Combat· World War II
Sugar Loaf Hill
Sugar Loaf was the western anchor of the Shuri Line and the 6th Marine Division's bloodiest fight on Okinawa.
It was not a single hill but a mutually supporting complex of three, with Half Moon and Horseshoe covering its flanks and all approaches falling under heavy artillery from Shuri Heights. Modest in height, its significance lay in the ingenuity of its fortifications and the ferocity of the Japanese counterattacks that met every penetration. The 22d, then 29th, then 4th Marines threw company after company at the complex in repeated assaults, summit seizures, and night melees, regiments ground down to fragments before the hill was held. The Marines fought the entire battle, an attrition struggle that came to epitomize Okinawa, taking the position only after the flanking hills were simultaneously invested and a massed enemy counterattack was destroyed.
Podcast episodes on World War II
Record no. 847