Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. (/ˈsaɪmənˈbɒlɪvərˈbʌknər/ SY-mən BOL-i-vər BUK-nər; July 18, 1886 – June 18, 1945) was a lieutenant general in the United States Army during World War II. He served in the Pacific Theater of Operations and commanded the defenses of Alaska early in the war. Following that assignment, he was promoted to command the Tenth Army, which conducted the amphibious assault on the Japanese island of Okinawa on April 1, 1945. He was killed during the closing days of the Battle of Okinawa by enemy artillery fire, making him the highest-ranking United States military officer lost to enemy fire during World War II.[1] He remained the highest-ranking U.S. military member to be killed by a foreign armed action until the death of Lieutenant General Timothy Maude during the September 11 attacks Buckner, Lesley J. McNair, Frank Maxwell Andrews, and Millard Harmon, all lieutenant generals at the time of their deaths, were the highest-ranking Americans to be killed in World War II. Buckner and McNair were posthumously promoted to the rank of four-star general on July 19, 1954, by a Special Act of Congress (Public Law 83-508).
Early life and education
Buckner was the son of Confederate general Simon Bolivar Buckner and his wife Delia Hayes Claiborne. His father was Governor of Kentucky from 1887 to 1891, and was the Gold Democratic Party's candidate for Vice President of the United States in 1896.[3] Buckner was raised near Munfordville, Kentucky, and accompanied his father on his 1896 presidential campaign when he served as the running mate of ex-Union general John M. Palmer.
Military career
Plaque on Fort McClellan building
Buckner attended the Virginia Military Institute. When he turned 18 in the summer of 1904, his father asked President Theodore Roosevelt to grant him an appointment to West Point. Roosevelt granted this request and Buckner graduated in the class of 1908. He served two military tours in the Philippines, and wrote about his adventures in Tales of the Philippines – In the Early 1900s.[4] During World War I, he served as a temporary major, drilling discipline into aviator cadets
