So Sad to Fall in Battle

by Kumiko Kakehashi

  Amid this flood of information, the American people were horrified to learn that in the first four days after the landing, the battle on Iwo Jima had produced more casualties than five months of jungle fighting on Guadalcanal. Public opinion grew agitated, and there were letters and articles in the newspapers: “Please stop sending our finest youth to be murdered.” “The commanding officer should be replaced.”

  Bradley maintains that Kuribayashi had foreseen this response, and that it was precisely for this reason that he opted not to fight and die in a blaze of glory, but to wage a battle of attrition designed to maximize the human toll on the American side.

  Bradley’s theory may be correct, but the war subsequently developed in a manner diametrically opposed to Kuribayashi’s hopes. The United States did decide that it did not want any more of its young men to die, but the means it chose to bring the war to a speedy end was to drop the atomic bomb, which killed and maimed Japanese civilians in enormous numbers. This was something that neither Kuribayashi nor the twenty thousand soldiers who fought so unforgivingly could ever have predicted.

  August 6, 1945; 5:55 a.m. A single B-29 bomber flew over Iwo Jima, which had already been in U.S. hands for several months. The plane was on its way to the Japanese mainland from Tinian in the Northern Mariana Islands.

  “The pilot did not just go straight past, but flew a number of loops around the island,” Bradley told me. “He was paying his respects to the almost seven thousand Americans who lost their lives there.”

  The name of the bomber was Enola Gay. Its destination: Hiroshima.

  LET’S RETURN TO IWO Jima before the American landing. Kuriba-yashi’s strategy to hold the island for as long as possible can be distilled into two key elements.

  1. To abandon the doctrine of defense at the water’s edge, and instead place the main defensive positions in the interior away from the shoreline.

  2. To build underground defensive positions, and make all the soldiers fight from these underground positions.

  As Kuribayashi’s plan ran contrary to the Japanese army’s traditional strategy, he was going to need all his strength of will and powers of execution to bring it off.

  The “doctrine of defense at the water’s edge”—the doctrine abandoned by Kuribayashi as “ineffective”—involved crushing the enemy on the beaches, just as they were coming ashore. This was one of the Imperial Army’s traditional tactics and had seventy years of history behind it.

  An enemy who comes toward the land on boats invariably suffers a temporary loss of offensive strength at the point when it transfers from water to land. The “doctrine of defense at the water’s edge” was all about making a concentrated attack precisely at that moment of opportunity.

  Up to that point, this strategy had been fervently believed in, and it was certainly not without advantages.

  First of all, the incoming landing craft made an easy target for the defenders on the shore, particularly as they all came in at the same time and were densely packed together. Meanwhile, landing craft had no significant firepower of their own, meaning the defenders had the advantage.

  Second, it was possible to methodically pick off the enemy with sniper fire as they came ashore. Since the number of men who could land at any one time was limited, the defenders had the opportunity to eliminate them in sequence. There was no need to face a huge number of the enemy all at the same time.

  Third, you could attack the enemy just after they had come ashore and before they were able to deploy any serious firepower. The defending side thus held a significant advantage right after the landing took place, and hitting the enemy hard during this window of opportunity was sure to yield dramatic results.

  If you let an enemy with superior fighting power land unmolested, then your chance for victory was as good as lost. To repel an attacking force, the conventional wisdom maintained that you needed to build the key defenses at the water’s edge, where the decisive battle would take place, and also position the bulk of your troops near the shoreline.

  This doctrine may have worked well against a poorly equipped enemy on the Chinese front, but in the Pacific islands strategy of the Japanese—whether at Tarawa, Makin, or Saipan—it proved itself a complete and utter failure.

  It failed because of American airpower. Before they started their landing operations, the Americans would launch massive aerial bombardments that would obliterate any defensive positions—and installations on the beach had no cover, meaning that they were dangerously easy to find.

  Throughout the entire landing operation, intensive support would also be provided by naval barrage and air raids. This meant the overall offensive power of the American forces did not weaken significantly, even at the water’s edge. By contrast, the Japanese forces on Iwo Jima could expect little, if any, support from either sea or air.

  The traditional army doctrine of defense at the water’s edge was worthless as long as the Americans enjoyed air and sea supremacy. Kuribayashi was the first to grasp this truth and he made the decision to abandon the old strategy at a very early stage.

  The Japanese resistance would quickly collapse if he were to pour vast quantities of men, matériel, and weaponry into the defenses at the shore yet fail to inflict massive damage on the Americans.

  Kuribayashi would not allow a spectacular battle at the water’s edge that would culminate in defeat. He felt that his duty was to pin the American forces down on the island for as long as posssible while inflicting a maximum number of casualties.

  Kuribayashi made up his mind to let the Americans land, and to get his men, hiding like moles in their underground defensive installations, to wage a thoroughgoing battle of resistance

  .

  WHEN KURIBAYASHI ARRIVED on the island on June 8, defenses were already being built near the shore according to the standard water’s-edge doctrine. By June 20, after inspecting every part of the island on foot and examining its topography and geology, Kuribayashi had made up his mind to jettison the traditional strategy and switch to a defense in depth. This, it should be noted, predated the fall of Saipan.

