After the conquest of the Mariana Islands, American leaders were faced with the question of where to go next. As expected, General Douglas MacArthur advocated invading the Philippine Islands, from which he had had to flee in 1942, but, for Admiral Ernest J. King, commander in chief of the Navy, things were not so clear. His preferred option was to occupy the island of Formosa (Taiwan). However, his immediate subordinates did not see it that way.
For the head of the Pacific Fleet, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, the next objective had to be the islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The second was a large island just 550 kilometers from Japan, which could be used as a strategic base for a future invasion of the archipelago. But why the tiny island of Iwo Jima? The reason came from heaven.
After the conquest of the Marianas, the Americans had built five large airfields on their main islands (Saipan, Tinian and Guam), from which the four-engine Boeing B-29 had begun the bombing of Japanese infrastructure. But the distance was more than 2,600 kilometers, so the 20th Air Force aircraft were forced to prioritize fuel over bombs.
In addition, the volcanic island of Iwo Jima was halfway there in a straight line and had a radar capable of alerting Tokyo two hours in advance, as well as two airfields (and a third under construction) from which their fighters could take off.
On the other hand, in case of conquest, those same runways could serve as a base for the North American P-51 Mustang fighters to protect their bombers, or to carry out emergency repairs. Furthermore, Iwo Jima belonged to Tokyo Prefecture. That is to say, in some way it was metropolitan territory, and its conquest would be a blow to Japanese morale.
Finally, on October 13, 1944, the Joint Chiefs of Staff authorized MacArthur to land on Luzon and Nimitz to invade Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The task of occupying the small island of the Ogasawara archipelago would fall to the seventy thousand men of the 3rd, 4th and 5th Marine Divisions. The code name would be Operation Detachment. However, those same considerations had also been taken into account by the Japanese command.
The inhospitable Iwo Jima was an elongated island of only 22 km2, seven long and a maximum of four wide, dominated at one end by Mount Suribachi, 168 meters high, which covered the few beaches suitable for a landing Sparsely populated, its main handicap was the lack of drinking water. What little there was was contaminated and often caused diarrhea. The heat could be suffocating, and the earth gave off sulfur fumes. When it rained, its inhabitants tried to collect water no matter what.
Its defense was personally commissioned by the Prime Minister and Minister of War, General Hideki T?j?, to Major General Tadamichi Kuribayashi. A soldier with more than thirty years of service who knew the Americans very well, since he had been a military attaché in their embassy in Washington and had received military training at Fort Bliss (Texas).
In June 1944, he took command of the 109th Infantry Division, reinforced by the 145th Infantry Regiment, an elite unit, and Olympic medalist Baron Takeichi Nishi’s 26th Tank Regiment, so His forces totaled 21,060 men. Aware of his mission and realistic about him, he wrote to his wife: “Don’t expect me to come back.”
His first intention in the next battle was to contain the enemy near the beaches, so that the Combined Fleet could finish him off, but, upon learning that it had received a harsh punishment in the battle of the Philippine Sea, something that was had hidden from him, he decided to change his strategy.
An enemy of banzai charges (massive bare-chested attacks, which usually ended in real massacres with little result) and aware of the new tactics used by General Sadae Inoue in Peleliu, he decided to make the most of the terrain, establishing a defense in depth and ordering the cessation of the construction of defenses on the front line of the coast.
His resolution cost him serious confrontations with Rear Admiral Sadaichi Matsunaga, command of the island’s naval and air forces, until he achieved his transfer, but also with his successor, until he compromised on maintaining the twenty-six defenses under construction, which were destroyed by the attacker at the first opportunity.
The axis of his strategy consisted of drilling holes in Mount Suribachi and other elevations with an intricate network of tunnels, which converged on strong points where the services were located (warehouses, dispensaries, communications, etc.) from which the troops would be located. sheltered from bombing, in order to organize counterattacks. To reinforce their firepower, many anti-aircraft weapons, especially 75 mm guns, were used as anti-tank weapons.
The construction of such defenses took about eight months under intense heat and lack of oxygen. The men drilled only in loincloths, almost in the dark and in ten-minute shifts. The old-fashioned masks they used produced such a feeling of suffocation that most men rejected them. But volcanic rock was cut easily and, mixed with cement, hardened.
Most of them had electric light, and some were up to 26 meters deep. In total, they managed to establish nearly eight hundred artillery points. Curiously, the tunnel that connected the Suribachi with the Motoyama plateau was not completed. It was one of the reasons why the mountain resisted less than expected.
