Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr.
Rank Component Date
Cadet USMA June 16 , 1904
Second Lieutenant Regular Army February 14 , 1908
First Lieutenant Regular Army August 5 , 1914
Captain Regular Army May 5 , 1917
Major Temporary August 5 , 1917
Captain Regular Army August 21 , 1919
Major Regular Army July 1 , 1920
Lieutenant Colonel Regular Army April 1 , 1932
Colonel Regular Army January 11 , 1937
Brigadier General Regular Army September 1 , 1940
Major General Army of the United States August 4 , 1941
Lieutenant General Army of the United States May 4 , 1943
General Posthumous July 19 , 1954
Dates of rank
Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. ( ; 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. 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 (Public Law 83-508).