Okinawa: The Last Battle of World War II

Robert Leckie was a marine in the Pacific during WWII. He has written a number of books, perhaps most notably "Helmet on My Pillow," a WWII personal memoir which served as one of the primary references for the HBO 2010 mini-series "The Pacific." He died in 2001 so would not know that his material would have renewed and important life given to it. As I learned from reading PT Deutermann's "Sentinels of Fire," the kamikaze was a devastatingly effective weapon of war against the American fleet in the final months of WWII. We see that in this book also, although Deutermann did a much better job of explaining it and how it was done.

This was published in 1995, the 50th anniversary of the Okinawa campaign which began in April 1945. America show more lost her President FDR that month, after this battle had begun. There are interesting stories in here. Again and again when reading these books I am struck by the senseless death that comes, but also by the unbelievable bravery of soldiers. Correspondents also. Ernie Pyle died here. The casualties on both sides were terrible.

The book didn't engage me the way I want books to do. There's a lot of set-up here in the book before the actual battle itself and some of it seemed only marginally relevant, if at all. The writing style was uneven and distracted me, annoyed me a little, sometimes a lot. The author's hatred for the Japanese is so thick it is difficult to believe. If this were written as a propaganda piece in April 1945 I might understand it, but 50 years later? I felt like Leckie was still fighting this war 50 years after it was finished. Bothersome were other different things, lingo, acronyms, choice of wording, scene setting, highly opinionated views and what felt like lecturing to the reader. I got bored numerous times.

There were a selection of photos included, rather random but interesting. Something I found extremely strange however is that there is not a single map in the book.

There's an interesting epilogue to the story which discusses the value of Okinawa and the still continuing debate over the use of atomic weapons in August 1945. Although there was some good information in the book, the storytelling is so poor I would not recommend this. To be fair there are some parts in here that I thought were pretty good, but overall I disliked this and found it to be a disappointing book. show less