Storm Landings

by Joseph H. Alexander

  Marine major general Harry Schmidt would command V Amphibious Corps as he had done so ably at Tinian. Schmidt would have the distinction at Iwo Jima of commanding the largest force of Marines ever committed to a single battle: a three-division landing force numbering seventy thousand men. But Spruance and Turner (to the displeasure of Nimitz) complicated the command structure by inviting Lt. Gen. Holland Smith along for one last campaign. Smith would serve as commanding general of “expeditionary troops,” a contrived billet in this case where one amphibious corps attacked one island. Smith knew this, and endeavored to keep out of the Corps commander’s way, but Schmidt would forever be resentful of Smith “stealing his thunder.”

  Smith actually contributed significantly at the highest echelons to the success of the campaign. By serving as the eminently quotable Marine spokesman for the media—and by “baby-sitting” VIP visitors like Navy Secretary James Forrestal—Smith allowed Schmidt to fight the tactical battle without distraction. And it would be Holland Smith’s role to provide a necessary “reality check” for the combat correspondents gathered on the flagship before D-Day. “This is going to be a rough one,” he predicted, “we could suffer as many as fifteen thousand casualties here.” Few believed him.

  Aside from aerial photography (and periscope photographs from the submarine Spearfish), American intelligence collection and analysis prior to Iwo Jima proved less effective than most preceding amphibious campaigns. Analysts looked at the island’s severe water shortage and concluded that no more than thirteen thousand troops could be accommodated there, a 40 percent shortfall. Analysts also believed the senior officer on the island to be Maj. Gen. Kotono Osuga, assuming incorrectly that little-known Lt. Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi maintained his headquarters on Chichi Jima, 140 miles away. Planners underestimated the proliferation of Japanese major weapons. “The Japs had more heavy guns than we expected,” admitted Kelly Turner to a New York Times reporter during the battle.

  Nor did Turner, Smith, or Schmidt pay much attention to the evidence of the transformation in Japanese antiamphibious tactics manifested at Biak and Peleliu. They expected another Saipan, another General Obata. They anticipated a vigorous defense along the perimeter, followed by a massive banzai attack the first night. “We welcome a counterattack,” growled Smith. “That’s when we break their backs.” A revealing 5 January 1945 intelligence report that forecast a radically different Iwo defense organized in depth along the lines of Peleliu attracted little top-level attention.

  Iwo Jima represents a paradox in American naval history. The battle resulted in total victory, acquisition of strategic airfields virtually on Japanese territory, and an enduring symbolic legacy. Yet Iwo Jima also became the bloodiest battle in the history of the U.S. Marine Corps, the only major Pacific assault where the landing force sustained higher casualties than they inflicted on the Japanese garrison. As Smith would shortly be forced to admit, “This is the toughest fight in the 169 years of our Corps.” Why such a surprise this late in the war? What made “Sulfur Island” such a tough nut to crack?

  The Americans at first believed the Japanese had spent years preparing Iwo’s intricate, mutually supporting defenses. They would be surprised to learn later that the fortifications they encountered in February 1945 had largely resulted from a crash construction program completed barely a week before the invasion. As late as February 1944 only fifteen hundred troops occupied the unfortified site. It took Nimitz’s Central Pacific drive to alert IGHQ to Iwo Jima’s strategic vulnerability. But it would take a strong-willed, imaginative commander to reverse the rigidity of service politics and the Bushido code and turn the island into the most formidable fortress in the Pacific.

  Imperial Headquarters in 1944 created a new subtheater, the Ogasawara Area, which included islands of that name, plus the neighboring Bonin and Volcano Islands—to which they assigned a freshly formed, patched-together command designated as the 29th Division. Many of these soldiers would be assigned to Iwo Jima. Navy forces on the island were encouraged to “cooperate” with the area-division commander. Neither the subtheater nor the division reflected inspired staff work. The critical difference would lie in the personality of the newly designated commander, Lt. Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi.

