Storm Landings

by Joseph H. Alexander

  With Suribachi in American hands, Admiral Hill opened up beaches on both sides of the southern coast. The 3d Marine Division (less the 3d Marines, withheld as Expeditionary Troops reserve in a controversial decision by Holland Smith) streamed ashore and shouldered into line between the 4th and 5th Divisions in the attack north.† Navy SeaBees landed in force, an entire brigade of them, and began rebuilding Iwo’s vital airfields under scattered fire. Army antiaircraft units moved their big guns ashore to provide a high-velocity land-based punch to counter the expected air raids from the Japanese home islands. An Army Air Forces P-51 Mustang fighter group flew ashore, providing superb close-air support and a lethal interception force.

  At Iwo Jima, however, the Fifth Fleet’s picket screens and combat air patrols experienced few difficulties in intercepting aerial counterattackers. There were two exceptions. The night before D-Day a pair of Japanese bombers penetrated the task force and struck the transport Blessman. Ironically, this was the mother ship for the Navy combat demolition teams, the men who had just executed their bold mission so successfully along Iwo’s beaches. The ship survived the attack—the bomb just missed the after hold where the frogmen stored their TNT—but the unit lost more of its members in this one fiery instant than the total of all their combat operations in the Pacific.

  At twilight on D+2, a flight of fifty kamikaze planes penetrated the fleet screen. In desperate action that foreshadowed the Okinawan campaign the ships managed to down all fifty planes, but not before some crashed aboard the escort carrier Bismarck Sea, sinking her, and the old warhorse Saratoga, damaging her enough to send her back to Hawaii. There were no other breakdowns in air defense.

  Japanese attempts at aerial resupply proved ludicrous. According to Imperial Navy chief petty officer Kei Kanai, one of the few Iwo survivors, a plane flew over Japanese positions in the north one night and dropped packages for the garrison—filled solely with bamboo spears.

  Nor did the once-mighty Combined Fleet make any serious move toward disrupting the Iwo landing. In operational terms, the Japanese Navy’s only contribution was the dispatch of several kaitan “human torpedoes” embarked on fleet submarines. Three of these subs left Kure for Iwo during 22-23 February, followed by two more on 2 March. None got through.

  By 4 March, the end of the second week of fighting ashore, the Marines had suffered thirteen thousand casualties, and the end seemed nowhere in sight. Yet at that point the first crippled B-29 landed on Iwo’s main runway, a great boost to American morale. Thirty-five more of the silver war birds, damaged in Tokyo raids, would land successfully on Iwo during the battle. The troops cheered each one. “We knew where they’d been!” said one rifleman.

  This was the beginning of the end for the Japanese garrison. Unknown to the Marines, they had now pierced the main defensive belt, killed as many Japanese as their own casualty total, and forced Kuribayashi that very day to abandon his forward command post and seek shelter in a cave near Kitano Point, prepared to make his last stand. “Send me air and naval support and I will hold the island,” he radioed Tokyo; “without these things I cannot hold.” On the following day a heavy American bombardment killed Colonel Kaido in his artillery command post at Turkey Knob.

  In Kuribayashi’s absence from the central highlands, the infantry brigade commander in the eastern sector disobeyed his standing orders and launched an all-out, traditional banzai charge against the 4th Marine Division. Many of these Marines were veterans of larger counterattacks at Saipan and Tinian; once again they stayed low, aimed carefully, and scored devastating hits against the charging Japanese, backlit by a thousand flares. Morning revealed rows of dead Imperial troops, fully eight hundred of them. The 4th Marine Division, their back-breaking burden suddenly lightened by this turn of events, then made such rapid progress they secured the entire coast in their sector in five days. The 3d Marine Division, fighting ferociously, sent Schmidt a canteen of seawater from the northeast coast.

  The next day, 17 March, the 5th Marine Division swept over Hill 165, trapping the remnants of Kuribayashi’s forces in what would be called “the Bloody Gorge.” Colonel Ikeda burned his regimental colors. Fleet Admiral Nimitz declared victory. Kuribayashi bade an emotional farewell to the people of Japan. That evening Prime Minister Kuniaki Koiso made an unprecedented announcement over Radio Tokyo to a shocked nation: Iwo had fallen.

