So Sad to Fall in Battle

by Kumiko Kakehashi

  Everything about the photograph—from the distribution of the soldiers to the way the flag was waving—was so perfect that a rumor circulated that the photographer had staged the whole thing. The truth was that Rosenthal had gotten there late and, barely in time for the second hoisting, had clicked the shutter in considerable haste.

  Many Japanese people have seen this historic photograph; few, however, know what was used for the flagpole.

  Lieutenant Colonel Johnson had given a flag to his men as they headed up Mount Suribachi, but he did not provide any flagpole for it. In both the first and second flag raisings, marines procured the poles from whatever was on the top of the mountain. It was Corporal Robert Leader and Private First Class Leo J. Rozek who found something that fit the bill: a length of metal piping that lay amid all the debris on the summit.

  The pipe belonged to a cistern that the Japanese forces had built to collect rainwater for drinking. The cistern had been completely destroyed in the American air raids, and the pipe itself was riddled with holes.

  To the marines, that pipe was no more than a piece of junk among a pile of debris. To the Japanese it was much more. The true value of that grubby pipe could only be understood by people who had known the agony of being parched, or had watched their comrades die begging for a drink of water.

  The American soldiers had supplies of canned water to drink. During the battle, a Japanese soldier wrote in his diary: “I heard rumors that the Americans drink canned water. Is it possible such a thing exists in this world?” Of course it existed. Every landing craft was loaded with six thousand cans, each of which held eighteen liters of water— and there were seventy-three landing craft in all. The marines called Iwo Jima “hell,” but at least they did not have to suffer from thirst.

  The Stars and Stripes waved over Iwo Jima, a declaration of America’s victory and America’s conquest. But the pole that held that flag aloft was the wreckage of a system that had helped sustain life for the more than twenty thousand Japanese troops on the island. Frozen forever in that incomparable photograph, a cruel and bizarre juxtaposition is still exposed to the eyes of the world.

  —

  IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE FIRST flag had been raised on Mount Suri-bachi, a motorboat dropped off a number of men on the island. They disembarked on the stretch of shore that the Americans had dubbed “Green Beach,” the corner of the south shore closest to the base of Mount Suribachi.

  Two men stood side by side upon the black sand that four days before had clutched at the ankles of the marines and hampered the caterpillar tracks of the tanks. They had a good view of the Stars and Stripes fluttering on the summit of Mount Suribachi.

  One of the men wore a gray sweatshirt over his khaki uniform. He said to his companion: “Holland, the raising of that flag means a Marine Corps for another five hundred years.”

  Holland was Lieutenant General Holland M. Smith. And the old general’s eyes swam with tears as he thought back on all the heroic feats of “his marines” and all the casualties they had endured. This would be his last command.

  The man in the sweatshirt was James V. Forrestal, secretary of the navy. Forrestal had come all the way out to the Pacific to witness firsthand the marine invasion of Iwo Jima and had been in the command ship USS Eldorado off the island, watching the campaign unfold.

  Overriding the opposition of his entourage, who feared for his safety, he went ashore. Secretary Forrestal had walked the beaches of Normandy seven months earlier and was equally determined to inspect the Iwo Jima beachhead himself.

  LIEUTENANT GENERAL SMITH was commanding general of the U.S. Marines Expeditionary Troops. The chain of command was as follows: above Smith stood Vice Admiral Richmond K. Turner, U.S. Navy, commander of the Joint Expeditionary Force; above Turner was Rear Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, commander of the Fifth Fleet; above him was Admiral Nimitz, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet. Above them all was Navy Secretary Forrestal, who stood at the apex of the navy power structure.

  Well aware that he could not allow the navy secretary to go ashore by himself, Lieutenant General Smith accompanied him and his entourage to the beach, and was thus able to witness a moment of history.

  There was a rationale behind Forrestal’s remark to Smith about “a Marine Corps for another five hundred years.” The marines were often seen as little more than an afterthought or add-on to the navy. The question of whether there was a genuine need for them was often debated.

  The Marine Corps was originally organized as an affiliate of the navy and was a small force responsible for onboard security and sharp-shooting. Its role was reevaluated in the years after World War I. Suspecting that the islands of the Pacific could become the scene of fighting in the near future, the American military decided that an elite force specializing in amphibious landings was needed and gave that role to the marines. The American forces were running combat simulations against Japan in the Pacific years before Pearl Harbor, at a time when the Japanese military had not even started developing a strategy toward America.

  Over time, the marines were built up as a force able to conduct independent amphibious operations far away from the continental United States. As the U.S. military establishment had predicted, the day came when battles had to be fought on the islands of the Pacific, and the marines acquitted themselves nobly in landing operations against the Japanese on Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Peleliu, Saipan, and Guam, among other places.

  The Americans raising the Stars and Stripes on Iwo Jima—on the Japanese homeland—was a historic moment. And it was the marines who did it. In so doing, they forcefully justified their existence and proclaimed their worth to the world.

