Okinawa Lib/E: The Last Battle

On 1 April, 1945, the largest amphibious assault of the Pacific Theater began. The battle for the island of Okinawa would last for the next eighty-two days. Through the course of this dramatic battle over 20,000 Americans would lose their lives and over 75,000 Japanese were killed in one of the bloodiest clashes of World War Two. Okinawa: The Last Battle is a remarkably detailed account of this monumental event by four soldiers who witnessed the action first-hand. They take the listener to heart of the fight explaining the preparations for the invasion, under its codename Operation Iceberg, through to the major conflicts at the beachhead, Ie Shima, breaking through the defenses surrounding Shuri and overcoming the last-ditch counter-offenses of the Japanese. This book is a must-listen for anyone interested the Pacific Theater and how the United States Marines and Army were able to overcome the Japanese in the last few months of the war. Corporal Eugene B. Sledge said of the battle: "The Japanese fought to win--it was a savage, brutal, inhumane, exhausting and dirty business." Okinawa: The Last Battle was written by U. S. Army historians who participated in the Ryukyus campaign as members of a group organized to accompany the American forces to the Ryukyus and secure at first hand the materials for a history of their operations. Maj. Roy E. Appleman was attached to the 27th Division, M/Sgt. James M. Burns and Lt. Col. Stevens accompanied the Tenth Army headquarters, and Capt. Russell A. Gugeler served with the 7th Division on Okinawa. After the war many of the authors went on to become prominent military historians. Appleman passed away in 1996, Burns in 2014, Stevens in 2001, and Gugeler in 1985. Their work was first published in 1948.

About the Author :
James MacGregor Burns (1918-2014) was the Woodrow Wilson Professor of Government Emeritus at Williams College and the Distinguished Leadership Scholar at the James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership at the University of Maryland. He also served as president of the American Political Science Association and of the International Society of Political Psychology. He was the author or coauthor of more than two dozen books, including Roosevelt: Soldier of Freedom, which won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award; Leadership, which is considered the seminal work in the field of leadership studies; Government by the People; and Running Alone: Presidential Leadership from JFK to Bush II-Why It Has Failed and How We Can Fix It. The late Roy E. Appleman wrote several military history studies, among them South to Naktong, North to the Yalu; Okinawa: The Last Battle; and Ridgway Duels for Korea, which won the Truman Library Book Award. During the Korean War, he served as an army historian, interviewing troops shortly after combat. He left his papers, including all interviews related to the Chosin campaign research, to the Army History Center at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. John Stevens was a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army during World War II. Russell A. Gugeler is the author or coauthor of several military history studies, including Combat Actions in Korea. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II. Joe Barrett began his acting career at the age of five in the basement of his family's home in upstate New York. He has gone on to play many stage roles, both on and off-Broadway, and in regional theaters from Los Angeles, Houston, and St. Louis to Washington DC, San Francisco, and Portland, Maine. He has appeared in films and television, both prime time and late night, and in hundreds of television and radio commercials. Joe has narrated over two hundred audiobooks. He has been an Audie Award finalist eight times, and his narration of Gun Church by Reed Farrel Coleman won the 2013 Audie Award for Original Work. AudioFile magazine has granted Joe fourteen Earphones Awards, including for James Salter's All That Is and Donald Katz's Home Fires. Regarding Joe's narration of John Irving's A Prayer For Owen Meany, AudioFile said, "This moving book comes across like a concerto . . . with a soloist-Owen's voice-rising from the background of an orchestral narration." Joe is married to actor Andrea Wright, and together they have four very grown children.