Saturday, February 19, 2005
Bloody Iwo!
"throwing human flesh against reinforced concrete"
Sixty years ago today, U.S. Navy landing craft loaded with thousands of U.S. Marines began churning toward a tiny, eight-square-mile chunk of volcanic rock jutting out the Pacific Ocean. The island, Iwo Jima, was about to become the scene of a month long battle between U.S. forces and Iwo's Japanese defenders. It was a battle that some historians have since described as “throwing human flesh against reinforced concrete.” It would define the modern Marine Corps. President Franklin D. Roosevelt would gasp in horror upon learning of the American casualties (7,000 Americans were killed, another 26,000 wounded). And Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal would say to General Holland M. Smith, “The raising of that flag on Suribachi means a Marine Corps for the next 500 years.”
Following is an excerpt from the chapter on Iwo Jima in my book, Decisive 20th-Century American Battles:
... Hand-picked by Emperor Hirohito to command Japanese forces on Iwo Jima was Lt. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, a 53-year-old Samurai warrior and a former Imperial Cavalry chief. Sworn to defend his island fortress to the death, Kuribayashi had posted his “Courageous Battle Vows” at every bunker and gun emplacement. The vows ordered each man to kill ten of the enemy before dying. “Each man should think of his defense position as his graveyard,” wrote Kuribayashi. “Fight until the last and inflict much damage to the enemy.”
Kuribayashi knew the invaders were coming and that the defenders would be outnumbered. But he wanted his men to be heartened by their sense of duty to their families, their homes, and their emperor. He appealed to his men to force their assailants to come to them and pay for every inch of ground with blood, regardless of their own imminent deaths. There was to be no surrender. The reasoning - though incomprehensible by Western standards - was simple: Iwo Jima was Japanese soil, and no foreign military force had stepped foot on Japanese soil in 5,000 years. That was about to change.
On February 16, the American Fifth Fleet under the command of Admiral Raymond Ames Spruance steamed into the area around the island. Many of the fleet’s ships were carrying members of the V Marine Amphibious Corps - consisting of the 4th and 5th Marine Divisions (with the 3rd Marine Division in reserve) - under the command of Major General Harry “the Dutchman” Schmidt, the senior shore commander. Schmidt’s division commanders - also major generals - were Keller E. “the Great Stone Face” Rockey of the 5th, Clifton Bledsoe Cates of the 4th, and Graves B. “the Big E” Erskine of the 3rd.
The overall “Expeditionary Troops” commander was Lt. General Holland M. “Howlin’ Mad” Smith, a hard-bitten Alabaman who had won the French Croix de Guerre for his actions at Belleau Wood during World War I. Smith was nick-named “Howlin’ Mad” because of his unforgiving approach to failure on the part of subordinates. He had, in fact, fired two subordinate U.S. Army Generals for lack of aggressiveness. Smith was also diabetic and, at 62, the oldest three-star in any of the services. But President Franklin Roosevelt arranged for Smith to be ranking Marine commander in the Pacific. Back home, the American newspapers were often critical of Smith, accusing the General of needlessly wasting lives. But Smith knew how to fight, his Marines adored him, and that was enough for FDR.
Prior to the landings, Iwo Jima was subjected to the longest sustained aerial bombardment of the Pacific war. It wasn’t as much as the Marines wanted or needed, but it was enough to turn the already eerie-looking atoll into something akin to a “lunar landscape.”
With the exception of it’s defending garrison, no one lived on Iwo Jima. Yet on the morning of February 19, it became one of the most densely populated places on Earth. It would also become the place with the lowest life expectancy.
Just before 2:00 a.m., Naval gunfire opened up on Iwo, pounding the island for one hour. The shelling stopped momentarily as over 100 bombers dove on the smoking atoll to deliver their preparatory payload. When the aircraft had finished their attack, the ships’ big guns again opened up. Surprisingly, neither the air bombardment nor the Naval gunfire had much of an effect on the island’s deeply burrowed underground fortresses or its 21,000 armed inhabitants. A fact that would prove costly to the leathernecks tasked with taking Iwo.
Offshore, Marines sweating it out in the holds of troop transport ships made final preparations: They checked their equipment, cleaned weapons, wrote required letters home, and nervously ate the traditional pre-invasion breakfast of steak and eggs.
At 8:30 a.m., the order was issued to begin ferrying the Marines ashore. Just after 9:00 a.m., the first waves were scrambling out of the landing craft and onto the island’s southeastern beaches. Initial opposition was minor. To the men hitting the beach, it seemed as if the preparatory fires had been effective. The immediate problem was terrain. Much of the ground was nothing more than rock, volcanic ash, and deep black sand: Difficult for infantry to move through - the Marines were sinking in up to their ankles - and often impassable for amphibious tractors, tanks, and other vehicles.
Deeply entrenched in a 16-mile labyrinth of tunnels and reinforced caves, Kuribayashi’s men waited. In previous battles, the Japanese had resorted to terrifying Banzai charges, suicidal attacks led by sword-wielding officers. But such “bamboo spear tactics” proved too costly. There were some suicidal Japanese counterattacks on Iwo Jima. But Kuribayashi's primary strategy was a defense-in-depth: Fortifying an area, then garrisoning each connected position point-to-point.
Once ashore, the Marines launched two attacks along a 4,000 yard front: The 5th moved against Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima’s dominant feature; and the 4th pressed toward the island’s largest air strip, located about a half mile inland.
The patient Japanese waited for the largest possible concentration of Marines to enter their previously sighted fields of fire. Then they opened up. According to one Marine, “you could've held up a cigarette and lit it on the stuff going by.”
Kuribayashi had predicted that the massive fires and subsequent high casualties would cause the Marines to lose heart. He misjudged his enemy.
Gunnery Sergeant John Basilone, already famous as the first Marine to win the Congressional Medal of Honor in World War II, single-handedly wiped out an enemy blockhouse then charged up the beach. Having recently returned from a stateside war bond tour where he was kissed by Hollywood starlets, he now found himself under fire and looking for a position where he could place a machine gun. Basilone turned to his men and urged them forward. At that instant, an enemy shell exploded killing Basilone and four other Marines.
“They waited until we got on the beach, then they unloaded on us,” said Corporal Robert W. Hughes, a Marine who landed in the second wave and was later carried off the island with two shattered legs. “The dead and wounded were everywhere. We were all scared, but we had a job to do and we did it.”
By early evening, Mt. Suribachi had been isolated from the rest of the island, and the Marines had reached the edge of the air strip which was quickly captured. But the price was high. The Americans suffered some 2,500 casualties on the first day.
Pilots and war correspondents flying above the battle reported “surprise” at what appeared to them to be thousands of Marines on one side of the island fighting against a solid wall of stone. It wasn’t an inaccurate description. Without cover, the Americans were exposed to constant fire and counterattack. Fighting yard by yard, were it not for the tenacity of the individual Marine, Iwo Jima might have proven to be impregnable.
The fighting was merciless: Marines were having to clear caves, tunnels, and blockhouses. Believing they had destroyed one position, the Marines would move to the next only to discover the previous position suddenly burst to life again behind them. In such close quarters, the combat was almost primal, often becoming hand-to-hand. Many Marines were hacked to death, one man losing both arms at the shoulder to a Samurai sword. ...
ORDER DECISIVE 20TH-CENTURY AMERICAN BATTLES TO READ THIS STORY IN ITS ENTIRETY. Also, for an account of one of the battle's most incredible warriors, read the story of Marine Lt. Jack Lummus - a 29-year-old New York Giants defensive lineman who was killed on Iwo - in Gridiron Heroes at NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE.
Semper Fi,
WTSjr