For Immediate Release
April 17, 1945
On the morning of April 16, large numbers of enemy aircraft attacked one of our destroyers for more than two hours off the coast of Okinawa. The ship took two bomb hits and four suicide hits.
But she shot down 6 dive bombers and proceeded to operate as ordered.
So the word Kamikaze was formed later to describe them?
The Pittsburgh Press (April 17, 1945)
B-29s pound air bases on home island
GUAM (UP) – The Jap Air Force lost 204 planes yesterday in a third unsuccessful attempt to smash the American invasion forces of Okinawa.
Today, a huge fleet of Superfortresses blasted six enemy aircraft staging bases on the home island of Kyushu.
Blazing aerial battles were fought between American and Jap pilots in the skies along a 360-mile route between Okinawa and Kyushu. Navy gunners on ships ranging from gunboats to carriers of the Essex class joined in the fight.
All-day battle
The battle lasted all day. Jap planes trying desperately to reach the U.S. Fleet were sent hurtling in flames into the sea.
A United Press dispatch from Vice Adm. Richmond Kelly Turner’s flagship said yesterday’s battle offered some of the greatest hunting of the war for American fighting men. It was Japan’s third try in 11 days to cripple the U.S. Fleet in the Ryukyus and brought Jap planes losses to 929 shot down or destroyed in 12 days around Okinawa.
Hitting Kyushu, the B-29s sent the aerial offensive against Japan into the sixth straight day.
Splitting into six groups, the Marianas-based Superfortresses plastered a half dozen airfields in Northern and Southern Kyushu with demolition bombs rather than incendiaries which were heaped on Tokyo twice in the last 72 hours.
Fighters hit Japan
The targets were the airfields at Kanoya, East Kanoya, Izumi, Kokubu and Nittaoahara, all in Southern Kyushu, and Tachiarai in the northwestern section of the island.
Kanoya Airfield also was hit yesterday by P-51 Mustangs of the VII Fighter Command from Iwo Island bases.
All the airfields were known to have held planes which have been hitting at the U.S. sea, land and air forces in the Okinawa area.
The heavy blow came as U.S. infantrymen were cleaning up tiny Ie Island, three miles west of Okinawa, where they landed yesterday and seized another base for the increasing aerial campaign.
Ground positions unchanged
Except for the invasion of Ie and the seizure of its airdrome with three valuable flying strips, two of which are 5,000 feet long, ground positions on Okinawa have changed little in the past week.
But the air battles and the attacks on the enemy’s flying bases in the Northern Ryukyus and Kyushu have continued at a furious pitch.
Yesterday’s results brought the toll of Jap planes in the past month to 2,626 destroyed or damaged – or a rate of approximately 94 a day.
Adm. Chester W. Nimitz disclosed that carrier planes from Vice Adm. Marc A. Mitscher’s fast task force raided the Northern Ryukyus and Southern Kyushu from Thursday through Sunday while Mustang fighters from Iwo hit the Jap homeland yesterday.
The carrier planes shot down 29 Jap aircraft, destroyed 58 on the ground and damaged 60 more at Kyushu’s Kanoya and Kushira’s airfields. The fields were almost empty when the Mustangs arrived on Monday.
The trip was the longest of the war for Mustangs.
Tokyo reported that approximately 100 carrier planes, together with Liberators and Mitchell medium bombers also attacked Kyushu yesterday.
United Press writer James MacLean, who went ashore with the Army troops on Ie Island, said the Americans suffered light casualties against suicidal and scattered Jap resistance.
U.S. Navy Department (April 18, 1945)
Tenth Army troops in Ie Shima made substantial gains in the northeastern area of the Island on April 18 (East Longitude Date). The enemy in the area of Iegusugu Peak gave stiff resistance from dug in positions and pillboxes. On the third day of the action, preliminary reports show that 388 of the enemy have been killed and one prisoner taken. In the same period, our forces lost 15 killed and 73 wounded. Five are listed as missing.
Elements of the Marine III Amphibious Corps have reached the northern end of Okinawa Island. The Marines on Motobu Peninsula continued operations on April 18 against isolated groups of the enemy in that sector.
There were no changes in the lines of the XXIV Army Corps in the southern sector of Okinawa. Naval guns and carrier aircraft continued to attack enemy strongpoints in the south. As of April 18, according to the most recent reports available, 989 officers and men of the U.S. Pacific Fleet had been killed in the Okinawa operation and associated attacks on Japan, 2,220 were wounded in action, and 1,491 were missing in action. At last report, the soldiers and Marines of the Tenth Army had lost 478 officers and men killed, 2,457 had been wounded and 260 were missing.
A Search Privateer of Fleet Air Wing One sank a small cargo ship north of the Ryukyus on April 18.
Corsair and Hellcat fighters of the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing attacked targets in the Palaus and destroyed buildings on Yap in the Western Carolines on April 18.
Liberators of the 11th Army Air Force on April 17, bombed the Kataoka Naval Base on Shumushu in the Northern Kurils.
U.S. patrols on Saipan, Tinian and Guam in the Marianas killed 30 Japanese and took 88 prisoners of war during the week ending April 14.
The Pittsburgh Press (April 18, 1945)
Famed war reporter killed by Jap bullet on Ie, off Okinawa
Ernie Pyle – He joins thousands of his beloved G.I. Joes.
WASHINGTON (UP) – Ernie Pyle, the greatest frontline reporter of this war, was killed in action this morning.
The skinny little Scripps-Howard and Pittsburgh Press war reporter – beloved of U.S. fighting men the world over – was killed by a Japanese machine gun bullet on the little island of Ie, off Okinawa.
He was killed, Secretary of the Navy Forrestal said, in the company of “the foot soldiers, the men for whom he had the greatest admiration.”
Vice Adm. Richmond Kelly Turner, commander of amphibious forces in the Pacific, reported from Guam that Mr. Pyle was killed outright about 10:15 a.m. Guam Time (Tuesday night ET) under Japanese machine gun fire on the outskirts of the town of Ie, on the island of Ie, four miles west of Okinawa.
Often close to death
He had come close to death countless times before – in North Africa, Sicily, Italy and France.
Mr. Pyle started covering the war in England and North Africa. He stayed with it, except for a brief furlough home, until the Americans were sweeping the Germans out of France.
Then he came home again, leaving the front, he explained, simply because he couldn’t stand the sight and smell of death any longer.
He didn’t want to go to war again, but he felt he owed it to America’s soldiers and sailors and Marines to report what they were doing in the Pacific.
He landed on Okinawa on what they called “Love Day” – the day of the first assault.
Truman expresses grief
The news of Mr. Pyle’s death saddened an already bereaved White House. A few moments after the report got out, President Truman said:
The nation is quickly saddened again by the death of Ernie Pyle. No man in this war has so well told the story of the American fighting man as American fighting men wanted it told. More than any other man he became the spokesman of the ordinary American in arms doing so many extraordinary things. It was his genius that the mass and power of our military and naval forces never obscured the men who made them.
He wrote about a people in arms as people still, but a people moving in a determination which did not need pretensions as a part of power.
Nobody knows how many individuals in our forces and at home he helped with his writings. But all Americans understand now how wisely, how warmheartedly, how honestly he served his country and his profession. He deserves the gratitude of all his countrymen.
Mr. Pyle was a foxhole reporter. He said he knew nothing about strategy or tactics. What interested him was the G.I. in the dust and the muck. So that is what he wrote about.
