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Sugar Loaf Hill. A casual glance at the name might take your mind to one of those special squares on a Candy-Land board. You know, those special cards you draw where you move forward or backward a bunch of spaces – the Molasses Swamp or the Dew-Drop Inn or whatever – that add a little excitement to the game. It sounds sweet and happy, like a vacation destination for Strawberry Shortcake or a place where My Little Pony can prance and play. Sugar Loaf Hill exudes all that is cotton-candy nice and right with the world.
That’s what you might think. The real-life Sugar Loaf Hill is none of those things.
As the Battle of Okinawa (the final battle fought by the U.S. in World War II) worked through its second month, the Sixth Marine Division was tasked with moving down the west side of the island to sever Japanese lines and then move eastward behind the heights of Shuri. On top stood the bombed-out, shelled-out ruins of Shuri Castle, the visible part of elaborate network of tunnels and pillboxes that comprised General Mitsuru Ushijima’s main defensive fortifications on the island.
In front of the Sixth Marines stood three small hills, though “hill” is kind of a strong word as none of them was much more than 50 feet high. “But“, as Bill Sloan writes in The Ultimate Battle, “the identities bestowed on them by the Sixth Division Marines who repeatedly tried, failed, and tried again to take them would become synonyms for the most horrific struggle in the division’s history…Among those who survived the three hills, they are inevitably remembered at Horseshoe, Half Moon, and Sugar Loaf.”
For twelve (mostly rainy) days, the Marines fought the Japanese over this seemingly insignificant hillock, no more than three football fields in size. On eleven different occasions, the hill was assaulted. Men sprang into action, clamoring up the hill, only to be shelled and shot at with such accuracy and ferocity that they were forced to retreat. It became apparent that all three of these small hills would have to be taken together due to the covering fire each hill provided the others.
May 16, 1945 proved to be an especially trying day, as four times the Sixth Marines reached the summit…and four times were driven back. Bob Sherer, a First Lieutenant, spoke to everyone’s struggle. “The frustrating thing about those hills was that they just looked like barren little humps covered with tree stumps left by Navy gunfire. There was no outward indication of all the caves and tunnels inside.”
The morning of May 18, 1945 provided the breakthrough. The First Marines were able to take Wana Ridge, which housed Japanese 75mm guns used to shell Sugar Loaf. This allowed tanks to be brought in, encircle the hill, and provide suppression along with artillery while Marines worked to dynamite and seal the caves. General Ushijima’s efforts to reinforce Sugar Loaf failed under intense American artillery, and the Sixth Marines stood atop Sugar Loaf Hill…never to relinquish it.
But the cost had been tremendous. Over nearly two weeks, regiments had been reduced to company strength, and companies to platoons. Many platoons were wiped out to a man. More than 1,600 Marines died in the fight for this 50-foot-high strongpoint, with another 7,400 wounded.
The fight for Sugar Loaf Hill would come to epitomize the brutal battle of attrition that was the experience not only in the fight for Okinawa, but in many far-flung island battles of the Pacific campaign.
Recommended Reading: Killing Ground on Okinawa – Hallas’ book is pretty graphic, but puts you at the heart of this bloody encounter like few books can.
Today's History Lesson 