The Battle of Okinawa was the last major conflict of World War II and finished a mere two months before the U.S. dropped the atomic bombs Little Boy and Fat Man on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively. Germany surrendered in May 1945, right in the middle of Okinawa, which lasted from April to June that year. Essentially, Okinawa was the conventional combat capstone to both the war in Pacific and the war as a whole.
But Okinawa was particularly brutal. Japanese soldiers proved savage defenders more than willing to die, even commit suicide, to win. Kamikaze rockets, torpedoes, ships, and planes bombarded U.S. vessels. The scene on land, smothered in rain and artillery, was "nothing but mud; shellfire, flooded craters with their silent, pathetic, rotting occupants; knocked-out tanks and amtracs, and discarded equipment — utter desolation," wrote marine Eugene Sledge in his book "With the Old Breed, at Peleliu and Okinawa." Nearly a quarter of a million Japanese soldiers and civilians died over 83 days, and the U.S. suffered one of the costliest battles in its country's history.
In fact, the fighting was so vicious on Okinawa that it left President Truman "rattled," as Joseph Wheelan writes in his book, "Bloody Okinawa: The Last Great Battle of World War II" (per Smithsonian Magazine). "They could see how costly it would be to invade the mainland," Wheelan wrote, "... The island would just be a charred cinder." Okinawa, plus Iwo Jima before it, directly influenced the decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan rather than go through more troop-on-troop battles.
