The Battle of Okinawa, codenamed Operation Iceberg, was a major battle of the Pacific War fought on the island of Okinawa by United States Marine and Army forces against the Imperial Japanese Army. The initial invasion of Okinawa on April 1, 1945, was the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific Theater of World War II; the 82-day battle lasted from April 1 until June 22, 1945. After a long campaign of island hopping, the Allies were planning to use Kadena Air Base on the large island of Okinawa as a base for Operation Downfall, the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands, 340 mi away; the United States created the Tenth Army, a cross-branch force consisting of the 7th, 27th, 77th, 96th infantry divisions of the US Army with the 1st, 2nd, 6th divisions of the Marine Corps, to fight on the island. The Tenth was unique in that it had its own tactical air force, was supported by combined naval and amphibious forces; the battle has been referred to as the "typhoon of steel" in English, tetsu no ame or tetsu no bōfū in Japanese.

The nicknames refer to the ferocity of the fighting, the intensity of Japanese kamikaze attacks, the sheer numbers of Allied ships and armored vehicles that assaulted the island. The battle was one of the bloodiest in the Pacific, with 160,000 casualties on both sides: at least 75,000 Allied and 84,166–117,000 Japanese, including drafted Okinawans wearing Japanese uniforms. 149,425 Okinawans were killed, committed suicide or went missing, a significant proportion of the estimated pre-war 300,000 local population. In the naval operations surrounding the battle, both sides lost considerable numbers of ships and aircraft, including the Japanese battleship Yamato. After the battle, Okinawa provided a fleet anchorage, troop staging areas, airfields in proximity to Japan in preparation for a planned invasion. In all, the US Army had over 103,000 soldiers, over 18,000 Navy personnel. At the start of the Battle of Okinawa, the US 10th Army had 182,821 personnel under its command, it was planned that General Buckner would report to Turner until the amphibious phase was completed, after which he would report directly to Spruance.

Although Allied land forces were composed of American units, the British Pacific Fleet provided about ¼ of Allied naval air power. It comprised a force. Although all the BPF aircraft carriers were provided by Britain, the carrier group was a combined British Commonwealth fleet with Australian, New Zealand and Canadian ships and personnel, their mission was to neutralize Japanese airfields in the Sakishima Islands and provide air cover against Japanese kamikaze attacks. Most of the air-to-air fighters and the small dive bombers and strike aircraft were US Navy carrier-based airplanes; the Japanese land campaign was conducted by the 67,000-strong regular 32nd Army and some 9,000 Imperial Japanese Navy troops at Oroku Naval Base, supported by 39,000 drafted local Ryukyuan people. The Japanese had used kamikaze tactics since the Battle of Leyte Gulf, but for the first time, they became a major part of the defense. Between the American landing on April 1 and May 25, seven major kamikaze attacks were attempted, involving more than 1,500 planes.

The 32nd Army consisted of the 9th, 24th, 62nd Divisions, the 44th Independent Mixed Brigade. The 9th Division was moved to Taiwan before the invasion, resulting in shuffling of Japanese defensive plans. Primary resistance was to be led in the south by Lieutenant General Mitsuru Ushijima, his chief of staff, Lieutenant General Isamu Chō and his chief of operations, Colonel Hiromichi Yahara. Yahara advocated a defensive strategy, whilst Chō advocated an offensive one. In the north, Colonel Takehido Udo was in command; the IJN troops were led by Rear Admiral Minoru Ōta. They expected the Americans to land 6–10 divisions against the Japanese garrison of two and a half divisions; the staff calculated that superior quality and numbers of weapons gave each US division five or six times the firepower of a Japanese division. To this, would be added the Americans' abundant naval and air firepower. On Okinawa, middle school boys were organized into front-line-service Tekketsu Kinnōtai, while Himeyuri students were organized into a nursing unit.

The Imperial Japanese Army mobilized 1,780 middle school boys aged 14–17 years into front-line-service. They were named Tekketsu Kinnōtai; this mobilization was conducted by an ordinance of the Ministry of the Army, not by law. The ordinances mobilized the students as volunteer soldiers for form's sake. About half of the Tekketsu Kinnōtai were killed, including in suicide bomb attacks against tanks, in guerrilla operations. Between the 21 male and female secondary schools that made up these student corps, 2,000 students would die on the battlefield. With the female student

Eric Schaefer, Ph. D. is a film historian. He is an associate professor at Emerson College and interim chair of the visual and media arts department, he has a B. A. from Webster University, an M. A. and Ph. D. from the University of Texas, Austin. He is best known for his book on exploitation filmmaking, Bold! Daring! Shocking! True: A History of Exploitation Films, 1919-1959, published by Duke University Press in 1999, he has been described as "the go-to academic source on the genre of exploitation films."He is a member of the Northeast Historic Film board of advisors and a member of the editorial board of the journal The Moving Image. Bold! Daring! Shocking! True": A History of Exploitation Films, 1919-1959 - Duke University Press. "Plain Brown Wrapper: Adult Films for the Home Market, 1930-1970", In the Absence of Films: Towards a New Historiographic Practice, Eric Smoodin and Jon Lewis, Duke University Press. "Gauging a Revolution: 16mm Film and the Rise of the Pornographic Feature". Cinema Journal - 41, Number 3, Spring 2002, pp. 3–26.

"Dirty Little Secrets: Scholars and Dirty Movies". The Moving Image - Volume 5, Number 2, Fall 2005, pp. 79–105

Henry Lyall Hall was an Australian politician, serving as the member for Perth in the Legislative Assembly from 1897 until 1901. Hall was born at Homebush near Avoca, Australia, to Henry Hall, a miner and newspaper editor, Elizabeth Bethell, he became a public servant in Victoria and was a telegraph clerk at Emerald Hill in 1884. On 11 December 1884 in Ballarat, he married Mary Page, with whom he had four daughters, they moved to Western Australia in 1894, where he worked as general land agent. In 1896 he was elected to the North Ward of Perth City Council for a two-year term, after joining the governing Forrest party, he won the seat of Perth in the Legislative Assembly at the 1897 elections against Stephen Henry Parker. During this time, he was active in advocating for the establishment of Hyde Park known as Third Swamp and used as a camping ground for travellers, to be converted into public gardens to allow citizens to better enjoy Perth's prosperity; the reserve was declared on 30 September 1897 and, after design work by Hall and Thomas Mews, development work proceeded through 1898 and 1899.

He did not contest the 1901 election. After 1907, he became an investor and speculator in real estate and was a member of the Wembley Park progress association, he died on 23 October 1935 at St John of God Hospital in Subiaco, was buried in the Anglican section of Karrakatta Cemetery