War Stories II: Heroism in the Pacific

by Oliver North

  The first troop-carrying Amtracs rode the low waves onto the black sands of Iwo Jima by 0905 on 19 February 1945. For the next hour or so it was a flawless landing. But then all hell broke loose. Marines from the second waves of Amtracs waded ashore amidst unbelievable chaos. There was broken debris from blasted equipment—landing craft, armored vehicles, and supplies—scattered across the beach and washing up on shore.

  Scores of dead Marines were also bobbing in the waves and washing onto the black sands. Body parts were almost as commonplace as the chunks of volcanic rock. The scene was one of absolute pandemonium and mayhem. As one eyewitness Marine said, “I can’t describe it to you. All I could think was, this is not the movies.”

  General Kuribayashi had waited until several waves of Americans were ashore before letting the Marines know that they had company on the island. Then Kuribayashi’s guns triangulated on the Marines on the beach, mowing them down like a buzz saw. Rockets, anti-aircraft fire, and anti-tank guns were also trained on the landing beaches. The Japanese opened fire from almost everywhere on the island.

  Marines everywhere on the island were pinned down or cut down. Casualties began to mount, and it was an impossible mission for the Marines during those first few hours of combat. In fact, in the first seventy-two hours of combat, there was one Marine casualty every forty-five seconds.

  U.S. intelligence had pegged the Japanese troop size on Iwo Jima in late 1944 to be somewhere between 4,000 and 11,000. That’s why FDR and the Joint Chiefs were optimistic that the Marines could master the island in short time. No one knew it, but the enemy troop strength was in fact at least twice the highest number given by military intelligence.

  General Kuribayashi had constructed his command center with five-feet-thick walls and a ten-feet-thick roof, seventy-five feet underground.

  The Americans were not prepared for the horrendous numbers of killed and wounded Marines. Nor had they been prepared for the barbarous ferocity of the Japanese counter-attacks. To General Kuribayashi, this would truly be a “heroic” battle. By that he meant that he expected every one of his soldiers to die, but not before killing 220,000 Marines first—ten for every Japanese soldier, as he had inspired them to do. Kuribayashi would have been even more encouraged if he’d known that the Americans were sending “only” 100,000 Marines ashore—his troops could turn the tide by just killing five Americans apiece.

  At the end of the day, the Marines had progressed only a few feet—at a tremendous cost of 10 percent of their forces. Of the first 30,000 men who landed on Iwo Jima that day, 3,000 were already casualties. About 40,000 Marines followed, and were met with the same percentage of casualties. Every one of the nearly 100,000 combatants on Iwo Jima would be caught up in the viciousness of the fighting.

  Twenty-four-year-old Marine Captain Fred Haynes was the operations officer for the 28th Marine Regiment as the showdown on Iwo Jima’s beaches drew near.

  CAPTAIN FRED HAYNES, USMC

  D-Day, Iwo Jima

  19 February 1945

  0800 Hours Local

  I was the tactical control officer on a patrol craft offshore, and it was my job to see that all of the numbered waves of invasion troops were dispatched properly.

  As soon as the numbered waves went, I went in with Colonel Williams and landed in the middle of Green Beach. We had two command groups and set up a command post but we were getting a tremendous amount of fire and the casualties were just incredible.

  Nobody really knew that the Japanese were in bunkers below ground. We didn’t really wake up to that fact until after we had gone ashore. Our whole regimental staff and their communications people just stood up and went straight across.

  It was fairly smooth until the caves on Suribachi opened up. Within about twenty minutes, the Japanese began to pound the beaches with artillery.

  When they opened up, we realized we had a problem. We couldn’t call for naval gunfire, air support, or artillery, the critical elements of fire support. We were too close to the Japanese, face-to-face with them. The 105 mm artillery gunfire was more than I had ever seen in any Marine operation.

  And from Suribachi, they were firing everything they had—artillery, mortars, machine guns—raking the beach. It was the first real battle I had been in. And it quickly taught me that they meant business.

  We, the fighting troops, were really not affected by the number of casualties. We were given the orders to take the island, so that’s what we had to do. There were huge casualties. This was the bloodiest battle that we fought during the Pacific war.

