frontal assaults and flanking attacks to a double envelopment from the rear. Early in the morning the two flank battalions sent companies around either extremity of the ridge and at 0800 struck the enemy’s rear in a coordinated attack. For two hours the enemy fought back bitterly but could not halt the assaulting Marines. With the fall of the Kiyamu-Gusuku Ridge all organized resistance in the Sixth Marine Division’s zone of action ceased.
During all but thirteen of the eighty two days that the Okinawa Campaign lasted, the Sixth Marine Division was committed and actively engaged. Credited to the division were 23,000 Japanese killed and over 3,500 captured. The division had captured over two thirds of Okinawa and had repeatedly fought the enemy on his own terms, and his own ground. During this operation the Sixth Marine Division had taken heavy losses; 400 officers and 7,822 enlisted men were either killed or wounded. In the drive from the Asa River to the Kokuba, the division had lost the equivalent of a regiment of men. Not included in the above figures are men lost due to non-battle casualties, sickness, or combat fatigue.
After reaching the southern coast the Sixth Division turned to retrace its steps back to the Kokuba, mopping up enemy remnants at it went.
The first week in July found the Sixth Marine Division busy with preparations for the trip to the new base camp on Guam. On 4 July there was an impressive ceremony held to dedicate the division cemetery. Although the division was preparing to leave Okinawa, it paused briefly to pay its respects to those of its members who would have to remain forever behind. In the last paragraph of the special order of dedication, General Shepherd admonished his men as follows:
“As this cemetery is dedicated to the dead and to the past that they made glorious by their heroic sacrifices, let there be in the minds of the members of this division the resolve to dedicate their future efforts to speeding the impending final defeat of the enemy to the end that there will no longer be occasion for the sacrifice that the honored dead of our division were called upon to make on this island.”
9. GUAM
On 16 July General Shepherd and his staff arrived at Guam and set up his new command post. By direction of Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, a base camp had been built for the Sixth Marine Division on Guam. As soon as the units had moved into their new areas, construction was begun on chapels and recreation facilities. A division training order was issued on 23 July outlining a program to last from 6 August to 15 December 1945.
On 26 July General Shepherd published a letter of gratitude from the people of Guam to the officers and men of the Sixth Marine Division. Written on the occasion of “Guam Liberation Day”, 21 July, one year after the Fourth and Twenty Second Marines had landed on the bloody beaches near Agat, the letter, signed by several leading Guamanians said in part:
“On behalf of the people of Guam we take this opportunity, as a token of everlasting gratitude, to extend our greetings and felicitations to you, the officers and men of the First Provisional Brigade which formed the nucleus of the Sixth Marine Division, with its supporting arms and services, on the first anniversary of D-Day.
“Through popular request, the twenty first of July has been designated as ‘Guam Liberation Day’. It is fitting and proper that we renew and reaffirm our loyalty and devotion to our mother country and the cause for which she stands.”