  General Kuribayashi and several hundred survivors actually held out another nine days, making the 5th Marine Division bleed for every bitter yard in the Gorge. His body was never identified. Some survivors claimed he led the final, savage, “all-out-attack” against the American bivouac at airfield number 2 during the predawn of 26 March, the last day of the battle. Whatever his final end, Kuribayashi fought a good fight and died. So did 22,000 other Japanese. Yet Kuribayashi’s imaginative and radical defensive plans achieved little more than inflicting 24,053 casualties upon the attacking Marines and prolonging the campaign for five weeks.

  In the context of the great sweep of forces converging on Japan by the spring of 1945, such heroic sacrifices stood for little. The Americans had gained operational use of airfields on Japanese territory within the first two weeks of the battle. Already Curtis LeMay’s B-29s were enjoying an elevenfold increase in bombing effectiveness; a total of 24,761 crewmen from crippled bombers would owe their lives to the Marine seizure of Iwo in the months ahead. And the Joint Chiefs’ master plan remained fully intact. Iwo Jima officially ended on 26 March. On that same date—right on schedule—Raymond Spruance and Kelly Turner kicked off Operation Iceberg in the waters off Okinawa.

  Kuribayashi’s principal contribution to the Pacific War was the portent he provided the world of what to expect should the Japanese home islands be invaded: savage, no-quarter fighting on a massive, protracted scale. On the other hand, Iwo Jima’s inexorable loss sobered the Japanese high command. The Americans had seized one of the most heavily defended islands in the world, conquered it in spite of the bravery and ingenuity of Kuribayashi and his men, and achieved this in the face of daunting losses. The Americans, it was quite clear, had the ways and means—and will—to inflict their storm landings against any defended shore.

  * Fine-grained sand would indicate favorable trafficability; these samples contained large grains, confirming the problems to be encountered on D-Day.

  * Twenty-two Marines received the Medal of Honor for Iwo; half were awarded posthumously.

  * The 4th and 5th Marine Divisions each deployed four Sherman tanks modified with the “POA-CWS-H1” flamethrower mounted in the turret and fired through a salvaged 75mm gun tube. They could fire a 6 percent napalm solution eighty yards and proved invaluable in Iwo’s “Jungle of Stone.” All were hit; none were lost.

  † Although pilloried by officers ashore for this decision, Smith probably made the right choice here. As CG, Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, he well knew he would have to rebuild these shattered forces quickly in time for the scheduled invasion of Kyūshū in November. The 3d Marines would have been his nucleus.

  Chapter Eight

  Okinawa

  Amphibious Capstone

  The approaching landing waves possessed something of the color and pageantry of medieval warfare, advancing relentlessly with banners flying.

  Commander, Task Force 54

  Okinawa Action Report,

  5 May 1945

  The three-month-long battle of Okinawa covered a seven-hundred-mile arc from Formosa to Kyūshū and involved a million combatants—Americans, Japanese, British, and native Okinawans. With a magnitude that rivaled the Normandy invasion the previous June, the battle of Okinawa was the biggest and costliest single operation of the Pacific War.

  Okinawa would become the U.S. Navy’s greatest operational challenge: protecting an enormous amphibious task force in orbit around its beachhead against the ungodliest of furies, the Japanese kamikazes. Equally, Okinawa would test whether U.S. amphibious power projection had truly come of age—whether Americans in the Pacific Theate
r could execute a massive assault against a large, heavily defended landmass, integrate the capabilities of all services, fend off every imaginable form of counterattack, and maintain tactical momentum ashore.

  Okinawa, the largest of the Ryukyu Islands, sits at the apex of a triangle almost equidistant to strategic areas. Kyūshū is 350 miles to the north; Formosa 330 miles to the southwest; Shanghai 450 miles to the west. The island has a peaceful heritage, but geography ruled its destiny in 1945. Okinawa’s proximity to Japan—well within medium bomber and fighter escort range—and its militarily useful ports, airfields, anchorages, and training areas made the skinny island an imperative objective for the Americans, eclipsing their earlier plans for the seizure of Formosa for that purpose.

