by Daniel Wrinn
The first night in Iwo Jima was an eerie affair. Mists of sulfur spiraled from the earth. Marines who were used to the tropics now shivered in the cold, waiting for Kuribayashi’s samurai warriors to come screaming down the hills. Marines learned this Japanese commander was different. There would be no wasteful banzai attack tonight. Instead, small teams of infiltrators, “Prowling Wolves,” would probe the Marine lines and gather intelligence. A barge full of the elite Japanese Special Landing Forces tried a counter landing on the western beaches—they died to a man under the alert guns of the 28th Marines and supporting LVT crews.
That night was one of continuous indirect fire from the Highlands. A high velocity round landed directly in a fighting hole occupied by the 1/23 Marines commander Colonel Ralph Hass and instantly killed him. Marines took other light casualties throughout the night, but at dawn, the veteran landing force stirred.
Five infantry regiments moved to the north, while the sixth turned to the business at hand in the south: Mount Suribachi
Suribachi-yama
Marines knew this dormant volcano as “Hotrocks.”
The Japanese called it Suribachi-yama. Allied planners knew their drive north would never succeed without first securing that hulking rock dominating the southern plain. According to one Marine: “Suribachi took on a life of its own. It watched over us. It loomed over us. That mountain represented more evil to us than the Japanese.”
Colonel Atsuchi commanded 2,000 enemy soldiers and sailors in the Suribachi garrison. The Japanese had honeycombed the mountain with machine-gun nests, tunnels, and observation sites. But Atsuchi had lost many of his large-caliber guns from the three-day naval bombardment. Atsuchi’s command at Suribachi was semiautonomous. General Kuribayashi realized the invaders would soon cut communication lines across the island’s narrow tip. Kuribayashi hoped Atsuchi could hold out for at least ten days and maybe even two weeks.
Some of the strongest defenses on Suribachi were down along the rubble-strewn base. Here, over seventy camouflaged concrete blockhouses protected the mountain’s approaches. Another fifty blockhouses bulged from the slopes within the first hundred feet of elevation. Then came the caves, and the first of hundreds the Marines would face on Iwo Jima.
The 20th Marines took 407 casualties cutting across the neck of the island on D-Day. The following day in a cold rain, they prepared their assault. Colonel Chandler Johnson, commanding the 2/28 Marines, set the morning’s tone as he deployed his tired troops forward: “it’s going to be a hell of a day in one hell of a place to fight this damn war.”
Several 105mm batteries opened up overhead. Gun crews fired from positions dug in the black sand next to the 28th Marine’s command post. Troops learned that even their 155mm howitzers would hardly shiver the enemy’s concrete pillboxes. As the preparatory fire lifted, infantry advanced into heavy mortar and machine-gun fire. Colonel “Harry the Horse” Liversedge requested tanks. But the 5th Tank Battalion was having a frustrating morning. Tanks desperately searched for a defilade spot to rearm and refuel for the assault. But in those first few days on Iwo, there was no such spot. Every time the tanks gathered to service their vehicles, they were walloped by enemy artillery and mortar fire from the entire island. Getting the tanks serviced to join in on the assault took most of the morning. After getting battered all day, the tankers would now only refit, rearm, and re-equip at night.
The day’s slow start led to more setbacks for the 5th Tank Battalion. Enemy antitank gunners hid in the hodgepodge of boulders and knocked out the first approaching Shermans, crippling the assault’s momentum. While the 20th Marines overran forty enemy strongpoints and gained 200 yards a day, they lost a Marine for every yard gained. The tankers redeemed themselves when a 75mm round caught Colonel Atsuchi poking his head out of a cave entrance—blowing him apart.
Elsewhere on the morning of D +1 were discouraging sites of chaos along the beaches from Kuribayashi’s unrelenting artillery barrages and the violent surf. According to one Marine: “The wreckage was indescribable. I saw two miles of debris that was so thick there were only a few places our landing craft could still get in. The wrecked hulls of dozens of landing boats testified to the price we had to pay to put our troops ashore. Tanks and half-tracks laid there crippled from getting bogged down in the coarse sand. LVTs and amphibian tractors were victims of mines and well-aimed shells and were now flopped on their backs. Cranes were brought in to unload cargo and were tilted at insane angles. Our bulldozers were smashed in their own roadways.”
