US Marines and Japanese Garrison Stopped Fighting to Eat Together on Aka Island

US Marines and Japanese Garrison Stopped Fighting to Eat Together on Aka Island
Through Marine binoculars, Aka Island appeared silent. No radio traffic. No visible movement. Just dense subtropical jungle rising from coral beaches. Yet intelligence estimated two hundred Japanese soldiers entrenched there—one of the last pockets west of Okinawa. Across the strait, the main campaign had already cost over twelve thousand five hundred United States dead and one hundred ten thousand Japanese fatalities in two months of combat. Command expected resistance "to the last man." Standard doctrine. Standard bloodshed.
But within days, the island would record zero casualties and a scene no one had predicted—enemy troops and Marines sitting side by side, eating from the same field rations.
Official reports filed in June nineteen forty-five called it "an incident of mutual ceasefire and fraternization without precedent in the Pacific area."
The question remains: how, amid total war, did two sworn enemies decide to stop killing—and share a meal instead?
A situation report crossed Lieutenant General Simon-B-Buckner Junior's desk at Tenth Army headquarters. The message read: "Kerama Retto secured; anchorage usable by fleet." Fleet oilers and repair ships began to anchor in the protected waters. The western islets, thirty-six in total, had fallen to the Seventy-seventh Infantry Division in a week-long operation that cost twenty-seven United States killed and eighty-one wounded. Japanese losses exceeded six hundred fifty.
The planners believed the western islets were largely cleared. Minesweepers had swept the approaches. Engineers had marked safe channels. The logisticians had begun mapping fuel dumps and ammunition points. Reality, however, carried a footnote. Small, isolated enemy detachments remained—intact, concealed, uncontacted.
Buckner's staff worked from reports compiled by regimental intelligence officers. Each report listed objectives secured, enemy killed, weapons captured. The Seventy-seventh had employed L-V-T-four amphibious tractors to cross coral reefs, Higgins L-C-V-Ps to ferry assault teams, and seventy-five-millimeter pack howitzers for fire support on the smaller islets. The S-C-R-three-hundred backpack radios—ten watts, frequency-modulated, reliable to three miles—tied battalion commanders to their companies. Mine-sweeping crews adjacent to the invasion beaches worked around the clock to protect the logistics train.

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