By nightfall on March 9, Erskine’s forces controlled about 800 yards of contiguous coastline at the northeastern corner of Iwo Jima. That had the effect of cleaving the remaining Japanese forces into two pockets, on the northeast and northwest coasts of the island. The eastern salient was contained by the 4th Division, which had consolidated its grip on the area after the bloody failure of General Senda’s counterattack. A tougher prospect was presented by the rugged coastal terrain around Kitano Point in the northwest, where General Kuribayashi’s command center was in a deep bunker. This strongpoint was well defended, and the natural terrain advantages of the area precluded direct assault. Naval gunfire and airstrikes were directed against it for days, with seemingly little effect. Kuribayashi had anticipated and planned that Kitano Point and the rocky cliffs and ravines to its south would be the final pocket of organized resistance on Iwo Jima. The cave entrances and firing ports were high in a sheer rock face, sweeping a 200-foot-wide rocky gorge. Perhaps 3,000 Japanese troops remained alive and well enough to fight.
Holed up in their caves and bunkers, the defenders were relatively protected from the unending violence of the artillery barrages and aerial bombs. But the noise and blast concussions took a steady toll on their nerves, and many were reduced to a catatonic stupor. Their subterranean world grew steadily more fetid and unlivable. There was no way to bury the dead, so the living simply laid them out on the ground and stepped around them. The stench was unspeakable; the ovenlike heat and the lack of ventilation did not help. Nor did the shortage of drinking water, which grew critical in the fourth week of the battle, as the last of the cisterns was emptied. Men spoke endlessly of water, of the fresh mountain streams and springs of Japan. Whatever water collected on the floors of the caves was quickly lapped up by parched soldiers. They were not above licking moisture off the walls. Some drank their own urine. One soldier of the 20th Independent Artillery Mortar Battalion said, “I don’t think I will ever be able to forget the memory of how sweet the rainwater that formed puddles in the tunnels in the night tasted when we got down on all fours to drink it.”79
General Kuribayashi’s bombproof headquarters was about 300 yards inland of Kitano Point, and about 75 feet beneath the ground. The command bunker was a spacious cave with 9-foot ceilings, large enough to accommodate a conference table, desks, and communications equipment. His personal wardroom, a short walk down a narrow tunnel, was a small stone cavity with a cot, a desk, and a chair. Electric lighting was provided throughout the complex. A labyrinth of tunnels spread out from this nexus, leading by many different routes to the world above, and to pillboxes and firing ports manned and armed with machine guns and other small arms. Directly above, fused into the rock, was a massive steel-reinforced concrete blockhouse, 150 feet long by 70 feet wide, with a roof 10 feet thick.
Final radio signals were received from one outpost after another, as the marines sealed up caves and tunnels. Many subordinate units announced plans for a last banzai charge against the enemy, but Kuribayashi firmly told them to remain in their positions and fight to the last bullet. He said that “everybody would like to get an easy way to die early,” but it was the duty of every Japanese soldier on the island to stay alive as long as possible, to “inflict heavy casualties to the enemy.”80
The Americans set up loudspeakers and began broadcasting surrender appeals in Japanese, including personal appeals aimed directly at Kuribayashi. There was no response, except bullets. General Erskine’s 3rd Division staff sent two Japanese POWs back into the Japanese lines to carry a message to the commanding officer of the 145th Infantry Regiment. The messengers somehow managed to return to the U.S. lines with the report that General Kuribayashi was still alive, and did not intend to surrender.