Then bad weather set in and complicated the unloading. Strong winds whipped sea swells into a nasty chop. The surf got uglier. These were the conditions Colonel Carl Youngdale faced while trying to land the 105mm howitzer batteries of his 4/14 Marines. All twelve of these guns were preloaded in amphibious trucks (DUKWs) one to a vehicle. Adding to that was the problem of marginal seaworthiness and contaminated fuel. Youngdale watched in shock as eight amphibious trucks suffered engine failures, swamped, and sank with a terrible loss of life. Two more amphibious trucks broached in the surf zone and spilled their guns into deep water. Youngdale managed to get the two remaining guns ashore and into firing position.
General Schmidt committed one battery of the 105mm howitzers to the narrow beachhead on D +1. These guns reached the beach intact, but it took hours to get the amphibious tractors to drag the heavy guns up over the terraces. The 105’s were in place and firing before dark. The deep bark of the guns was a welcome sound to the Marines. Concerned about heavy casualties in the first twenty-four hours, General Schmidt committed the 21st Marines from the core reserve. But the seas were too rough. Troops had a harrowing experience trying to climb down the cargo nets and into the small boats—violently bobbing alongside the transports. Many Marines tumbled into the sea. The boating process took hours to complete. Once afloat, troops circled endlessly in the small Higgins boats waiting for the call to land. But after six hours of bobbing in the water and awful seasickness, the 21st Marines returned to the ships for the night.
Even the larger landing craft, the LSMs and LCTs, had a hard time breaching. Sea anchors were needed to keep the craft perpendicular to the breakers, and they rarely held fast in that soft bottom. Admiral Hill later wrote: “dropping that stern anchor was like dropping a spoon in a bowl of mush.”
Hill contributed to the development of amphibious operations in the Pacific War. He and his staff developed armored bulldozers to land in the assault waves. They experimented with hinged Marston matting, used as a temporary road on airfields to get vehicles over soft sand. On the beach at Iwo, bulldozers were worth their weight in gold. The Marston matting was only partially successful: the LVTs chewed it up, but all hands could see the true potential.
Admiral Hill worked with the Naval Construction Battalion (Seabees) to bring the supply-laden pontoon barges ashore. But again, the surf prevailed and broached the craft, spilling the cargo. Now desperate, Hill’s beachmasters turned to a round-the-clock use of amphibious trucks and LVTs to keep the combat cargo flowing. Once amphibious trucks got free of their crippling loads, they were fine.
Amphibian tractors could cross the soft beach without help. They resupplied and conducted medevac missions directly along the front lines. These vehicles suffered from inexperienced crews in the LSTs who wouldn’t lower their bow ramps enough to accommodate the amphibious trucks and tractors approaching after dark. Many times, vehicles loaded with wounded Marines got lost in the dark or ran out of gas and sank. The amphibian tractor battalions lost over 147 LVTs at Iwo Jima. Unlike Tarawa, where enemy gunfire and mines accounted for less than twenty percent of this total. Thirty-four LVTs perished from Iwo’s crushing surf, and eighty-eight sank in the deep water.
Once ashore and clear of the loose sand along the beaches, half-tracks, tanks, and armored bulldozers collided with the strongest minefield defenses yet encountered in the Pacific. Under Kuribayashi’s direction, enemy engineers had planted irregular rows of antitank and horned anti-boat mines
along the exits from both beaches.
The enemy accompanied these weapons by rigging massive makeshift explosives from 500-pound aerial bombs, torpedo heads, and depth charges triggered by a pressure mine. The loose soil on Iwo had enough metallic characteristics to render standard mine detectors inaccurate. Marines and engineers were on their hands and knees in front of tanks, probing for mines with bayonets and wooden sticks.
While the 28th Marines battled to encircle Suribachi, the shore party and beachmasters struggled to clear the wreckage from the beaches. In the 5th Marine Division zone, the relatively fresh troops of the 1/26 and 3/27 Marines got bloodied. They forced their way across the western runways and took heavy casualties from time-fused airbursts and enemy dual-purpose antiaircraft guns. In the 4th Division zone, the 23rd Marines captured and secured the airstrip—advancing 800 yards with massive casualties.
