"Ushijima missed the boat on his withdrawal from the Shuri Line," General Buckner declared on 31 May as he reformed his ranks for the pursuit and final destruction of the 32d Army. "It's all over now but cleaning up pockets of resistance. This doesn't mean there won't be stiff fighting but the Japs won't be able to organize another line." Other officers also did not credit the enemy with the ability to execute an orderly withdrawal.{487} This optimism proved soon to be largely unfounded. It was to be learned that the enemy had withdrawn his forces from Shuri effectively and in time to organize a new line in the south. The enemy's maneuver, though it did not result in setting up a formidable line of defense, was to necessitate more than three crowded weeks of pursuit and fighting by the American troops to bring organized resistance to an end.
On 31 May General Buckner extended the Army boundary along the road joining the villages of Chan, Iwa, and Gushichan. He ordered his two corps to complete the encirclement of Shuri in order to cut the remaining Japanese troops into large segments. General Buckner and his staff still hoped to isolate a large portion of the 32d Army and prevent its withdrawal from Shuri; thus the two corps were directed to converge at Chan "in order to pocket enemy north this point." III Amphibious Corps was then to secure Naha and its airfield while XXIV Corps drove rapidly southeast to prevent the enemy from retiring into the Chinen Peninsula. General Buckner expected the Japanese, without skilled men or adequate transportation or communications, and hindered by boggy roads, to experience trouble and disorder during their mass retreat.{488}
Mud was a major concern of American commanders. Nearly twelve inches of rain had fallen during the last ten days of May and more was expected during the first part of June. Although 400 trucks had been used on 30 May to dump coral and rubble into the mudholes on Route 5, the main north-south road through the center of Okinawa, it was closed the following day to all but the most essential traffic. Other supply routes along the east and west coasts were in almost impassable condition. At the time when General Buckner ordered his troops to "drive rapidly," supply trucks were moving toward the front only as fast as they could be dragged by winches or bulldozers through the numerous quagmires. Units on each flank were using boats or amphibian tractors to transport supplies from rear areas to forward dumps, but they still faced the problem of moving food and ammunition from the beaches to the front-line foxholes. Center divisions were under a still greater strain. Much of the ammunition, food, and water was carried forward by reserve units—sometimes by men from the assault companies.
Map No. 51: The Push South
"We had awfully tough luck," said General Buckner, "to get the bad weather at the identical time that things broke." His deputy chief of staff considered the mud to be as great a deterrent to the attack as a large-scale enemy counterattack.{489}
The XXIV Corps occupied the southernmost positions of the American front. General Hodge shifted the 7th Division toward the east and ordered the 96th to move south, relieve the 32d Infantry, and take up the western end of the Corps line. The 77th Division became responsible for protecting the rear of the 96th and for mopping up the part of the Shuri line which was in the XXIV Corps sector. By evening of 31 May, the 7th and 96th Divisions reached the Corps' objective, and they were ready to start south on the following morning.{490}
The lines of the III Amphibious Corps stretched from Shuri to a point 1,000 yards southeast of Naha; its nearest position was more than 3,000 yards from the dominating ground near Chan where General Buckner still hoped to converge spearheads of his two corps and to reduce Ushijima's force to segments. This hope disappeared by the night of 31 May, when the performance of the 96th and 7th Divisions indicated that General Ushijima had already accomplished his sly withdrawal despite the difficulties of mud and communications. When it became apparent that the Japanese withdrawal had frustrated American hopes of splitting the enemy forces, Tenth Army revised its plans and permitted the III Amphibious Corps to attack down the west coast and the 7th Division to proceed down the east flank.{491} (See Map No. 51.)
When the attack toward the south began on the first day of June, it was planned that the Marines should destroy the remaining Japanese rather than isolate them. Patrols from the III Amphibious Corps soon discovered that only a thin shell of defenses remained near Shuri. General Geiger decided, therefore, to push the 1st Marine Division directly south to seal the base of Oroku Peninsula, and he also made plans for an amphibious landing by the 6th Marine Division on the tip of the peninsulas.{492}
Four miles south of the front line loomed another coral escarpment, the largest on the Okinawa battlefield. This was the Yuza-Dake-Yaeju-Dake, which formed a great wall across the southern end of the island that had been visible since the early days of the campaign. The central part of the island between the American front lines of 31 May and the Yaeju-Dake consisted of a series of comparatively small rounded hills and uneven low ridges; a few larger hills stretched across the base of the Oroku Peninsula on the west side of the island. The highest hills south of the landing beaches were on the east side of southern Okinawa and on Chinen Peninsula, which consisted entirely of hilly ground except for the narrow strip of flat land at the shore.
