Pacific: The Lost Evidence Okinawa (2006– ) watch online HD

In April, 1945, American Marines and soldiers landed without opposition on the Japanese island of Okinawa, with the intention of clearing it and using it as a staging area for the invasion of the Japanese home islands. Okinawa itself was home to 400,000 civilians, a third of whom would be killed in the battle and another third wounded.

But at first there WAS no battle, to everyone's relief. The Navy stood offshore with supply ships and war ships. The Marines moved northward and the Army moved to clear the southern end of the island, and that's when the ball began. The Japanese were outnumbered but well supplied and had had ample time to burrow underground bunkers and tunnels, taking advantage of the many ridges and rolling hills of the south's terrain. The Army was stopped by a wall of artillery and small arms fire when they reached the first line of resistance.

Progress by the Marines towards the northern end of the island was difficult as well but they finally prevailed. It's not in the film but there were jokes and complaints about the slow progress of the Army compared to the Marines, who were then sent south to get the job done. It took more than two months for the soldiers and Marines together to get the job done, because the Shuri defense line in the south was, as the narrator describes it, the most formidable obstacle of the Pacific war. Bunkers and tunnels ran from one end of the island to the other. There were hospitals and officer's quarters and other amenities. Some rooms were 160 feet below the ground. The Japanese had planned skillfully. The rocky hillsides had openings only eighteen inches wide through which a machine gun could fire, and the positions were laid out in such a way that each position provided covering fire for neighboring positions.

And that was only the first line of defense. It couldn't be breached by frontal attack so the Marines managed to flank it after an extremely costly battle. Then the Americans ran into a defense line organized around Shuri Castle and had to battle their way through it. At the same time, torrential rains turned the field into a sea of mud, hindering the transport of supplies.

Meanwhile at sea, attacks by the Imperial Japanese Navy were parried but kamikaze suicide airplanes come in a three-day hailstorm. The United States Navy sustained the largest loss of ships in its history with thirty-six lost and 368 damaged. The Navy also sustained the largest loss of life in a single battle with almost 5,000 killed and an equal number wounded. the United States Tenth Army would incur its greatest losses in any campaign against the Japanese. The Tenth Army initially was made up of 183,000 army, navy, and marine personnel. During those eighty-two days, the Tenth Army would lose 7,613 men and over 30,000 men would be evacuated from the front lines for a minimum of a week due to wounds. Moreover, the largest numbers of U.S. combat fatigue cases ever recorded would occur on Okinawa. The Japanese lost about 100,000 determined troops.

There is a bitter irony in the fact that taking the island of Okinawa turned out to be unnecessary. Three weeks later, two atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Japan surrendered. But, as President Truman said about his decision to use nuclear weapons, he didn't want another Okinawa from one end of Japan to the other.

The film is mostly documentary footage with some brief and judicious reenactments and the usual number of eyewitnesses and participants, all American. The narration is balanced and doesn't sound like a celebration of national heroism. Nicely done, overall.

There are some excellent books available on the battle for the island, including memoirs by Eugene Sledge and William Manchester and a thorough study of American, Japanese, and Okinawan cultures by George Feiffer.