For the Allied effort in the Pacific, the strategic significance of the island was twofold. Okinawa was (and still is) an ideal location in the Western Pacific for air and naval bases. More importantly, in 1945, Okinawa could serve as a staging area for a strike at Japan proper, which was just 350 miles to the northwest. On the operational level of war, Okinawa represented the culmination of Adm. Chester Nimitz and the Pacific Fleet’s campaign across the Central Pacific toward the Japanese home islands. Upon capturing Okinawa, Allied strategy in the Pacific called for ADM Nimitz to consolidate his forces with those of Gen. Douglas MacArthur for the final attack on Japan.

The book on review concerns itself with the fighting at the tactical level of war. Author Bill Sloan is a Dallas-based journalist and a familiar name to readers on the battles Marines fought in the Pacific. This is Sloan’s third book on the Pacific war. His first two books were accounts of the battles for Wake and Peleliu, respectively. As Sloan did in his previously published books, he employs the reporting and storytelling techniques of the journalist. ‘‘The Ultimate Battle” is a narrative based on oral history and secondary historical works. He tells the story from the foxhole, not the command post. This is a popular history, without footnotes or other scholarly citations.

What makes ‘‘The Ultimate Battle” worth the price of admission is the author’s re-creation of the sights and smell of the battle in highly readable form. The fighting was savage. Conditions for the American fighting man were grueling. Sloan writes:

Untold numbers of historians have attempted to describe conditions and events that prevailed in southern Okinawa during May 1945. But none has fully succeeded in capturing the unmitigated horror of that time and place—a horror that defies not only human verbal skills but human imagination as well.

In summary, Sloan says, ‘‘Mourning, misery, and terror were the order of each day.”

The author is even-handed in his coverage of the men who fought in the battle. He relates stories from the sailors at sea who withstood the kamikaze attacks of the Japanese, which Sloan characterizes as ‘‘the largest coordinated suicide operation the world has ever seen.” Sloan gives equal coverage to the infantrymen of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. He also relates the story of Ernie Pyle, the reporter who survived the major campaigns in Europe only to die on Ie Shima on April 18,1945, within 48 hours of his arrival to cover the battle of Okinawa.

Sloan’s retelling of the story of the Allied fight for Okinawa provides a fresh perspective offered by the passage of time. Sloan includes an 11-page epilogue that looks at Okinawa today and summarizes the activities on the island since the end of World War II. As one would expect from a major commercial publisher, the binding and print quality are good. The maps, bibliography, and index are sufficient, as are the 68 glossy photos in black and white at the center of the book. If you are in receipt of orders to Okinawa and you are unfamiliar with the actual capture of the island in 1945, I recommend this book for your flight over the Pacific.

Editor’s note: Kopets is a combat engineer officer currently assigned to G-3 Operations, 1st Marine Logistics Group. He recently completed a tour in Iraq as a transition team leader.