He had spent the years before the war writing a rambling column about places he had seen and people he had met.
He lacked the physique for war. He was slight, weatherbeaten, gray-haired, and balding. He was ill much of the time. He was no longer young – he would have been 45 on August 3.
But he liked people. When he went to war, he kept on writing about people. The people he wrote about were in fox-holes, so Emie spent a lot of time in foxholes.
Secretary Forrestal said in a statement that Mr. Pyle “was killed instantly by Japanese machine gun fire while standing beside the regimental commanding office of Headquarters Troops, 77th Division, U.S. Army.”
Mr. Forrestal added:
Mr. Pyle will live in the hearts of all servicemen who revered him as a comrade and spokesman. More than anyone else, he helped America to understand the heroism and sacrifices of her fighting men. For that achievement, the nation owes him its unending gratitude.
Secretary of War Stimson was shocked into momentary silence by the news. Then he said:
I feel great distress. He has been one of our outstanding correspondents. This is the first I have heard of his death. I’m so sorry.
Speaker Sam Rayburn voiced the sentiment of his congressional colleagues: “I think he was one of the great correspondents of all time.”
Once in North Africa, some German Stukas began dive-bombing and strafing the place where Ernie was. He dived into a ditch behind a soldier.
When the raid was over, he nudged the soldier and said, “Whew, that was close, eh?” The soldier didn’t answer. He was dead.
Mr. Pyle, saying over and over again that he was constantly afraid, went from near-miss to near-miss, from North Africa to Ie.
Once at Anzio a bomb knocked him out of his bunk. He reported it, but most of the column for that day was about the others who were in the hut with him. He told how Robert Vermillion, United Press reporter, tried to get out from under the debris and couldn’t. Said Vermillion, “Hey, somebody get me out of here.”
In France, Mr. Pyle finally saw all the death he could stand for a while. He wrote candidly that he could no longer take it. He had to come home.
Soldiers wrote him letters telling him they knew just how he felt, and they didn’t blame him.
But Mr. Pyle couldn’t stay away from a war that he felt was his as much as it was the Joes fighting it. So, he went to Okinawa.
In the Pacific he went aboard an aircraft carrier n Vice Adm. Marc A. Mitscher’s task force. He covered two naval air attacks on Tokyo in February and the invasion of Iwo Jima.
But he couldn’t stay away from the foot soldier, so he asked to be assigned to the Marines for the Okinawa campaign.
Before he departed, he had his belongings packed. He left instructions for their shipment if anything happened to him.
Went in with Marines
He went ashore at Okinawa with the 1st Marine Division. Then he went with an Army division to invade Ie last Monday. He watched the Doughboys move quickly ashore and capture the island’s three-strip airfield and gain control of the western two-thirds of the island.
It was as the troops pushed eastward to root out Japs dug in on the Iefusugu Mountain north of the town of Ie that Mr. Pyle was killed.
Everywhere he went, Mr. Pyle found fighting men looking for him. They told him their stories, and he always got their names and addresses right.
If he slept on the ground with a bunch of exhausted soldiers, he wrote a column about them in the morning. If the bombs came close, he told how the men took it.
Told everything
If they were hungry and dirty and homesick and grumpy and sick of war, he told about that, too.
Ernie’s columns about combat troops won them an increase in pay. He didn’t pretend to be a molder of opinion, he just thought that if airmen and others got extra pay for combat duty, the men with the rifles ought to get it, too. He said it would be good for their morale Congress agreed.
Mr. Pyle didn’t know any long words. At any rate, he never used them. He could write with great feeling and sharp discernment, with poetic feeling, even.
Loved by all
What he wrote hit a day laborer as hard as it hit a college professor.
The ordinary people loved him; witness the stream of letters-to-the-editor which flowed constantly into the newspapers which carried his column.
The learned also loved him, and showed him their respect. Witness the honorary degree bestowed upon him by his alma mater, Indiana University. They called the degree “Doctor of Humane Letters.”
Born in 1900 on farm
Ernie Pyle was born August 3. 1900, on a farm near Dana, Indiana. His father, William C. Pyle, still lives there. His mother, about whom he wrote from time to time in his column, died while he was in England in March 1941.
His full name is Ernest Taylor Pyle. Taylor was his mother’s maiden name.
He was married July 7, 1925, to Geraldine Siebolds, then a Civil Service Commission government clerk in Washington. She came from Stillwater, Minnesota. Mrs. Pyle lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where they built a home a few years ago.
Went to Indiana U
Ernie attended Indiana University for three and a half years and quit without graduating. He broke into the newspaper business on the La Porte (Indiana) Herald, then was moved to Washington, D.C., by the late Earl Martin, then editor of Scripps-Howard’s Washington Daily News.
He worked on The News from 1923 to 1926, when he was overcome by a yen for travel. He and “Jerry” drew out their savings, bought a Ford Model-T roadster, and the two of them drove clear around the rim of the United States in a leisurely way.
The trip wound up in New York, and Ernie worked as a desk man on The Evening World and The Evening Post for a year or two, until he was talked into returning to The Washington News as telegraph editor. There he worked up a terrific interest in aviation and started doing an aviation column on the side. It was a success and Ernie had an enormous acquaintance among airmen who are veterans of those days.
How column was born
He was made aviation editor of the Scripps-Howard Newspapers. Then in 1932 he was appointed managing editor of The Washington News.
Early in 1935, the Pyles took a vacation in Arizona. When they got back, the late Heywood Broun happened to be taking a vacation too, so Ernie wrote a dozen columns about his own vacation experiences to fill the Broun spot in The News. They made good reading and the eventual result was a decision by G. B. Parker, editor-in-chief of the Scripps-Howard Newspapers.
He and Jerry set out
So, Ernie and Jerry set out, by auto. The first of his columns appeared August 8, 1935, under a Flemington, New Jersey, dateline. He has been writing a piece a day ever since, except for an occasional timeout for rest.
Those early columns were leisurely copy, concerned with scenes and people and incidents encountered as he and Jerry drove around the country. He didn’t write “news.”
The Washington News ran the pieces regularly from the start, and has never missed one. Other Scripps-Howard papers gradually began using them, and eventually all were printing them as a fixed daily feature. The United Feature Syndicate began syndicating the column to non-Scripps-Howard papers.
Combed the continent
In those first few years Ernie, usually with Jerry traveling beside him, combed the United States, Canada, Mexico, Alaska, the Hawaiian Islands, Central and South America. He traveled by train, by plane, by boat, on horseback, muleback and by truck, but most of the time he drove a convertible coupe.
He spent several days at the leper colony on Molokai Island, went up the Yukon on a boat. flew to the Bering shore of Alaska, went down in mines and up on dams, drove from Texas to Mexico City before the famous highway was finished. He interviewed the great and the little.
His daily column contained human interest – whether whimsy or pathos, incident or personality. He eventually worked into it so much of his own personality that readers began to regard this stranger as an old friend.
Was in blitz
In 1940, Ernie went to England, and the blitz. Shortly after his arrival in London he went through the great firebombing during the holiday week of December 1940, and cabled home an account of “the most hateful, most beautiful single scene” he had ever witnessed.
Portions of the dispatch were cabled back to London and reprinted in London papers.
He spent some months in England and Scotland, and his dispatches from there were reprinted in book form.
