page_title: Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr.
section_title: World War II
hierarchical_section_title: Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. / Military career / World War II
caption_attribution_description: English: Simon B. Buckner, Commanding General, Tenth Army (foreground), holding camera, photographed while observing action on the Marine front during the latter part of the campaign. With him, holding walking stick, is Major General Lemuel C. Shepperd, Jr., Commanding General, 6th Marine Division.
context_page_description: Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. 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. He would remain the highest ranking 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.
caption: Buckner (foreground, holding camera), photographed with Major General Lemuel C. Shepherd Jr., USMC, on Okinawa.
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