This has been subjected to revisionism multiple times.
After public protest and court ruling, it is now admitted it was the Japanese army which ordered people to kill themselves and even killed them:
"Orders from Japanese soldiers led to Okinawans committing group suicide," and, "The [Japanese] army caused many tragedies in Okinawa, killing local civilians and forcing them to commit mass suicide." [1]
> After public protest and court ruling, it is now admitted it was the Japanese army which ordered people to kill themselves and even killed them:
That's a bit of revisionism as well. The reason why many okinawans killed themselves was because the allied soldiers were raping and killing okinawan civilians.
From your own wikipedia link...
"There was some return fire from a few of the houses, but the others were probably occupied by civilians – and we didn't care. It was a terrible thing not to distinguish between the enemy and women and children. Americans always had great compassion, especially for children. Now we fired indiscriminately."
The nonsense about "distinguish between the enemy an women and children" is just egotistic nonsense. We have a long history of butchering women and children ( especially non-white women and children ). All we have to do is review US treatment of natives, blacks, etc throughout US history to see how compassionate we were.
The reason why the okinawans killed themselves was because of the brutality and savagery of both sides ( americans and japanese ).
After public protest and court ruling, it is now admitted it was the Japanese army which ordered people to kill themselves and even killed them:
"Orders from Japanese soldiers led to Okinawans committing group suicide," and, "The [Japanese] army caused many tragedies in Okinawa, killing local civilians and forcing them to commit mass suicide." [1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa#MEXT_controv...