  As with Peleliu and Iwo Jima, the Japanese did little to fortify Okinawa until the shocking news of the fall of Saipan. At that point, IGHQ established a heavily armed field force on Okinawa, the 32d Army, and began to funnel trained components to it from Japan’s great armed perimeter in China, Manchuria, or the home islands.*

  Admiral Nimitz turned once again to his most veteran commanders to execute Operation Iceberg, the forcible seizure of Okinawa: Raymond Spruance to command the U.S. Fifth Fleet, Kelly Turner to command all amphibious forces under Spruance. But Turner’s military counterpart would no longer be the familiar old Marine warhorse, Holland Smith. Iwo Jima had been “Howlin’ Mad” Smith’s last fight. Army lieutenant general Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr., the son of a Confederate general who fought against Ulysses S. Grant at Fort Donelson in the American Civil War, would command the newly created U.S Tenth Army, the first field army to arise in Nimitz’s command.

  Six veteran divisions—four Army, two Marine—would comprise Buckner’s landing force, with a division from each service marked for reserve duty. Here was another indication of the growth of U.S. amphibious power in the Pacific. Earlier, the Americans had forcibly landed one infantry division at Guadalcanal, two each in the Gilberts, Marshalls, and Palaus, and three each at Saipan and Iwo. By spring 1945 Turner and Buckner could count on eight experienced divisions.

  Buckner’s Tenth Army had three major components. Army major general John R. Hodge commanded the XXIV Corps, comprised of the 7th, 77th, and 96th Infantry Divisions, with the 27th Infantry Division in floating reserve, and the 81st Infantry Division in area reserve.† Marine major general Roy S. Geiger, veteran of Guadalcanal, Guam, and Peleliu, commanded the III Amphibious Corps (IIIAC), comprised of the 1st and 6th Marine Divisions, with the 2d Marine Division in floating reserve. The third major component of Buckner’s staff was the Tactical Air Force, commanded by Marine major general Francis P. Mulcahy.

  The 1st Marine Division, now commanded by Maj. Gen. Pedro A. del Valle, had returned from Peleliu to “pitiful Pavuvu” in the Russell Islands to prepare for the next campaign. Del Valle, a consummate artillery officer who had proven his combat worth earlier at Guadalcanal, insisted upon tank-infantry training under the protective umbrella of supporting howitzer fires. The 6th Marine Division became the only division to be formed overseas in the war when Maj. Gen. Lemuel C. Shepherd activated the colors and assumed command in Guadalcanal in September 1944. The unit may have been new, but veterans of hard campaigning in the Solomons, Marshalls, and Marianas provided the grit and gristle of this enterprising outfit. Looking ahead to Okinawa, Shepherd emphasized tactical mobility, large-scale combined-arms operations, and combat in built-up areas.

  The Marine divisions preparing to assault Okinawa experienced yet another organizational change, the fourth of the war. The overall size of each division increased from 17,465 to 19,176. This growth reflected the addition of an assault signal company, a rocket platoon (the “Buck Rogers Men”), a war dog platoon, and—significantly—a 55-man assault platoon in each regimental headquarters. The most timely weapons change occurred with the replacement of the 75-mm “half-tracks” with the newly developed M-7 105-mm self-propelled howitzers—four to each regiment. Purists in the artillery regiments tended to sniff at these weapons, deployed by the infantry not as massed howitzers but rather as direct-fire, open-sights “siege guns” against Okinawa’s thousands of fortified caves, but the riflemen soon swore by them.

  General Buckner assumed command of the Tenth Army in August 1944, the same time that Lt. Gen. Mitsuru Ushijima took command of the Japanese 32d Army on Okinawa. Ironically, both senior generals had commanded their respective national military academies, Buckner at West Point, Ushijima at Zama. Both would die in the battle, three days apart and within five miles of each other.

  General Ushijima’s 32d Army represented an amalgam of Manchurian-theater veterans, new recruits, and native Okinawan levees, reinforced by an unusual quantity of field artillery and heavy mortar units, originally destined for the Philippines. Imperial General Headquarters made one critical mistake in their preparations for the coming invasion. Still unsure of the main American thrust in November 1944, the high command stripped Ushijima of his most valuable force, the veteran 9th Division, sending it south to oblivion in Formosa. Ushijima could only shake his head at this top-level folly and make the most of his remaining 110,000 troops.

