HILL 95, near Yaeju-Dake, with Gushichan in foreground.
One of these probing actions made a slight penetration of the enemy's line and soon revealed the nature and volume of the enemy fire power protecting the final Japanese line. Nearest the Big Apple Peak was the 381st Infantry, first to venture into the Yaeju-Dake and the first to be driven back. West of the Big Apple was a secondary escarpment, like a step, about halfway to the top. Col. Michael E. Halloran ordered the 1st Battalion to explore this area and, if possible, to seize a lodgment on the lower part of the escarpment which would permit an attack against the Big Apple from the west and against the flank of the enemy's most dominating fortification.{507}
On the morning of 6 June the battalion commander, Maj. V. H. Thompson, leapfrogged his companies through Yunagusuku against only half-hearted opposition and then sent Company B, under Capt. John E. Byers, forward to test the escarpment wall. Three squad-sized patrols crept through bands of fire from machine guns, some of which were so far inside caves that they could not be destroyed with grenades, and reached the lower of the two escarpments. The rest of the company followed, and Thompson ordered Company C to move abreast and left of Byers' men. It was midafternoon, and the first attempt at penetration of this largest escarpment on Okinawa was proceeding with promise of success. Company C started across the open rice paddies to the base of the cliff, and Company B moved up a steep trail leading to the intermediate level of the escarpment. This movement went beyond the line of enemy delaying action and into the area where General Ushijima had ordered his army to "bring all its might to bear" to break up the American attack and exact a heavy toll of the attacking force. "To this end," he instructed, "the present position will be defended to the death, even to the last man. Needless to say, retreat is forbidden."{508}
The Japanese waited patiently until both companies were in a belt of pre-registered fire, then opened up with machine guns and 20-mm. dual purpose guns in sufficient quantity to lace both companies with beads of automatic fire. Major Thompson immediately started to organize a withdrawal and employed ten battalions of artillery to drop smoke shells in front of his trapped men. Even this was inadequate and many of the troops did not return until after dark. Company C lost five men killed and as many wounded. Casualties in Company B for the day totaled 43, including 14 missing. Of the missing men, 4 were dead, 2 returned the following morning, and the other 8 were trapped behind enemy lines. Three of the trapped men were subsequently killed by friendly or enemy fire, and the remaining five stayed in enemy territory until the morning of 14 June, although they tried to escape on each of the eight intervening nights.
For the next three days the 96th Division blasted the coral escarpment with artillery and air strikes and watched it closely for possible gun positions and strong points. The heaviest fighting occurred on the extreme eastern flank of the 7th Division, where Company B, 184th Infantry, faced unyielding opposition on a tapered ridge that pointed northeast from the tip of Hill 95. One of the roughest single terrain features on Okinawa, this 800-yard-long ridge was a jumbled mass of coral that was as porous as sponge and as brittle and sharp as glass. There were several fortified positions on the ridge as well as numerous cavities which protected individual enemy riflemen. The entire ridge was also under fire and observation from other positions on Hill 95. The advance was tedious, and the company made only slight progress. The largest gain from 6 to 9 June was in the zone of the 17th Infantry, which forced advances up to 1,800 yards and occupied the green knolls at the base of the escarpment. These small hills were not heavily defended but they were exposed to enemy fire from the face of the Yaeju-Dake and from the tableland above.{509}
The 32d Infantry, which had rounded up about 20,000 Okinawa civilians during six days of patrol activity on Chinen Peninsula, moved south on the afternoon of 8 May and effected relief of the 184th. Road conditions were improved and a large quantity of supplies reached Minatoga on 8 June; two companies of medium tanks were near the front lines and others were moving forward. General Arnold planned to strike the first blow against the new Japanese line and ordered the attack to commence at 0730 on 9 June. There were two immediate objectives. The task of reducing Hill 95 and the rough-hewn coral ridge that lay in front fell to the 1st Battalion, 32d Infantry, commanded by Lt. Col. Robert C. Foulston; the 3d Battalion, 17th Infantry, under Lt. Col Lee Wallace, was to secure a lodgment on the southern and low end of the Yaeju Dake at a point just north of the town of Asato.
Dawn patrols proceeded unmolested toward the coral ridge in front of Hill 95, but the Japanese reacted quickly before the remainder of Company C of the 32d Infantry, which carried the burden of the attack, had moved 100 yards.