His plan was to let the enemy advance to the Chidori airfield to trap them between the interior defenses, and once there, counterattack. Kuribayashi cared a lot about the morale of his troops. He was one of his men, he ate and drank (a canteen of water a day) the same rations as them and slept on a camp cot. His weight loss soon became evident, but his attitude served to extend his example to the other officers.
Every day he was seen walking around leaning on a cane, pointing out here and there the weak points of the framework. He also made his subordinates recite a decalogue (The brave vows of combat) whose first point was: “We will defend the island to the end of all our strength.” Kuribayashi knew that he could not win, but he decided to sell his skin dearly. His ultimate goal was to bleed the Marines dry.
By the time he was appointed head of the Ogasawara Army Corps (July 1), the island had begun to suffer the first air attacks, which destroyed its few planes. Two days later he had the civilian population evacuated, while sending his personal effects to Japan. He also banned comfort women, whose presence displeased him.
On December 8, Iwo Jima suffered its first major air-naval bombardment, which lasted uninterruptedly for seventy-four days, although with few results. On February 11, the last device landed from Japan.
After a powerful artillery preparation that lasted three days, instead of the ten requested, at 09:02 on February 19, 1945, the first marines disembarked, who, after the steep beaches, found several terraces of fine sand on which their feet were sinking and whose vehicles were unable to cross. The traffic jam would be spectacular.
Kuribayashi’s plan was to let them advance, but the opportunity was unique. Around 10:00, the Japanese fire fell on the bewildered marines, causing numerous casualties. Only the arrival of the bulldozers allowed the attackers to break through, waiting for a banzai charge that did not arrive. From his command ship, General Holland M. Smith, head of the 5th Amphibious Corps, commented: “I don’t know who he is, but the Japanese general running this show is a very smart bastard.”
On February 20, the Americans had destroyed Suribachi’s heavy guns with napalm and isolated the volcano from the rest of the island. Seeing the situation, his defender, Colonel Kanehiro Atsuchi, in command of about twelve hundred men, requested permission to carry out a banzai attack. Kuribayashi didn’t even answer him.
He had thought that the mountain could hold out for at least ten days, and within a second it was already crumbling. Bad weather came to his aid, causing a pause that a small Japanese air force took advantage of to attack the anchored American ships. They sank the escort carrier USS Bismarck Sea and severely damaged the USS Saratoga. When the Marines planted their flag on the top of the mountain on February 23, their defenders tried to reach their lines. The few who succeeded received a harsh reprimand: they should have remained at their posts until the end.
Despite the enormous casualties, the Marines, protected by their material superiority, continued to advance. On the 25th they reached the so-called Meat Grinder, a set of four elevations in which the Japanese resisted strongly, to the point that the first ninety meters of advance cost them five hundred casualties. In the following days the Americans conquered the Motoyama airfield, which was put into service, giving them immediate air cover that they took advantage of to spray every meter in the enemy’s possession with napalm.
Little by little, reality began to prevail. The Japanese defenders, already reduced by half, began to lack everything. Only on the 27th, Japanese aircraft managed to drop supplies by parachute. It was the last time the garrison was helped. Despite their valiant effort, the hand-to-hand fight, they were giving up more and more meters, although the resistance was still alive.
By March 4, Kuribayashi only had about three thousand five hundred men left. Lacking everything, they hid during the day and came out at night to attack and steal food. Their dead could not be buried, so they were piled up inside the tunnels. They no longer had artillery or tanks left.
Ready to put an end to the battle, on March 6 the Americans launched one of their largest bombardments on the meager Japanese positions: 22,500 cannon shells in sixty-seven minutes. Trapped, disobeying orders, Captain Samaje Inouye launched a nighttime banzai attack that caught the enemy off guard. Some of his men only carried bamboo spears. They were massacred.
Discarding the initial idea of ??suicide, Kuribayashi prepared one last counterattack. On the night of March 25, in a well-planned operation, he launched against the enemy at the head of about three hundred men, with a balance of two hundred and sixty-two dead and eighteen captured, in exchange for fifty-three enemy dead and one hundred and nineteen wounded. .
He himself was wounded, but it is not known if he bled to death or was finished off following his own orders. His body was never found. As his son Taro said, “my father considered it shameful that the enemy discovered his body even after he was dead…”, and he took action in this regard.
Although small pockets of resistance remained, the battle was over. The week scheduled for the conquest of Iwo Jima had quintupled, and, although the numbers are treacherous, the attackers had 6,016 dead and 17,788 wounded, compared to 20,703 Japanese dead and 216 prisoners. For the first time in the Pacific theater, the Americans suffered more casualties than they caused.