  The marines were the ones who landed under enemy fire and secured positions for the rear guard units to take up; the marines were the ones who first made contact with the enemy. But despite exposing themselves to greater danger in this manner, not only were they less respected than the other three services—the army, navy, and air force— they were also often looked down on as a bunch of ruffians. Now a single flag guaranteed that they would get the respect that their dangerous, brutal missions deserved for five hundred years—such was Secretary Forrestal’s promise.

  The following day, February 24, Forrestal left for Guam. With the landing operation completed and Mount Suribachi, seen as the island’s key strategic point, in American hands, Forrestal thought he had seen everything he needed to see. But the fight was by no means over.

  Neither the navy secretary nor the American public going crazy over the flag-raising photograph had any way of knowing that the marines would need another thirty days to conquer Iwo Jima completely.

  Of the forty men who stood on the summit of Mount Suribachi at that historic moment, only four were able to walk on board the ships that would take them home. Of the remaining thirty-six, the lucky ones left on stretchers; the unlucky ones died and were buried on the island.

  THE FALL OF MOUNT Suribachi within only four days of the Americans landing was a severe blow to Kuribayashi.

  He had planned for the decisive battle to be fought from the defensive positions that ran from the center to the northern part of the island, so he was ready to let Suribachi go at some point, but he had hoped that the garrison defending the summit would hold out for a minimum of ten days and keep the enemy pinned down.

  Mount Suribachi fell earlier chiefly because the tunnels linking it to the Motoyama area in the center of the island had not been completed in time. The Japanese had built a total of 18 kilometers of tunnels by the time the Americans landed, but those between Mount Suribachi and Mo-toyama had not yet been joined. Mount Suribachi was cut off when the Americans occupied Chidorigahara, which lay between the two.

  Had the tunnels between Mount Suribachi and Motoyama been ready, it would have been possible to travel back and forth between the two installations without having to emerge aboveground. The Japanese would have been able to stay in contact; more important, they would have also been able to move troops, weapons
, and ammunition. Kuriba-yashi must have bitterly regretted the shortage of materials that hampered his tunnel-building program.

  The Americans landed on the south beach, then, while one group advanced to the left to take Mount Suribachi, other units headed right, pushing up to the northeast. The Japanese forces ranged against them fought back from defenses they had built in three tiers: the first line of defense; the second line of defense; and then the honeycomb defense. They cleverly exploited the uneven ground and their underground positions to conceal their guns, while the artillerymen were also waiting for the enemy underground.

  Motoyama Airfield, in the center of the island, was the prize the Americans most wanted to capture. The Japanese first and second lines of defense were placed on either side of this airfield, above and below it. The marines’ Fourth and Fifth Divisions, which pushed toward Mo-toyama Airfield, encountered stiff resistance from the Japanese and suffered many casualties. This inspired the Americans to send in the reserved Third Division on February 24, the day after the capture of Mount Suribachi. The total manpower committed by the Americans now rose to around sixty-one thousand men—three full marine divi-sions—and for the next four days the battle in the area around Mo-toyama Airfield became very intense.

  The Americans chose to make a frontal assault based on brute strength.

  They advanced northward, tanks out in front and artillery units blasting round after round from their rocket guns. The infantry followed, using flamethrowers, hand grenades, and high explosives to wipe out the pillboxes and underground bunkers one by one. Rear Admiral Rinosuke Ichimaru summed up the situation in a Senkun Denpô— literally a “war lesson telegram”—he sent to the Imperial General Headquarters. “The Americans only advance after making a desert out of everything before them. Their infantry advance at a speed of about ten meters an hour. They fight with a mentality as though exterminating insects.”

  The Japanese forces fired from cleverly concealed gun ports, as well as raining down concentrated fire from mortars and rocket guns. When the firepower of the Americans became simply too overwhelming, they would slip down into their underground installations and go through one of the tunnels that headed off any which way, then resume the attack from some unexpected point. The different units could coordinate by keeping in contact via a telephone system that ran through the tunnels.

  This was the style of fighting Kuribayashi had envisaged and prepared for over the previous eight months.

  The underground bunkers and tunnels the soldiers had sweated so hard to construct gave them a standby location before making a sortie, and a place to take refuge from enemy gunfire. They also served as their living quarters, offering shelter from the airstrikes that went on throughout the battle, as well as providing storage space for food and ammunition. The soldiers must have recognized that this was the only way they could fight on such a small island against an enemy so superior in numbers, firepower, and equipment.

  Admiral Nimitz acknowledged that Kuribayashi had turned Iwo Jima into “the most impregnable eight-square-mile island base in the Pacific.” “The only thing we could do,” he stated, “was to use infantry units supported by tanks to get in and capture one by one the bases the Japanese had so ingeniously constructed.”

  The Japanese soldiers would also sprint out of their caves clutching armor-piercing charges (bombs capable of destroying the armor-plating of tanks) and blow up tanks by flinging themselves against them. These close-quarters attacks on tanks traditionally involved throwing explosive charges into the tank’s caterpillar tracks and then withdrawing, but when it came to real combat many soldiers summoned up the courage to ram themselves bodily against the tanks, which was much more effective. It goes without saying that they were blown to pieces when the charge went off. They were doing on land what the Kamikaze Special Attack Force was doing in the air.

