War Stories II

by Oliver L. North

  You were beaten without provocation. When the war ended, the Japanese guards all took off. And we ran the camp ourselves for awhile. About a week after the war ended we learned about the bomb.

  On 4 September we all walked to the railroad station, climbed aboard a train, and headed down to Hamamatsu, a seacoast town where the American navy had come ashore to locate and help repatriate prisoners in the area.

  Pretty soon I was on a hospital ship, the Rescue, sitting out in the bay. They kept us there a couple of weeks, then took us home to America.

  Sergeant Richard Gordon spent time at U.S. Army hospitals and aboard hospital ships heading back home, finally ending his journey at Madigan General Hospital in Fort Lewis, Washington. Gordon finally boarded a train in Seattle and crossed the country to arrive at Penn Station in New York City. His wife and other relatives were not allowed to see him yet, and Dick recalls a poignant moment when an older woman came up to the railroad car window and peered inside. He describes the moment: “I saw my mother come up and look through the window... she had put on weight, and her nose was all smudged from the dirt on the windows. And I saw a kid standing next to her about eighteen years old. It was my kid brother. I didn’t recognize him, ’cause I hadn’t seen him in some time.”

  An ambulance took Dick Gordon to Holland General Hospital in Staten Island. There a proper reunion with his family took place. Two weeks after that reunion, Dick’s mother died.

  Dick Gordon stayed in the hospital another four months before being discharged. Then he reenlisted, received a commission as second lieutenant, and remained on active duty until 1961.

  ARMY EVAC HOSPITAL

  PHILIPPINE ISLANDS

  14 FEBRUARY 1945

  By mid-February 1945, six weeks after the successful prison break, the former residents of Camp Cabanatuan had recovered enough in the Army evacuation hospitals to begin the long trip home. They boarded the USS General Anderson for the long trip back to the United States. With no escort, the 20,000-ton troop transport ship was virtually defenseless in the Pacific lanes on its way back. Ordinarily, it would’ve been a major target for Japanese subs and other enemy ships. But there were no Japanese ships and the Anderson pulled into San Francisco Bay with her precious cargo intact. The city went wild in celebration and gratitude.

  The 121 young American Rangers, the Alamo Scouts, and the Filipino guerrillas who went on the raid to rescue the “Ghosts of Bataan” at Cabanatuan were a remarkable lot—and they were all volunteers. They all made a choice—believing that the value of the lives of their comrades was worth putting their own lives at tremendous risk.

  Captain Bob Prince and Lt. Colonel Henry Mucci were awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation’s second highest award for valor, and the other officers were awarded the Silver Star. All the other men from the 6th Ranger Battalion were awarded the Bronze Star for their courageous acts during the raid. But the Rangers had chosen to dare the difficult and dangerous not for personal glory, fame, or fortune, but simply because if they didn’t do it, who else would?

  The American military, war correspondents, and the American public alike celebrated the remarkable achievement. The raid had touched a nerve among Americans who cared about the fate of those long-suffering defenders of Bataan and Corregidor.

  To this day, the 6th Rangers’ raid on Camp Cabanatuan has remained the largest and most successful rescue mission of its kind ever conducted.

  CHAPTER 16

  IWO JIMA: THE BLOODIEST BATTLE OF WORLD WAR II

  (FEBRUARY–MARCH 1945)

  U.S. JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  D-DAY MINUS TWENTY

  31 JANUARY 1945

  After the Battle of Leyte, the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington began to plan for the invasion of Iwo Jima. This tiny spit of land, called “sulfur island” in Japanese, was eight square miles of volcanic rock.

  The battle for Iwo Jima would turn out to be perhaps the bloodiest combat in American history. Two out of three of the boys (most of them were just seventeen, eighteen, or nineteen) who landed on the island were killed or wounded. Twenty-two thousand Japanese soldiers defended Iwo Jima. Most were older and more experienced than the Americans, but nearly all of them were killed as well.

