Okinawa

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On September 29, 1944, Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander of the Pacific Ocean Area (POA), and Fleet Admiral Ernest King, chief of U.S. Naval Operations, conferred in San Francisco on the next steps to be taken to deliver the final crusher to a staggering Japan. This was the conference’s stated purpose, but the unspoken objective was to persuade the irascible, often-inflexible King to accept Nimitz’s battle plan, instead of King’s own.

This would not be easy, for the tall, lean, hard, humorless King was known to be “so tough he shaves with a blowtorch.” Indeed, his civilian chief, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, had ordered from Tiffany’s a silver miniature blowtorch with that inscription on it. Thus, there was some trepidation among Nimitz and his Army chiefs—Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner of Army Ground Forces (POA) and Lieutenant General Millard Harmon of the newly formed Army Air Forces (POA)—as well as Admiral Raymond Spruance, alternate chief with Fleet Admiral William “Bull” Halsey, of Nimitz’s battle fleet.[1] They knew that King was convinced the next operation in the Pacific should be landings on the big island of Formosa off the Chinese southeastern coast. If Nimitz and staff could persuade King to accept General of the Armies Douglas MacArthur’s plan to invade Luzon in the Philippines rather than Formosa, the conference would end in a rare and high note of interservice cooperation.

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