Then he came back to the states for a rest. He was at Edmonton, Canada, preparing to shove off by plane over the new air route to Alaska, when word reached him that his wife was dangerously ill in Albuquerque. He flew to Albuquerque, and stayed with her for months until she recovered.
Just missed Pearl Harbor
Later he made all arrangements for a trip that would have taken him to Honolulu, Manila, Hong Kong and Australia. His clipper booking was cancelled to make room for propellers for the Chinese.
While he cooled his heels, this clipper arrived over the Hawaiian Islands during the Jap attack on Pearl Harbor.
In the early summer of 1942, he went to the British Isles, where he spent several months with our troops training in Northern Ireland and England.
Then came the invasion of Africa. He did not go in with the first wave, but arrived shortly thereafter.
Ernie spent much of his time living in the field with the troops. During the fighting in Tunisia, he went four and five weeks at a time without a bath, sleeping on the ground and on farmhouse floors, under jeeps and in foxholes.
Friends also killed
Many friends of Ernie’s have been killed in this war, including, aside from soldiers, Raymond Clapper of Scripps-Howard, Ben Robertson of The Harold-Tribune and Barney Darnton of The New York Times.
Ernie once wrote a friend:
I try not to take any foolish chances, but there’s just no way to play it completely safe and still do your job. The front does get into your blood, and you miss it and want to be back. Life up there is very simple, very uncomplicated, devoid of all the jealousy and meanness that float around a headquarters city, and time passes so fast it’s unbelievable. I didn’t have my clothes off for nearly a month, never slept in a bed for more than a month. It was so cold that my mind would hardly work and my fingers would actually get so stiff I couldn’t hit the keys.
Few of his readers knew it, but Mr. Pyle got a brief look at service life in the last war, although he never went overseas.
He enlisted in the Naval Reserve at Peoria, Illinois, on October 1, 1918. He was 18. He was released from active duty after the armistice but remained in the reserve and took a two weeks training cruise aboard the training ship Wilmette. He was honorably discharged on September 30, 1921, when the Navy cut down its reserve force for reasons of economy.
Mr. Pyle’s African dispatches were also published in book form.
In Sicilian invasion
Ernie was in on the invasion of Sicily, and soon after that came back to the states for a two-month rest. Then. he returned to the Mediterranean Theater, spent some months with the Fifth Army in Italy, and then went to England to await the invasion. He went into Normandy on D-Day plus one.
His column appeared in more than 300 newspapers, including the Army newspaper Stars and Stripes.
Ernie stayed in France through the battle of the breakout. He was almost killed by U.S. bombers at the time Lt. Gen. Leslie McNair was killed.
After the liberation of Paris, he decided he had “had it,” and came home for a rest in Albuquerque and a visit to Hollywood, where a film based on his experiences has just been completed.
He left early this year for the Pacific.
Gained wide honors
In 1944, Mr. Pyle was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for distinguished correspondence in 1943. He was voted the outstanding Hoosier of the year by the Sons of Indiana of New York. In October 1944, the University of New Mexico conferred on him the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters.
In November 1944, the University of Indiana conferred on him the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters.
Sigma Delta Chi awarded him their Raymond Clapper Memorial Award for war correspondence in 1944. In both 1943 and 1944, he received a Headliner’s Club award.
Mr. Pyle’s third book, Brave Men, was the December 1944 selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club.
Dreaded going back
Lincoln Barnett, in an article in Life Magazine last month, said the G.I.s’ own war correspondent didn’t want to go back to the war – any more than any other man who braves death in the battleline.
“I dread going back and I’d give anything if I didn’t have to go,” Mr. Pyle told the author after his return from Europe. “But I feel I have no choice I’ve been with it so long I feel a responsibility.”
Ernie Pyle’s five-foot, eight-inch frame carried only 112 pounds. Despite his appearance of fragility, the sparse-haired little man lived with the fighting men, lived as they lived – and he died as they die.
Mr. Barnett wrote that:
Ernie has come to be envisaged as a frail old poet a kind of St. Francis of Assisi, wandering sadly among the foxholes, playing beautiful tunes on his typewriter. Actually, he is neither elderly, little, saintly or sad.
Extracts from article
Extracts from Mr. Barnett’s article follow:
Success thrust itself upon him… he cares nothing for the money it has brought, and is embarrassed by the fame… but he keeps going because he feels that he must.
Although Pyle is America’s No. 1 professional wanderer, he is fundamentally a sedentary person who likes nothing better than to sit in an overheated room with a few good friends. Sometimes he appears to find conversation less pleasurable than the simple circumstance of being seated.
His apparent agoraphobia is a byproduct neither of war nerves nor a swelled head. He has always been self-effacing, and he finds himself uncomfortable in his current eminence as the nation’s favorite war reporter, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of two bestsellers.
Not timid
He has been called shy, but he is not timid. His reticence is marked by quiet dignity.
He likes people as individuals and writes only nice things about those he mentions by name in his column, “But there are a lot of heels in the world,” he says, “I can’t like them.”
The Life article points out that Ernie has always been an apostle of the underdog. Seven years ago, after visiting a leper colony, he wrote that “I experienced an acute feeling of spiritual need to be no better off than the leper.”
“And so in war,” says Mr. Barnett, “Pyle has felt a spiritual need to be no better off than the coldest, wettest, unhappiest of all soldiers.”
The article relates that when Ernie gave his consent to the making of the movie, The Story of G.I. Joe, he stipulated that (1) the hero of the picture must be the Infantry and not Pyle; (2) that no attempt be made to glorify him, and (3) that other correspondents be included in the story.
The movie, in which Capt. Burgess Meredith plays Ernie, will be seen by troops overseas in June and be released to the civilian public in July.
Huge earnings
In spite of his refusal to capitalize on his fame when he returned from the European fronts, Ernie has made close to half of a million dollars in the past two years, Mr. Barnett estimates.
While he was home, he wore one suit, which he bought for $41.16 when he landed in New York. His home is a modest house in Albuquerque, which cost about $5,000. He puts his money into war bonds and, according to Mr. Barnett, quietly bestows substantial sums upon “friends, relatives, G.I.’s and anybody else he likes.”
Hundreds pray for him
The article continues:
Although Pyle disdains his affluence, he is keenly appreciative of the aureole of national esteem and affection that now envelopes him.
The emotions Pyle evokes in his public go beyond detached admiration. He is probably the only newspaper columnist for whom any notable proportion of readers have fervently prayed.
For some time after D-Day, 90 percent of all reader queries that came into Scripps-Howard offices were: Did Ernie get in safe?
His success has been achieved without much push on Emie’s part, the article maintains.
It declares that he took journalism at the University of Indiana because someone told him it would be an easy course.
Two years after going to Washington, Ernie married Geraldine Siebolds, an attractive girl from Minnesota who had a job with the Civil Service Commission. Later, when he became a roving reporter, she was known to millions as “that girl.”
He goes to war
“A small voice came in the night and said Go,” Ernie wrote in the fall of 1940. It was the same voice that had spoken to him in the leper colony in Hawaii. So, he went off to war.
Pyle’s first overseas trip in the winter of 1940-41 multiplied readers of his column by 50 percent. Stirred by the spiritual holocaust of London and his own relentless instinct for self-immolation, he produced columns of great beauty and power. But it was not until he reached North Africa the following year that the Pyle legend began to evolve.
The article tells how Ernie, afflicted by one of his periodic colds, remained in Oran while the other reporters went to the front. There he met some obscure civilians who told him about the turbulent political situation in North Africa and he scored an important scoop.