In a final valediction to Tokyo on March 16, Kuribayashi wrote that “the gallant fighting of the men under my command has been such that even the gods would weep.” His forces had been “utterly empty-handed and ill-equipped against a land, sea, and air attack of a material superiority such as surpasses the imagination.”81 These sentiments transgressed powerful taboos, and the text published in the Tokyo newspapers was heavily edited. The phrase “utterly empty-handed and ill-equipped” was redacted. The last line was changed to a vow that Kuribayashi would launch a final attack “with all my officers and men reverently chanting banzais for the emperor’s long life.”82
Radio contact with Tokyo and other islands became spotty and intermittent. Major Horie, from his post on Chichi Jima, tried to get a message through to Kuribayashi informing him that he had been promoted to full general, but it was not clear that the message was received. A March 21 transmission informed Horie that the remaining force had had nothing to eat and no water to drink for five days. The last word from Iwo reached Chichi Jima on March 23. It said simply, “All officers and men of Chichi Jima, goodbye.”83
Before dawn on March 26, about 300 Japanese troops emerged from their caves and crept down the island’s west coast toward Mt. Suribachi. They surprised a bivouac of marines and USAAF personnel on Hirawa Bay, near South Field. After a firefight of nearly three hours, all the Japanese were killed. The Americans, unprepared for the sudden predawn onslaught, lost 170 killed and wounded. An official Marine Corps history concluded, “This attack was not a banzai charge; instead it appeared to have been a well-laid plan aimed at causing maximum confusion and destruction.”84
No one witnessed Kuribayashi’s death, and his body was never identified. Some Japanese sources maintain that the general led this final attack, and was killed in action; others suggest that he took his own life before leaving the bunker. The Americans searched the Japanese dead at Hirawa Bay, but all rank insignia had been removed, and none carried any documents.
The marines had commenced “loading out”—departing the island—on March 14, 1945. They left in echelon, with the 4th Division first to go, followed by the 5th and the 3rd Divisions. Permanent garrison duty was assumed by the army’s 147th Infantry Regiment, which arrived on March 20. The army took command of the island on March 26, at virtually the same hour that the surprise attack at Hirawa Bay was defeated.
It is safe to assume that not a single American regretted leaving Iwo Jima. A Seabee vowed that he would take no souvenirs from the island: “All I want to take away from this place is a faint recollection.”85 For many, of course, the island was impossible to forget.
The victors had paid dearly for their victory. The marines and naval personnel on the island had sustained 24,053 casualties, representing approximately one of every three men who had landed. Of that figure, 6,140 died. Save a few hundred Japanese taken prisoner, the entire defending garrison was wiped out, numbering about 22,000 men. Taking the sum of killed and wounded on both sides, Kuribayashi’s forces had inflicted more casualties than they had suffered. In view of the many advantages possessed by the attackers, that was a remarkable feat. His troglodyte army had remained disciplined and organized to the very end, making the marines pay for every yard of captured territory. But if any doubt had remained after Tarawa, Roi-Namur, Saipan, and Peleliu, the Japanese now knew with absolute certainty that their enemy could take any Pacific island they wanted, no matter how strongly fortified or zealously defended. Even when the fighting was at its worst, the marines had never doubted that they would win. On Guadalcanal, recalled Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Galer, they had often wondered, “Can we hold?” But at Iwo Jima, “The question was simply, ‘When can we get it over?’ ”86
In the five remaining months of the war, B-29s of the Twentieth Air Force would make 2,251 emergency landings on Iwo Jima. Possession of this vital way station, almost directly on the flight line between the Marianas and Japan, effectively added to the range and payload of the Superforts. It also saved untold numbers of lives. In April, P-51 squadrons based on Iwo would begin providing fighter escort for the B-29 formations as they hit Japan. Approximately 20,000 USAAF aircrewmen made at least one emergency landing on the island; many would otherwise have perished at sea.
A B-29 pilot spoke for all of his fellow airmen when he said, “Whenever I land on this island I thank God for the men who fought for it.”87
THE HEAVY CASUALTIES ON IWO JIMA touched a nerve with the American public, and prompted an outbreak of recriminations and second-guessing. Holland Smith, who had commanded the expeditionary troops in the earlier bloodbaths on Tarawa and Saipan, was accustomed to being denounced as a “butcher,” a “coldblooded murderer,” and an “indiscriminate waster of human life.”88 Now more of the same epithets were flung at him and the entire Marine Corps. Letters poured into Washington, and congressmen asked the usual questions. Was the island worth the cost? Could it have been captured with fewer American casualties?
