June 22, 1945: The Battle of Okinawa

June 22, 1945, 80 years ago: The Battle of Okinawa ends. It is an American victory. But it is a hard one, perhaps a "Pyrrhic victory."

U.S. troops had been "island-hopping" all across the Pacific Ocean, taking one piece of territory after another from Japan. But as they got closer to Japan's "home islands" -- Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu -- the Japanese fought harder. The Battle of Iwo Jima, ending in March, was brutal, to the point where it remains the defining victory of the U.S. Marine Corps.

Okinawa would be as close to the home islands as could be gotten without getting all the way there, about 400 miles from Kyushu, and 1,300 miles from Tokyo. It had an airstrip, and it was close enough that, should the battle be won, U.S. planes could take off from there, attack the home islands, and fly back without having to refuel.

But the Japanese fought harder than ever. The U.S. invaded on April 1, and it took 83 days to secure the island. There were over 12,500 American troops killed, including the overall commander, Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. The Japanese lost 77,000. For comparison's sake, in the Vietnam War, America lost 59,000 in 8 years. This was in less than 3 months.

The phrase "Pyrrhic victory" originates from a quote from Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose triumph against the Romans in the Battle of Asculum, in what is now Southern Italy, in 279 BC destroyed much of his forces, forcing the end of his campaign. According to legend, he said, "If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined." The more common translation is, "Another such victory, and I am undone."

So President Harry Truman knew that an invasion of Japan's home islands would be even worse. The study he commissioned suggested that the U.S. would lose 500,000 men -- half a million -- while their Allies would lose at least as many, and the Japanese would lose twice that, over a full million, and that wasn't even counting civilians.

Truman knew that, if he had the atomic bomb, and he didn't use it, and half a million American soldiers were dead when the war could be ended quickly -- almost literally in a flash -- the backlash would be horrible. He was willing to trade however many Japanese lives that the bomb would kill to save those American and Allied men. And he did. And so, Okinawa became the site of the last major American battle of World War II.

The U.S. returned control of Okinawa to Japan in 1971, although it maintains a military base there. Today, the Okinawa Prefecture -- Japan calls their State equivalents "Prefectures" -- includes 160 islands, 49 of them inhabited, with about 1.4 million people living on them.