A Day on Okinawa with Desmond Doss, 1945

By early May 1945, the Battle of Okinawa had become the bloodiest fight of the Pacific War. The 77th Infantry Division was tasked with seizing the Maeda Escarpment — a 400-foot cliff the GIs called “Hacksaw Ridge” — where dug-in Japanese defenders held a maze of tunnels, caves, and pillboxes. Private First Class Desmond T. Doss, a 26-year-old Seventh-day Adventist from Lynchburg, Virginia, served as a combat medic in B Company, 1st Battalion, 307th Infantry Regiment. He had refused to touch a weapon out of religious conviction, enduring beatings and ridicule in basic training...

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