MacArthur, whose Luzon campaign was underway at the same time, did not let the opportunity pass. On February 26, a week after the marines had landed on Iwo Jima, MacArthur’s forces completed the recapture of Corregidor. A garrison of about 6,000 Japanese troops had been almost completely wiped out, at a cost of just 675 Americans killed or wounded. An SWPA communiqué proudly declared: “A strongly fortified island fortress, defended to the point of annihilation by a well-equipped, fanatical enemy . . . was reduced in a period of twelve days by a combination of surprise, strategy and fighting technique, and skill, perfectly coordinated with supporting naval and air forces.”89 No one missed the insinuation. MacArthur was saying that superior generalship could have won the Battle of Iwo Jima with fewer American casualties. The issue was especially salient at that particular moment, because the two prongs of the Pacific offensive must soon merge into one. MacArthur was bidding for supreme command in the Pacific, and his backers in the United States were quick to pick up his cues. At his hilltop castle at San Simeon, on the central California coast, William Randolph Hearst picked up the telephone and dictated an editorial about Iwo Jima to the managing editor of the San Francisco Examiner. On February 27, it ran on the Examiner’s front page: “The attacking American forces are paying heavily for the island, perhaps too heavily. . . . Plainly, what we need in all our Pacific operations is a military strategist.” Hearst nominated MacArthur, because “he saves the lives of his own men.”90
That afternoon, a group of about one hundred off-duty marines filed into the Examiner’s newsroom in the Hearst Building at Third and Market Streets. A flustered employee called the police, but then called back a few minutes later to say that the police were not needed. The marines were calm and law-abiding. They did not threaten the staff or premises, but only wanted to look the editor in the eye as they explained that he did not have the facts.
In the end, however, the Marine Corps won its case in the court of public opinion. Secretary Forrestal, who had once worked as a Hudson Valley beat reporter, had compelled the navy and marines to adopt more press-friendly policies. By February 1945, his efforts were bearing fruit. Dozens of war correspondents reported from Iwo Jima, and their stories were transmitted back to the mainland in less than forty-eight hours. Lavish press coverage ensured a high degree of public interest in the battle, and a better understanding of the unprecedented tactical problems posed by the enemy’s subterranean fortifications. Hap Arnold and other USAAF leaders publicly emphasized the absolute necessity of securing Iwo Jima to support the B-29 campaign. Joe Rosenthal’s stirring photograph of the flag-raising on Suribachi was worth a million newspaper column inches.
MacArthur’s implied criticism had been grossly unjust. The tactical options for seizing Iwo Jima had always been limited, and Kuribayashi’s preparations had been brilliant. For all his undoubted talents as a field commander, MacArthur had never confronted such a challenge as Iwo Jima, and one fails to imagine what he could have done differently. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had served as MacArthur’s protégé in the Philippines, and who had led the largest ground campaign of the war, briefly visited the island (as president-elect) in 1952. As he stepped off his plane and looked around, Eisenhower was astounded to learn that the marines had brought more than 60,000 troops ashore. Comparing the barren little island to the “wide open spaces of Normandy,” Eisenhower said that he could barely visualize a battle on such a scale, in such constricted terrain: “It was just very difficult for him to comprehend.”91
Chapter Twelve
AT THE 21ST BOMBER COMMAND HEADQUARTERS ON GUAM—A COMPLEX of modest Quonset huts perched on a northern bluff—“Possum” Hansell and his team were frustrated to the point of gloominess. Start-up problems and growing pains had plagued every aspect of their operations, including maintenance, training, supply, housing, and airfield construction. Even as new B-29s and aircrews flew into the Marianas, Hansell’s organization struggled to put a larger number of bombers into action against Japan. The cumulative “abort rate”—the percentage of planes forced to turn back due to engine trouble or other technical problems—stood at 21 percent. Their largest mission had been their first, on November 24, 1944, when 111 B-29s had taken off and 94 had reached Japanese airspace. That figure was not surpassed until three months later.
Until the capture of Iwo Jima, Japanese fighters based on that island flew regular low-altitude bombing and strafing raids against the Marianas airfields. The most spectacular of these had occurred on November 27, when fifteen Zero fighters flew south from Iwo Jima at wavetop altitude, ducking under Saipan’s radar screens, and appeared without warning over Isley Field. Achieving complete surprise, the Zeros strafed B-29s parked on the hardstands, destroying three and damaging eight more. General Hansell witnessed this audacious attack personally, and was nearly killed by it. He was riding shotgun in a jeep when a Zero roared overhead and strafed the vehicle. Hansell and his driver rolled out and took cover in the bush. When the Japanese pilot had expended his ammunition, he cranked down his wheels and actually landed on Isley’s main runway. To Hansell’s amazement, the pilot leapt out of his cockpit with a pistol in his hand and fought a gun battle with American soldiers, who quickly killed him.
