Joseph H. Alexander

“ As General Kuribayashi would ruefully admit in an assessment report to Imperial General Headquarters, “we need to reconsider the power of bombardment from ships; the violence of the enemy’s bombardments is far beyond description.”
The amphibious task force appeared from over the horizon, the rails of the troopships crowded with combat-equipped Marines watching the spectacular fireworks. The Guadalcanal veterans among them realized a grim satisfaction watching American battleships leisurely pounding the island from just offshore. ”

“ Holland Smith believed that the replacement drafts would suffice, presuming that each man in these hybrid units had received sufficient infantry training to enable his immediate assignment to front-line outfits. The problem lay in distributing the replacements in small, arbitrary numbers—not as teamed units—to fill the gaping holes in the assault battalions. The new men, expected to replace invaluable veterans of the Pacific War, were not only new to combat, but they also were new to each other, an assortment of strangers lacking the life-saving bonds of unit integrity. ”

“ At Tarawa, Saipan, and Tinian, I saw Marines killed and wounded in a shocking manner, but I saw nothing like the ghastliness that hung over the Iwo beachhead. Nothing any of us had ever known could compare with the utter anguish, frustration, and constant inner battle to maintain some semblance of sanity.
Personnel accounting was a nightmare under those conditions, but the assault divisions eventually reported the combined loss of 2,420 men to General Schmidt (501 killed, 1,755 wounded, 47 dead of wounds, 18 missing, and 99 combat fatigue) . ”

“ The war had come full cycle from the dark days of October 1942 when the 1st Marine Division and the Cactus Air Force endured similar shelling from Japanese battleships.
The Marines and sailors were anxious to get their first glimpse of the objective. Correspondent John P. Marquand, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, recorded his own first impressions of Iwo: “Its silhouette was like a sea monster, with the little dead volcano for the head, and the beach area for the neck, and all the rest of it, with its scrubby brown cliffs for the body.” ”

“ Fighting in this ungodly landscape provided a fitting end to the battle—nine endless days of cave-by-cave assaults with flamethrowers and demolitions. Combat engineers used 8,500 tons of explosives to detonate one huge fortification. Progress was slow and costlier than ever. General Rockey’s drained and depleted regiments lost one more man with every two yards gained. To ease the pressure, General Schmidt deployed the 3d Marine Division against Kitano Point in the 5th Division zone. ”

“ Marines advance warily on Airfield No. 1 towards wrecked Japanese planes in which enemy snipers are suspected of hiding. The assault quickly moved on.
Some of the bitterest fighting in the initial phase of the landing continued to occur along the high ground above the Rock Quarry on the right flank. Here the 25th Marines, reinforced by the 1st Battalion, 24th Marines, engaged in literally the fight of its life. The Marines found the landscape, and the Japanese embedded in it, unreal:
There was no cover from enemy fire. ”

“ The Marines had always enjoyed the finest immediate medical attention from their organic surgeons and corpsmen, but the backup system ashore at Iwo Jima, from field hospitals to graves registration, was mind-boggling to the older veterans. Moderately wounded Marines received full hospital treatment and rehabilitation; many returned directly to their units, thus preserving at least some of the rapidly decreasing levels of combat experience in frontline outfits. The more seriously wounded were treated, stabilized, and evacuated, either to offshore hospital ships or by air transport to Guam. ”

“ Time correspondent Robert Sherrod reported that the dead at Iwo Jima, both Japanese and American, had one thing in common: “They all died with the greatest possible violence. Nowhere in the Pacific War had I seen such badly mangled bodies. Many were cut squarely in half.”
Close combat was rough enough; on Iwo Jima the stress seemed endless because for a long time the Marines had no secure “rear area” in which to give shot-up troop units a respite. Kuribayashi’s gunners throughout the Motoyama Plateau could still bracket the beaches and airfields. ”