  To put that in perspective, almost 7,000 Americans were killed in action at Iwo Jima. If the battle had lasted nine months, it would have equaled all those killed in ten years of war in Vietnam. Despite its relatively short duration, Iwo Jima would truly be the bloodiest battle in the Pacific.

  The European front in World War II was governed by a set of traditional rules. The two sides fought intensely but simultaneously observed polite protocols. They took time out for each side to collect their dead and wounded and observed cease-fires for “reasonable” causes. On Christmas, both sides would quit warring and mark the season of “peace and goodwill” with a brief interruption of hostilities. Then, with a sense of heavy-handed irony, they would resume shooting after the short respite.

  But there were no rules of warfare in the Pacific. Japanese soldiers had been ingrained in the samurai code, which sent them into “heroic” battle with great ferocity and no fear of death. Throughout the war the Japanese would fight until the last man was dead. They knew that there could be no surrender. A Japanese soldier trying to surrender was likely to be shot by his own officers or fellow soldiers. A soldier who surrendered brought dishonor not just upon himself, but also upon his family, his village, and his emperor. Any soldier who surrendered would have his name taken from the village records, and his family would disown him.

  The Japanese had also rejected the Geneva Conventions, which prescribed various “rules of warfare.” When the time came to invade the Pacific Islands, both sides understood that it would be a battle of “no holds barred.”

  The Joint Chiefs of Staff decided to overrule General MacArthur’s recommendation to swing south and retake the rest of the Philippines as well as the East Indies. They decided to concentrate on Luzon instead, ratcheting up the pressure on the Japanese mainland with attacks by American bombers, some of which would be based on the recaptured territory of Luzon.

  But winter monsoon rains foiled American plans to establish air bases on Leyte, thereby making it impossible for U.S. aircraft to operate from there. The 6th Army made steady progress in clearing the smaller islands with offensive assaults, however.

  In June 1944, the Joint Chiefs decided to invade and capture the islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, which lie in the northern waters between the Philippines and Japan. The strategic value of these two islands was still in flux. MacArthur would have his hands full trying to retake Luzon. The invasion of 9 January at Lingayen Gulf was only the beginning of the hardscrabble struggle to regain control of Luzon. The battle to overcome the 250,000 troops of the 35th Imperial Army would last until the Japanese surrendered in August 1945.

  The 35th Imperial Army, led by General Sosaku Suzuki, put up a skilled resistance to the American invasion of Luzon. It was here that the Japanese war plan had changed. The old plan was to throw everything against the American and Allied troops to keep them from getting ashore. The reason was simple: If the Americans took the small outlying islands, it was an easier step to invade the Japanese Home Islands, as they were able to put more bombers and fighter planes within range of Japan.

  However, now it was too late for that. The current Tokyo strategy was to save all war matériel and troop strength for defending the Japanese homeland. Hence, General Suzuki was fighting an ongoing “hide and seek” war with MacArthur and General Walter Krueger, not wanting to engage the Americans and risk any major war resources.

  In January 1945, the Americans finally landed on the main Philippine island of Luzon. After a bitter battle, they reached the capital city of Manila on 2 February. Over the next six months, the Japanese would lose 170,000 troops in the Philippines, in contrast to the American losses of 8,000.

  Meanwhile, the Joint Chiefs began to consider I
wo Jima more seriously after the Japanese showed lighter resistance to the initial U.S. landings on the Philippine islands. Iwo Jima served as an early warning station for the Japanese; from there they could detect approaching aircraft and radio reports of the incoming bombers to mainland Japan. When the U.S. and Allied bombers arrived over Japanese cities, Japanese air defenses could be ready for them.

  Japanese aircraft still based on Iwo Jima also continually harassed the Americans in operations across the northern Pacific. The Joint Chiefs believed that taking Iwo Jima could neutralize those air attacks, make other U.S. operations in the region less risky, and provide another launching site for B-24s and B-25s headed for Tokyo.

  The Joint Chiefs had postponed the operations to take Iwo Jima and Okinawa because of the monsoons and the difficulties encountered in taking Leyte and Luzon. Now seemed to be the right time to dust off those plans.

