Strong Men Armed

by Robert Leckie

The first B-29 had landed on Iwo Jima. It was the forerunner of 2,251 Superforts, which, with 24,761 crewmen, would make safe landings on Iwo before the war ended. Already, with the battle for Iwo not yet over, the value of Iwo had been made evident.

  8

  Even though Major General Erskine’s Third Division had overrun Airfield Number Three more than two-thirds of the way up the island, they had not been able to knock out a pocket of savage resistance holed up in blockhouses about 200 yards below the field at Motoyama Village.

  It was decided to flank it, to strike at Hill 362-C, which stood above and behind it, for the Third Division was trying desperately to break through Kuribayashi’s Secondary Line to the northeastern beaches. This was to be done while the Fourth Division continued to clean out all resistance in the eastern bulge of the pork chop. The Third was to drive to the sea above the Fourth, then face north and press up the island’s right flank while the Fifth marched up the left. Below them, in the bulge, the Fourth would be whittling away at the enemy.

  The decision to make the flanking movement on Hill 362-C a night attack was made by General Erskine. He had come to realize how skillfully the Japanese had adapted themselves to American attacks. When Marine artillery and naval guns began the fire preceding each morning’s attack, the Japanese scampered down to their deepest caves to wait it out. When it ceased, they ran back up to their guns to receive the Marines, inflicting heavy casualties—killing men such as the brave Sergeant Reid Chamberlain. The Japanese had done this so often they had it mastered to the point of split-second timing, and they had practially nullified the effect of preparatory shelling.

  On the morning of March 7, an hour and a half before daylight, the Ninth Marines attacked without artillery. Three battalions faced almost directly east. The left or northernmost battalion was to take Hill 362-C, the others were to slip into the heart of the Japanese defenses and strike them at daylight.

  At five in the morning, with a whistling wind hurling cold rain in their faces, they slipped out. There was not a shot fired. There was not a hand raised against them. The battalions on the lower or right flank reported moving 200 yards without detection. They were ordered to take another hundred.

  The left-flank battalion came upon the enemy asleep in their emplacements, and wiped them out. Jubilantly, the Marines reported they had taken Hill 362-C. But they had not. In the darkness they had mistaken Hill 331 for their objective, and now it was daylight and those two battalions in the center and right had been spotted and pinned down.

  They fought back throughout that day. The men in the center were hit so savagely that companies were reduced to barely more than squad strength. By nightfall Lieutenant Wilcie O’Bannon commanded less than 10 men—all that was left of F Company. He held them together on a mound 300 yards within the Japanese strong-point, while directing mortar fire by radio. But the Japanese opened with countermortars and O’Bannon’s radio fell silent. Lieutenant Colonel Robert Cushman ordered tanks to the rescue. Thirty-six hours after the dawn attack began, the tanks ground over the rubble to the mound where O’Bannon and four other men lay fighting. They straddled them to drag them inside the escape hatches. And Company E under Captain Maynard Schmidt fared just slightly better in the same sector. They had seven men left.

  On the right, there were also companies cut off among the jumble of rocks and crags, out in front of pillboxes passed during the darkness. Here Lieutenant John Leims risked death three times to save his men—once crawling 400 yards through enemy fire to lay communications wire from his cut-off company to the battalion command post, and then, after skillfully pulling his company back out of the trap, twice more crawling up to the abandoned ridge to rescue wounded Marines—and for this he received the Medal of Honor.

  Such desperate heroics throughout that tragic March 7 made it appear that the night attack had ended in disaster.

  But it had not. Other companies had been fed into the fighting on the center and the right, and here it was found that the Marines had penetrated the outer works of a formidable bastion which would be known as Cushman’s Pocket and would fall only after eight evil days of fighting. On the north, the men who had taken Hill 331 fought doggedly on to take their original objective—Hill 362-C—which rose directly in front of them. They took it, but only because their surprise assault had taken Hill 331. It was there that the Japanese had concentrated their fortifications.

  By nightfall, all the highest ground on the Motoyama Plateau was in Marine hands—and from it the end was in sight.

  There were other proofs that the Japanese had begun to crack: They had begun to commit suicide. Over on the left flank a hundred enemy soldiers holed up inside a ridge blew themselves up—as well as a company of Marines who had occupied the ridge.

