HUNDREDS OF American and Japanese World War II veterans gathered on the Pacific island of Okinawa yesterday to mark the 50th anniversary of the war's last major campaign and the most terrible land, sea and air battle in history.
To commemorate the battle's end on June 23, 1945, officials on the southern Japanese island unveiled the Cornerstone of Peace, a monument of 114 black granite cenotaphs bearing the names of 234,183 American, Japanese and Okinawans who perished in the 82- day-long typhoon of fire and steel. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, more names will be added as other remains are found and identified.
Even after half a century, no one knows precisely how many died there, but best estimates are that 23,000 Americans, 91,000 Japanese and 150,000 Okinawan civilians were killed in the three-month battle -- more deaths than at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Lost and unaccounted for were thousands of Korean and Taiwanese civilians the Japanese had imported as slave labor to construct defenses.
For Americans, Okinawa was the last stepping stone in the bloody, 3 1/2-year island-hopping campaign across the Pacific. It was to be the staging area for the invasion of the Japanese mainland.
To the Japanese, the battle was a desperate, suicidal delaying action while their sacred homeland was preparing for the final Tennozan, the Japanese word used to describe the war's decisive last battle. But for Okinawans, a gentle island people caught in the fiery maelstrom, the fighting was an unmitigated disaster that all but destroyed their culture and more than a third of their population.
The fury of the give-no-quarter battle convinced many Americans that the invasion of Japan would be even worse, and was a major consideration in President Truman's decision to drop the atomic bombs that finally forced Japan to surrender.
For 50 years, the morality of the atomic attack has been debated. Was it necessary? Wasn't Japan on the brink of defeat anyway? But among war-weary soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines fighting in the Pacific and the Far East and others training to invade Japan, few questioned the righteousness and wisdom of the bombing.
The late author James Jones, a veteran of the Pacific fighting, described the mood among troops who had served on Okinawa: "If the defense of the Japanese home islands, with their immensely greater area and enormously greater population, was going to take on the character of the defense of Okinawa, where and when and at what cost was it going to end?"
Yesterday's dedication ceremony -- attended by U.S. Ambassador to Japan Walter Mondale and Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama -- was held at the Peace Memorial Park overlooking the steep, wave- battered Mabuni Cliff at the southern tip of Okinawa, where thousands of Japanese and Okinawans leaped to their deaths rather than surrender.
The Cornerstone of Peace is a unique war memorial in that it is the only one that honors the dead on both sides as well as the thousands of civilians caught up in the cross fire. It is a moving tribute, and a stark reminder of the dreadful nature of modern war, even without nuclear weaponry.