The Doughboys’ saint
Gradually, as he moved about among the soldiers, covering the “backwash” of the war, he became the patron saint of the fighting foot soldier, the article relates. But he didn’t know it for a long time.
He thought, when he wrote it, that his famous column on the death of Capt. Waskow was no good.
B-29s aim of airports housing planes used in suicide attacks against Yanks off Okinawa
Reported new landing by U.S. troops was on Minna Island, off Okinawa’s Motobu Peninsula. Nearby Ie Island was virtually occupied. The Japs continued to fight hard on Motobu Peninsula. To the northeast of Okinawa (inset map), U.S. Superfortresses blasted Jap airfields on Kyushu Island twice in 12 hours, and U.S. carrier planes joined in the attacks. In the Philippines, U.S. forces stormed Baguio.
GUAM (UP) – More than 100 Superfortresses ripped Japan’s six main suicide-plane bases in Southern Kyushu before dawn today for the second time in less than 12 hours.
The Superfortresses’ fastest one-two punch yet against Japan was designed to knock out airfields from which enemy suicide pilots have been taking off to crash their explosive-laden planes against U.S. warships off Okinawa.
Today’s raid marked the third anniversary of Lt. Gen. James H. Doolittle’s historic carrier-based raid on Tokyo, now nearly one-tenth destroyed as result of B-29 fire raids in the past six weeks.
Report new landing
A Jap broadcast said U.S. troops have landed on tiny Minna Island, just south of nearly-conquered Ie Island and three miles off Okinawa’s embattled Motobu Peninsula.
The invasion, like that of Ie, was designed to gain additional airfields for the Americans, the broadcast said. It indicated the landing occurred simultaneously with that on Ie Monday.
Pacific Fleet headquarters was silent on the purported landing but announced that two-thirds of Ie had already been cleared against moderate resistance.
Marines win hill
On Okinawa, Marines battled 1,200 to 2,200 Japs entrenched in the hills of Motobu Peninsula in the northern sector. The Japs counterattacked four times yesterday and an important hill changed hands twice in the vicious fighting. Three hundred enemy dead were found when the Marines finally won a firm hold on the hill.
The XXIV Army Corps front above Naha, the capital of Okinawa, was quiet.
Superfortresses which roared out from the Marianas to bomb Kyushu, Japan’s southernmost home island, early today passed in flight some of the last squadrons homeward bound from yesterday’s afternoon raid.
Both forces sowed their explosives on Tachiarai, Kanoya, East Kanoya, Izumi, Kokumbu and Nittaghara airfields.
2,813 planes blasted
The raids were believed to have added materially to the toll of 2,813 Jap planes destroyed or damaged over and on Southern Japan and the Ryukyu Island chain since March 17.
A Pacific Fleet communiqué said U.S. air forces alone had destroyed 2,200 enemy aircraft in the period. British carrier planes accounted for an additional 80 and B-29s destroyed 105 more. Another 428 were damaged.
A XXI Bomber Command announcement said B-29s which hit Japan early Monday burned out an additional 5.2 square miles in Tokyo and 2.9 square miles in the nearby industrial center of Kawasaki.
By the United Press
Ernie Pyle was “singled out” by a Jap machine gunner and was killed instantly while he was talking with an officer in a command post on Ie, Larry Tighe, Blue Network reporter, reported from Guam today.
Other reporters said there was the same kind of stunned disbelief at headquarters when the news of Mr. Pyle’s death arrived as when President Roosevelt’s death was announced.
Mr. Pyle was shot three times through the temple, Blue Network Correspondent Jack Hooley said. He added that Mr. Pyle was headed for the front with Lt. Col. Joseph Coolidge of Arkansas when a burst of fire sent them scrambling from their jeep into a ditch.
After a few minutes they peered over the edge of the ditch and the gun rattled again, Col. Coolidge ducked back to find Mr. Pyle dead beside him.
Col. Coolidge crawled to safety and three tanks moved up to rescue Mr. Pyle’s body. Steady machine-gun fire pinned the men inside the tanks and finally Cpl. Alexander Roberts of New York volunteered to go alone.
He found Mr. Pyle with the fatigue cap he wore “in safe places” clutched in his hand. A chaplain and litter bearer went forward and aided in taking the body within the American lines, Mr. Hooley said.
Oberdonau-Zeitung (April 19, 1945)
5 Flugzeugträger und 8 weitere Schiffe versenkt
Tokio, 18. April – Das Kaiserlich Japanische Hauptquartier gab am Mittwoch um 16.30 Uhr folgenden Bericht heraus:
Unsere Luftwaffenverbände, die in Unterstützung unserer Besatzungstruppen auf der Hauptinsel von Okinawa die feindlichen Operationsstreitkräfte und Kriegsschiffe schwer angreifen, haben in der Zeit vom 16. bis 17. April folgende Resultate erzielen können: Versenkt wurden: Fünf Flugzeugträger (drei davon reguläre Flugzeugträger), ein Schlachtschiff, zwei Schlachtschiffe oder Kreuzer, einen Kreuzer und vier Transporter. Ein Schlachtschiff wurde beschädigt.
U.S. Navy Department (April 19, 1945)
The XXIV Army Corps launched an offensive of substantial force against enemy defense lines in the southern sector of Okinawa on April 19 (East Longitude Date). In the early morning hours, powerful concentrations of Army and Marine artillery joined with battleships, cruisers, and lighter units of the Pacific Fleet to deliver one of the largest bombardments ever made in support of amphibious troops.
Under cover of this fire and supported by great flights of carrier aircraft, Army Infantrymen of the 7th, 27th and 96th Infantry Divisions moved off to the attack between 0600 and 0800. By noon the left and right flanks of our lines were reported to have moved forward from 500 to 800 yards and our forces captured the village of Machinato. The enemy was resisting our advance stubbornly with artillery, mortars, and light weapons.
Our troops are now striking at a fortified line which is organized in great depth and developed to exploit the defensive value of the terrain which is dissected by ravines and terraced by escarpments. These fortifications whose northern perimeter follows an uneven line across the island at a point where it is about 8,000 yards wide are about four and a half miles north of Naha on the west coast and three and a half miles north of Yonabaru on the east coast. They include interlocking trench and pillbox systems, blockhouses, caves and the conventional Japanese dug‑in positions. During the forenoon, U.S. Army Infantrymen were engaged in knocking out strongpoints and penetrating and destroying segments of the outer lines.
Tenth Army troops in Ie Shima continued to advance on April 19 moving their lines forward south of the Iegusugu Peak. The enemy continued to resist from concealed fixed positions. Some of our observation planes have landed on the island airstrip.
Marines of the III Amphibious Corps continued to extend their control over the northern areas of Okinawa. On Motobu Peninsula, mopping up operations were still in progress.
Army Mustangs of the VII Fighter Command, Strategic Air Force, Pacific Ocean Areas, on April 19 attacked Atsugi airfield, in the area of Tokyo.
Preliminary reports show that the following damage was inflicted on the enemy:
A large cargo ship was seen sinking off the coast and a medium cargo ship was observed burning south of Tokyo. Our aircraft strafed the ground targets at low level through moderate to intense anti-aircraft fire.
A search plane of Fleet Air Wing One sank a small coastal cargo ship in the area of the northern Ryukyus on April 19.