  The night of the next day came the battle’s only banzai, another sign of Japanese desperation. A thousand Japanese tried to break the Fourth Division’s lines on the right flank. They tried to infiltrate to gain Airfield Number One, where they would blow up equipment with the charges wound around their waists. But they were blown up themselves. The Marines killed 784 of these human bombs. It was the only break of the Iwo Jima campaign—784 Japanese who could have exacted a fearful price within their caves and pillboxes had come out to be killed easily.

  The following day, March 9, a patrol of the Third Division reached the northern end of Iwo Jima. They clambered down the rocky cliffs to the sea. They filled a canteen with sea water and sent it back to Major General Schmidt, inscribed: “For inspection, not consumption.”

  Iwo Jima had been traversed in eighteen days.

  That night Tadamichi Kuribayashi sent his first melancholy message to Tokyo.

  “All surviving fighting units have sustained heavy losses. I am very sorry that I have let the enemy occupy one part of Japanese territory, but I am taking comfort in giving him heavy damages.”

  He was indeed doing that. Even though resistance was subsiding, there were still many Japanese holed up in individual pockets. In the eastern bulge, where the Fourth Division had been gathering momentum since the banzai, there were numerous hold-out pockets. One of them was believed to be the headquarters of Major General Sadasui Senda, commander of the 2nd Mixed Brigade which had opposed the Fourth. To him Major General Clifton Cates addressed a surrender appeal broadcast from loudspeakers. He said:

  “You have fought a gallant and heroic fight, but you must realize the Island of Iwo Jima has been lost to you. You can gain nothing by further resistance, nor is there any reason to die when you can honorably surrender and live to render valuable service to your country in the future. I promise and guarantee you and the members of your staff the best of treatment. I respectfully request you accept my terms of honorable surrender. I again appeal to you in the name of humanity—surrender without delay.”

  But Senda did not surrender. Nor was his body found when, by March 16, there was nothing but corpses opposing the Marines in the eastern bulge. The Fourth Marine Division had conquered again—but it had suffered casualties of 9,098 men, of whom 1,806 had been killed. That was half the division’s strength. In fourteen months’ time, this splendid division had fought three major battles and had suffered casualties almost equal to its strength—17,722 dead and wounded Marines. In three more days the battered Fourth would sail for Hawaii, never to enter battle again.

  But the brother Third and Fifth Divisions still had fighting to do in the west sector commanded by Colonel Masuo Ikeda. On March 16 General Erskine made his own surrender appeal. It was addressed to Colonel Ikeda and typed in English on one side of a paper, written in Japanese on the other. It said:

  Our forces now have complete control and freedom of movement on the island of Iwo Jima except in the small area now held by the valiant Japanese troops just south of Kitano Point. The fearlessness and indomitable fighting spirit which has been displayed by the Japanese troops on Iwo Jima warrants the admiration of all fighting men. You have handled your troops in a superb manner but we have no de
sire to completely annihilate brave troops who have been forced into a hopeless position. Accordingly, I suggest that you cease resistance at once and march, with your command, through my lines to a place of safety where you and all your officers and men will be humanely treated in accordance with the rules of war.

  General Erskine entrusted the message to two captured enemy soldiers. He gave one of them a walkie-talkie radio and instructed him to tell his countrymen that he had taken it from enemy Marines after a harrowing fight. On the message, Smith said that the Japanese soldiers had been taken captive while lying unconscious in their foxholes. The two men set out to pass a day and a night divided between lying to their countrymen and dodging the shell-bursts of both armies. One of them actually reached the cave occupied by Colonel Ikeda and got a sergeant friend to take the note in to him. But then, the resourceful prisoner got cold feet. He slipped away. He rejoined his companion and spent the next day spotting targets for the Marine artillery.

  The two Japanese returned to the Marine lines the night of March 17, but to those of the Fifth Division. To their great indignation they were seized and treated as common prisoners. An American officer asked them in Japanese how they got the walkie-talkie.

  “An American general gave it to me,” the boldest of them replied, adding stiffly: “I demand to be taken to my commanding officer.”

  The interpreter grinned.

  “Oh, yeah? Who’s he?”

  The Japanese soldier stiffened and rapped it out rat-a-tat-tat.

  “Major General Graves Erskine,” he said, and the interpreter was just startled enough to call the Third Division’s command post.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said after the grin had faded from his face. “Yes, sir! I’ll bring them right over!”