  “Defense in depth” meant placing the main defenses at some distance back from the beach and giving up on the idea of making a general counterattack on the enemy immediately after they had landed. Moving the main defenses back from the shoreline meant bringing all the hard work of the soldiers who had been building installations at the water’s edge to nothing, while the officers in charge of the construction efforts were predictably indignant. But Kuribayashi’s resolve held firm.

  Colonel Atsuchi Kanehiko was in charge of the “I Detachment,” Iwo Jima’s permanent garrison until the arrival of the 109th Division under Kuribayashi. Atsuchi issued orders for the construction of new defensive positions in the interior on June 23, after receiving Kuriba-yashi’s new battle policy.

  1 Detachment Order

  1. I Detachment shall temporarily halt the construction of defenses at the water’s edge and will construct defenses in the interior.

  2. Every infantry battalion will construct defensive positions in the region shown on the attached map.

  3. The artillery battalions will construct positions near Mount Ôsaka and near Minami Buraku, and on the north side of Mount Suribachi in order to cover No. 1 Airfield.

  4. The 15th Fortifications Engineer Battalion will work with the infantry and artillery battalions to build the defenses.

  5. No. 1 Company of the 9th Independent Engineer Regiment will build the command center for the Division and the command center for the Brigade.

  6. The key parts of the defenses listed above must be finished by the end of June.

  7. I am in Motoyama Corps Headquarters.

  Commander of I Detachment

  Colonel Atsuchi Kanehiko

  The order calls a halt to the building of defensive positions on the shoreline, and states that the interior defenses—or at least the framework for them—should be built quickly.

  The construction of inland defen
ses started immediately upon the issuing of this order. As Kuribayashi had taken up his command only two weeks before, this was quick work.

  Based on staff diaries and other sources discovered after the war’s end, the official history describes Kuribayashi’s new plan for the defense of Iwo Jima as follows:

  To create strong, honeycomb bases on Mount Suribachi and in the Motoyama area that can hold out for a long time and accommodate a powerful reserve force. If the enemy does attack, they shall be allowed to land. We shall attack them after they have reached the No. 1 Airfield, drive them back to the sea, and exterminate them.

  “A honeycomb base” (Fukkaku Jinchi in Japanese) means a strong defensive position designed to allow long-term resistance even after the enemy has broken through the lines of defense.

  Let me summarize Kuribayashi’s idea simply:

  • The aim is to hold out as long as possible, so key defensive installations will not be placed near the beach where the enemy lands, but inland on Mount Suribachi and in the Mo-toyama area. A reserve corps will be maintained in readiness for the enemy assault.

  • When the enemy attacks, they will be allowed to land unmolested without any resistance at the water’s edge. The counterattack will only get under way once the enemy has progressed as far as No. 1 Airfield, whereupon the enemy will be pushed back to the shore.

  Mount Suribachi was a dormant volcano on the southwest end of the island; the Motoyama region was a plateau in the northeast. Kuriba-yashi decided to place his main defensive positions at these two points, both of which were away from the shoreline. Squeezed neatly between them was Chidorigahara, where the No. 1 Airfield (also called Chidori Airfield) was located.

  Chidori Airfield was all of 800 meters from the beach where the Americans were expected to land. It seemed likely that the first thing the Americans would do after landing would be to try to capture this airfield, so Kuribayashi decided to make his first attack there.

  If he put his key defenses on the beach and tried his damnedest to prevent the Americans from landing and the strategy failed, the island was sure to be overrun quickly. But if he could first lure the enemy into Chidori Airfield and launch an attack when they were caught between the inland defenses he had built in Suribachi and Motoyama, his forces could inflict damage on the enemy while also being able to withdraw into their positions afterward.

  The ultimate goal was to wage a drawn-out battle of attrition. Avoid a showdown on the beach; launch one attack; withdraw; then start an intense, long-term resistance based on multiple lines of defensive positions. This was the plan of Kuribayashi the rationalist.

  KURIBAYASHI’S IDEA MET with fierce resistance from the navy.

  “It’s outrageous! In full knowledge of the situation, he’s planning to let the enemy land and then he’s going to hand them a crucial airfield on a plate.”

  “Smashing the enemy on the beach is standard procedure in our island strategy.”

  Such were the opinions of the navy.

  In mid-August, Colonel Urabe Kiyoshi, staff officer of the Third Air Fleet, visited Iwo Jima together with Major General Sanada, operations chief of the Army General Staff, and Major General Nakazawa, operations chief of the Navy General Staff. Urabe was emphatic about what he wanted.

  “It is imperative to retain the air base on Iwo Jima so it can continue to serve as our unsinkable aircraft carrier. That is why we must annihilate the enemy before they even make it to the beach.”

  Urabe then advised them to build a large number of sturdy pillboxes (small defensive installations made of concrete) on either side of Chi-dori Airfield.