Some of the most savage fighting was along the high ground above the Rock Quarry on the right flank. Here, the 25th Marines were engaged in the fight of their lives. Rifleman Richard Wheeler found the landscape, and the embedded enemy surreal: “there was no cover from enemy fire. Japs were in reinforced concrete pillboxes and laid down interlocking bands of fire that cut entire companies to pieces. Camouflage hid all their positions. The high ground on either side was honeycombed with layer after layer of Jap emplacements. They had a perfect observation of us. Whenever a Marine made a move, those damn Japs smothered the area with a murderous blanket of fire.”
The second day of battle proved unacceptable on every front for the Marines. When the 1/24 Marines finally broke through along the cliffs late in the day, they were rewarded with back-to-back cases of friendly fire. A naval airstrike caused eleven casualties. Misguided salvos from an unidentified gunfire support ship took down another ninety troops. Nothing was going right.
The morning of D +2 promised more frustration. Marines shuddered in the chilly rain and wind. Admiral Hill twice closed the beach because of dangerous undertows and wicked surf. But during one of the grace periods, the 3/21 Marines came ashore, glad to be free of the heaving small boats.
The 20th Marines continued their attack on Suribachi’s base. It was a slow, grinding, and bloody fight—boulder by boulder. On the western coast, the 1/28 Marines made the most of naval and field artillery gunfire support and reached the mountain’s shoulder. Everywhere else, murderous enemy fire restricted any progress to a matter of yards. Enemy mortar fire from all over the volcano rained down on the 2/28 Marines, clawing their way along the eastern shore. Rifleman Richard Wheeler recalled: “it was terrible. Worst I can remember us ever taking. Jap mortar men played checkers with us as the squares.”
The Marines used Weasels, handy tracked vehicles that made their first field appearance in this battle to hustle forward flamethrower canisters and evacuate the wounded. That night the amphibious task force experienced the only significant air attack of the battle. Forty-nine kamikaze pilots from the 22d Mitate Special Attack Unit smashed into ships on the outer ring of Iwo Jima. In a desperate action, serving as a prelude to Okinawa’s fiery hell, kamikaze pilots sank the escort carrier Bismarck Sea with heavy loss of life. They damaged several ships and knocked the veteran Saratoga out of the war. All forty-nine Japanese planes were destroyed.
On D +3, it rained even harder. Marines darted forward under fire, hitting the deck to return fire. They discovered that the loose volcanic sand, combined with rain, jammed their weapons. The 21st Marines at the vanguard ran headfirst into a series of enemy emplacements at the southeastern end of the Japanese defenses. Marines battled all day to scratch and claw and advance 200 yards. Casualties were disproportionate and horrific.
On the right flank, Colonel Chambers rallied the 3/25 Marines through the rough and rugged terrain above the Rock Quarry. While Chambers directed the advance of his decimated companies, an enemy sniper shot him in the chest. Chambers went down hard, thinking it was all over: “I faded in and out. I don’t remember too much about it except a frothy blood gushing from my mouth. Then someone started kicking the hell out of my feet. It was Captain Headley yelling, ‘get up, you were hurt worse on Tulagi.’”
Captain Headley knew Chamber’s sucking chest wound was life-threatening. He tried to reduce his commander’s shock until he could get him out of the line of fire. Lieutenant Mike Keller, the battalion surgeon, crawled forward with one of his corpsmen. They lifted Chambers onto a stretcher and through enemy fire, carried him down the cliffs to the aid station, and eventually onboard an amphibious truck to make the evening’s last run out to the hospital ship. All three battalion commanders on the 25th Marines were now casualties. Chambers survived and received the Medal of Honor. Captain Headley took command of the shot-up 3/25 Marines for the rest of the fight.
The 20th Marines on D +3 made progress against Suribachi. They reached the shoulder on all points late in the day. Combat patrols from the 28th Marines linked up at Tobiishi Point: the southern tip of the island. Reconnaissance patrols reported they found few signs of life along the mountain’s upper slopes and on the north side.