  General Erskine’s attempt had also failed, and now it was up to the Fifth Division to clean out the rocky, Japanese-infested gorge lying south of Kitano Point. Here were the remnants of Colonel Ikeda’s 145th Infantry, here were blockhouses commanding all the entrances, and here was General Kuribayashi himself.

  It was the most grinding work of the grimmest battle in Marine history. One blockhouse withstood endless shelling as well as demolition attempts with 40-pound shaped charges. The Marines cleaned out the surrounding positions and bypassed it, leaving it to the tank-dozers to seal off its air vents and cave it in with five 1,600-pound dynamite charges.

  Then the tank-dozers caught up with the riflemen moving through the gorge. One of them began shoving out a path for the Sherman tanks to follow. Suddenly a single Japanese soldier scrambled out of a cave and ran at the tank-dozer with a satchel charge.

  The driver swung his tank sharply to face the charging Japanese. He raised his blade high in the air. It paused there. Then it dropped to cut the assailant in two.

  To the astonishment of the men in the waiting Sherman tanks, the tank-dozer’s turret came open. The driver popped out. He ran back to the tanks, while bullets whined and clanged off rock and steel. He hammered on the side of one of them, until someone answered him through a fire port.

  “Did you see what that Nip bastard tried to do to me?” he called. “That does it, brother—I’ve had it!”

  He turned and walked out of the gorge.

  But the next day he was back again, sealing off caves, clearing roads for the killer-tanks as the attack in the gorge ground forward. That was on March 21. That night General Kuribayashi was still alive, for he got off a message to Major Horie on Chichi Jima.

  “We have not eaten nor drunk for five days. But our fighting spirit is still running high. We are going to fight bravely to the last.”

  Three days later, Major Horie’s radio crackled again.

  “All officers and men of Chichi Jima—goodbye.”

  Silence.

  The following night on Iwo Jima some 300 figures arose from caves, from the ruins of pillboxes and blockhouses in that last northwest pocket. Many of them carried swords, for there were numerous officers among them. Most of them carried explosives. They slipped down to the western beaches and they fell on men of the Army Air Corps’ VII Fighter Command based there.

  They had come upon those Americans least trained to fight on foot in the dark, and they took a fearful toll. Then they raced on to the bivouac of the Fifth Marine Pioneer Battalion, and here they were brought up short against a hastily organized defense line, and were struck to the ground by a counterattack led by Lieutenant Harry Martin. The counterstroke broke them, though Lieutenant Martin himself did not live to receive his Medal of Honor.

  In the daylight of March 26 there were 223 Japanese bodies counted on the western beaches, 196 of them in the Fifth Pioneers’ area. The Marines looked eagerly for the body of Tadamichi Kuribayashi, for they had heard it was he who had led this last lash of the Japanese tail on Iwo Jima. Like Senda’s, it was never found.

  But there were the bodies of more than 5,000 Marines to be buried in grim testimony to the skill and tenacity with which Tadamichi Kuribayashi and 21,000 Japanese warriors had defended the Emperor’s front gate. In all, 5,885 United States Marines were killed on Iwo, or in the air above or sea around it. There were also 17,272 Marines wounded, 46 Marines missing and surely dead, 2,648 Marines felled by combat fatigue —as well as 738 dead and wounded Navy doctors and corpsmen.

  The Fifth Division had more Medal of Honor men to bury. Platoon Sergeant Joseph Julian lost his life charging pillboxes, Pfc. James LaBelle and Private George Phillips had thrown themselves on grenades to save their comrades, Lieutenant Jack Lummus had died leading his men, Corpsmen Jack Williams and John Willis had perished protecting wounded Marines. They were all buried in the shadow of the volcano their division had captured. In the hospitals far from Iwo Jima Private Franklin Sigler and Corpsman George Wahlen recuperated from wounds suffered while helping stricken comrades. They too would receive Medals of Honor. So the fledgling Fifth was blooded now with 8,563 casualties in its first and only fight—and the Fifth buried its dead at the base of Mount Suribachi while taps blew sad and solitary over the drifted ash dunes.

  Higher up the island the Third and Fourth Divisions buried their dead in adjoining cemeteries. Already the men had carved memorials out of Iwo’s sandstone and decorated the graves of their friends with carved crosses and Marine emblems. Some had made inscriptions:

  REACH DOWN, DEAR LORD, FOR THIS MARINE WHO GAVE HIS ALL THAT WE MIGHT LIVE.