As long as the men kept their heads down the enemy fire subsided, but any attempt to move forward attracted rifle and machine-gun and knee-mortar fire which blasted sharp chips from the coral formation. The company commander, Capt. Robert Washnok, held up the frontal assault, placed artillery shells on Hill 95, used about 2,000 mortar shells on his objective, and then tried working a platoon forward on the Gushichan side to eliminate two strongly defended knobs near the end of Hill 95. This effort was partially successful; the men killed thirteen Japanese and located the source of the most troublesome automatic fire, but toward evening they had to be recalled.
The first and greatest obstacle confronting Wallace's attack was the open ground over which both assault companies had to move. Wallace used all available support and the men camouflaged themselves with grass and rice plants, but enemy fire began almost as soon as the leading platoons moved into the open. The infantrymen crawled through the slimy rice paddies on their stomachs. Within an hour Company I was strung from the line of departure to the base of the objective which two squads had reached. About this time the Japanese opened fire with another machine gun, separating the advance squads with a band of fire. This left one squad to continue the attack; the remainder of the company was unable to move, cut off by fire or strung across the rice paddies.
Those men in the squad still free to operate lifted and pulled each other to the edge of the cliff and crawled quietly forward through the high grass on top. Pfc. Ignac A. Zeleski, a BAR man, moved so stealthily that he almost touched the heels of one Japanese. Zeleski killed him, and the other men killed eight more Japanese within the first ten minutes. Another squad reached the top of the escarpment about an hour later but was caught in cross and grazing fire from three machine guns, and the entire 8-man squad was killed. Gradually, however, a few more men reached the top, and by evening there were twenty men from Company I holding a small area at the escarpment rim.
Company K had a similar experience. Accurate enemy fire killed one man, wounded two others, and halted the company when it was from 200 to 300 yards from its objective. For forty-five minutes the attack dragged on until S/Sgt. Lester L. Johnson and eight men maneuvered forward through enemy fire, gained the high ground, and concentrated their fire on the enemy machine gun that was firing on the remainder of the company. This did not silence the gun but did prevent the gunner from aiming well, and Johnson waved for the rest of the company to follow. By 1330 of 9 June Company K was consolidated on the southeastern tip of the Yaeju-Dake. That evening, three small but determined counterattacks, with sustained grenade fire between each attempt, hit the small force from Company I, which held off the attackers with a light machine gun and automatic rifles.
Tanks stirred dust along the narrow roads when, at 0600 on the morning of 10 June, they started for the front lines. A full battalion was on hand to support the 7th Division; two companies operated with the 96th Division, which began its assault on the Yaeju-Dake that morning. The character of warfare on Okinawa changed, and until the end of the campaign there was a freer, more aggressive use of tanks. Weather and terrain were more favorable, and flame tanks became the American solution to the Japanese coral caves; interference from enemy shells became less with the destruction of each Japanese gun; and, more important, through experience the infantrymen and tankers developed a team that neared perfection. Improved visibility also aided observation of artillery fire and air strikes. The battle for the southern tip of Okinawa blazed with orange rods of flame and became a thunderous roar of machine guns, shells, rockets, and bombs.{510}
Company C, 32d Infantry, still bore the responsibility of destroying the Japanese in front of Hill 95. When the fighting flared again on the second day of the attack, Navy cruisers fired on the seaward side of the ridge; artillery and tanks shelled and machine-gunned the top and sides of Hill 95; and the ad Battalion attacked toward the village of Hanagusuku. Captain Washnok and his men crept cautiously over the coral. The Japanese did not withdraw; Company C killed them as it advanced. By early afternoon the men had eliminated all enemy fire except that from a few scattered rifles and several fortified caves in two rocky knobs near the northeast end of Hill 95. Colonel Finn advocated the use of flame. Washnok held his company in place, and Capt. Tony Niemeyer, 6-foot 4-inch commander of Company C, 713th Armored Flame Thrower Battalion, moved one tank to the base of the two knobs. Then he attached a 200-foot hose, a special piece of equipment for delivering fuel to an area inaccessible to the tank. S/Sgt. Joseph Frydrych, infantry platoon leader, Captain Niemeyer, and Sgt. Paul E. Schrum dragged the hose onto the high rock and sprayed napalm over the two strong points, forcing out thirty-five or forty enemy soldiers whom the infantryman killed by rifle or BAR fire. Except for stray rifle fire, all enemy opposition in the coral ridge was gone when the 1st Battalion set up defenses for the night. The Japanese came back, however, during the night; they harassed Company C with mortars and grenades and prowled in the open in front of the other advanced companies. Two days of fighting through the rough terrain had cost Company C forty-three casualties, ten of whom were killed.