  After four days of battle, the casualties dropped off slowly as we got across the ridgeline. Instead of 100 to 200 a day, which my regiment was having, it dropped off to maybe thirty a day.

  At the end of the operation in late March, when we were doing a rout march down to get to the beach, a group of Japanese came out of somewhere, probably 200 of them. They came right down the airfield and caught us totally by surprise. The Army Air Corps pilots were sleeping above ground, unfortunately. About thirty-five pilots were killed in that attack.

  Lieutenant Martin and our air battalion, which happened to be back in that area, took the challenge and killed all the Japanese, and that was the end of that.

  Pacific intelligence did not realize that we were going to fight the devil on Iwo Jima. But we did, and it was a very, very difficult campaign.

  U.S. MARINE ASSAULT FORCE

  IWO JIMA

  D-DAY PLUS TWO

  21 FEBRUARY 1945

  1100 HOURS LOCAL

  When President Roosevelt saw the casualty figures from Iwo Jima D+2 for the first time, he wept. He found it hard to believe that the Marines had lost so many men in just two days ashore. Over 4,000 Marines were wounded and more than 600 were dead. Another 560 were MIA—in just the first two days of battle.

  By now the Marines were coming to grips with a painful reality. The enemy soldiers were not on Iwo Jima—they were in it. General Kuribayashi’s island defense plans were ingenious.

  He had built sixteen miles of tunnels, some several stories below the ground. These tunnels were wide and tall enough for soldiers carrying rifles to walk or run erect. There were also nearly 1,500 rooms spread throughout the subterranean sprawl, big enough for barracks, ammunition and fuel storage, bunkers and pillboxes, affording plenty of places to hide from American bombs, flame-throwers, naval guns, and other offensive actions. The Japanese had also constructed the tunnels and rooms with electricity, water storage, and even ventilation systems. They were ready to stay put and hold out for many months.

  General Kuribayashi also improved on the German D-Day defenses. Instead of trying to blast the invaders while they were still coming ashore, he waited until they were already on the island so as to have more precision in using his guns. He had set up a vast, protected “killing machine.” From inside concrete pillboxes situated all across Mount Suribachi, he could unleash every manner of weapon, including spigot mortars that could hurl a 675-pound shell almost a mile. Heavy machine guns set up a crossfire, and other big guns inside bunkers could fire down on the concentrated American forces. Every square foot of the invasion beach had interlocking sectors of fire where machine guns and small arms fire could crisscross.

  Night brought a new kind of nightmarish hell. Mount Suribachi resembled a monstrous Christmas tree, with cannon and mortar fire, tracers, and flares exploding all along the rise of the ancient extinct volcano. When the firing stopped, General Kuribayashi sent out terror in the form of his prowling wolves—each warrior intent on killing his quota of ten Marines.

  Some of the Japanese soldiers carried hand grenades in addition to their rifles. Others strapped land mines to their chests. After emptying their rifles at the Americans, and trying to kill others with a grenade, bayonet, or sword, they’d run into a foxhole containing several Marines and throw themselves down onto their enemies. The mine exploded and eviscerated everyone within six feet of the blast.

  But despite heavy casualtie
s, the Marines held their ground and kept pushing the enemy back, inch by inch. They attacked the Japanese pillboxes with grenades, satchel charges of TNT, and flame-throwers. Many times this just drove the enemy soldiers deeper underground, keeping them alive to fight another day.

  One day after the landing, the Marines took the southern end of Iwo Jima around Mount Suribachi and made plans to take the summit. By the end of the day on 20 February, the Marines had secured one-third of the island and Motoyama Airfield No. 1.

  Three days after the landing, a teenage Marine from Cleveland assigned to Combat Intelligence made his own landing on Iwo Jima. Private Don Mates experienced combat, death, and the aftermath of the war.

  PRIVATE DONALD MATES, USMC

  Iwo Jima

  D-Day Plus Three

  22 February 1945

  I ended up on Iwo Jima on February 22. It was one of the most scary, hellish places on the earth. It sort of looked like a moonscape, with the burning sulfur and haze that hung over it. And when we got ashore it was just absolute chaos.

