ENID — When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Arlo Becker of Enid was still two months shy of his 16th birthday. He had no way of knowing then he would play a role in the last major battle of World War II, helping to push the Japanese from their last foothold in the Pacific before the Home Islands.

The war caught up with Becker little more than two years later, when he was drafted shortly after his 18th birthday. He traveled to the Selective Service depot in Oklahoma City, where he asked to be enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. When asked this week why he chose the Marines, Becker laughed and said, “I have no idea.” While he might not recall his reasoning for the choice, it led him to one of the hardest-fought chapters of the war.

Becker was placed in the 1st Marine Division, a battle-hardened group that had just finished the Corps’ bloodiest battle of the war on Peleliu. Some units from the division lost as much as 60 percent of their men on Peleliu, and men like Becker were sorely needed to fill the ranks for the upcoming thrust towards Japan.

“We were replacements,” Becker said matter-of-factly about the thousands of new recruits who joined the 1st Marine Division after Peleliu. He said the older, battle-hardened Marines “were very receptive” of the fresh recruits, but were hesitant to share their combat experiences with the new arrivals.

“There was never very much said about Peleliu ... they just wouldn’t talk about it much at all,” he said.

The division’s men settled into a training regimen shortly after Becker’s arrival, honing their combat skills on the island of Pavuvu. Even as the men prepared for battle, their exact destination remained a closely guarded secret. Up until the invasion was launched, many, including the Japanese, speculated the attack would come in Formosa, off the coast of mainland China.

“We boarded a ship and we all thought we were going to hit Formosa, but we were wrong,” Becker said. Once the troops were safely sealed up in their transports and assault craft, the orders were revealed: they would be invading Okinawa.

Okinawa was to be the last amphibious invasion of the island-hopping campaign in the Pacific, and the last major battle of the war. But, as troops began massing for the invasion of Okinawa, it was seen not as a likely end to the war’s fighting, but rather as a prelude to a much bigger and bloodier task: the invasion of the Japanese Home Islands.

Located less than 350 miles from Japan’s nearest home island, Okinawa would allow American and Allied bombers to establish supremacy in the skies over Japan, and would serve as the final staging area for the invasion.

Okinawa’s strategic importance wasn’t lost on the Japanese. They amassed 100,000 Imperial Army soldiers and Okinawan conscripts on the island with one mission: to inflict as many American casualties as possible and give the Allies a taste of what to expect in an invasion of the Home Islands.

Facing the Japanese defenders was the U. S. Tenth Army, supported by the 1st, 2nd and 6th Marine Divisions.

American and Allied forces were well-versed in amphibious invasions by the time they came up against the Japanese at Okinawa. They had been invading and conquering islands from the sea for more than two-and-a-half years, beginning with Guadalcanal and most recently raising the American flag over Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima.

But, for new recruits like Becker, there was little idea of what should be expected, and the worst possibilities weighed on their minds as the invasion force approached Okinawa.

“We were wondering the whole way there, ‘How’s our landing going to go, and how many guys are going to be killed?’” Becker said. “You always have that on your mind when you get on that invasion ship ... what’s going to happen when you hit the beach.”

The men of the invasion force would find out on Easter morning, April 1, 1945, the day picked for the amphibious landing. A naval force of more than 1,400 ships was assembled for the invasion, a larger show of sea power than was present at Normandy on D-Day.

“When we got to Okinawa, as far as you could see in every direction, there were ships ... it seemed like there were thousands of them,” Becker said.

The Allied forces converged on the northern end of Okinawa on Easter morning, expecting heavy Japanese resistance to the amphibious landings.

When the troops hit the beaches, however, almost no Japanese forces could be found.

“It really was April Fool’s Day — hardly a shot was fired,” Becker said. The Japanese had made a strategic decision to give up the northern three-quarters of the island and mass their troops in the dense, mountainous jungles of the island’s southern sector.