Niemeyer was active again on the morning of 11 June, when the 32d Infantry proceeded against the high end of Hill 95. Company B had taken the lead and pushed against the northeast end of the hill; although tank and artillery fire on Hill 95 was so heavy that the hill was partially obscured with haze, several machine guns fired from caves which could not be reached, and the men were temporarily stopped. When this approach failed, Niemeyer, Colonel Finn, and Capt. Dallas D. Thomas, Company B commander, decided to use the flamethrower tanks to burn a path to the top of the 170-foot coral cliff. Captain Niemeyer, a daring soldier who was enthusiastic over the, capabilities of his flamethrower tanks, moved them to the Hanagusuku side of Hill 95 and forced streams of red flame against the portion of the cliff where the infantrymen expected to make the ascent. This flame eliminated any threat of close-quarters resistance from caves in the face of the escarpment. The next step was to reach the flat top of the hill and secure a toe hold on the high ground. At 1100 Niemeyer and a platoon under 1st Lt. Frank A. Davis fastened one end of a hose to a flame tank and began dragging the other end up the almost vertical side of the hill. The tanks, artillery, mortars, and machine guns stepped up their rate of fire to keep down enemy interference, the men being as exposed as spiders on a bare wall. This spectacular attack was also slow, and it was forty-five minutes before the men reached a small shelf just below the lip of the escarpment. They stopped here long enough to squirt napalm onto the flat rocks above them in case any Japanese were waiting for them there, then scrambled over the edge and poured flame onto the near-by area. Davis and his men fanned out behind the flame. The remainder of Company B followed immediately; the company quickly expanded its holding across the northeast end of the hill and then pushed south, still using flame against suspected enemy strong points. When the fuel from one tank was exhausted the hose was fitted to another tank.
Colonel Foulston reinforced his attacking company with two platoons from Company A. When evening came the 1st Battalion had destroyed the enemy force on the northeast end of the tableland. The men were involved in close-in fighting with Japanese hiding in rocks and crevices but their grip on the tableland was firm.
When it was time for front-line troops to dig in on the evening of 11 June, one battalion from each of the 7th Division's attacking regiments held a small corner of the enemy's main line on southern Okinawa. During the three days since the assault against Hill 95 and the Yaeju-Dake began on 9 June, the right (western) end of the XXIV Corps line had remained relatively unchanged. The 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry, softened its end of the Yaeju-Dake with lavish use of artillery, to destroy enemy strong points on the plateau above the escarpment, and employed tanks and cannon company weapons directly against caves in the face of the cliff.{511}
Meanwhile, the 381st and 383d Infantry Regiments hammered away at the high peaks of Yaeju-Dake and Yuza-Dake. On 10 June the 383d attacked toward the town of Yuza, which it reached the following day. There was heavy fighting from one wall to the next in the battered town and, in addition, constant fire from Yuza-Dake, which towered over the southern edge of the town. The troops withdrew that evening when enemy fire increased.{512}
With its approach blocked by the highest and steepest section of the Yaeju-Dake wall, the 381st Infantry struck toward the saddle between the Big Apple Peak and the Yuza-Dake, where the escarpment rose in two levels. Major Thompson's 1st Battalion had unsuccessfully explored this route on 6 June when Companies B and C reached the intermediate level, immediately drew pre-registered fire, and were forced to abandon their gains under smoke. After shelling the Japanese emplacements for four days these two companies attacked over the same route, this time with tank support. Difficult terrain and mines prevented effective use of the tanks, but Companies B and C pushed ahead without them and, by 0900 of 10 June, three of the attacking platoons were back on the ledge where the previous attack had stalled. Japanese machine guns opened fire as promptly and accurately as before, and the advance again ended suddenly with half of the men on the first ledge of the escarpment and the rest scattered in the rice paddies to the rear.
Throughout the day the company commanders tried to maneuver the trailing elements of their units forward. Each effort failed until, late in the afternoon, another smoke screen was laid down, this time to cover the advance of the rear elements and the preparation of defensive positions for the night. When the smoke had cleared, both companies were in place. A few minutes later about a hundred Japanese troops, believing the smoke had covered a withdrawal as on 6 June, emerged from their holes and gathered near a building at the southern end of the flat area, where they began to change to civilian clothes for their customary night infiltrations. Capt. Philip D. Newell, commanding Company C., adjusted artillery fire in their midst and most of them were killed.
FLAME THROUGH A HOSE
Flame-throwing tanks advance to Hill 95.
