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Joe Rosenthal / AP
Taken on the island of Iwo Jima, Japan, U.S. Marines and a United States Navy hospital corpsman, raise a U.S. flag atop Mount Suribachi. These men fought alongside more than 70,000 Marines, sailors, and airmen on Iwo Jima, a tiny eight-square-mile speck of volcanic rock and sand
Okinawa was invaded on April 1, 1945 (Easter Sunday). It is 870 square miles. In 1879 the Japanese annexed the Ryukyu Islands, including Okinawa. These were the two bloodiest battles of the Pacific. Iwo cost 6,800 Marine lives and Okinawa cost over 14,000 lives.
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The Battle of Okinawa
The Combatants
U.S. land forces consisted of five divisions of the Tenth Army (7th, 27th, 77th, 81st, 96th) and two Marine divisions (1st and 6th), all commanded by Army Lieutenant-General Simon B. Buckner, Jr. With a total of 183,000 troops, the Okinawa invasion force was the largest single army under one command ever assembled during the War in the Pacific. The land forces were supported by the U.S. Fifth Fleet, which included 300 warships plus 1,139 other ships, commanded by Admiral Raymond Spruance, and by the British Pacific Fleet, which provided most of the aircraft carrier support and carried out most of the pre-invasion bombardment of Okinawa. 
Okinawa was defended by the Japanese 32nd Army, consisting of about 77,000 troops, commanded by Lieutenant-General Mitsuru Ushijima, and by about 20,000 natives who had been conscripted and formed into the Okinawa Home Guard. The Japanese also used the island's native population as pawns in the battle, often sending out civilians to draw enemy fire while Japanese soldiers laid in waiting to ambush American troops.
The Invasion
At 8:30 am on April 1st, a
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