This is just a quick overview. More info will come as I write it.

The battle of okinawa, also known as Operation Iceberg, was fought on the Ryukyu Islands of okinawa and was the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific Theater of World War II. The 82 day battle lasted from late March through June 1945.

The battle has been referred to as the “Typhoon of Steel” in English, and tetsu no ame (”rain of steel”) or tetsu no bōfū (”violent wind of steel”) in Japanese. The nicknames refer to the ferocity of the fighting, the intensity of gunfire involved, and sheer numbers of Allied ships and armored vehicles that assaulted the island. The battle has one of the highest casualties: the Japanese lost over 90,000 troops, and the Allies (mostly United States) suffered nearly 50,000 casualties, with over 12,000 killed in action. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed, wounded or attempted suicide.

The main reason for the battle was to gain a major island only 340 miles away from the main Japanese islands. The Allies were beginning to surround Japan, and okinawa would serve as a base for the planned invasion of the mainland islands. The island didn’t become a base in the end though, as the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused Japan to surrender just weeks after the end of the fighting at okinawa.