On the same date, Corsair and Hellcat fighters of the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing attacked buildings and installations in the Palaus and Helldiver bombers of the same force struck the airstrip on Yap in the Western Carolines.
The Pittsburgh Press (April 19, 1945)
Writer to be buried in Army cemetery
By Mac R. Johnson, United Press staff writer
From the last two paragraphs of Here Is Your War, by Ernie Pyle, written after the African campaign.On the day of final peace, the last stroke of what we call the “Big Picture” will be drawn. I haven’t written anything about the “Big Picture,” because I don’t know anything about it. I only know what we see from our worm’s-eye view, and our segment of the picture consists only of tired and dirty soldiers who are alive and don’t want to die; of Jong darkened convoys in the middle of the night; of shocked silent men wandering back down the hill from battle; of chow lines and atabrine tablets and foxholes and burning tanks… and the rustle of high-flown shells; of jeeps and petrol dumps and smelly bedding rolls and C rations and cactus patches and blown ridges and dead mules and hospital tents and shirt collars greasy-black from months of wearing; and of laughter, too, and anger and wine and lovely flowers and constant cussing. All these it is composed of; and of graves and graves and graves.
That is our war, and we will carry it with us as we go on from one battleground to another until it is all over, leaving some of us behind on every beach, in every field… I don’t know whether it was their good fortune or their misfortune to get out of it so early in the game. I guess it doesn’t make any difference, once a man has gone. Medals and speeches and victories are nothing to them anymore. They died and others lived and nobody knows why it is so. They died and thereby the rest of us can go on and on. When we leave here for the next shore, there is nothing we can do for the ones beneath the wooden crosses, except perhaps to pause and murmur, “Thanks, pal.”
OKINAWA – Ernie Pyle will be buried among the soldiers he immortalized.
The beloved little war correspondent killed by a Jap machine-gunner yesterday probably will be laid to rest in an Army cemetery here in the Ryukyus where he covered his last campaign.
The soldiers he loved brought him back from the battlefield back to where the noise of the guns is distant and dull. They lifted his pint-sized frame from the ditch where he fell, victim of a sneak machine-gun ambush.
They put him on a litter, and crossed his arms, and then carried him back to the rear.
Jap jealous of prize
It wasn’t easy. That Jap machine-gunner seemed jealous of his prized victim. It was four hours after Ernie was killed before anybody could get to his body.
Cpl. Alexander Roberts, Army photographer from New York City, tried to get in to take pictures. He said every time anybody would try to enter the clearing where Ernie had been killed the gunner would open up.
Finally, Cpl. Roberts crawled into the clearing on his belly, pushing his camera ahead of him.
“Ernie’s face was not twisted in pain or agony,” he said. “He looked pleasant and peaceful. If there hadn’t been a thin line of blood at the corner of his mouth, you might have thought he was sleeping.”
Said he would get it
Ernie always said he would get it, that he had used up his chances. He said it again just before he landed with the assault troops on Okinawa. He told a public relations officer that he had a premonition about the campaign. And he said to another officer that he thought he would go back to the States “right after this one.”
Instead, he went from Okinawa to Ie Island because, as he told a friend, his premonition was “pretty silly as I’ve run into nothing hot yet.”
So he went on
So he went on – as he had gone from Ireland to North Africa, to Sicily, Italy, France and the Pacific – to get more stories about his beloved G.I.’s. He wanted to write about the Marines.
Erie was an old dough from the word go. He sweated and suffered with the doughfeet, shared their hopes, fears, and thrills – their lives. Today he shared death with them and it was believed he would be put to rest with them, in a G.I. Army cemetery.
Ernie would have liked that.
Ernie Pyle spent his last hours doing the job he had always done – gathering notes from G.I.’s for his columns, James MacLean, United Press correspondent, reported.
Detained by cold
A two-day-old cold had confined him to the sick bay of a transport and prevented him from landing with other correspondents in the assault waves on Ie until Tuesday. He spent that day interviewing soldiers and officers on the battlefield.
Wherever he went he was surrounded by G.I.’s who swarmed around him, forgetting the battle in progress. They tried to get him to autograph captured Jap money, American bills or invasion bills until their officers ordered the men back into position.
Milton Chase, 33, a correspondent for Radio Station WLW in Cincinnati, and a former staff member for United Press in Shanghai, said Ernie walked very carefully on Ie, because of his fear of landmines.
Mr. Chase said:
He told me that the weapon he hated worst – more than machine guns, shells or anything else – was “stumbling blindly into minefields because they explode before you can duck or take cover.”
First 18 days of campaign cost Americans 7,895 killed, wounded or captured
GUAM (UP) – Marines completed the conquest of three-quarters of Okinawa today with a push to the northern tip of the island only 330 miles south of Japan.
The first 18 days of the Okinawa campaign, along with associated operations in the rest of Ryukyu Island chain and supporting carrier raids on Japan proper, cost 7,895 Americans killed, wounded or captured, a Pacific Fleet communiqué announced.
Navy suffers heaviest
Heaviest losses were suffered by the Navy – 989 officers and men killed, 2,220 wounded and 1,491 missing. Tenth Army Marines and soldiers lost 478 dead, 2,457 wounded and 260 missing.
Though Marines of the III Amphibious Corps had brought all of central and norther Okinawa under American control, they were still battling isolated enemy groups on Motobu Peninsula jutting out from the northwest coast.
Yanks stalled near Naha
In southern Okinawa, the XXIV Army Corps was still stalled by strong Jap positions shielding Naha, the island’s capital. The Fleet’s big guns and carrier planes were hammering the defenses.
Other forces on Ie Island three miles west of Motobu Peninsula made substantial gains in the northeast section of the island, but Jap troops in dug-in positions and pillboxes around Iegusugu Peak were resisting stiffly.
By Jack Hooley, Blue Network war correspondent
IE ISLAND (April 18) – Ernie Pyle died here on Ie Island at 10:15 in the morning. An hour later, word of his death had spread over open water as far as Mi Island, two miles away. Relayed by an artillery officer at the front by radio, by blinker light and by word of mouth, it had spread from Ie to the ships standing off shore – all in that short time.
The facts are quickly told. Ernie Pyle went ashore the evening before. In the morning, having heard that our troops were engaged in heavy fighting for a time below a mountain peak on the tiny island, he set out for the spot with Lt. Col. Joseph Coolidge.
The two men bumped along in a jeep over the narrow road taken by our troops the day before. As the jeep rounded a corner, a sudden burst of fire from a Jap machine gun hidden on a ridge sent both men scrambling for a ditch.
The gunfire stopped. Both had been through this kind of thing before.
Death came instantly
After a few minutes they peered cautiously over the edge. Another burst of fire and Col. Coolidge ducked back. He turned to Ernie.
The veteran correspondent lay on his back, too still for life.
Death had come instantly from three bullet wounds in the temple.
Every bit of movement brought a burst of fire from the hidden Japs, but finally Col. Coolidge managed to crawl to cover and submit his report.
Tank men helpless
For a long while, Ernie’s body was inaccessible. Finally, the chaplain of the outfit asked for volunteers to bring him in.
First three tanks moved up. Their appearance was the signal for the machine-gunner to open up with such a steady fire that the crew men were helpless inside the tanks.
When they retired, Cpl. Alexander Roberts of New York City volunteered to go alone. From the point beyond which the Yanks had retired about 125 yards back of the bend in the road, Cpl. Roberts crawled to the jeep.
