CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
In Sight of Suribachi
“Can’t be as rough as it was on Tarawa.”
“No way as hard as it was taking Peleliu.”
“After the Canal, this’ll be a piece of cake.”
Those are some of the things my Marine buddies said on our way to Iwo Jima. They’d been through the fighting that made those other Pacific Islands feel like little bits of hell on earth. They’d struggled out of sinking landing craft, stormed the beaches while machine gun fire tore up the sand around their feet, heard the terrible sound of air being ripped apart around them by pieces of whirling metal, seen buddies killed right next to them. There was no way this little piece of volcanic garbage could be as bad as what they’d been through.
They were right. Iwo Jima wasn’t like those other landings that seemed like bad dreams. It was the worst nightmare of all.
It wasn’t the fault of our commanders. Iwo Jima wasn’t just “softened up” for a few days before D-day. It was pulverized. For five months, heavy bombs dropped on that little island almost every minute. Hour after hour, for days on end, high explosives poured from the sky like metal rain. It seemed impossible that anything could survive.
What Command didn’t know was how deep the enemy had dug into the island. Those thousands of tons of bombs didn’t do much more than disturb the sleep of the Japanese soldiers in reinforced caves and tunnels a hundred feet below the black sand.
They were well-supplied, too. They had distilleries set up to make drinking water and stocks of food enough to last for years. In fact, grandchildren, when we finally took that island and began exploring the deserted Japanese positions, we Marines found something that made us feel especially angry. We were looking through a cave when the beam of my flashlight caught the glint of metal.
“I cannot believe this,” I said.
“Wull I’ll be danged,” Georgia Boy said.
There, stacked from floor to ceiling, were thousands and thousands of boxes of canned goods. There was every-thing from beans and meat to fruit cocktail—just like those canned goods we Navajos had gotten together on our food drive to help the poor earthquake victims. All of those cases were clearly marked on the side in English: U.S.A. FOOD RELIEF
It was indeed the very same food donated by Americans to Japan before the war. The Japanese military government had stolen it from their own hungry people.
The Fifth Fleet that Admiral Spruance sent in against Iwo Jima was the largest one that had ever sailed the Pacific. Twelve aircraft carriers and forty-four destroyers, forty-four transport ships, thirty minesweepers, and many other vessels. Four hundred sixty-four ships in all. Our fleet was so big that there were four command ships, each with its own team of Navajo code talkers. There were also non-Navajo teams sending and receiving messages in Morse code on the command ships and among the landing forces. However, all the messages sent by Morse code were false, designed to fool any Japanese monitoring our transmissions. Everything important was run through our Navajo net.
The Fifth Marine Amphibious Corps was also the largest landing force in the history of the Marines. Three reinforced divisions, 70,000 men in all. The Fourth and the Fifth would lead the attack.
On February 19, 1945, at about 0100, the major part of our fleet dropped anchor 4,000 yards off the shore of Iwo Jima. Third Division waited fifty miles to the southeast. It would only be called for if it was desperately needed. That need came far sooner than expected.
Breakfast was to be served at about 0500. Before then, though, I made my way quietly to the upper deck. I knew other code talkers were doing the same on the command ships and the other transports.
I stood with nothing over my head but the sky. I faced the east, took a pinch of pollen from my pouch, and placed it on my tongue. I put a little dab of pollen on top of my head and spoke my words to the Holy People.
“Let me have clear thoughts, clear speech, and a good path to walk this day,” I prayed as I watched the rising sun.
Breakfast, as always, was a big one. There was a tradition back then of serving every Marine a T-bone steak, eggs and biscuits with lots of gravy, and as much coffee as he could drink before getting onto his landing craft. The idea was that a Marine needed the energy from that food to go into battle.
“Enjoy your last meal, Leatherneck,” said the cook who served me.
I smiled and nodded to him. It was part of a ritual our cooks followed. Calling it our last meal was a way of wishing us good luck.