Admiral Spruance authorized Task Force 58 to strike Okinawa and Honshu at sundown. After that, they would go to Ulithi and prepare for the Ryukyuan campaign. All eight Marine Corps fighter squadrons left Iwo Jima for good. Navy pilots flying from the ten remaining escort carriers picked up the slack. While there was no question of the courage and skill of these pilots, the quality of close air support for the troops fighting ashore plummeted after the Marine fighter squadrons departed.
The escort carriers had too many other missions: combat air patrols, anti-submarine sweeps, downed pilot searches, and harassing strikes against neighboring Chichi Jima. Marines reported a slow response time for air support requests, light payloads, and high delivery altitudes. The navy pilots delivered several napalm bombs, but many failed to detonate. This wasn’t the pilots’ fault. The early napalm bombs were old wing-tanks filled with the mixture and activated by unreliable detonators. Marines on the ground were concerned about these notoriously inaccurate weapons being dropped from high altitudes.
On February 23, D +4, the 28th Marines were poised to capture Suribachi. This honor was given to Lieutenant Harry Schrier and Company E, 3rd Platoon. They were ordered to summit, secure the crater, and raise a 54” x 28” American flag for everyone to see. At 0800, Schrier led his forty-man patrol forward. The regiment had already blasted dozens of pillboxes with demolitions and flame. They’d rooted out snipers and knocked out the mass batteries. The combined arms hammering by planes, naval guns, and field pieces had finally taken their toll on the enemy. Any Japanese soldier who popped out of a cave to resist was cut to shreds. Marines carefully walked up the steep northern slope, sometimes resorting to crawling on hands and knees.
The Suribachi flag-raising drama has endured for so long because so many people observed it. All over the island, Marines tracked the progress of the tiny column of troops during their ascent. Hundreds of binoculars from offshore ships watched Schrier’s Marines climb. When they finally reached the top, they disappeared. Those closest to the volcano heard gunfire. Then at 1020, there was movement on the summit—the Stars & Stripes fluttered bravely in the breeze.
Cheers roared from the southern end of the island. Ships sounded sirens and whistles. Wounded men propped up on their litters to get a glimpse. Marines wept. Navy Secretary Forrestal was thrilled. He turned to General Holland Smith: “raising that flag means a Marine Corps for another five hundred years.”
Three hours later, an even larger flag went up. Few knew that Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal had just captured the American war-fighting spirit on film. Leatherneck magazine Staff Sergeant Lou Lowery had taken a picture of the first flag raising and immediately got into a firefight with a handful of enraged enemy defenders. His photograph would become a valuable collector’s item—but it was Rosenthal’s that would enchant the free world.
Captain Tom Fields of Company D’s 1/26 Marines heard his men
yell: “Look up there!” and he turned in time to watch the first flag go up. His first thoughts were on the battle still at hand, and he remembered in the moment saying: “Thank God the Japs won’t be shooting us down from behind anymore.”
The 28th Marines captured and secured Mount Suribachi in three days at the cost of 900 casualties. Colonel Liversedge reoriented his regiment for operations to the north. Unknown to all, the battle of Iwo Jima still had another bloody thirty days before it would be over.
The Meatgrinder
It wasn’t until the ninth day of battle that intelligence officers realized General Kuribayashi led the Japanese forces on Iwo Jima.
The unexpected early loss of the Suribachi garrison was a setback for Kuribayashi, but he still held a strong position. He had eight infantry battalions, two artillery and three heavy mortar battalions, and a tank regiment. Admiral Ichimaru had 5,000 naval infantry and gunners under his command, but unlike other besieged garrisons in the Central Pacific—these two Japanese leaders worked well together.
Kuribayashi was pleased with the quality of his artillery and engineering troops. His chief of artillery, Colonel Kaido, commanded from an impregnable concrete blockhouse in the east-central sector of the Motoyama Plateau. A lethal landmark the Marines called “Turkey Knob.”
General Senda was an artillery officer with combat experience in Manchuria. He commanded the 2d Independent Mixed Brigade, whose central units would be locked into a 25-day death struggle against the 4th Marine Division. The 204th Naval Construction Battalion had built some of the most formidable defense systems on the island in his sector. One cave had an 800-foot-long tunnel with fourteen separate exits. It was only one of the hundreds defended to the bitter end.