He found Pyle’s face beneath the helmet he wore, peaceful in death. In his left hand, Ernie clutched the Marine fatigue cap he always wore.
Preferred cap
“A helmet is a lot of iron for a man like me to carry around,” he said to me recently, “so when I get to a safe place I switch to a cap.”
With the way shown by Cpl. Roberts, the chaplain, who had not wished to risk four lives, crawled over the ground with a litter bearer and they made 80 yards of the return trip before the machine gun opened upon them.
Four hours after his death, Ernie Pyle’s body was inside our lines again.
The boys in the lines out here were thrilled when Ernie Pyle came out to the Pacific. G.I.’s, Marines and youngsters on the ocean knew that he didn’t have to but they were glad he came anyway.
“We had waited for him so long,” said one of them today.
U.S. Navy Department (April 20, 1945)
After a day of heavy attacks on the enemy’s fortified positions in the Southern Okinawa Sector, the XXIV Army Corps had advanced about 1,000 yards generally by the morning of April 20 (East Longitude Date). The 7th Infantry Division penetrated enemy defenses up to 1,400 yards in its zone of action near the east coast. Heavy naval guns continued to bombard enemy strong points and Marine and Army artillery supported the advancing infantry with carrier aircraft delivering close support. Most of Yonabaru Town was destroyed. The enemy resisted our attacks bitterly in all sectors of the fighting in the south.
On Ie Shima, Tenth Army troops continued to drive eastward against strong resistance from isolated enemy positions on April 20. Simultaneously, operations were began to destroy enemy forces holding Iegusugu Peak. At the end of April 18, 736 of the enemy had been killed on the island.
Patrols of the Marine III Amphibious Corps continued to cover the rugged country in Northern Okinawa on April 20 while operations against small groups of the enemy in Motobu Peninsula were continued.
In the early morning hours of April 20, several small groups of enemy aircraft approached our forces in the Okinawa Area and retired without causing damage.
The following is the complete list of ships sunk by enemy action in the Okinawa operation and the associated attacks on Japan from March 18 to April 18:
Destroyers:
Minecraft:
Destroyer Transport:
DICKERSON (APD-21)
Gunboat:
Ammunition Ships:
During the same period the following Japanese ships and aircraft were destroyed by our forces participating in the same operations:
Numerous enemy torpedo boats, speed boats and other types of small craft.
Liberators of the 7th Army Air Force on April 19 bombed installations on Truk in the Carolines. On the following day, a search plane of Fleet Air Wing One sank a small sailing vessel in Truk Lagoon.
Army bombers of the 7th AAF also struck Arakabesan and Koror in the Palaus scoring hits on antiaircraft emplacements on April 19. Corsair and Hellcat fighters of the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing bombed miscellaneous targets in the Palaus and on Yap in the Western Carolines on the following day.
The Pittsburgh Press (April 20, 1945)
Greatest offensive in Pacific underway
Heaviest offensive of the Pacific war has been launched by U.S. forces in Southern Okinawa. The Americans pushed to within 3½ miles of the capital, Naha. Tokyo reported a landing attempt southwest of Naha which would flank the capital. The Japs held only small pockets on Motobu Peninsula and Ie Island. U.S. fighters from Iwo airfields raided a Tokyo airfield (inset map).
GUAM (UP) – U.S. troops lunged to within three and a half miles north of Naha, the capital of Okinawa, in the most powerful offensive of the Pacific war today.
Radio Tokyo said other troops attempted to land on the south coast of Okinawa about eight miles southeast of Naha yesterday from a 30-ship invasion fleet, including 20 transports and several battleships.
Such a landing would outflank Naha, a city of 65.000, and clamp a pincer on its garrison of 60,000.
Smash deep bulges
Three Army divisions – possibly 45,000 men – smashed deep bulges into both flanks of the Jap line across southern Okinawa yesterday under cover of the greatest coordinated air, ship and artillery bombardment ever given American troops for the size of the target anywhere in the world.
Front reports said Americans now were less than 6,200 yards north of Naha and approaching Machinato airfield on the west coast and nearing the northern end of Yonabaru airstrip on the east coast. They were 3½ miles from the town of Yonabaru.
A hill overlooking Shuri, two miles inland from Naha, was all but cleared in the center of the line. The town of Machinato, a mile north of the airfield of the same name, was captured in the initial phases of the offensive yesterday.
Key ground won
Maj. Gen. John R. Hodge, commander of the XXIV Army Corps, said his forces had made “good gains” in the heart of the enemy’s main line of resistance. Key ground had been won, he said.
Lt. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner, commander of the Tenth Army, said the offensive was going “just about as we expected.”
“The Japs have as well an organized line as I have ever heard of anywhere,” Gen. Buckner said. “We all know that we still have to use a blowtorch and corkscrews to get them out of their caves.”
Tokyo radio said the amphibious forces attempted to land on the southern coast at Chinen and Minatokawa, 4½ to 5 miles south of Yonabaru, but were driven off.
Tokyo also claimed that Jap naval units had entered the Okinawa area and shelled two American-held airfields.
A Melbourne dispatch said the Australian Information Department intercepted a Tokyo broadcast that the Jap army and navy had launched a general attack in the Okinawas. The information department was quoted as saying that the broadcast suggested the Jap navy may have gone out for a big engagement.
While the troops were battering through the strong Jap lines on Okinawa, Army Mustang fighters from Iwo heavily raided the Atsugi airfield at Tokyo in the first large-scale fighter attack on the enemy’s capital.
Early reports listed 102 Jap planes as destroyed or damaged in the surprise attack on Atsugi yesterday. Returning American pilots said they sighted rows of from 200 to 300 Jap bombers and fighters lined up on the field.
In the raid, 21 Jap planes were shot down, 22 probably shot down, 26 destroyed on the ground and 33 damaged. A large cargo ship was also sunk off the coast and a medium-sized freighter left burning south of Tokyo.
Lt. Gen. Buckner launched the big offensive on Okinawa with elements of the 7th, 27th and 96th Infantry Divisions early yesterday.
Swarms of carrier planes and the big guns of battleships, cruisers and destroyers off shore also aided the infantrymen.
A Blue Network correspondent described the fighting on Okinawa as the heaviest of the Pacific War and “it is going to be bloodier by the moment.”
Gain on Ie Island
Adm. Chester W. Nimitz disclosed that Tenth Army troops on nearby Ie Island moved south of Iegusugu Peak, further compressing the small enemy pocket in the southeastern corner. He said the island’s airstrip was already being used by observation planes.
Innsbrucker Nachrichten (April 21, 1945)
Japanische Einheiten fügen dem Gegner schwerste Verluste zu
Berlin, 20. April – Die harten Kämpfe auf den Ryukyu-Inseln südlich der japanischen Heimatinseln und insbesondere die Kämpfe auf der Insel Okinawa haben die Schlacht auf dem Pazifik wiederum in den Mittelpunkt des allgemeinen Interesses gerückt.
Als der japanische Widerstand auf Iwojima aushörte, war man in Japan bereit, den direkten Angriff auf die Kerninseln zu erwarten. In eines der wichtigsten Verbindungsglieder der langgestreckten japanischen Inselreihe ist der Amerikaner nun hineingestoßen. Er hat sich damit der Verbindung Formosa-Japan in den Weg gestellt, hat gleichzeitig eine Flankenstellung gegenüber der Jangtse-Mündung und Schanghai bezogen. Durch den Angriff auf die Insel Okinawa der Ryukyu-Gruppe stellen sich die USA zwischen Japan und den Philippinen, außerdem aber auch vor den wichtigen Nachschubhafen der Chinafront.