  Kuribayashi may have been a stranger to the Americans in mid-1944, but by the following March certain Marine riflemen were calling him “the best damned general on this stinking island.” Kuribayashi was fifty-three years old, tall and portly, a native of Nagano Prefecture in central Honshū, and a descendent of samurai ancestors. A 1914 graduate of the Military Academy, he served the ensuing thirty-one years as a cavalry officer. With the outbreak of war in Asia, Kuribayashi commanded a cavalry regiment in Manchuria, a brigade in China. He participated in the capture of Hong Kong in December 1941 as chief of staff, 23d Army. With the emperor’s approval, he took command of the Imperial Guard Division in Tokyo. From this post in late May 1944 Prime Minister Hideki Tojo selected him to command the suddenly vital island called Iwo Jima (literally “Sulfur Island” in Japanese).

  Kuribayashi’s military record provides few clues as to what made him such a formidable commander at Iwo Jima. His experience commanding men in combat represents an asset, but this pales against the combat record of his contemporaries who fought in the tougher battles in Malaya, the Philippines, or New Guinea. He was an unreconstructed cavalryman, refusing to “transition” into tanks and armored warfare, and therefore of diminishing tactical value to his service. As a colonel assigned to the Ministry of the Army in 1937, for example, he served as head of equestrian affairs in the logistics branch—more concerned with forage and farriers than the more central issues of war plans or mobilization.

  Given this unremarkable record, it is no wonder American intelligence analysts failed to predict Kuribayashi’s tactical brilliance. Iwo Jima somehow invoked a metamorphosis for Kuribayashi. In his final command he proved to be tough, cool-headed, pragmatic, innovative, and fearless—a warrior in the best definition of any nation’s army. Holland Smith’s grudging postwar assessment summed it all up: “Of all our adversaries in the Pacific, Kuribayashi was the most redoubtable.”

  General Kuribayashi came to Iwo Jima during the second week of June 1944 and found the small garrison ill-prepared for war, a hodgepodge of squabbling units at each other’s throats. Several disasters occurred in short order. On 15 and 24 June, Rear Adm. Joseph J. “Jocko” Clark’s fast carrier task group struck Iwo hard, sweeping away the inexperienced Japanese aircraft and bombing the island with impunity. Then during 4-5 July, American battleships and cruisers bombarded the island at leisure. Recorded one member of the Japanese garrison: “For two days we cowered like rats.”

  Relief came from an unexpected quarter. The U.S. decision to tackle the Palaus after the Marianas provided the Japanese a half-year grace period in which to fortify Iwo Jima. Kuribayashi took full advantage of this lull. With the fall of Saipan, IGHQ diverted the veteran 145th Infantry Regiment, earmarked to reinforce the Marianas, to Iwo Jima for duty. This was a windfall. Although numerically small, the ranks of the 145th were filled with men from Kagoshima, renowned fighters, commanded by Col. Masuo Ikeda. Kuribayashi would build his defense with this regiment at its core; he would die with Ikeda at his side. In early August, Rear Adm. Toshinosuke Ichimaru reported to Iwo for duty, a legendary naval aviator, long crippled, hungry for a fight. The next week Maj. Gen. Joichiro Sanada, operations chief of the Army General Staff, visited the island. Like Kuribayashi, he was appalled by the unpreparedness he saw. As he recorded in his diary, “Kuribayashi warns that if an American task force of the size of the July 4th fleet returns with a division and a half of troops he could sustain the defense for at best a week to ten days.” Sanada had great influence in Tokyo. Soon, more troops, weapons, and ammo began flowing to Iwo Jima.

  As Kuribayashi studied the topography of the Volcano and Bonin Islands, he concluded that Iwo Jima was the only one with the potential for a bomber strip. This would inevitabl
y attract the Americans. Kuribayashi saw the paradox. Iwo Jima served only a limited tactical advantage to the Japanese as an early warning site and fighter-interceptor base. On the larger scale, the island was a strategic liability to the Japanese. American seizure of Iwo would be catastrophic to the Japanese war effort, bringing the home islands within range of medium bombers and fighter escorts to augment the B-29s. Sensing this, Kuribayashi spent weeks determining whether the Japanese would be better off simply blowing the island up—or at least sinking the central plateau into the sea. Some demolition experts came down from Tokyo, examined the volcanic rock, and said it could not be done.