  MONTY A GOOD MARINE WHO DIED IN DEED BUT NOT IN VAIN.

  And then this single stark cry of anguish:

  BUT GOD—FIFTEEN YEARS IS NOT ENOUGH!

  Marines came to the cemeteries from their bivouacs to stand or kneel in prayerful farewell before they took ship to sail away from this dark ugly curse of an island. Major General Erskine spoke to them, commemorating all the fallen.

  “Only the accumulated praise of time will pay proper tribute to our valiant dead. Long after those who lament their immediate loss are themselves dead, these men will be mourned by the Nation.

  “They are the Nation’s loss!

  “There is talk of great history, of the greatest fight in our history, of unheard-of sacrifice and unheard-of courage. These phrases are correct, but they are prematurely employed.

  “Victory was never in doubt. Its cost was.

  “The enemy could have displaced every cubic inch of volcanic ash on this fortress with concrete pillboxes and blockhouses, which he nearly did, and still victory would not have been in doubt.

  “What was in doubt, in all our minds, was whether there would be any of us left to dedicate our cemetery at the end, or whether the last Marine would die knocking out the last Japanese gun and gunner.

  “Let the world count our crosses!

  “Let them count them over and over. Then when they understand the significance of the fighting for Iwo Jima, let them wonder how few there are. We understand and we wonder—we who are separated from our dead by a few feet of earth; from death by inches and fractions of an inch.

  “The c
ost to us in quality, one who did not fight side by side with those who fell can never understand.”

  There would be more crosses for the world to count, more stars, more plain headboards for those nonbelievers who also fell—and the cost to the nation in quality would increase.

  On March 26, the day the fighting at Iwo Jima was declared ended, an Army division landed at a place called Kerama Retto.

  Okinawa, the last battle, had begun.

  9

  No one expected Okinawa to be the last battle.

  To both sides the inevitable fight for this chief and largest island of the Ryukyu chain was to be but prelude to the titanic struggle on Japan itself. To America it meant seizure of the last steppingstone to Nippon. To Japan it was to be the anvil on which the hammer blows of a Divine Wind would destroy the American fleet.

  This was still the chief object of Japanese military policy-this destruction of American sea power. It was sea power which had brought the Americans through the island barriers, had landed them at Iwo within the very Prefecture of Tokyo, was now bringing them to within less than 400 miles of Kyushu in southern Japan. Only sea power could bring about the invasion of Japan, something which had not happened in the three thousand years of Nippon’s recorded history, something which had been attempted only once before.

  In 1570 a Mongol emperor massed a great amphibious force on the Chinese coast. Japan was ill prepared to repel the invaders, but a kamikaze, a Divine Wind, sprang up in the shape of a typhoon and it scattered and sank the Mongol fleet.

  In early 1945, nearly four centuries later, a whole host of Divine Winds was blowing out of Nippon. They were the suicide bombers of the Special Attack Forces, the new kamikazes who had been so named because it was seriously expected that they too would destroy an invasion fleet.

  They had been brought into being by Vice Admiral Takejiro Onishi. He had led a carrier group during the Battle of the Philippine Sea. After that aerial disaster, he had gone to Fleet Admiral Toyoda with the idea of organizing a corps of flyers to crash-dive loaded bombers into the decks of American ships. Toyoda agreed. He sent Onishi to the Philippines. There, in August, 1944, Onishi began organizing kamikazes on a local and spontaneous basis. Then came the Palau and Philippines invasions. On October 15, Rear Admiral Masafumi Arima tried to crash-dive the American carrier Franklin. He was shot down by Navy fighters, but the Japanese High Command told the nation he had succeeded in hitting the carrier, and had thus “lit the fuse of the ardent wishes of his men.” The first organized attack of the kamikaze came on October 25 at the start of the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Suicide bombers struck blows savage enough to startle the Americans and make them aware of a new weapon in the field against them, but not enough to stun them. Too many kamikaze missed their targets and were lost, too many were shot down. Of 650 kamikaze sent out in the Philippines, about a quarter of them scored hits—but mainly on small ships. The High Command, still writing reports in rose-colored ink, still keeping the national mind carefully empty of news of failure, announced hits of almost 100 per cent. The High Command did not believe this, of course. The High Command guessed privately at hits ranging from 12 to 50 per cent, but the High Command also assumed that nothing but battleships and carriers had been hit.