Okinawa · Chapter 3 of 9
North to Motobu and Ie Shima
After the beachhead divided the island, Marine forces moved north. Fast progress along roads and through thinly defended areas could suggest a campaign already nearing completion. The Motobu Peninsula corrected that impression. Rugged country around Yae-Take gave Japanese defenders positions that had to be located, approached, and reduced at close range.
The 6th Marine Division’s northern fighting formed a distinct campaign within Iceberg. Patrols crossed steep ground, artillery worked on positions that were difficult to see, and infantry searched caves and ridgelines. The northern operation was shorter than the long struggle for Shuri, but it was neither an empty march nor a substitute for the southern battle.
Off the peninsula lay Ie Shima, now generally called Iejima. Its airfields and its conspicuous central height, Iegusugu—the Pinnacle—made it an important objective. The 77th Infantry Division landed on 16 April. Here again, ground that looked manageable from offshore concealed a dense defensive problem. Strongpoints in and around the town, Bloody Ridge, and the Pinnacle made the fighting costly.
On 18 April, correspondent Ernie Pyle was killed by Japanese machine-gun fire on Ie Shima. His death was felt far beyond the island because readers knew him as a writer who followed ordinary servicemen rather than treating war as the work of generals alone. The photograph in this chapter shows him alive, talking with a Marine on Okinawa; it should not be mistaken for a photograph of the place where he died.
By the time organized resistance on Ie Shima had been broken, the larger campaign was hardening into a sustained battle of attrition. The 77th Division would subsequently enter the southern fighting. Moving the map’s focus from Motobu to Maeda therefore follows a unit’s campaign as well as a change of place. Its Statue of Liberty insignia belongs to Army infantry, even though some popular accounts of Okinawa give the impression that every American on the island was a Marine.