  Their decision was made: Iwo Jima would be first and Okinawa next. The islands were to be taken rather than bypassed. Recon planes showed that Mount Suribachi was being dug in, with gun emplacements and pillboxes both above and below ground. Because so many enemy troops were dug in and couldn’t be seen by the recon aircraft, reports grossly underestimated the Japanese troop strength. The naval air bombardment would blast away at the island until D-Day for the Iwo Jima invasion.

  HQ 5TH AMPHIBIOUS FORCE

  VICINITY IWO JIMA

  D-DAY MINUS FOUR

  14 FEBRUARY 1945

  On 14 February, U.S. ships were on their way to an undisclosed location. The Marines aboard had no idea where the battle would be fought, only that it was a top-secret location known as “Island X.”

  Vice Admiral Raymond Spruance’s 5th Fleet dominated the air and sea around Iwo Jima, softening up the island for the Marine invasion. The U.S. was sending 72,000 Marines of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Marine Divisions to “Island X”—more troops than were sent to any other Allied island assault. The convoy of 880 American ships—the largest naval armada in history at the time—took forty days to sail from Hawaii to Iwo Jima. Aboard the troop ships, the Marines received communion and prayed during brief services held by the chaplains. Others wrote letters home; some of these letters would contain the last words ever expressed to their loved ones back in America.

  D-Day was approaching. This D-Day was not unlike its counterpart in Europe nine months earlier. The invasion of Normandy had been terrible, with appalling costs in dead and wounded troops. But the Normandy assault lasted just twenty-four hours, though to its participants it must have seemed much longer. Yet writer-historian James Bradley said, “Any time a bullet is near your head, that’s a bad battle. Normandy was awful, but at the end of twenty-four hours you and your grandmother could have had a tea party on the beach at Normandy. Iwo Jima, a much smaller beach, had a thirty-six-day battle on a four-mile-long island, and it was the most intense battle of World War II.”

  The defending troops figured out that “Island X” was Iwo Jima even without coded messages and intelligence. They saw Admiral Spruance’s ships on the horizon for two and a half months, with troop carriers edging ever closer to the small island.

  The average age of a Japanese soldier in World War II was a battle-hardened twenty-four. Most of the Americans were teenagers; many of them at Iwo Jima were seeing combat for the first time. These young Marines had been told by naïve American war planners that the typical Japanese soldier was five feet, three inches tall, wore glasses, and weighed 117 pounds. They were painted as small, inept, and completely unskilled in jungle warfare.

  That caricature did not even come close to the reality of the Japanese soldiers. In truth, they were fearless, some of the world’s most effective fighting men, defending their emperor and their homeland.

  But what did the Japanese know about the Americans, especially the Marines? Their superiors told them fearful myths: that for a young American to become a Marine he had to kill his parents; that Marines ate dead babies. Japanese leaders warned civilians that if the U.S. Marines ever invaded the homeland, the women would be raped and killed and their children slaughtered and eaten.

  No doubt these grisly myths had inspired Japanese civilians on Peleliu to throw their children off cliffs and jump to the rocks below. But if these Japanese civilians had seen the Marines weep when they witnessed these terrible acts—including Japanese civilians being machine-gunned when they hesitated or didn’t jump—perhaps there might have been a little less horror on Peleliu.

  The responsibility for killing the Marines on Iwo Jima was given to General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, a sixth-generation samurai personally selected by Emperor Hirohito. Kuribayashi had been a victorious general in the Japanese campaigns in China and Manchuria, and before the war he had been a Japanese military attaché in the United States. He’d traveled throughout the U.S. and returned to Japan with intelligence about America’s industrial and economic might. He wisely told his superiors, “The last country that Japan should ever go to war with is the United States.” But the Japanese political and military leaders never really considered his advice.

  But now, here he was, about to defend the island of Iwo Jima against that mighty sleeping giant. General Kuribayashi must have known in his heart that his 22,000 men would not be able to prevail against 72,000 Marines. Tokyo knew. It’s not known if the general was told that this was a suicide mission, but Kuribayashi wrote to his wife that he did not expect to come home. Kuribayashi ordered his troops that they were to each kill ten Americans before they died.