“ The persistent myth among some Marine units that Japanese troops were all near-sighted and hence poor marksmen ended for good at Iwo Jima. In the close-quarters fighting among the badlands of northern Iwo Jima, Japanese riflemen dropped hundreds of advancing Marines with well-aimed shots to the head or chest. “Poor marksmen?” snorted Captain Caldwell of Company F, 1st Battalion, 26th Marines, “The Japs we faced all fired ‘Expert.’”
Mopping up the caves with grenades and Browning automatic rifles, Marines flush out remaining Japanese hidden in Iwo Jima’s numerous and interconnecting caves. ”

“ The Navy and Marine frogmen had reported the approaches free of mines or tetrahedrons. There was no premature cessation of fire. The “rolling barrage” plan took effect. Hardly a vehicle was lost to the desultory enemy fire.
The massive assault waves hit the beach within two minutes of H-hour. A Japanese observer watching the drama unfold from a cave on the slopes of Suribachi reported, “At nine o’clock in the morning several hundred landing craft with amphibious tanks in the lead rushed ashore like an enormous tidal wave.” ”

“ Japanese fire and the plunging surf continued to make a shambles out of the beachhead. Late in the afternoon, Lieutenant Michael F. Keleher, USNR, the battalion surgeon, was ordered ashore to take over the 3d Battalion, 25th Marines aid station from its gravely wounded surgeon. Keleher, a veteran of three previous assault landings, was appalled by the carnage on Blue Beach as he approached: “Such a sight on that beach! Wrecked boats, bogged-down jeeps, tractors and tanks; burning vehicles; casualties scattered all over.” ”

“ The 21st Marines could see the end, and their momentum proved irresistible. In half a day of sharp fighting they cleared the point of the last defenders. Erskine signalled Schmidt: “Kitano Point is taken.”
Both divisions made serious efforts to persuade Kuribayashi to surrender during these final days, broadcasting appeals in Japanese, sending personal messages praising his valor and urging his cooperation. Kuribayashi remained a samurai to the end. He transmitted one final message to Tokyo, saying “we have not eaten or drunk for five days, but our fighting spirit is still running high. ”

“ Iwo Jima in American hands produced immediate and highly visible benefits to the strategic bombing campaign. Marines fighting on the island were reminded of this mission time and again as crippled B-29 Superforts flew in from Honshu. The capture of Iwo Jima served to increase the operating range, payload, and survival rate of the big bombers. The monthly tonnage of high explosives dropped on Imperial Japan by B-29s based in the Marianas increased eleven-fold in March alone. ”

“ We Americans of a subsequent generation in the profession of arms find it difficult to imagine a sustained amphibious assault under such conditions. In some respects the fighting on Iwo Jima took on the features of Marines fighting in France in 1918, described by one as “a war girt with horrors.” We sense the drama repeated every morning at Iwo, after the prep fires lifted, when the riflemen, engineers, corpsmen, flame tank crews, and armored bulldozer operators somehow found the fortitude to move out yet again into “Death Valley” or “The Meatgrinder.” ”

“ Where it counted most—the proficiency of small units in amphibious landings and combined-arms assaults on fortified positions—each division was well prepared for the forthcoming invasion. The 3d Marine Division had just completed its participation in the successful recapture of Guam; field training often extended to active combat patrols to root out die-hard Japanese survivors. In Maui, the 4th Marine Division prepared for its fourth major assault landing in 13 months with quiet confidence. ”

“ I see those awful, impossible positions to take in a frontal attack on such an island, where the batteries opposing you are not only staggered up in front of you, but also standing around at the sides as you’re coming on shore. ”

“ Unavoidably, Iwo Jima’s biggest cost to the V Amphibious Corps was the loss of so many combat veterans in taking the island. While the battle served to create a new generation of veterans among the survivors, many proud regiments suffered devastating losses. With these same units already designated as key components of the landing force against the Japanese home islands, such losses had serious potential implications. These factors may well have influenced General Holland Smith’s unpopular decision to withhold the 3d Marines from the battle. ”

“ Japanese snipers had no compunctions about picking off litter crews, or corpsmen, or sometimes the wounded man himself as his buddies tried to slide him clear of the fire. One of the most celebrated examples of casualty evacuation occurred after a Japanese sniper shot Corporal Edwin J. Canter, a rocket truck crew chief in the 4th Marine Division, through the abdomen. The rocket trucks always drew an angry fusillade of counterbattery fire from the Japanese, and Canter’s friends knew they had to get him away from the launch site fast. ”

