Replying to a message of Ross Cassell to Jeff Snyder:

 RC> The Japanese fanatically fought tooth and nail to defend nearly to the
 RC> last man, Tarawa and Okinawa, and on Tarawa they did so down to the
 RC> last man, woman and child, with those unable to fight committing
 RC> suicide.

The southern tip of Okinawa has cliffs that rise up almost vertically out of the
ocean.  The Japanese forces defending the island were forced down to those cliffs.
When the situation was finally deemed hopeless the Japanese commander committed
seppuku (ritual suicide) and most of his troops jumped to their deaths rather than
surrender.  In the 1960s when I was there at the top of the cliffs were many
monuments to those Japanese troops from various prefectured in Japan, I presume
they are still there.

The Japanese - military and civilian - also jumped off cliffs to their deaths on
Saipan.

Also note that on Okinawa as late as the early 1970s they were still finding
unexploded shells and bombs on the island.  Also note that when wading in
the shallows near Kadena AB one can find hundreds if not thousands of bullets
(the invasion forces landed on the beaches immediately west of the air base.
Note also that there was almost no opposition to the initial landings, and very
little opposition to the forces that turned north; nearly all of the opposition was
south of Kadena.

Little known factoid is that Ernie Pyle, the famous war correspondent, was 
killed on the small island Ie Shima, which lies just west of Okinawa's Motobu
Peninsula.

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