  The general inspired his men with talk of the samurai code, the honor of dying for the emperor, and the terrible dishonor of surrender. He told them that this would be a “heroic” battle for the defense of Japan herself. All they had to do was kill ten Americans before each of them died in battle.

  Their cause may have been “heroic” in his eyes, but it was also hopeless. The only thing General Kuribayashi had going was that the Americans had underestimated his troop strength on Iwo Jima, which would turn out to be a significant flaw in their battle plan.

  Leading the American troops was another hand-picked general, selected by FDR. He was nicknamed the “Patton of the Pacific”—his Marines had never lost a battle at any place they had stepped ashore. He’d directed assaults on Tarawa, Eniwetok, Tinian, Saipan, and Guam, often leading his troops ashore himself. Now he faced the assaults of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. He was General Holland “Howlin’ Mad” Smith, an Alabama lawyer who had received his commission forty years earlier and had even fought in WW I.

  This down-to-earth commander of the Pacific Fleet Marine Forces knew more about amphibious assault landings than any other American officer. General Smith knew that he’d have to sacrifice some of his Marines but he also knew the consequences if he didn’t. Without the use of Iwo Jima for air bases, it might take many more years to conquer Japan. Formosa and Thailand could be enslaved for decades. General Smith believed that most of Asia was already enslaved and he and his Marines had to do something about it.

  5TH AMPHIBIOUS FORCE, AFLOAT

  VICINITY IWO JIMA

  D-DAY MINUS THREE

  16 FEBRUARY 1945

  Iwo Jima was a stinking hulk of volcanic rock located 650 miles south of Tokyo, between four and five miles long and two miles wide. A car traveling at sixty miles per hour could traverse its entire length in five minutes.

  Iwo Jima had just a few notable characteristics: Mount Suribachi, a small extinct volcano about as high as the Washington Monument, on the south tip of the island, and two crucial airfields, with another under construction. These airfields were needed as landing fields for U.S. aircraft returning from bombing runs, especially planes damaged from AA gunfire or encounters with Japanese fighters, and planes that were running out of fuel. As it was, too many American pilots were becoming casualties. Having no place between Japan and the American-controlled islands to land safely, a number of them could only ditch. Some were picked up but most simply went to a watery grave.

  Key to
the invasion were the seventy-two consecutive days of bombing by American B-29 Superfortresses and B-24 Liberators. They dropped more than 5,800 tons of bombs on Iwo Jima in a little more than two months. In fact, Iwo Jima would set the record for the most sustained and heavy bombardment in all of the Pacific war.

  At dawn on D-4, the gunnery ships, along with escort carriers commanded by Rear Admiral William Blandy, had already arrived on the scene and began to blast the small island in preparation for the invasion.

  HQ 3RD MARINE DIVISION

  WEST OF KAMA ROCK, OFF IWO JIMA

  D-DAY, 19 FEBRUARY 1945

  0820 HOURS LOCAL

  Nearly 500 Navy ships laid down more shelling of the island from before dawn until just before 0800. Aircraft from Task Force 58, just off the coast of Iwo Jima, sent in their dive-bombers and fighters to bomb and strafe the small island.

  Offshore to the southeast, there was a mix of fresh-faced, newly arrived Marines and battle-hardened Leathernecks who’d already experienced combat on other islands in the Pacific. They were waiting for the word to go in. For the Marine combat veterans, this was their fourth assault in thirteen months, and they were ready to take and hold the beachhead’s right flank.

  But the Japanese had terraced the beach, and after the Navy guns and bombers had rearranged the coarse, coal-black volcanic sand, it was almost impossible to dig in. When the typical Marine, wearing a seventy-five-pound pack on his back, tried to dig a foxhole for cover it was like digging a hole in a barrel of ball bearings. The best he could hope for was to burrow into the sand like a beetle and hope it was deep enough. As it turned out, the only real practical but grim protection from Japanese bullets was often the lifeless body of a fallen comrade.