Rao bulletin 1 October 2016 html edition this bulletin contains the following articles pg Article Subject
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- Military History Anniversaries ► 01 thru 15 OCT
- Medal of Honor Citations ► Dunlap, Robert H.
- The President of the United States in the name of The Congress takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor to
Sugarloaf Hill For twelve mostly rainy days, the Marines fought the Japanese over this seemingly insignificant hillock, no more than three football fields in size. On eleven different occasions, the hill was assaulted. Men sprang into action, clamoring up the hill, only to be shelled and shot at with such accuracy and ferocity that they were forced to retreat. It became apparent that all three of these small hills would have to be taken together due to the covering fire each hill provided the others. May 16, 1945 proved to be an especially trying day, as four times the 6th Marines reached the summit, and four times were driven back. The frustration for the Marines was that the hills they were trying to storm looked like barren little humps covered with tree stumps left by Navy gunfire. There was no outward indication of all the caves and tunnels inside. In fact, most Marines never even saw the Japanese firing at them. The morning of May 18, 1945 provided the breakthrough. The 1st Marines were able to take Wana Ridge, which housed Japanese 75mm guns used to shell Sugar Loaf. This allowed tanks to be brought in to encircle the hill, and to provide suppression along with artillery while Marines worked to dynamite and seal the caves. Ushijima's efforts to reinforce Sugar Loaf failed under intense American artillery, and the 6th Marines stood atop Sugar Loaf Hill, never to relinquish it. But the cost was tremendous. Over nearly two weeks, regiments had been reduced to company strength, and companies to platoons. Many platoons were wiped out to a man. More than 1,600 Marines died in the fight for this 50-foot-high strongpoint, with another 7,400 wounded. The fight for Sugar Loaf Hill would come to epitomize the brutal battle of attrition that was the experience not only in the fight for Okinawa, but also in many far-flung island battles of the Pacific campaign. After Sugar Loaf, the 6th Marine Division advance through Naha, conducted a shore-to-shore amphibious assault on the Oroku peninsula where they battled Admiral Ota's forces for 10 days. The battle on Okinawa ended on June 21, 1945. The 6th Marines were credited with over 23,839 enemy killed or captured, and with helping to capture two-thirds of the island, but at the cost of heavy casualties, including 576 on one day, May 16 at Sugar Loaf Hill-a day described as the "bitterest" fighting of the Okinawa campaign. One man's actions stood out on Sugar Loaf Hill: Marine Corporal James L. Day rallied two dwindling squads of men for 3 days, from May 14-17, to hold a shell hole on the hill against repeated and relentless waves of Japanese attacks. By the third day, he had lost all but one member of the two squads to enemy fire, and had saved the lives of most of his wounded men by carrying them back down the hill to safety by himself one at a time. He did this while resupplying his shell hole every night with raids on a couple disabled LVTs at the bottom of the hill, and while providing lethal covering fire for many other Marine assaults on the hill. Corporal Day and his surviving squad mate, with multiple burns and fragmentation wounds, only abandoned their position when ordered to do so after the third day, to allow a massive bombardment of the complex. He left the bodies of over 100 dead Japanese soldiers stacked within feet of his shell hole, most of whom he had killed himself, many of them in hand-to-hand combat. Corporal Day eventually retired as a Major General. He received the Medal of Honor for that action, but not until nearly 56 years later, and just 9 months before he passed away. The battle of Okinawa had been among the most brutal of the Pacific War. The commanding generals on both sides died: Lt. Gen. Simon B. Buckner by Japanese artillery fire, Gen. Ushijima Mitsuru by suicide. Other U.S. losses in ground combat included 7,374 killed, 31,807 wounded, and 239 missing in action. The Navy suffered its greatest casualties for a single engagement with 4,907 killed or missing aboard 34 ships sunk and 368 damaged; 763 aircraft were lost. At sea and in the air, the Japanese expended roughly 2,800 aircraft, plus a battleship, a light cruiser, and four destroyers, with losses that can be estimated at upwards of 10,000. More than 150,000 Japanese - many of them civilians - were killed during the battle. Photo is Lt. Gen. Buckner foreground and Maj. Gen. Geiger standing next to him. Despite the casualties, preparations were quickly underway for the long-anticipated invasion of Japan. All hands turned to in order to begin preparations to invade Kyushu. Already, Army Air Forces bomber groups that had been in Europe on V-E Day joined Marine Tactical Air Force units operating from Okinawa's airfields and thousands of American, British and Canadian carrier-based aircraft in the pre-landing bombardment that was to lay waste to the southernmost Home Island before a contemplated October invasion was set in motion. On July 2, 1945, while Marine and Army division rested, trained, and prepared for the expected invasion of mainland Japan, the first atomic bomb was tested in New Mexico. An alternative to invasion was now a definite possibility. The morning of August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima. Three days later, Nagasaki suffered a similar fate. A few days later the Japanese surrendered. No mainland invasion would take place; the fighting was over. For a short video on the Sugar Loaf, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t19rs7sQvfA. [Source: Together We Served | Dispatch | April 2016 ++] ***************************** Military History Anniversaries ► 01 thru 15 OCT Significant events in U.S. Military History over the next 15 days are listed in the attachment to this Bulletin titled, “Military History Anniversaries 01 thru 15 OCT”. [Source: This Day in History http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history | September 2016 ++] ***************************** Medal of Honor Citations ► Dunlap, Robert H. 
The President of the United States in the name of The Congress takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor to Directory: uploads uploads -> 587 Return function, r i(X) r i(0) r i(1) r i(2) r i(3) 1 0 2 4 6 Thermal Station, I 2 0 1 5 6 3 0 3 5 6 10 uploads -> Department of science and humanities department of mathematics part-a questions and answers uploads -> The Case Against the nypd’s Quota-Driven ‘Broken Windows’ Policing What Is It? uploads -> For want of a nail uploads -> Ownership Models There are two different types of ownership models uploads -> Police Militarization uploads -> City of rising star regular meting thursday, july 14, 2016 uploads -> Township of winfield uploads -> Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act of 2014 uploads -> The Black Panther Party’s Ten-Point Program What We Want Now! Download 7.71 Mb. Share with your friends:
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