“ As far as the Marines on the ground were concerned, the most welcome Army units flew into Iwo Jima on 6 March (D+15) . This was the 15th Fighter Group, the vanguard of VII Fighter Command destined to accompany the B-29s over Tokyo. The group included the 47th Fighter Squadron, a seasoned outfit of North American P-51 Mustangs. Although the Army pilots had no experience in direct air support of ground troops, Colonel Megee liked their “eager-beaver attitude” and willingness to learn. ”

“ Too often the men had to spend their rare rest periods repairing weapons, humping ammo, dodging major-caliber incoming, or having to repel yet another nocturnal Japanese probe.
General Schmidt planned to attack the Japanese positions in the north with three divisions abreast, the 5th on the left, the 3d (less the 3d Marines) in the center, and the 4th on the right, along the east coast. The drive north officially began on D+5, the day after the capture of Suribachi. Prep fires along the high ground immediately north of the second airfield extended for a full hour. ”

“ Strong men wept unashamedly. Navy Secretary Forrestal, thrilled by the sight, turned to Holland Smith and said, “the raising of that flag means a Marine Corps for another five hundred years.”
Three hours later an even larger flag went up to more cheers. Few would know that Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal had just captured the embodiment of the American warfighting spirit on film. Leatherneck magazine photographer Staff Sergeant Lou Lowery had taken a picture of the first flag-raising and almost immediately got in a firefight with a couple of enraged Japanese. ”

“ While the 28th Marines fought to encircle Suribachi and the beachmasters and shore party attempted to clear the wreckage from the beaches, the remaining assault units of the VAC resumed their collective assault against Airfield No. 1. In the 5th Marine Division’s zone, the relatively fresh troops of the 1st Battalion, 26th Marines, and the 3d Battalion, 27th Marines, quickly became bloodied in forcing their way across the western runways, taking heavy casualties from time-fuzed air bursts fired by Japanese dual-purpose antiaircraft guns zeroed along the exposed ground. ”

“ According to a subsequent analysis by military historian Dr. Norman Cooper, “Nearly seven hundred Americans gave their lives for every square mile. For every plot of ground the size of a football field, an average of more than one American and five Japanese were killed and five Americans wounded.”
The fighting hardly over, grizzled, begrimed, and tired Marines solemnly display the spoils of war captured in a very long, difficult, and hard-fought battle.
Marine Corps Historical Collection
The assault infantry units bore the brunt of these losses. ”

“ The Rocket Detachments Attached to the assault divisions of the landing force at Iwo Jima were provisional rocket detachments. The infantry had a love-hate relationship with the forward-deploying little rocket trucks and their plucky crews. The “system” was an International one-ton 4×4 truck modified to carry three box-shaped launchers, each containing a dozen 4.5-inch rockets. A good crew could launch a “ripple” of 36 rockets within a matter of seconds, providing a blanket of high explosives on the target. ”

“ The Marines had come a long way in the tactical use of fire in the 15 months since Tarawa, when only a handful of backpack flame throwers were available to combat the island’s hundreds of fortifications. While the landing force still relied on portable flame throwers, most Marines could see the value of marrying the technology with armored vehicles for use against the toughest targets. ”

“ With that, the escort carriers departed the area and left close air support to the 47th Fighter Squadron for the duration of the battle.
While technically not a “supporting arm,” the field medical support provided the assault Marines primarily by the Navy was a major contributor to victory in the prolonged battle. The practice of integrating surgeons, chaplains, and corpsmen within the Fleet Marine Force units continued to pay valuable dividends. In many cases company corpsmen were just as tough and combat-savvy as the Marines they accompanied. ”

“ The next day, D+6, 25 February, provided little relief in terms of Japanese resistance. Small groups of Marines, accompanied by tanks, somehow made it across the runway, each man harboring the inescapable feeling he was alone in the middle of a gigantic bowling alley. Sometimes holding newly gained positions across the runway proved more deadly than the process of getting there. ”