  Summing up what was unique about the extraordinary close-quarters battle between underground and aboveground waged by Kuribayashi, Lieutenant General Smith declared in Coral and Brass that: “Every cave, every pillbox, every bunker was an individual battle, where Japanese and Marine fought hand to hand to the death.”

  The Japanese put up a desperate fight, but lost Motoyama Airfield by February 26, after the Americans sent in reinforcements and blanketed the area with devastating artillery barrages. By the evening of February 27, Japanese troop strength had been cut by half, while guns and ammunition had shrunk by two thirds. The ammunition situation for field guns and midsize trench mortars was especially dire, with only 10 percent of the original stock remaining.

  The Japanese were now no longer able to respond in kind to American firepower. Henceforth they could not expect to fight in a manner that resembled any conventional idea of what a battle should be; from then on, the battle would be one of bloodshed and endurance more painful than death itself. Nor would Kuribayashi allow his men to use death as a quick way out.

  “Yours not to die a noble and heroic death; yours to live the most excruciating life”—that was the role that Kuribayashi, commander in chief on this grimmest of battlegrounds, ordered his soldiers to perform.

  ôkoshi harunori was a Japanese soldier who was wounded on Iwo Jima and became a prisoner of war. He passed through prison camps in San Francisco, Chicago, and Hawaii before being repatriated in January 1947. As a navy special junior soldier, Ôkoshi was still only seventeen years old when he fought on Iwo Jima. He was among the youngest POWs in the camps, but when it came out that he was an “Iwo Jima soldier,” the guards would always treat him slightly differently. Says Ôkoshi: “One of the American soldiers told me that ‘Kamikaze soldiers’ and ‘Iwo Jima soldiers’ were special.”

  Ishii Shûji, another prisoner of war, recalled an experience he had in the POW camp in San Francisco.

  One day, one of the guards asked me: “So where were you captured?”

  “Iwo Jima,” I replied.

  The guard started, went pale, and adjusted his grip on his weapon. That gave all of us quite a surprise, too.

  In the camps, the Japanese soldiers who had been captured on Iwo Jima were regarded with a mixture of fear and respect. The Americans all knew how fiercely they had fought.

  There was nothing special about the garrison that defended Iwo Jima in terms of age, physical strength, and combat experience. The marines were a combination of veteran officers and physically strong volunteers with high morale, but the Japanese forces included many conscripts. The only proper cohesive fighting units were the 145th Infantry Regiment and the 26th Tank Regiment; otherwise the garrison was made up of independent infantry and artillery battalions and auxiliary units.

  But even while they expended huge amounts of physical energy in building defensive positions, the pace of training never slackened, so that the soldiers were able to improve their fighting skills. It was probably their desire to defend Iwo Jima, a part of Japan itself, and to stave off air raids and the invasion of the homeland that more than anything else transformed them into such a crack force.

  Kuribayashi gave extremely practical directions regarding training. I will quote the “Battle Directions for the Soldiers of Courage Division” in its entirety. (“Courage” was a single Japanese ideogram that served as a sort of code name for the Division.) These directions were devised and distributed by Kuribayashi.

  Preparations for battle

  1. Use every moment you have, whether during air raids or during battle, to build strong positions that enable you to smash the enemy at a ratio of ten to one.

  2. Build fortifications that enable you to shoot and attack in any direction without pausing even if your comrades should fall.

  3. Be resolute and make rapid preparations to store food and water in your position so that your supplies will last even through intense barrages.

  Fighting defensively

  1. Destroy the American devils with heavy fire. Improve your aim and try to hit your target the first time.

  2. As we practiced, refrain from reckl
ess charges, but take advantage of the moment when you’ve smashed the enemy. Watch out for bullets from others of the enemy.

  3. When one man dies a hole opens up in the defense. Exploit man-made structures and natural features for your own protection. Take care with camouflage and cover.

  4. Destroy enemy tanks with explosives, and several enemy soldiers along with the tank. This is your best chance for meritorious deeds.

  5. Do not be alarmed should tanks come toward you with a thunderous rumble. Shoot at them with antitank fire and use tanks.

  6. Do not be afraid if the enemy penetrates inside your position. Resist stubbornly and shoot them dead.

  7. Control is difficult to exercise if you are sparsely dispersed over a wide area. Always tell the officers in charge when you move forward.

  8. Even if your commanding officer falls, continue defending your position, by yourself if necessary. Your most important duty is to perform brave deeds.

  9. Do not think about eating and drinking, but focus on exterminating the enemy. Be brave, O warriors, even if rest and sleep are impossible.

  10. The strength of each one of you is the cause of our victory. Soldiers of Courage Division, do not crack at the harshness of the battle and try to hasten your death.

  11. We will finally prevail if you make the effort to kill just one man more. Die after killing ten men and yours is a glorious death on the battlefield.