  Without the 9th Division, Ushijima had insufficient forces to guard Okinawa’s extended coastline. Instead, he would go to ground in the broken jumble of ridges in the southern third of the sixty-mile-long island, building a concentric ring of fortifications centered on the ancient Ryukyuan fortress of Shuri Castle. While this meant yielding the critical airfields of Kadena and Yontan along the East China Sea, Ushijima took comfort in the fact that his fields of fire from the Shuri complex would prevent American use of the port of Naha for any major buildup of combat power ashore.

  Throughout the war the Americans failed to appreciate or anticipate the digging ability of the common Japanese soldier. While not a factor at Betio (shallow water table) or Saipan (beachfront defense philosophy), this propensity for rapid burrowing underground would produce startling results in the cave warfare battles that followed. At Okinawa, the 32d Army achieved a masterpiece in less than seven months. Working entirely with hand tools—there was not a single bulldozer on the island!—the garrison dug miles of underground fighting positions and “fire port caves,” literally honeycombing southern Okinawa’s ridges and draws. Staff officers stocked each successive position with reserves of ammunition, food, water, and medical supplies. Okinawa would be the supreme Fukkaku defense.

  General Ushijima’s objective became simply this: to engage the U.S. landing force in a costly, protracted battle of attrition while Japanese air power savaged the Fifth Fleet. The battle would thus feature the unique integration of a near-passive island defense with a violent air offensive using suicide tactics on a totally unprecedented scale.

  American forces by now were familiar with the enemy’s propensity for individual suicide measures—kamikaze pilots in the Philippines, anti-shipping swimmers in the waters off Iwo Jima, “human bullet” antitank demolitionists at Peleliu. These reappeared in large numbers during Okinawa. But Imperial General Headquarters introduced something terrifyingly new in the Ryukyus: the kikusui, the “floating chrysanthemum” mass kamikaze flights, hundreds of suicidal planes, attacking in waves. The Japanese would launch ten separate kikusui during the battle, always in conjunction with conventional air strikes and often coordinated with tactical offensives, like the massive ground counterattack during 12–13 April, or the sacrificial sortie of the battleship Yamato.

  Surprisingly, for an operation preceded by near-continuous ULTRA decryption intercepts and aerial photography, U.S. intelligence failed to pinpoint either the location of Ushijima’s major fortifications or his likely tactical intentions. Spruance, Turner, and Buckner anticipated a stiff defense of the western airfields and therefore stockpiled a huge amount of shells for the preliminary naval bombardment—at the considerable expense of the bombardment more critically needed at Iwo Jima a few weeks earlier. Assault troops in the 1st Marine Division were warned to expect “80-85 percent cas
ualties.”

  The Tenth Army plan of attack called for a massive four-division assault over the Hagushi beaches (the Marines of IIIAC on the north, the soldiers of XXIV Corps on the south). Meanwhile, the 2d Marine Division with a separate naval task unit would endeavor to duplicate its successful amphibious feint off Tinian by demonstrating opposite the Minatoga beaches on Okinawa’s southeast coast. Love-Day (selected from the existing phonetic alphabet in order to avoid confusion with Iwo Jima’s D-Day) would occur on 1 April 1945. Hardly a man failed to comment on the obvious irony: it was April Fool’s Day and Easter Sunday—which would prevail?

  Rear Adm. W.H.P. Blandy would command the “amphibious support force” at Okinawa and be given a full eight days to execute his missions. This would forfeit surprise (although after Saipan that hardly mattered any more) in exchange for life-saving, time-saving preparation of the objective for the main assault.

  Blandy deployed the 77th Division to launch Operation Iceberg with a skillful seizure of the Kerama-rettō Islands, a move that surprised the Japanese and produced great operational dividends. Admiral Turner now had a series of sheltered anchorages to repair ships damaged by Japanese kamikazes, already exacting a toll. The soldiers also captured the main cache of Japanese suicide boats, nearly three hundred power boats equipped with high-explosive rams intended to sink troop transports as they approached their assault anchorages. The Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, Force Reconnaissance (“Force Reconn”) Battalion, commanded by Maj. James L. Jones, preceded each Army landing with stealthy nocturnal patrols and also scouted the barren sand spits of Keise Shima, seven miles off the southwest coast of Okinawa, finding them undefended. With that welcome news, the Army landed a battery of 155-mm “Long Toms” on the islets, soon adding their high-velocity punch to the naval bombardment of Okinawa’s main landing beaches.