  There were bodies all over, wounded Marines. There was broken equipment and broken men. They hadn’t picked up the bodies yet. So they were in the water, on the beach, they were on the rise going up from the beach. There were parts of men all over.

  Wounded men were being evacuated but they were still on the beach. The corpsmen were working feverishly, the doctors were hacking away, and it was just terrible.

  The Japanese controlled the high ground on Iwo. They knew where we were going to come in. They had their big guns, mortars, and everything triangulated. They were able to pick us apart and cause tremendous casualties.

  Our Marines were working their way up Mount Suribachi. I remember Jim Trimble turning to me and saying, “If we have to go up that hill, Don, we’re gonna die.”

  When we saw that flag go up on 23 February, it was just marvelous, because we knew the hill was secure, and that we wouldn’t have to go up there. It was a relief to see that flag go up, even though we knew there was still much more ahead of us.

  From 23–27 February, we just did guard duty. On 28 February, G-2 wanted to find out where the huge rockets were coming from. The Japanese were sending up rockets the size of fifty-five-gallon oil drums. They weighed about 168 pounds, and they had a motor that burnt out, causing the rockets to tumble in the air. Wherever it hit it created absolute chaos. They’d send up five or six at a time and just shoot them towards our lines.

  So G-2 and General Erskine sent us out on patrol the afternoon of 28 February, to see if we could spot where these tremendous rockets were coming from. We got north of the second airfield and dug in between Hill 362A and 362B on a ridge.

  The radio was at the top of the ridge. I was a secondary radioman. Joe McClusky was first radioman and he was in the hole. So he ran a telephone wire down to my hand, and when he yanked that telephone wire, that let me know that he was coming.

  He’d take my spot, and I’d go back up and be the radioman for the second shift with Corporal William Reed.

  Just before midnight, a flare went off and there they were! We had maneuvered ourselves to be in front of the lines. The Japanese came up out of their holes and came at us hand-to-hand. You couldn’t use a rifle from where I was. Thank God we had hand grenades. That’s the only thing that stopped them for a while. One Japanese soldier got within two feet of my foxhole while the battle was going on. He was wounded by one of the hand grenades, and he lay there dying.

  Fifteen minutes later, Jimmie Trimble was bayoneted, McClusky and Reed were dead, and Nitsell was wounded. Warren Garrett, the old man out of the outfit at twenty-four, was dead.

  When Jimmie Trimble got bayoneted he said to me, “Grenades . . .”

  He’d heard the clicking of grenades. To ignite a Japanese grenade you have to hit it against something hard. This Japanese soldier hit two of them together and threw them in the hole. I was lying flat when I heard the word “grenades” and Jimmie Trimble was sitting up. He turned and caught the full blast of one of the grenades in the back, and the other one went off between my legs.

  I pulled myself out of the hole, and Trimble was still alive. He put his hand out to be helped. At the same time, a Japanese soldier jumped in with a mine strapped to his body, and he wrapped himself around Jimmie. The Japanese soldier just evaporated. If I’d been in the hole I would’ve been behind the Japanese soldier and I would’ve gone up with him.

  Jimmie didn’t catch the full blast of the mine, but it was enough to kill him. Lee Blanchard, a seventeen-year-old private who enlisted when he was sixteen, was much smaller than I was. But he crawled out, put me on his back, and dragged me into his foxhole.

  Waiting for me was another guardian angel, Jim White from Michigan. Jim took his bandages and Lee’s and wrapped up both my thighs.

  That meant they’d used their bandages; if anything happened to either of them they’d be in trouble.

  I lay there for about three and a half hours and the Japanese still came at us. Jimmy White got a mortar platoon to move up and fill in the line where we were. And he got a tank to come up, and that’s what saved our skins.

  There was another man named Brown, who ended up in our foxhole. A machine gun raked the foxhole and killed Brown and hit me a second time.

  About nine-thirty that morning, they got a corpsman to come and give me plasma and morphine. About noon, litter-bearers were able to get to me and move me about 150 yards behind the front lines. I lay there for the rest of the day until a litter-bearing Jeep came for wounded Marines.

  There were nine of us in line there. One of the fellows had died. I didn’t make the first trip, but I made the second trip of four to an aid station.

