Vast Selection of Royalty Free Images and Historical Information

Title: USS Bunker Hill, May, 1945

Description: The aircraft carrier USS Bunker Hill (CV-17), hit by two Japanese kamikaze planes during the battle for Okinawa; the resulting explosions and fire on the ship killed 346 men of the crew, wounding another 264 men, with forty-three missing (presumed dead), in the single most deadly kamikaze attack on a U.S. warship during World War II; the Bunker Hill nevertheless survived its damages and returned to Pearl Harbor for repair; more than 1,500 kamikaze planes attacked the U.S. Navy vessels at Okinawa, sinking seventy-nine ships; the Japanese fought to the death at Okinawa, with almost all of 120,000 Japanese troops killed or died by suicide; these troops were under the fanatical command of General Mitsuru Ushijima (1887-1945) and Lieutenant General Isamu Cho (1895-1945) - both committed suicide - with only 7455 Japanese soldiers captured; out of a force of 548,000 soldiers (U.S., British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand), commanded by U.S. Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr. (1886-1945), 12,513 were killed and missing and 38,916 wounded; the Allies lost 763 aircraft during the prolonged Okinawa campaign, while the Japanese lost 3,130 planes; between 75,000 and 140,000 civilians on Okinawa were killed, almost all by mass suicide, which had been ordered by the fanatical Japanese military, although in March 2007 revisionist Japanese officials at the Ministry of Education, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) attempted to suppress this recorded information, which three months later, the Okinawa Prefect Assembly defiantly denounced as an attempt to alter the truth of the facts of the war in the Pacific;

Date: May 11, 1945

Category: World War II

Keywords: air attacks, aircraft carriers, aviation, Battle of Okinawa, March-June 1945, explosions, fires, Japanese attacks, Japanese suicide pilots, kamikazes, Operation Iceberg, Rain of Steel, Ryukyu Islands, Second World War, smoke, suicide planes, Typhoon of Steel, World War II, WWII