Most Marines ate as much as they could of that big breakfast. But not me. Instead, I took two big slices of bread, stuck my steak in between them, wrapped it up, and stashed it in my combat pack. I had plenty of reasons for doing that. I wasn’t feeling hungry yet. Plus, I had seen what happened to a lot of those big breakfasts eaten by keyed-up Marines who had to get into boats being rocked back and forth by the waves. You learned not to stand in front of a jarhead whose face was turning green. His breakfast was about to become fish food.
Another reason for not eating before heading into combat was something no one wanted to talk about. It was better to take a bullet in your guts on an empty stomach. The medics knew that and did what I did—stashed breakfast in their packs or just didn’t eat.
My main reason, though, for packing away that steak was that I figured I’d need it later. I’d learned what it was like to be pinned down in a foxhole for hours on end with nothing to chew on but your last C-rations. If that happened on Iwo, I’d be happy to have a steak sandwich in my pack.
As I stood on deck, waiting, ready to climb into the LST, I got my first look at Iwo Jima appearing in the faint light before dawn. The looming shape of Suribachi made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. That mountain rose like the shadow of a monster against the dark sky.
At 0630, the guns of our support ships began to roar. Fire shot out of the cannons of the Idaho, the Nevada, the New York, and the Tennessee. Our bombardment tore up the beaches and the slopes of Suribachi, but there was no answering fire from the shore. Waves of airplanes swept in, Marine Corsair F4Us. They blanketed just about every square foot with rockets and fire. Smoke filled the air, and the hot breeze from the island brought the scent of the napalm to us. But there was no response. It was like the whole island was dead.
Some of us dared to hope that the Japanese defenses had been wiped out by our guns and during the months of bombing. But I remembered the words General Howling Mad Smith spoke at the meeting. He’d been the only commander with serious doubts about the plan.
“This will be the bloodiest fight in Marine Corps history,” he said. “We’ll catch seven kinds of hell on the beaches and that will be just the beginning. The fighting will be fierce and the casualties will be awful, but my Marines will take the damned island.”
My new Signal Corps group was with the first wave. Most of the non-Navajo men were guys I’d just met. Georgia Boy had been assigned to another company in the second wave. Smitty, though, was right beside me. Smitty and I had reached the point where we felt as if we were each other’s good luck charm. As long as we stuck together in battle, nothing too bad could happen to either of us.
Our LSTs moved up to the line of departure at 0730 and our amphibious alligators rolled down the ramp into the water. Unlike the first alligators we used on Bougainville, they were more heavily armored all around. Also, each alligator had three machine guns and a seventy-five-millimeter howitzer. After unloading us on the beach, our alligators were supposed to crawl inland another fifty yards to form a line of fire protecting the men who came after us.
0830. The Central Control vessel dipped her pennant. The sixty-eight alligators of our Second Armored Amphibian Battalion crossed the lines of departure. Five minutes behind us was the second wave, then the third, the fourth, the fifth, and the sixth. As so often happened, a nervous Marine behind me started checking his watch and calling out the time.
“Five minutes,” he said. Then “Six minutes. . . . Seven.”
/> I could feel it getting warmer as we got closer to the island. Mount Suribachi kept getting larger above us as we continued in.
“Ten minutes. . . . Eleven.”
I thought at first that the growing warmth was only nervousness or my imagination as I remembered General Smith’s words about hell. But heat actually was coming from the island itself. Iwo Jima had been made by volcanoes. Its name, which means Sulphur Island, is an appropriate one. The closer you got, the hotter it was. When we arrived on the island we’d see cracks in the rock where steam rose up. If you pushed your hand down too far into the loose sand your skin would be burned.
“Fifteen minutes. . . . Sixteen.”
At 0906 our alligator ground onto the black sand. The ramp, which had the words WELCOME TO PARADISE printed on it in big block letters, dropped.
“Go,” our lieutenant, who was in the boat with us, yelled. “Don’t bunch up on the beach.”