Die Angriffe gegen Tokio, von denen in den letzten Tagen berichtet wurde, sind nur möglich von einer Landbasis aus, was bisher wegen fehlender Stützpunkte ausgeschlossen war. Nur die Superfestungen mit ihrer größten Reichweite konnten sich den An- und Abflug zum Angriff auf Japan leisten. Von Okinawa aus können jedoch Bomberverbände starken.
Der amerikanische General Nimitz hat die Wichtigkeit der eingeleiteten Operation erkannt und infolgedessen ein gewaltiges Aufgebot seiner Kräfte eingefasst. Große Flugzeugträger-Einheiten, zu denen auch solche der britischen Flotte gestoßen sind, wurden zusammengezogen. Gleichzeitig begannen Luftangriffe gegen wichtige japanische Luftstützpunkte auf den Kerninseln, um die größte Gefahr für die US-Trägerflotte, das Kamikazekorps, auszuschalten. Wenn Japan meldet, dass mehrere Hundert Feindschiffe inzwischen versenkt oder schwer getroffen wurden, ja kann man ermessen, welche Einbußen dem gewaltigen Einsatz der Feindflotte zugefügt wurden. Dennoch versucht der Gegner weiter, seine Landung vorwärtszutreiben, führt Nachschub heran und zieht Trägerflugzeuge um die Inseln; so dass auch den japanischen Luftgeschwadern und Einzelkämpfern neue Ziele geboten werden.
Wahrscheinlich hat die US-Kriegführung im Pazifik angenommen, mit der japanischen Flotte in Berührung zu kommen. Obwohl die Japaner im Seeraum der Ryukyu-Gruppe günstige Voraussetzungen vorgefunden hätten, ist der Zusammenprall unterblieben. Wenn auch die japanische Flotte Regierung amtlich bekannt, dass sie auch das zweite damit ein entscheidendes Mittel aus der Hand ließ, den Sprung des Gegners ans die Okinawa-Gruppe zu verhindern, mögen japanische Überlegungen sehr tiefgreifender Art für die Verschiebung des Zusammenstoßes gegeben sein. Auch Japan steht auf dem Standpunkt, dass erst die letzte Schlacht den Krieg entscheidet.
Der Stil der feindlichen Landungen ist immer derselbe. Er erfordert gewaltige Einsätze. Den Verteidigern stehen Luftstreitkräfte, leichte Flottenteile, wie Schnell- und Torpedoboote, zur Unterstützung zur Verfügung. Diese haben im Verstand der feindlichen Kräfte erheblich aufgeräumt. Der Feind steht jetzt 700 Kilometer vor der japanischen Kernstellung, aber viele Tausend Meilen von seinem Ausgangshafen. Die Vorteile des einen Faktors werden durch die Nachteile des anderen stark aufgewogen. Es besteht jedoch kein Zweifel, dass Japans Kriegsführung sehr achtsam die Entwicklung verfolgt, um kein operatives Übergewicht der Gegenseite aufkommen zu lassen.
The Pittsburgh Press (April 21, 1945)
Yanks on Okinawa gain in drive on Naha – 15 U.S. war vessels lost off island
GUAM (UP) – Upwards of 300 Superfortresses today blasted the Kyushu bases of Jap suicide planes blamed for the sinking of some of the 15 American war vessels lost in the Battle of Okinawa and Japan during the past month.
On Okinawa itself, three U.S. divisions thrust deeper into the enemy’s last-ditch defense line less than 3½ miles north of Naha, capital of the island, on the third day of the greatest ground offensive of the Pacific war.
Advances of up to a mile were reported all along the four-mile line extending across the southern end of the island yesterday. Swarms of planes and the big guns of warships joined massed land artillery in an unprecedented supporting bombardment.
The big fleet of Superfortresses bombed nine airfields on Kyushu, southernmost of the Jap home islands. The raid was the third in five days on the suicide-plane bases, but two of the airfields – Usa, near the northeast coast, and Kushira, in the south – were hit for the first time.
A XXI Bomber Command announcement said the attacks covered the “length and breadth” of Kyushu.
There was no mention of opposition and it was indicated that both fighter and anti-aircraft reaction by the Japs was negligible.
A Jap broadcast said approximately 200 B-29s had raided airfields on Kyushu for four hours this morning.
Japs lose 100 ships
A Pacific Fleet communiqué listed for the first time American naval losses in operations off Okinawa and Japan between March 18 and April 18. Against 15 Americans ship sunk, the Americans destroyed at least 100 Jap vessels during the period, all previously announced.
American losses were:
It is standard Navy policy to notify all next of kin of casualties before using the names of subs sunk or damaged.
The 100 Jap ships sunk included a Yamato-class battleship, two light cruisers, five destroyers, five destroyer escorts, four large cargo ships, 18 medium cargo ships and 28 smaller cargo ships. In addition, 2,569 Jap aircraft were destroyed.
The communiqué said the American losses constituted the “complete list of ships sunk by enemy action” in the month-long period – thus giving the lie to Jap claims that upwards of 100 American vessels had been sunk.
Gain 1,400 yards
American gains in southern Okinawa yesterday averaged 1,000 yards, but the 7th Infantry Division penetrated the maze of enemy defenses on the east coast to a depth of at least 1,400 yards.
The 7th Infantry Division was just north of Yonabaru Airfield and Yonabaru town, the main port on Nakagusuku Bay.
Evergreen and wheat used for wreath
By Mac R. Johnson, United Press staff writer
ABOARD ADM. TURNER’S FLAGSHIP, Okinawa – A white cross today marked the grave of Ernie Pyle in a small cemetery 600 yards inland from “Red Beach” on embattled Ie Shima.
The white-haired little man, who rose from obscurity to become the greatest champion of little-known but important G.I.’s, was buried yesterday with five enlisted men who died as he did, in action.
Enlisted men of the Army’s 77th Infantry Division built a crude wooden coffin of boards ripped from K-ration boxes and on it they placed a wreath of Japanese evergreen and a sheaf of ripe golden wheat.
Led by general
The funeral party was led by Maj. Gen. Andrew D. Bruce, commanding general of the 77th Infantry Division. It was halted at the beach when the enemy dropped 100 rounds of mortar fire in the area.
There were no salutes. Taps was not blown. This was a cemetery for combat men in a combat zone and the ceremony was simple. It lasted 35 minutes.
A trench had been bulldozed in the brown soil of an open field. Individual graves had been dug in the bottom of the trench. The bodies of the five enlisted men and Mr. Pyle were placed in the common grave.
Chaplain officiates
Capt. Nathaniel B. Saucier of Coffeeville, Mississippi, a regimental chaplain, read the burial service for all six.
Mr. Pyle’s body was wrapped in a blanket like any officer or G.I. and a dog tag wired around his body.
