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8 OccupationDuty The best duty I ever had. —2nd Lt. James Craig Before he left for Okinawa in November 1945, Jim and some of his ofcer buddies went down to a dump where some old furniture from the now dismantled Camp Maui lay discarded. He found some cross-legged folding chairs and helped himself to one. He took his chair with him on board the transport and lounged in it on deck every day that the weather permitted. With the war over, there was no longer a need for the precautionary zigzag pattern. This time the trip across the Pacic was shorter. In contrast to the trip to Iwo Jima, this voyage was leisurely; Jim had time to rest and read.  The building of the atomic bomb and the consideration for its use against Japan was such a closely held secret that only a select few in the higher echelons of the military knew of its existence. Planning for the eventual invasion of Japan, code-named Operation Downfall, continued even after the bombs were dropped, right up until Japan accepted the terms of surrender on 15 August 1945. Had it been necessary to invade Japan, Okinawa was to have served as the jumping-off point for American forces. Lying 400 miles south of Kyushu, Okinawa was essential to the American plans. The invasion of Okinawa began on 1 April 1945, and the island was declared secure on 22 June. Once Okinawa was secured, tons of supplies and munitions began arriving in preparation for the planned invasion. Thousands of civilians were rounded up and placed in a rehabilitation center until their homes could be rebuilt. The 9th Military Police (MP) 104 | The Last Lieutenant Battalion was sent to Okinawa to provide security for the American base and the rehabilitation center. The U.S. occupation forces divided Okinawa into three districts. The 9th Military Police Battalion was assigned to one of these districts. Jim and his platoon were given responsibility for a rehabilitation center in one of three subdistricts within his battalion’s district. As a second lieutenant, he was the highest-ranking MP in this subdistrict. His primary responsibility was to maintain the peace and security at the rehabilitation center where the displaced citizens lived. The poor Okinawans, as so often happens in war, were nonbelligerent civilians caught in the middle. They suffered thousands of casualties, and nearly all of them lost their homes. Looking north from Ishikawa, Jim could see the little island of le Shima, where the Hoosier war correspondent Ernie Pyle was killed by a Japanese sniper on 18 April 1945. Initially, the U.S. Army provided security for the area, and it continued in this capacity for two weeks after the Marines arrived. During this overlap period, Jim had a chance to observe the Army checkpoint at the entrance to the rehab center. One of the rst things he noticed was the work detail that drove trucks into the village to pick up Okinawan laborers. Jim had been instructed that nobody was allowed into the village without proper written authorization, yet the trucks seemed to come and go without anybody stopping them to check for this authorization. The compound, especially the village where the civilians lived, was offlimits to all military personnel without proper authorization. At night Jim heard screams from inside the village and saw soldiers from the work battalion , located just down the road, sneaking in and out of the compound. He suspected they were harassing and raping the women. Jim was issued a broken-down jeep to patrol the roads. Unfortunately, it would only go the prescribed 35-mph speed limit. One day his men stopped a speeding truck. When they asked the driver for his authorization papers, three men in the back jumped out with machine guns and demanded to be allowed to pass. As MPs they were only issued .45-caliber pistols. A pistol is no match for a machine gun, and he had learned on Iwo Jima not to argue with anyone holding a machine gun. They let the truck pass. Jim soon discovered that most of the military vehicles on the island were not properly registered. He and his men set up checkpoints and started checking for proper registration and comparing the vehicle registration number against a list of stolen vehicles. He was surprised how many had been stolen. When he came across a stolen vehicle, he conscated it. Some of the men in his battalion were...

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