We poured out, expecting our welcome to be mortars and machine guns. Instead, as our feet sank ankle-deep in the black sand, the only fire we heard was from our own guns out to sea. The four battleships had adjusted their range. The slopes 500 ahead of us were being blanketed with bursting shells that threw up geysers of fiery sand.
Our second wave landed and then our third. There was still no sign of any enemy.
0910.
0915.
0930.
All 9,000 Marines of our first wave were on the beach, ready to move up the steep terraces toward Mount Suribachi and the two airfields on the plateau in the middle of the hilly island.
It had all been too easy. I adjusted the strap of my radio over my shoulder and shook my head as I peered up at the mountain. It seemed to be staring down at me the way a cougar watches a deer before it attacks.
“Hey,” Smitty said to me, “this is like a walk in the park, Chief.”
Then the Japanese sprung their trap.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The Black Beach
Our Navajo net on board the Bunker Hill was set up in the radio room just above the flag bridge at the very top of the ship. It made for a good place to see what happened on the island. Johnny Manuelito told me about it later. As the last boats of our first wave reached the shore, Johnny watched from that flag bridge. He’d just set up to send and receive and was waiting for the first messages. The whole island was blanketed with smoke and dust, but he saw through his binoculars that we’d reached the beaches untouched.
Just then, something came streaking down out of the sky heading right at him. It was a shell from the Japanese guns that had suddenly opened fire. It hit the top deck a few feet below where he was standing. But instead of bursting on impact, it bounced off, went spinning down, ricocheted off the next deck, and blew up far below.
Johnny stared down in silence for a moment. Things like that, he thought, make you feel glad you performed your ceremony. Then he jumped to his radio that had crackled into life as the shores of Iwo Jima burst into flame.
A hundred yards in from the beach, what had seemed like a walk in the park had turned into a swim in a sea of fire. The most intense storm of howitzer and mortar shells, machine gun, and small arms fire any of us had ever experienced was raining down on us. Blue-green vapor lines of Japanese tracer bullets stitched the air above our heads. Once again I heard the sound that is one of the most awful things anyone can hear: the dull thud, between the sound of a slap and a punch, of a bullet hitting the body of a human being. I heard it again and again, followed by cries of pain from those who were not killed when burning pieces of lead struck them.
There was no line of protection between us and the enemy ambush. Our alligators tried to make a quick crawl up the steep slope of the terrace so they could set up a fire line. The black sand was too loose and too deep. Spraying sand, a few of them reached the top of the terrace closest to the beach. But where we were, right below Suribachi, it was just plain impossible. Our amphibious boats turned around, roared back down onto the beach, and churned their way out into the water fifty yards or so. From there, they could at least fire over our heads.
That fifteen-foot rise was just about as hard for a man to climb as for a tracked vehicle. Sand shifted out from under our feet as Smitty and I tried to scramble up the steep slope. My arms were sucked in up to my elbows as I tried to find my balance. Black sand flowed into my face and down my neck.
“Like trying to swim . . . up . . . a waterfall,” Smitty grunted as he reached back and grabbed my arm to pull me after him.
I didn’t say anything. My mouth was too full of sand.
Our work was worth it, though. When we finally reached the top a big reward was waiting for us. Not only did we have a great view, but we were fully exposed to the enemy fire that started the exact instant the two of us got there. The Japanese had waited until we Americans had swarmed up the first slope and were like sitting ducks on the wide plain before the next terrace. Smitty and I fell to our bellies and scrambled like sand lizards to the only cover we could find, a little dip in the ground.
I got out my radio while Smitty dug our foxhole deeper. More Marines were coming in behind us. They needed to know what was happening. I waved at Lieutenant Lewis, who was deepening his own foxhole fifty feet to the right of us. Before long, he had runners bringing me the messages I needed to send back to the ship. Those messages were a measure of how desperate things had become for us by 1100.
Receiving steady fire from grid 29B.
Deliver to Green Beach 1: 5,000 rounds
.30 caliber belted.
Air strikes with 100 pound bombs at 132N.