Five hundred yards away, on the spot where Ernie was killed by Jap machine gun bullets, soldiers erected a sign which reads:
AT THIS SPOT THE 77TH INFANTRY DIVISION LOST A BUDDY
ERNIE PYLE
18 APRIL, 1945
U.S. Navy Department (April 21, 1945)
The XXIV Army Corps pressed its attack against the enemy in the southern sector of Okinawa on April 20 and 21 (East Longitude Dates) making small gains through heavily defended areas. On the approaches to Hill 178, the high ground changed hands several times on April 21 in the bitterest kind of fighting. Small gains were made by our forces in other segments of the lines. Naval guns and Army and Marine artillery continued to bombard enemy emplacements with heavy fire and carrier aircraft attacked troop concentrations in the southern part of the island.
Marines of the III Amphibious Corps reduced the remaining pockets of enemy resistance on Motobu Peninsula on the afternoon of April 20 and brought the entire area under their control.
Tenth Army troops placed the United States Flag on the summit of Iegusugu Peak on Ie Shima on the morning of April 21 after overcoming bitter resistance from caves, pillboxes and other strongpoints. Our forces are engaged in mopping up operations on the island which is now in our possession.
On the night of April 20-21, enemy aircraft attacked Yontan and Kadena airfields causing minor damage. Carrier aircraft from the U.S. Pacific Fleet attacked air installations in the Sakishima group on April 19 and 21, shooting down one plane and strafing several others on the ground.
Hellcat and Corsair fighters of 4th Marine Aircraft Wing bombed targets in the Palaus on April 21.
U.S. Navy Department (April 22, 1945)
The XXIV Army Corps continued to attack the enemy’s fortified positions in the southern sector of Okinawa on April 22 (East Longitude Date) meeting bitter resistance in all areas of the fighting. Our troops were supported by heavy artillery, naval guns, and carrier and land‑based aircraft. No substantial changes had been made in the lines by 1700 on April 22. A total of 11,738 of the enemy have been killed and 27 taken prisoner in the Twenty Fourth Corps zone of action.
Elements of the Marine III Amphibious Corps occupied Taka Banare Island east of Okinawa on April 22 and landed on Sesoko Island west of Motobu Peninsula on the same date. Our troops on Sesoko were reported to be halfway across the island in the early afternoon.
During the night of April 21-22, a few enemy aircraft approached our forces around the Okinawa area and four were shot down by carrier planes and aircraft of the Tactical Air Force. On the afternoon of April 22, a substantial group of Japanese planes attacked our forces in and around Okinawa causing some damage and sinking one light unit of the fleet. Forty-nine enemy planes were shot down by our combat air patrols and anti-aircraft fire.
Carrier aircraft of the U.S. Pacific Fleet attacked airfields and other installations in the Sakishima Group on April 21 and 22.
Army Mustangs of the VII Fighter Command attacked Suzuka airfield 32 miles southwest of Nagoya on April 22 inflicting the following damage on the enemy:
Carrier-based aircraft of the U.S. Pacific Fleet attacked airfields and ground installations in the Amami Group of the Northern Ryukyus during April 18 to 20, inclusive, damaging or destroying numerous airfield structures. On April 21 and 22, carrier planes operating in the Northern Ryukyus shot down 16 enemy planes and burned 10 more on the ground.
A search plane of Fleet Air Wing One attacked a small cargo ship east of the Ryukyus on April 22 leaving it burning and dead in the water.
Runways and installations on Marcus Island were bombed by Liberators of the 7th Army Air Force on April 21. Helldiver bombers of the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing attacked the airstrip on Yap in the Western Carolines on April 21.
During the twenty-four hours ending at 1800 on April 20, 60 Japanese were killed and 64 were captured on Iwo Island. A total of 23,049 of the enemy have been killed and 850 captured since February 19.
Communiqué No. 338, paragraph five, is corrected as follows: Delete “One LST 477” from the list of ships sunk.
For Immediate Release
April 22, 1945
Maj. Gen. Andrew D. Bruce, Commanding General, 77th Infantry Division, whose forces captured Ie Shims, has sent the following message to FADM C. W. Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet and Pacific Ocean Areas, and to the Governor of Texas:
After a bitter fight from pillbox to pillbox, cave to cave, and house to house, the 77th Infantry Division placed the American flag on top of the heavily defended pinnacle on Ie Shima on April 21, 1945. A Texas flag was placed on the bloody ridge below the fortress by the Texans of the Division in honor of those gallant Texas men who gathered at Corregidor to remember San Jacinto Day on April 21, 1942, exactly three years ago.
FADM Nimitz is a native of Fredericksburg, Texas.
Maj. Gen. Bruce is a resident of Temple, Texas.
The Pittsburgh Press (April 22, 1945)
Bitter battle rages on hill guarding airfield
GUAM (UP) – American infantrymen on Southern Okinawa were locked in a bitter struggle for Hill 178 guarding approaches to Yonabaru Airfield Saturday and made small gains along the entire line.
On Ie Island, the U.S. flag was raised on Iegusugu Peak.
Several times the infantrymen were thrown off the high ground around the strategic hill. But each time they came back and pressed their assault.
Third day of barrage
For the third day the thundering barrage thrown into the southern Okinawa sector by guns of Pacific Fleet battleships, cruisers and destroyers and massed Army and Marine artillery continued to support the advancing 7th, 27th and 96th Infantry Divisions.
Carrier aircraft made constant pinpoint attacks against the strong pillboxes, blockhouses and cave positions through which the tank-led infantrymen slowly pushed their way.
On the approaches to Hill 178, overlooking Shuri, a city of 60,000 population in the center of the line, U.S. and Jap forces were locked in the bitterest type of warfare, Fleet Adm. Chester W. Nimitz said.
Gain not revealed
Adm. Nimitz gave no indication of the distance gained through Saturday. On the western coast, U.S. troops had pushed to within a mile and a half of Machinato Airfield, two miles above Naha.
On the east, they were last reported only 2½ miles from Yonabaru town. The Yonabaru airfield is less than a mile from the most advanced infantry forces in that sector.
The Jap fortifications were superior to those the Marines encountered on bloody Iwo Jima, front dispatches said. Many will be reduced only by hand-to-hand action.
Mopping up on Ie
Tenth Army troops on Ie Shima, three miles west of Okinawa’s Motobu Peninsula, raised the American flag on Iegusugu Peak Saturday morning after overcoming stiff resistance from enemy troops in caves, pillboxes and other fortifications. Mopping-up operations are now underway on Ie.
Marines of the III Amphibious Corps on Motobu eliminated the remaining Jap pockets and brought the entire area under U.S. control.
A few Jap aircraft attacked Yontan and Kadena airfields on Central Okinawa Friday night, causing minor damage. Carrier aircraft of the Pacific Fleet struck again at air installations in the Sakishima Islands southwest of Okinawa, shooting down one plane and strafing several others on the ground.
Ordered to keep fighting
The infantry on Okinawa was driving on “Skyline Ridge,” backbone of the Jap line, under orders to “keep advancing.”
Front dispatches said the immediate objective was Machinato Airfield.
“The 96th Division is in the thick of this vicious battle,” reported a United Press front correspondent. “Troops are driving up the face of ridges exposed to enemy fire in one of the most courageous attacks imaginable. Our mortars are virtually drilling holes in the hills to get at the dug-in Japs.”
Resistance was extremely well organized, but U.S. troops were slowly neutralizing the Jap positions.
In heart of defenses
“We are in the heart of the enemy’s position,” Maj. Gen. John R. Hodge, commander of the XXIV Army Corps, told United Press writer E. G. Valens.
A Tokyo broadcast said the fighting on Southern Okinawa was “gaining in intensity” and claimed that “fierce counterattacks” had been launched by the defenders.