Buckner, Simon Bolivar Jr., born on 18-07-1886 in Munfordville, Kentucky, 
.was an American Lieutenant General during World War II. He served in the Pacific Theater of Operations. 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. 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 McAuley. Palmer. 
Buckner won an appointment to West Point 
, class of 1908 from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. 
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 1900’s. During World War I, he served as a brevet major, drilling discipline into budding aviators 
. Prior to Pearl Habor, 
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, the Japanese seizure of the islands Kiska and Attu, June 1942, Battle of Attu, Operation Landcrab, May 1943 and “invasion” of Kiska, August, 1943, Aluetian Islands campaign. Following a short assignment to the central Pacific area, he was appointed, September 1944, Commanding General of the 10th Army 
, holding the rank of Lieutenant General. In that post he was charged with the invasion of the strategic Ryukyu Islands, which were still held tenaciously by the Japanese, he fought and won the Pacific front’s last great land battle on Okinawa.
The Army had over 102.000 soldiers, of these 38.000+ were non-divisional artillery, combat support and HQ troops, with another 9.000 service troops), over 88.000 Marines and 18.000 Navy personnel, mostly Seabees and medical personnel. At the start of Battle of Okinawa 10th Army had 182.821 men under its command. In all, Tenth Army suffered 65.631 casualties during the campaign, with 34.736 being suffered by XXIV Corps, 26.724 by III Amphibious Corps, 520 to the tactical air force attached to Tenth Army, 2.636 to the Army garrison forces of Okinawa and Ie Shima, and 1.015 to troops directly under the command of Tenth Army.
Death and burial ground of Buckner, Simon Bolivar Jr.
As noted earlier, one of those casualties was the commander of the 10th Army himself, killed by an enemy shell burst while visiting a forward position. The day after, a second General, Brigadier General Claudius Miller Easley 
, was killed by machine gun fire. Bückner was killed, age 58, on 18-06-1945, watching the fightings during these closing days of the Battle of Okinawa by enemy artillery fire,
making him the highest-ranking US military officer to have been killed by enemy fire during WWII and among the highest-ranking military officers to die during the war, along with Lieutenant General, Leslie James McNair
who was killed also by friendly fire in France on 25-07-1945. Lieutenant General Frank Maxwell Andrews 
killed in an air crash in Iceland on 03-05-1943. 2* Major General Maurice Rose, 
killed in a ambush near Heidelberg, two shots through his helmet, 
on 31-03-1945 while leading the 3rd Armored Division 
into the Rheinland.
Buckner’s memorial monument on the hill where he died. As Buckner stood at the outpost, a small flat-trajectory Japanese artillery shell of unknown caliber (estimated 47mm) struck a coral rock outcropping near him, and fragments pierced his chest. Buckner was carried by stretcher to a nearby aid station, where he died on the operating table. He was succeeded in command by Marine General Geiger, Roy Stanley “Rugged Roy”
. Total American deaths during the battle of Okinawa were 12,513. Buckner was posthumously promoted to the rank of a full four-star General on 19-07-1954 and is buried on Frankfort Cemetery, in Kentucky.
Mary Blanc Buckner 
, and William Claiborne Buckner. 
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