Estimated battalion casualties, 60 killed.
Two radiomen down.
On board ship, the messages from our Navajo net coordinated gunfire, insured resupply, and helped our commanders estimate what had to be done. Taking the island was going to require every available man. The ships carrying the Third Division were called in.
Many of the things that happened during our first three days on Iwo Jima are hard for me to remember clearly, grandchildren. That may be just as well. When I think of that time, scattered pictures appear in my mind. Marines running through fire to hurl grenades into pillboxes. Wounded men limping forward into the fight with nothing more than pistols in their hands. A burning Sherman tank lifted right up into the air and flipped upside down by the explosion of a 500-pound bomb that had been buried as a mine. The still, lifeless faces of men who had shared food with me, laughed and joked only hours before, men whose voices I would never hear again.
Then there were the smells. The odor of sulfur was everywhere. It mixed with the burning gasoline from the flamethrowers and napalm bombs, the sharp tang of gunpowder, the overheated metal of machine gun barrels, so hot that they were melting. Worst of all was the stench of burning skin, so thick at times that many lost their appetites. By the night of that first long day, though, all were so hungry that they wolfed down whatever they had with them. I remember brushing big green flies and black grit off my steak sandwich before eating it in the foxhole Smitty and I constantly had to keep digging out as the hot shifting sand flowed back over our feet.
I also hear clear voices when I remember that time. I hear those voices and my own heart grows calm again. They are Navajo voices speaking strongly in our sacred language. Speaking over the concussions of the exploding shells so close that the pressure in the air made it hard to breathe. Speaking above the deadly whirr of shrapnel, the snap of Japanese rifles, and the ping of bullets bouncing off our radio equipment. Speaking calmly. Speaking even when our enemies tried to confuse us by getting on our frequency to scream loudly in our ears and bang pots and pans.
Speaking. Speaking through that day and the next and the next. Even when our voices grew hoarse, we did not stop. Our Navajo nets kept everything connected like a spider’s strands spanning distant branches. The winds of battle never broke our web. As the battle for Iwo Jima raged all around us, our voices held it together.
Our first m
ajor objective on the island had been to take Mount Suribachi, but the fierce Japanese resistance made it almost impossible. All we could do was creep forward a few feet at a time. It took us four days to move halfway up the slope, taking terrible casualties all the way.
Friday was the fifth day of fighting. Company E was directed to capture the summit. By now Mount Suribachi’s caves and chambers were almost empty. Its blockhouses and pillboxes had been shattered. Howit-zers and mortars, naval gunfire, aerial bombing, and men on foot with hand grenades and satchel charges had done their work. Forty men from Company E crawled on their stomachs up the rocky slope that was almost vertical at the top, avoiding any trails for fear they were mined. I was not one of them. I was in a foxhole farther down the mountain, sending progress reports from our lieutenant.
At 1015 the forty men spilled over the side of the cone into the crater. Not one enemy was in sight. The Marines had taken the mountain and as they climbed, one of those guys had found a metal pipe discarded on the slope. They’d brought a small American flag with them. The little flag was fastened to the end of that pipe and the pole was jabbed into the soft soil at the north rim of the crater. Six men raised that flag, including Private Louis Charlo, a Crow Indian Marine from Montana. Sergeant Louis Lowery, a photographer for Leatherneck magazine, snapped pictures of the men posing around the flag. Just then, two Japanese soldiers who’d been hidden in a cave attacked them with hand grenades and a sword. Jimmy Robeson, a Marine who’d refused to pose for the picture, shot one of the Japanese soldiers before he could get to the flag and Louis Charlo took care of the other one. Sergeant Lowery’s camera was smashed in the fight, but the roll of film inside it was saved and his pictures got printed in Leatherneck.
I was too far down the slope to see that flag, but some of the Marines farther up from me saw the Stars and Stripes go up and started shouting and celebrating. Word of that flag-raising flowed down the slope as fast as a stream of sweet water.
Code Talker Page 14