  When I got to the aid station, they gave me whole blood. I lay there all that day and into the next day outside the aid station. They didn’t take me down to the beach until 2 March, forty-eight hours later, and gangrene had set in. There were so many wounded men lined up waiting to go aboard hospital ships that they looked like railroad ties. I’d say there were maybe 400 wounded men waiting to go on the hospital ships.

  They took me out to the USS Leedstown. I lay on the deck for an hour or two, and then they took me down to the galley and put me on a dining room table.

  It turned out that because I had gangrene and fractured legs, they had to do a lot of cutting. I was out for three days.

  I stayed on that ship until March 11. Then they took me to Army Hospital 127 in Saipan. It wasn’t really a hospital, but a series of tents on Guam filled with 21,000 casualties.

  After three days on Saipan, I was flown to Iea Heights Hospital in Honolulu. Again, the hospital was just jammed full of wounded Marines. They were all over the place—even in the hallway. Ironically I ended up in a VD ward because that’s where the beds were.

  From there I went to Oak Knoll Hospital, California, and then to Great Lakes Naval Hospital near Chicago. I spent the next year at the Marine Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio. My getting wounded didn’t mean the battle for Iwo Jima was over. There was still a lot of fighting ahead, but D and E Companies, of the 2nd Battalion, 28th Marines, they’re the ones that cleaned up that mountain.

  In my squad there were ten men, and there were two of us who survived Iwo Jima. Six were killed on Iwo; one died of wounds, and so did another one later. Seventy percent of the casualties of our headquarters company were deaths from our platoon.

  U.S. MARINE ASSAULT FORCE

  IWO JIMA

  D-DAY PLUS FOUR

  23 FEBRUARY 1945

  0830 HOURS LOCAL

  Early in the morning of 23 February, Navy aircraft dropped napalm on Mount Suribachi. Later, the mountain was strangely quiet. At its base, Colonel Chandler Johnson ordered a forty-man combat platoon up the slopes of the extinct volcano. When they landed, the platoon was only 400 yards from Mount Suribachi. It took them four days to cover that scant 400 yards of beachhead.

  Led by First Lieutenant Harold Schrier of E Company, 2nd Battalion, the forty Mari
nes of his 3rd Platoon gathered below Mount Suribachi. Their mission was to take Suribachi from the Japanese, and once that was accomplished, to raise the U.S. flag there on its peak.

  Among those forty men of E Company’s 3rd Platoon were six Marines and a Navy corpsman that were about to make history, including nineteen-year-old Navy Pharmacist Mate Second Class John “Doc” Bradley, from Appleton, Wisconsin, and USMC photographer Lou Lowery. The men of 3rd Platoon made it to the top at around ten that morning, and by 1020 had fastened a U.S. flag to a long, heavy piece of water pipe they found in the rubble. They raised the Stars and Stripes over that contested Japanese real estate for the first time in history.

  Marine photographer Lowery snapped several photos to record the event and headed back down to the combat command area.

  “Doc” Bradley was a corpsman assigned to treat wounded Marines in battle. From down below, Colonel Johnson looked up at the flag on Mount Suribachi and felt that it ought to be larger, so it could easily be seen from any part of the island.

  Johnson had an American flag from one of the ships that was 96 x 56 inches, and he called over PFC Rene Gagnon. Gagnon had been ordered to go up Mount Suribachi along with four of his buddies to set up a communications post. Joining them were two other Marines and a civilian photographer who had missed the first flag raising.

  Gagnon took the flag and the men started up the slippery slopes of the volcanic rock. Joe Rosenthal, the AP civilian photographer, had missed getting the first picture and figured this would be a good opportunity. He was carrying a huge, bulky Speed Graphic camera that used 4 x 5 inch carriers of sheet film. As he was stacking sandbags to secure his camera, the Marines had already gotten to the site and were struggling with the heavy water pipe “flagpole,” which weighed at least 150 pounds.

  Rosenthal grabbed his camera and instinctively shot a photo. Within seconds, the flag was fluttering in the wind at the peak of Mount Suribachi. He took another photo with the entire group posing and recorded the names of the men who raised the flag.