Dense fog banks covered southern Okinawa on the morning of I June. Visibility extended for only a few yards and mud was ankle-deep as the Americans attacked south to catch up with Ushijima's escaped army before it should have time to burrow into a new defensive line. On 1 June the Japanese defended two hills in front of the 7th Division, and during 1-2 June they made a solid stand in the zone of the 96th near Chan. Otherwise there was only spotty resistance of delaying and nuisance value until 6 June. On that day the pace of the American troops was retarded by vigorous enemy action to the front and by the overextension of the supply lines of the front-line units.{493}
Most of the hills were either defended by thin enemy forces or had been completely abandoned, and a lack of skill was noticeable among the enemy troops encountered. As American troops approached their positions the Japanese offered ineffectual fire until the attack drew close, and then frequently tried to escape by running across open ground. They became easy targets for riflemen and machine gunners, who were quick to see and respect skill in their opponents and as quick to feel disdain for spiritless mediocrity. S/Sgt. Lowell E. McSpadden, a member of the 383d Infantry, expressed the attitude of the infantrymen toward these inferior troops when he stepped up behind two Japanese soldiers without being seen, tapped one on the shoulder, and then shot both with a .45 caliber pistol which he had borrowed for the purpose.{494}
Map No. 52: Oroku and Yaeju-Dake
After the first day of the pursuit, rain was more troublesome and constant than enemy interference. The 184th Infantry waded south and east over the green and rain-soaked hills on Chinen Peninsula against light opposition that indicated an absence of enemy plans for a defense of that area. General Arnold, moving to speed up operations, committed the 32d Infantry to patrolling the northern part of the peninsula.{495} Late in the afternoon of 3 June, patrols from the 1st Battalion, 184th, reached the southeast coast of Okinawa near the town of Hyakuna and completed the 7th Division's first mission: It had been, General Buckner said, a magnificent performance.{496}
General Hodge doubted that his corps could have continued its pace had it not been for previous experience in the marshes of Leyte.{497} Only flimsy resistance faced the 1st Marine Division, but its supply system had collapsed and the battalions had to rely upon air drops or carrying parties. By 3 June the gap in depth between the two corps had increased to 3,000 yards, and the 383d Infantry was subjected to harassing fire from its exposed right flank. To protect his corps' flank, General Hodge sent the 305th Infantry, 77th Division, south to fill the increasing void.{498}
In the meantime the 2d Battalion, 5th Marines, crossing the Corps boundary north of Chan, attacked southwest through Tera and secured Hill 57 and the high ground south of Gisushi, thus reducing the gap to 1,000 yards.
With the elimination of possible defensive terrain on Chinen Peninsula and in central southern Okinawa, it was becoming evident by the evening of 3 June that General Ushijima intended to stage his final stand on the southern tip of the island, almost certainly on the Yaeju-Dake Escarpment, which lay within the zone of the III Amphibious Corps. Moreover, if the XXIV Corps maintained its pace for one or two days longer, as seemed likely, it would have secured its portion of southern Okinawa. In order to deny the enemy a breathing spell before the final period of combat, General Buckner shifted the Corps' boundary to the west so that the entire escarpment fell within the zone of the XXIV Corps. Effective at noon on 4 June, the boundary between the corps changed from the road connecting Iwa with Gushichan to the road connecting Iwa with Yuza, Ozato, and Komesu.{499} (See Map No. 52.)
MUD AND SUPPLY were major problems in pursuing the Japanese southward from Shuri. Success depended largely on ability to move American supplies over bad roads. Tractor (above) is pulling a reconnaissance car uphill from portable bridge in the hollow. When roads became impassable to motor vehicles (below), horses were used.