  At this stage, inland positions were already being built in Iwo Jima in accordance with Kuribayashi’s plan. Since the navy was providing all the necessary weapons and material for this, Staff Officer Urabe pressed the army to loan manpower to the navy for the construction of shoreline defenses. The navy was insistent that “This is what central command wants.” Kuribayashi did not deviate from his policy of building the key defensive positions inland rather than at the water’s edge. After all, it was all very well for the navy to talk about “unsinkable aircraft carriers,” but by August 10, the total number of functioning planes on Iwo Jima was paltry: eleven Zero fighters, two shipboard attack planes, and two night fighters.

  In the end, Kuribayashi promised army cooperation for the building of navy pillboxes at the shoreline. He thought the material the navy said it would provide could come in handy for building the army’s underground installations.

  But the materials were not delivered according to the original agreement, and both cement and dynamite were in very short supply on Iwo Jima. Kuribayashi is thought to have negotiated terms whereby half of the munitions and material supplied by the navy would go into building pillboxes on the beach, while the rest would be for the use of the army.

  After the war, Major Horie Yoshitaka and Major Shirakata Fujie, who were army staff officers in the 109th Division, reminisced about Kuribayashi’s approach.

  “The commander in chief was still a firm believer in inland defensive positions. If the navy provided him with the materials to build strong pillboxes on the beach, he planned to offer them a proportion of the army’s manpower and to use the materials he received in return for that in a more effective manner. He thought the defenses on the shoreline should be decoys to draw the fire of the enemy’s naval guns” (from the official history).

  Staff Officer Horie secured Kuribayashi’s agreement on August 18. He immediately sent a telegram to the combined fleet commander in the navy section of the Imperial General Headquarters.

  … Based on lessons learned from many past battles, we believe that the best way to defend this island is by destroying the enemy landing force and, in particular, boats transporting tanks and heavy artillery, before they reach the shore.

  The army and navy here are of completely the same opinion with regard to this matter. In order that we can do this, please persuade the various departments at central command and make arrangements to procure the necessary weaponry and materials listed below and send them here as soon as you can.

  The message includes the phrase “Based on lessons learned from many past battles,” but the defenses of Tarawa, Makin, and Saipan— where the water’s-edge doctrine had been applied—had ended in complete failure. The lesson that should have been learned from these battles was quite clear: “destroying the enemy landing force and, in particular, boats transporting tanks and heavy artillery, before they reach the shore” was not possible.

  —

  THE “NECESSARY WEAPONRY and materials” requested by Staff Officer Horie in his telegram were as follows:

  1. Weapons

  [i] Seventy 25-mm machine guns (with 2,000 armor-piercing rounds, and 500 standard rounds)

  [ii] Fifty 250-kilogram rocket shells

  2. Materials

  12,000 tons of cement; 750 tons of metal rods for reinforcing concrete equal to 282,650 cubic meters; 15 kilometers of No. 20 heat-reinforced steel wire; 60 tons of nails; 200 sheets of wrought iron; 20 small stone-crushers

  Kuribayashi was true to his promise and helped the navy to build their defenses on the shoreline. All he received in return from navy central command in the way of weapons and material was three thousand tons of cement and seventy-five 25-mm machine guns.

  An estimated twenty-six pillboxes were built along the shore near Chidori Airfield thanks to the cooperation of the army. They were obliterated in almost no time by the air raids and naval bombardments that preceded the American landing.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  RESOLVE

  —

  ON AUGUST 19, 1944, THE ARMY SECTION OF THE IMPERIAL GENeral Headquarters, which had clung so rigidly to the doctrine of defense at the water’s edge, finally changed its way of thinking and set forth a new policy of inland defense.

  The Imperial General Headquarters had been confident about the defense of Saipan, which was designated a strategic point in the “national area
to be defended at all costs.” Once the Americans actually started their landing operation, however, the defense garrison crumbled in no time. Saipan fell on July 7, followed by Tinian on August 3, and Guam on August 11.

  The Imperial General Headquarters recognized the gravity of the situation and changed the philosophy it had followed up to that point— one of “annihilating the enemy on the water’s edge, or making a daring attack on the enemy before he was able to establish a foothold on the islands in order to annihilate him”—and switched instead to inland defense.

  This new policy was called “Key Points for Defense of the Islands,” and it was transmitted not only to Iwo Jima, but also to the Palau region (Peleliu and Angaur). It began with the following two provisions.

  1. The commanding officer of the defense garrison on an island must focus on holding out for a long time as we need to inflict the maximum damage on the enemy.

  2. You are permitted to draw inland from the shore and choose positions that suit your needs. You may build small fortifications on the front lines of the main defensive positions in order to transform the whole island into a stronghold.

  Provision One makes it clear that defense of the islands should focus on endurance and attrition.

  Provision Two contains the most crucial element of the new policy. The key defensive positions can be selected as “suit[s] your needs” after “draw[ing] inland from the shore.”

  This amounted to jettisoning the doctrine of defense at the water’s edge—the strategy that the military leadership had followed so persistently up to that point. With things as they were, even the Imperial General Headquarters was forced to acknowledge that it would be absurd to just keep on with the same old way of doing things.