Crucible of Hell

Okinawa – Stalingrad of the Pacific

Saul David

• Publisher: William Collins
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780008342494
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Japanese History
• Index: History

From award-winning historian Saul David, an action-packed and powerful new narrative of the Battle of Okinawa – one of the greatest battles to take place across air, land and sea, and one of the most extraordinary, unusual episodes of the Second World War.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Maps
• Prologue: Love Day
• 1 ‘Where’s Douglas?’
• 2 Operation Iceberg
• 3 ‘Everybody go home!’
• 4 The Divine Wind
• 5 ‘More concerned with furlough than fighting’
• 6 ‘I’m going simply because I’ve got to – and I hate it’
• 7 ‘I was crying as I did it and she was crying too’
• 8 ‘Tomorrow is our big day’
• 9 ‘It was quite a show’
• 10 ‘There’s always some poor bastard who doesn’t get word’
• 11 ‘The smell of burnt flesh hung about for days’
• 12 ‘War is indeed hell’
• 13 ‘I could see him floating by, face upward’
• 14 ‘Gone? She’s gone?’
• 15 ‘They just knocked the heck out of us’
• 16 ‘I want to marry Shigeko’
• 17 ‘Harry, the president is dead’
• 18 ‘His eyes were rolling in panic’
• 19 ‘Three bullets had ripped into his temple’
• 20 ‘Progress not quite satisfactory’
• 21 ‘All Kaitens prepare for launch!’
• 22 ‘The most terrible weapon’
• 23 ‘Corpsman!’
• 24 Hacksaw Ridge
• 25 ‘We will fight to the last man’
• 26 ‘Doc, this one is worth saving’
• 27 ‘The happy dream is over’
• 28 Sugar Loaf Hill
• 29 ‘Hell’s own cesspool’
• 30 ‘I still hear those cries today’
• 31 ‘The entire enemy line appears to be crumbling’
• 32 ‘It is terrifying to think about’
• 33 ‘There is NO tactical thinking or push’
• 34 ‘I lost damn near all of them’
• 35 ‘You’re just going to have to hang on’
• 36 ‘We were so gullible, so innocent’
• 37 ‘We are down to the final kill’
• 38 ‘I haven’t come up to the front to hide’
• 39 ‘Every man will … fight to the end’
• 40 ‘Suppose it doesn’t go off?’
• 41 ‘What a splendid last moment!’
• 42 ‘All he talked about was you’
• 43 ‘The most terrible thing ever discovered’
• 44 ‘My God, what have we done?’
• 45 ‘We were going to live!’
• Epilogue: ‘Those dark corners are still there’
• Picture Section
• Acknowledgements
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Also by Saul David
• About the Author
• About the Publisher