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Volcano and Ryukyu Islands campaign
Part of thePacific Theater ofWorld War II
USS Tennessee bombarding Okinawa with her 14-inch/50-calibermain battery guns, as theLanding Vehicle Tracked in the foreground carries troops to the invasion beaches.
Date 19 February – 21 June 1945 Location Volcano Islands andRyukyu Islands,Pacific Ocean Result Allied victory
Belligerents
United States United Kingdom	Japan
Commanders and leaders
COMPACFLT: Chester W. Nimitz US Navy: Raymond A. Spruance Marc A. Mitscher William Halsey, Jr. Royal Navy: Bernard Rawlings Sir Philip Vian Bruce Fraser US Marine Corps: Holland Smith Roy Geiger US Army: Simon B. Buckner † Joseph W. Stilwell	Western District Army: Isamu Yokoyama Imperial Japanese Navy: Seiichi Itō † Minoru Ota † Kosaku Aruga † Keizō Komura Japanese Army: Tadamichi Kuribayashi † Mitsuru Ushijima † Isamu Cho † Hiromichi Yahara (POW)
Casualties and losses
27,113 dead or missing, 74,501 wounded, 79 ships sunk and scrapped, 773 aircraft destroyed Casualties fromBattle of Iwo Jima and theBattle of Okinawa	98,811–128,375 dead or missing, 17,000 wounded, 7,216 captured, 21 ships sunk and scrapped, 3,130 aircraft destroyed, 75,000–140,000 civilians dead or missing Casualties fromBattle of Iwo Jima and theBattle of Okinawa

TheVolcano and Ryūkyū Islands campaign was a series of battles and engagements betweenAllied forces andImperial Japanese Forces in thePacific Ocean campaign ofWorld War II between January and June 1945.

The campaign took place in theVolcano andRyukyu island groups. The two main land battles in the campaign were theBattle of Iwo Jima (16 February to 26 March 1945) and theBattle of Okinawa (1 April to 21 June 1945). One major naval battle occurred, calledOperation Ten-Go (7 April 1945) after the operational title given to it by the Japanese.

The campaign was part of the AlliedJapan campaign intended to provide staging areas for aninvasion of Japan as well as supporting aerial bombardment and a naval blockade of the Japanese mainland. The dropping ofatomic weapons on two Japanese cities and theSoviet invasion of Japanese Manchuria, however, caused the Japanese government tosurrender without an armed invasion being necessary.

Iwo Jima's strategic importance was debatable. TheAllies considered the island to be an important staging area for future invasion forces, however, after the Allies captured Iwo Jima, their focus shifted from using the island as a staging area to employing the island as a base forfighter escorts and theB-29 Superfortressbombers recovery. The Japanese had a radar station and airstrips to launch fighters that would pick off B-29s raiding theJapanese home islands. If captured by the Americans, it could provide them with bases for fighter escorts to assist B-29s in raiding the Japanese home islands, as well as being an emergency landing strip for any damaged B-29s that could not return to theMarianas.

The operation to take Iwo Jima was authorized in October 1944. On 19 February 1945 the campaign for Iwo Jima was launched. The island was secure by 26 March. Only a few Japanese were captured, as the rest were killed or committed suicide as defeat befell them. However, the Americans suffered a heavy toll in casualties in their initial landing, as opposed to the main fighting. Fighters began operations from 11 March, when the airfields were secured, and the first bombers hit the home islands.

Okinawa was right at Japan's doorstep, providing the springboard for the Allies to invade the Japanese mainland. Meanwhile, on Okinawa 131,000 Japanese soldiers dug in away from the landing beaches in the southern half of the island, as opposed to attempting to stop the landing at the beaches in earlier battles. GeneralMitsuru Ushijima made sure that the Americans would not even come close to the beaches, usingkamikazes underSoemu Toyoda to stem the tide. The suicide bombers proved effective, sinking 34 ships and damaging hundreds of others,^[1] but they nevertheless failed to stop American reinforcements from arriving on the island. On 7 April the large Japanese battleshipYamato was sent out to use a kamikaze method, codenamedTen-Go, but it was sunk before it could attack the invasion fleet. Vice AdmiralSeiichi Ito and the commander of the battleship,Kosaku Aruga, were killed in the fatal mission, and the battleship was destroyed before it could engage the US Navy.

On the land campaign, 48,193 military personnel were killed, wounded, or missing to secure the island. By the end of the battle, three-quarters of the Japanese officers were killed or had killed themselves. Only a handful of officers survived the battle, although more soldiers capitulated. Control of the Volcano and Ryukyu Islands helped the US Army Air Forces conduct missions against targets onHonshu andKyushu, with the first raid occurring onTokyo from 9 and 10 March.

After the capture of theMariana Islands in 1944, US land-based and carrier-borne aircraft struck the Volcano andBonin Islands. Haha-Jima and Chichi-Jima in the Bonin Islands and Iwo Jima in the Volcano Islands in particular were attacked by US aircraft.

Beginning in late 1944, the United States Navy’s andRoyal Navy's carrier-based aircraft attacked Japanese military forces on the Ryukyu Islands. This included the islands of Amami, Tanega, Yaku, Kikai, Miyako, Tokuno, Ishigaki, and Daito islands which held Japanese military and civilian infrastructure that had to be neutralized for Allied troops operating around Okinawa. Kamikaze bases in the Ryukyu Islands posed a particular threat to the U.S. and British task force operating around Okinawa and its environs. Allied air attacks continued until August 1945. The aerial bombardment intensified further after the invasion of Okinawa. Thousands of Japanese aircraft and dozens of merchant ships were destroyed, with a consequent heavy loss of both civilian and military lives.^[2]

• Japan campaign
• Japanese air attacks on the Mariana Islands

• Drea, Edward J. (1998). "An Allied Interpretation of the Pacific War".In the Service of the Emperor: Essays on the Imperial Japanese Army. Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press.ISBN 0-8032-1708-0.
• Dyer, George Carroll."The Amphibians Came to Conquer: The Story of Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner". United States Government Printing Office. RetrievedOctober 20, 2006.

• Fisch Jr., Arnold G.Ryukyus. World War II Campaign Brochures. Washington D.C.:United States Army Center of Military History. CMH Pub 72-35. Archived fromthe original on 2012-01-05. Retrieved2010-06-14.

• Japan campaign
• United States Marine Corps in World War II
• Campaigns of World War II
• Campaigns, operations and battles of World War II involving the United Kingdom
• 1945 in Japan
• Military history of the Bonin Islands
• Military history of Okinawa Prefecture
• Tokyo in World War II

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