82 Days On Okinawa by Art Shaw (Ret.) with Robert L. Wise
Fast, furious, and mesmerizing.
Japanese military leaders engineered a ferocious finale that accounted for more combat fatigue cases than anywhere else in the Pacific. The Japanese didn't defend the beaches as they had so many times before. They dug deep into the ground, making conquest very difficult for the soldiers and marines. Hit and run tactics in-and-out of caves lessened chances for inflicting heavy Japanese casualties. It wasn't any better on the numerous support ships around the island with kamikaze flights striking American vessels, and taking many lives there and several ships, too.
Invading land combatants suffered visually, and subsequently mentally from the too many mangled and unburied bodies their eyes and minds captured. Many of those grizzly images followed them into mental wards, and stayed with them for the rest of their lives,
Author Art Shaw was an Army artillery officer, and often serving as a forward observer, but he survived. and eventually wrote his account of that battle with the help of author Robert L. Wise. They worked well together. Shaw's story added human sight to one of the most inhuman events on the planet.
Content was largely limited to what Shaw saw and could remember. His memory was good, but some crucial battle moments, such as Army Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner's death from Japanese artillery was left out.