  Kuribayashi then took a long look at the defensive tactics recently employed by Japanese commanders defending Biak, Peleliu, Angaur, and Luzon. In each case the Japanese provided only minimal resistance at the point of landing but established interior positions in depth. While the Americans at Peleliu had scoffed at these tactics as “the Cornered Rat defense,” their ultimate victory had come only at a very high cost in casualties and after an unexpectedly protracted campaign. Kuribayashi concluded that this was the best he could expect to accomplish: fortify the interior of the island so expertly that the Americans would take exorbitant casualties and perhaps lose heart. If all else failed, a prolonged and lethal defense of Iwo Jima might make the American public have second thoughts about invading the Japanese home islands.

  Kuribayashi then announced his decisions. He would establish the headquarters of his 109th Division on Iwo Jima, not on the larger, safer, more comfortable island of Chichi Jima. He ordered the evacuation of all civilians from the island, including the “comfort girls.” He abolished all booze. He ordered all facilities moved underground. Finally, and most controversial of all, he stated his plan to concede the amphibious landing and instead concentrate his defenses in depth among the broken terrain of the central and northern highlands. Further, he forbade any large-scale banzai attacks. Counterattacks would only be launched by small units and for limited tactical objectives. He would make maximum use of the night, sending out “prowling wolves,” small groups of marauders to gather intelligence, destroy enemy crew-served weapons, or kill sentries.

  Kuribayashi’s difficulties in enforcing these unpopular decisions were compounded by the duality in service command lines that continued to fracture Japanese operations. He was clearly senior to Admiral Ichimaru (and the two actually got along well), but Ichimaru felt pressured by some of his own hot-headed officers and the Navy General Staff to argue for beachfront defenses. Against his better judgment Kuribayashi agreed to a compromise. He would permit construction of 135 pillboxes along the obvious landing beaches in the southern part of the island. The project took three months; the Americans would overrun all of them in the battle’s first three hours.

  General Sanada continued to ramrod support for Kuribayashi from the Army General Staff. Surprisingly, Kuribayashi did not ask for more troops. The earlier arrival of the 26th Tank Regiment commanded by the colorful Baron Takeichi Nishi, added to Ikeda’s troops, gave Kuribayashi a solid core of veterans. Many of the newly formed battalions in the 2d Independent Mixed Brigade contained little more than raw recruits, more liabilities than assets. Kuribayashi wanted neither to saturate his defenses nor to overwhelm the island’s meager water supplies. He had the guns and the shooters; now he needed fortification specialists. Sanada quickly provided mining engineers, quarry experts, fortress units, and labor battalions. The island’s volcanic ash lent itself to efficient cement mix; its soft interior rock yielded to thousands of picks and spades.

  Kuribayashi kept his training simple: antitank defenses, night infiltrations, marksmanship. Each man’s defensive position was to be his grave, his military shrine. Knowing how isolated the battlefield would quickly become, the general posted “Courageous Battle Vows” in each bunker. If each man took ten American lives for his own, he told them, Japan could win a glorious victory.

  From Peleliu on, Japanese island commanders placed top priority on training their troops in antitank tactics. Their Model 1 (1941) 47-mm gun, small enough to be manhandled quickly in and out of caves, proved heavy enough to knock out U.S. medium tanks at ranges up to a thousand yards, especially against the Sherman tank’s lightly armored sides and rear. (Larry E. Klatt)

  An assessment of the Japanese garrison on the eve of the battle reveals a checkered mix of strengths and weaknesses. On the plus side, Kuribayashi had transformed the divided, dispirited garrison into a force imbued with readiness to remain in prepared positions and inflict maximum casualties. The borrowed engineers had created a masterpiece of defensive works, particularly in the main belt that crossed the island just north of the second airfield. In the 145th Infantry Regiment, the 26th Tank Regiment, and some of the artillery units Kuribayashi had first-rate troops, a credit to any armed force. In Col. Chosaku Kaido, commanding the composite artillery brigade, Kuribayashi had one of the finest gunners in the empire.

  On the negative side, the 109th Division was hardly one of the empire’s best—certainly not one of the vaunted Manchukuoan outfits from the Kwantung Army. Moreover, Kuribayashi did not even have his entire division at hand. His second independent mixed brigade was scattered to the north, defending places like Chichi Jima and Marcus Island. Nor could the 109th Division ever expect to match in open combat the task organization, firepower, and unit integrity of any one of the three U.S. Marine Corps divisions steaming toward Iwo. Further, while Kuribayashi had been able to stockpile plenty of food and weapons in advance, he did not have that luxury in terms of artillery, mortar, and rocket ammunition. Only on D-Day would his gunners enjoy unrestricted firing. The very proliferation of types and calibers of major weapons would further complicate ammunition supply and distribution. Some weapons were simply inappropriate. The enormous Japanese 320-mm spigot mortars would scare hell out of the Marines, but their 675-pound shells would often prove more hazardous to the handling crews; the launchers had an operating life of only five to six rounds.

