For Once, Men Could Laugh

From Okinawa this week TIME Correspondent Robert Sherrod, veteran observer of the battles of Attu, Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima, radioed:

Nothing stranger has occurred in the Pacific war than the Tenth Army landings on Okinawa. Soldiers and marines stepped ashore with slightly more opposition than they would have had in maneuvers off the coast of California. To say merely that they were bewildered is to gild the lily of understatement. Where was the withering machine-gun fire? Where were the murderous 320-mm. mortars, the gin. rockets? Where were the fanatic Japs? They were not defending the west coast of Okinawa from north of Kadena southward half way to Naha (see map).

Within three hours after the shock of invading against negligible opposition, a famed Marine regiment walked across Yontan airfield, one of the biggest in Okinawa Gunto, less than 400 miles from Kyushu. Casualties (from halfhearted snipers): very light. Planes could make emergency landings on the airfield now. A few hours of Seabee sweating would make it an excellent take-off point for medium bombers to fly to China, to Japan, to Formosa--all approximately 400 miles distant--and to knock out whatever chance the Japs might have left of shipping anything from the south or southwest to the homeland. The soldiers of one seasoned division captured the Kadena fighter strip by knocking out a solitary machine gun.

The general attitude of the Americans was reflected by Lieutenant Lawrence Bangser, veteran Marine raider: "Either this Jap general is the world's greatest tactician or the world's most stupid man." Before noon on L-day (Loveday in the voice signal alphabet), the Jap general had lost Okinawa beyond reprieve. The tanks had arrived, the artillery was arriving to augment the planes and naval gunfire. The fleet's big guns had not been necessary in the immediate sense of killing Japs, but they had perhaps discouraged the halfhearted Jap general.

Easter Eggs? There will undoubtedly be hard fighting here. Jap discouragement has yet to reach the point of refusal to fight. But the strange little men lost their best chance of killing a lot of Americans when their general decided not to defend the west beaches. Perhaps the Jap commander was so certain that we would land on the east or south that he put all his eggs in eastern or southern baskets. His pillboxes on the western beaches were jerry-built of scrub-pine logs, lightly covered with sand and coral. Only a few bursts were fired from his guns and mortars at the landing amphtracks, and none caused a casualty.

The sand was deep and the beach rose rather sharply; it would have been difficult to assault under heavy fire. Built into the hillsides were dozens of coral block burial vaults. They are relics of the ancient Chinese culture of the Okinawans rather than of their 70 years of Japanese domination. Neatly kept, the vaults are about 10 by 10 ft. and about 6 ft. high. The vaults have steps inside on which iron or earthen urns were placed. Some of the urns are three feet high, others only half as large. The urns contain the skulls and bones of departed Okinawans.

Inside one vault, which had been hit by a shell, lay a coffin made of wooden slats. It contained the body of a recently-dead Okinawan. The islanders let their dead remain in unburied coffins for three years. Then they put the bones in urns and hold annual ceremonies in the vaults.

Easter Present. The vaults would have made formidable machine-gun posts from which to have swept the beaches. But there was only one instance of the Japs making such military use of the vaults.

I walked uphill to the regimental command post of one of Annapolis' great athletes. From the high ground I could see about 1,000 of the 1,400 ships involved around Okinawa. The Colonel said that some of his men were browned off because there had been no opposition on the beaches. They had been built up to such a high pitch of combat efficiency that they were bound to feel let down and slightly sheepish. Said the Colonel: "This is the finest Easter present we could have received. But we'll get a bellyful of fighting before this thing is over."

This was the kind of invasion every correspondent who knew the marines had wanted to cover. Those who had been at Iwo Jima were sick of blood, sick of seeing almost every friend killed or wounded. On the way to division headquarters we saw a stunted Okinawa horse. It was carrying a grinning marine's pack. Lieut. Colonel Victor ("The Brute") Krulak, stubby veteran of the Solomons, guffawed: "The first real pack horse I've ever known." On Love Day on Okinawa men could laugh.

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