Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. (/ˈsaɪmən ˈbɒlɪvər ˈbʌknər/ SY-mən BOL-i-vər BUK-nər; 18 July 1886 – 18 June 1945) was a lieutenant general in the United States Army during World War II who served in the Pacific Theater.

[1] 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 19 July 1954, by a Special Act of Congress (Public Law 83-508).

Buckner and his father are named after the Venezuelan soldier and statesman, Simón Bolívar, who led what are currently the countries of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, and Bolivia to independence from the Spanish Empire.

[2] 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.

At West Point, "His rule is remembered for constructive progressiveness, with a share of severity tempered with hard, sound sense, and justice.

[5] Alaskan waters, including areas along the Aleutian Islands and into the Bering Sea coastline, had previously been reconnoitered by Imperial Japanese Naval vessels in the 1930s.

Lieutenant Paul Bishop of the 28th Bombardment Group recalled that: General Simon B. Buckner Jr. said to us that the Japanese would have the opportunity to set up airbases in the Aleutians, making coastal cities like Anchorage, Seattle, and San Francisco vulnerable within range to attack by their bombers.

We knew that they bombed China relentlessly and by surprise on Pearl Harbor, so we had to make sure it wouldn't happen here in the continental U.S. similar to what the Germans did over London and Coventry.

[7] Buckner furthermore objected to the deployment of African American troops in Alaska, writing to his superiors of his concern that they would remain after the war, "with the natural result that they would interbreed with the Indians and the Eskimos and produce an astonishingly objectionable race of mongrels which would be a problem".

The loyal courage, vigorous energy and determined fortitude of our armed forces in Alaska—on land, in the air and on the water—have turned back the tide of Japanese invasion, ejected the enemy from our shores and made a fortress of our last frontier.

Twenty-four Allied soldiers were killed by friendly fire, four by Japanese booby traps, and a further seventy-one died when the ship Abner Read struck a floating mine.

The bombardment and invasion of the deserted island was written off as a "training exercise", and the Aleutian Campaign officially ended after 439 days of warfare.

Despite historic amphibious assets, Buckner insisted on a frontal assault on the dug-in Japanese, although extremely costly in American lives, his strategy was ultimately successful.

[11][12] As Buckner stood at the outpost, a small flat-trajectory Japanese artillery shell of unknown caliber (estimated to have been 47mm) struck a coral rock outcrop near him, and fragments pierced his chest.