But, it did not take Becker and the 1st Marine Division long to catch up to the Japanese in their heavily fortified defensive positions.

“It took us a few days to catch up to them,” Becker said, “and that’s when you-know-what hit the fan.”

Once the Marines advanced on the Japanese positions, Becker said the fighting was heavy: “We always had machine gun fire, mortars and artillery coming in ... it was pretty constant.”

While the fighting seemingly was uninterrupted, Becker said he and his comrades seldom saw the enemy.

“You hardly never saw them,” he said. “They were in caves or hidden, and you almost never knew where they were.”

One instance in which Becker did come into close action with the Japanese occurred shortly after his unit’s first contact with the enemy.

Becker said as his unit advanced one day, a Japanese machine-gunner opened fire. He was pinned down between the enemy gunner and one of his friends when a round struck his friend’s helmet, wounding and knocking him unconscious. The gunner kept firing at Becker’s wounded friend.

“The Jap would come up, fire a round, go down, move over, come up, fire another round ... I figured out what he was doing, so the last time he came up ... he shouldn’t have,” Becker said.

He returned fire on the Japanese gunner, and a corpsman later confirmed a tracer from Becker’s Browning Automatic Rifle, or BAR, went through the enemy soldier’s head.

Becker was hesitant to take credit for saving his friend’s life that day because he “didn’t want to seem like he was bragging.” He prefers to remember it as one of many instances in which a higher power preserved his life on Okinawa.

“I was right there between that gunner and my buddy, but he never did shoot at me,” Becker said. “I can remember several times when I’d be running for cover and I’d see machine gun bullets hitting the ground all around me ... I had people get shot all around me, but I never got hit. I attribute that to God ... it was like He was saying, ‘no, Arlo, it’s not your time.’”

The battle for Okinawa raged on for 82 days of almost constant enemy contact. As the battle wore on, soldiers on both sides found themselves fighting another battle against the elements in the Pacific rainy season.

“It rained so much and the mud got so deep that the trucks couldn’t get supplies to us,” Becker said. “They would fly airplanes in and drop supplies, but half that stuff would end up going over to the Japanese ... that’s how close we were to them,” he said.

He said being constantly wet, tired, hungry and in fear of violent injury or death began to wear on the men: “You’re on edge the whole time, day and night. Even when you’re not engaged in a battle, you’re wondering if there’s a sniper out there or if some guy’s going to creep into your foxhole and kill you ... the fear’s always there.”

The constant strain proved to be too much for some of the fighting men.

“Some of the guys couldn’t handle it, and had to be taken out of there,” Becker said.

For those who weren’t killed or wounded in the fighting, the end of the Battle of Okinawa offered only a temporary reprieve. Ninety-two percent of the Japanese troops had fought to the death or committed suicide by the battle’s end. Before they died, they killed 12,520 American troops and wounded 36,613 more while more than 33,000 troops suffered from non-combat injuries or disease.

The toll from Okinawa offered a grim look at what could be expected in an invasion of Japan.

“We heard if we invaded Japan that we should expect at least a million guys to get killed,” Becker said, “so that was a big worry for us ... we knew it was going to be a big fight.”

The Marines continued training for an invasion of Japan, an invasion that likely would have been a death sentence for a majority of the men.

All that changed when the atomic bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bringing an end to the war. Becker said he couldn’t recall his reaction when he found out about the atomic bombs being dropped; he just knew he was going home.

Becker spent six months with the 1st Marine Division in China before being shipped home to be discharged at the rank of Corporal. He kept in touch with a few of his Marine buddies from Okinawa over the years, writing Christmas cards each year to a list of about 20 men.

“Today,” Becker said, “I am the only one on that list who’s still alive.”

While time has claimed most of the men who survived Okinawa, and faded the memories of those who remain, it has not tarnished Becker’s pride at having served. He stated his feelings on the matter are best described by a bumper sticker that adorns his pickup.

It reads, simply, “OOH-RAH ... It’s a Marine thang.”