Deadeyes Remember General Buckner with Affection and Gratitude.

General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr. was the Commanding General of the Tenth Army as of September, 1944 until his passing

    General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr. was an American general during World War II. He served in the Pacific Theater of Operations and commanded the defenses of Alaska early in the war.
    After that assignment, he was promoted to command Tenth Army, which conducted the amphibious assault (Operation Iceberg) on the Japanese island of Okinawa.
    He was killed June 18, 1945, on one of the closing days of the battle of Okinawa. Buckner was posthumously promoted to the rank of full four-star general on July 19, 1954 by a Special Act of Congress.
    His father was Confederate General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Sr., who surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Fort Donaldson. He was also the 30th Governor of Kentucky.
    Buckner was raised in the rural hills of western Kentucky near Munfordville, and attended Virginia Military Institute.
    He later won an appointment to West Point (class of 1908) from President Theodore Roosevelt. He served two tours of duty in the Philippines. During World War I, he served as a brevet major, drilling discipline into budding aviators.
    Between the wars, Buckner returned to West Point as an instructor (1919-1923) and again as instructor and Commandant of Cadets (1932-1936). He was also an instructor at the General Service Schools at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and was executive officer at the Army War College in Washington, D.C.
    Prior to Pearl Harbor, Buckner was promoted to Brigadier General and assigned to fortify and protect Alaska as commander of the Army's Alaska Defense Command. Though comparatively quiet, there was some action with the attack on Dutch Harbor on the island of Unalaska, Japanese seizure of the islands Kiska and Attu (June 1942), Battle of Attu (Operation Landcrab, May 1943), and "invasion" of Kiska (August, 1943)
    In July, 1944, Buckner was sent to Hawaii to organize the Tenth Army, which was composed of both Army and Marine units. The original mission of the Tenth Army was to prepare for the invasion of Taiwan; however, this operation was canceled, and Buckner's command was instead ordered to prepare for the Battle of Okinawa. This turned out to be the largest, longest, and bloodiest sea-land-air battle in American military history.
    On June 18, 1945, Buckner was standing between two boulders watching the first combat operations of the 8th Marine Regiment when he was mortally wounded by coral fragments dislodged by an artillery shell. He was the highest ranking US Army officer to give his life during WWII, while exercising troop command. Upon his death, he was promoted to full General.
    Buckner is interred in the family plot at Frankfort Cemetery in Frankfort, Kentucky.

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Photo of the Burial Ceremony of General Simon Bolivar Bucker, Jr.

He was first buried in the Tenth Army Cemetery on Okinawa before his remains were taken back to Kentucky to lie beside his father, who was Civil War Confederate Lieutenant General and Kentucky Governor Simon Bolivar Buckner Sr

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This photo of the Buckner family, taken around 1930, was published for the Hart County Historical Society, Kentucky

General Omar Bradley with General Buckner's daughter Mary at the Presidio, San Francisco, on the day of her wedding.

"Remembering One World War II Soldier"

General Buckner with son, William
William Buckner attended the 96th Division Reunion 2002 to share with the Deadeyes about his father, GEN Buckner. He shared parts of his father's journal, in which many of his entries were of the 96th Divison in Okinawa just prior to his death. William Buckner explained the warm relationship GEN Buckner had with his Deadeyes,
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