Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr.

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Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. (July 18, 1886 - June 18, 1945) was an American general during World War II. He served in the Pacific Theater of Operations and commanded the defences 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 during the closing days of the battle of Okinawa by enemy artillery fire. Buckner remains the highest-ranking American to have been killed during the Second World War, outranking Lt. Gen. Lesley J. McNair, who was killed by friendly fire in France on July 25, 1944. Buckner was posthumously promoted to general on July 19, 1954 by a Special Act of Congress (Public Law 83-508).

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, allowing him to pursue his love of hunting and fishing. During World War I, he served as a temporary 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). Though recognized as tough and fair, his insistence on developing cadets past conventional limits caused one parent to quip, "Buckner forgets that cadets are born, not quarried." 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 August, 1943, Buckner was sent to Hawaii to organize the Tenth Army, and prepare for the Battle of Okinawa, the largest sea-land-air battle in history, which also turned out to be slow and bloody.

Earlier in the war, when Buckner had commanded troops in Alaska, his prejudices had been exposed. A Southerner and avowed racist, when told he would be commanding black troops, he vehemently opposed it. He said that he feared they would cross breed with Alaska Natives and produce "the ugliest race the world has ever seen."

His father was Confederate General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Sr., who famously surrendered to then brigadier-general Ulysses S. Grant at Fort Donelson.

Named in honor of Buckner:

Fort Buckner, an Army sub-post of the Marine Corps' Camp Foster on Okinawa. The post is home to the 58th Signal Battalion and includes a small memorial to its namesake.

West Point's Camp Buckner, where yearlings (incoming sophomores) go through Cadet Field Training (CFT), and get their first taste of the Army outside of the classroom.