Arthur A. Astle, North Ogden, Utah: an interview by Winston P. Erickson, July 16, 2003: Saving the Legacy tape no. 516

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ARTHUR A. ASTLE J 16 200 air attacks. Kamikazi tactics were refined accordingly. Kamikaze would no longer come in one or two at a time. Instead, kamikazes, bombers and Zero fighter would descend on the American fleet in a series of mass waves. The first wave would be sacrificed to expend the fuel and ammunition of the American fighters guarding the fleet. Successive waves following shortly thereafter would then attack the unprotected ships. If the Americans responded by flying their fighters in overlapping shifts, the total number of American fighters defending the fleet at any given time would be reduced allowing more kamikazes to get through. As the battle progressed, the Japanese tactics worked better than they had hoped. During more than two and a half months of vicious fighting on and around Okinawa, 12,513 Americans were killed in action, 38,916 were wounded in action, 33,096 non­combat losses were sustained, seventy-nine ships were sunk or damaged so badly they had to be scrapped and 763 US aircraft were lost. As expected, the entire Japanese defensive force was lost. 66,000 soldiers were killed or missing, 17,000 were wounded, 7,455 were captured, 16 Japanese ships were sunk and scrapped and 3,130 Japanese aircraft were destroyed. In addition, at least 150,000 Okinawan civilians were killed or went missing. In the aftermath of the battle, American war planners, evaluating the huge losses sustained during the Okinawa campaign, concluded that the conquest of the Japanese home islands would take at least another year and would cost at least a million American casualties. President Truman knew that extending the war a whole year was not politically or morally acceptable and sustaining another million casualties was not something the American would accept. By July 1945, the bloody Japanese strategy for forcing a negotiated peace settlement was on the verge of success. Then American scientists handed Truman a tool 41