  Kuribayashi seemed to accept all this. When Japanese scout planes reported the departure of hundreds of American ships from Ulithi and Saipan on 13 February, the general ordered his men into their final bunkers and moved into his command post in the Motoyama highlands. “I pray for a heroic fight,” he said.

  Kelly Turner’s joint expeditionary force approached Iwo Jima with 495 ships—including 125 amphibians and 75 seagoing landing craft—a force ten times the size he had led against Guadalcanal thirty months earlier. Only one useful piece of intelligence had filtered to the landing force from the unsavory Peleliu experience. A captured Japanese message from Peleliu recommended that drums of fuel be placed along the obvious landing beaches for remote ignition during the height of the American’s ship-to-shore assault. The latest aerial photos of Iwo showed a suspicious line of fifty-five-gallon drums positioned at close intervals along the beaches. Schmidt’s Marines in the first waves would therefore land wearing fire-retardant grease on their exposed skin.

  Holland Smith and Harry Schmidt were more concerned with an acrimonious dispute with the Navy over the extent of preliminary bombardment allotted to Iwo. The Marines, sensing the difficulty of seizing this godforsaken rock, asked for ten days—but got three. The Navy saw a greater need to orchestrate tactical surprise, coordinate the bombardment with strikes against Honshū by Mitscher’s fast carriers, and guard against an incursion by the remnants of the Combined Fleet. Logistic restraints also served to limit bombardment. The Pacific Fleet had not yet mastered the art of underway replenishment of major-caliber ammunition (8-inch and larger); those ships would have to retire to a distant anchorage to rearm for any prolonged bombardment. There was also concern for conserving ammunition for the pending, larger invasion of Okinawa. The arguments became rancorous. Blandy’s gunships would deliver four times the shelling Tarawa received and one and a half times the prep fires at Saipan. Yet the Marines argued that prolonged, deliberate fire—repeated hits on hard targets—was more critical than gro
ss tonnage delivered.

  The maestro. Lt. Gen. Holland M. “Howlin’ Mad” Smith, USMC (foreground), surveys storm damage to landing craft on Iwo Jima’s steep beaches. No one contributed more to the development of U.S. amphibious assault prowess than Smith, especially during the critical period 1938 to 1944. (U.S. Naval Institute)

  There is little doubt that a greater preliminary bombardment would have saved Marine lives. The heart of Kuribayashi’s defenses in the Motoyama plateau remained essentially unscathed during the three days before D-Day. On the other hand, most of Kuribayashi’s emplacements in the north were so skillfully camouflaged, his men so deeply entrenched, that they probably would have remained impervious to any extended shelling. They had already withstood ten weeks of daily pounding by Seventh Air Force bombers without substantial damage. Suspending the naval shelling each night provided further respite to the subterranean garrison. As 1st Lt. Kinryu Sugihara, a member of the 11th Antitank Battalion on Iwo Jima, recorded in his diary for the night of 17 February: “Our units are taking advantage of the slackening of the bombardment during the night and are strengthening their positions, repairing fortifications, and hauling food and ammunition to the different positions. They worked all night in preparation for tomorrow.”

  Landing force planners knew in advance that Iwo’s steep beach and loose volcanic sand would complicate the movement of vehicles from landing craft to the high-water mark. Admiral Hill and his chief beach-master, Capt. Carl E. “Squeaky” Anderson, had worked furiously to devise means of improving beach trafficability. Bulldozers would be in high demand along the beach on D-Day; Hill and Anderson fabricated armored shields to protect the operators from sniper fire. The two officers also developed sand sleds and “Marston matting,” folded, hinged metal mats intended to surface an expeditionary airfield, modified so they could be payed out from a tracked vehicle to lay an improvised “road” over the soft sand as a beach exit. Hill said the task force brought eight miles of hinged matting to Iwo.