More such attacks followed, and the toll of damaged and destroyed Superforts rose, until Hap Arnold demanded an upgrade to the island’s air defenses: “Our B-29 raids on Japanese homeland will continue to provoke desperate and fanatical counteraction.”1 New fighter patrols were scheduled, and B-24 raids cratered the airfields on Iwo Jima. Searchlights and a Microwave Early Warning (MEW) radar system were installed at the north end of Saipan, and destroyers were positioned north of the island to act as radar pickets. These measures helped, but the threat was not entirely eliminated until February 1945, when the marines stormed Iwo Jima.
To build airfields and supporting ground facilities for a fleet of 1,000 Superfortresses, on islands nearly 6,000 miles from the U.S. mainland, was a task of colossal proportions. A single bombardment wing required two parallel runways, each 8,500 feet long and 200 feet wide, with adjoining hardstands, taxiways, and maintenance aprons. Great expanses of land had to be graded and paved, but the bulldozers and steam shovels could not even break ground until a basic island infrastructure had been established. Airbase construction was only one of many priorities; the Marianas were simultaneously hosting a rapid buildup of naval and ground forces for operations against Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Guam and Saipan required electrical power, water systems, sanitation, housing, and modern seaport facilities. Work could not progress without advanced road networks linking the airfield sites to seaports and coral rock quarries. At Isley Field, the first active B-29 base in the Marianas, all arming, fueling, and maintenance was done in the open air, on congested hardstands, in scorching heat and driving rain. Tools and spare parts were stored in outdoor supply dumps, stacked in crates on the ground, and covered with tarps. A fleet of Douglas C-54 transports shuttled spare parts from California on a twice-weekly schedule. The mechanics worked around the clock, under floodlights, or with penlights between their teeth. They were still learning the big Boeing airplane’s many complex systems, especially its temperamental 2,200-horsepower Wright Duplex-Cyclone engines. Often they were required to complete an engine transplant at night, hours befor
e a Superfort was due to depart on another fifteen-hour bombing mission.
In the early days, each new B-29 bombardment wing arriving in the Marianas was obliged to commence operations with a single runway. That meant that a limited number of B-29s could take off in a given interval of time, requiring the lead planes to burn fuel while the trailing planes were still on the ground. Returning from their mission, with their fuel tanks running dry, the aircrews faced another perilous bottleneck. There might be two dozen B-29s circling above the field, awaiting their turn to land. This state of affairs required a larger fuel reserve, which in turn meant a smaller bomb load, and a corresponding reduction in the total bomb tonnage dropped on Japan. That latter statistic was closely monitored by Hap Arnold and his staff in Washington, and they were not pleased. Hansell and his team were under intense pressure to produce a return on Uncle Sam’s sizable investment in the B-29 program.
From its first mission in November through the end of 1944, the 21st Bomber Command launched ten raids against the Japanese homeland. The missions targeted aircraft factories and urban installations in Tokyo, Yokohama, Hamamatsu, Numazu, and Nagoya. Some were more successful than others. Bombs dropped from 30,000 feet often missed the aircraft plants they targeted and fell into nearby residential districts. A November 29 raid touched off destructive fires in the Kanda and Nihonbashi districts of Tokyo, killing about one hundred civilians and destroying an estimated 2,500 homes. In the heavily industrialized Tokai region, southwest of Tokyo, a major earthquake (magnitude 8.1) and tsunami struck on December 7, 1944. The natural disaster killed 1,223 people and destroyed almost 30,000 homes. The Mitsubishi Aircraft Engine Works, a giant airframe production center east of Nagoya Harbor, was severely damaged. As Mitsubishi struggled to get its production lines up and running, three large B-29 raids struck on December 13, 18, and 22. The weather was clear, and the bombing more accurate than usual. An assembly shop and seven auxiliary buildings were destroyed. The raids persuaded Mitsubishi and the government to shut down production at the site, and to attempt to disperse the assembly lines to underground sites and outlying locations. Meanwhile, the Americans attacked the psychological foundations of the Japanese war effort by dropping leaflets over Nagoya, asking, “What shall we offer you next, after the earthquake?”2
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