The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 (Modern Library War)

by Toland, John

  The LST’s, loaded with the first five assault waves, moved into final position 5,500 yards offshore. Slogans like “Too Late to Worry” were scrawled on the ramps. These lowered ponderously, and amphtracs began popping out into the sea (“It’s like all the cats in the world having kittens,” Marquand observed to a petty officer) and skittering toward Iwo. The first wave of sixty-nine amphtracs, each carrying some twenty men, climbed onto the beach at 9:02 A.M., two hours after H-hour, and began to crawl forward. Twenty yards inland they encountered a steep terrace fifteen feet high in places. The amphtracs churned vigorously through the black volcanic ash, which was as loose as sugar, but only a few breasted the terrace. The others disgorged their occupants at its base, where the heavily laden men sank over their ankles in the black sand. They struggled forward through sporadic rifle fire and desultory rounds of mortar. Perhaps enemy strength had been exaggerated or the massive bombardment had driven the Japanese underground.

  But once the Marines heaved themselves up the collapsing terrace, they were met by machine-gun and rifle fire from concealed pillboxes, blockhouses and caves. Mortar shells flew over their heads, crashing around amphtracs heading toward shore. Marines blown into the sea tried to swim to the beach but their heavy packs pulled them below the surface.

  The 5th Division, going into action for the first time, was spewing onto the beaches on the left. One regimental combat team, the 28th, moved doggedly toward Mount Suribachi. Its job was to cut across the 700-yard-wide neck of sand to the other side of the island, isolate the volcano and storm up it while another team, the 27th, attacked the southern end of Airfield No. 1.

  On the right flank two regiments of the 4th Division were to help seize the airfield and then the ridge guarding the Motoyama plateau. It was the first battle for Private Allen R. Matthews, a combat correspondent, and on the amphtrac he felt immortal, indestructible. He could picture himself grieving over the death of a friend—never a friend grieving over him. But as he scrambled onto the beach, mechanically chewing gum, his mind in a turmoil, he told himself, Run run run, get off the beach, don’t hole up on the beach unless its absolutely necessary because they’re sighting on the beach and they’ll get you sure as hell … get off the beach and run. But he couldn’t. He staggered under the weight of equipment and sank into the sand. He heard nothing of the thunder of battle, but something compelled him to look to the rear. The sand spouted like a geyser of black water. His mouth was so dry that his chewing gum stuck to his teeth and tongue. He lurched forward trying to spit it out but bits clung to his lip and chin. It was nothing like the attacks he had read about. All around, men were running and stumbling in a nightmare silence. They seemed to have no weapons, no uniforms, no faces. Suddenly he heard a noise. “Co-o—orpsman!” wailed a voice in pain and terror. “Oh, co-o-orpsman!” Marines weren’t supposed to cry out like that. It came from a man sitting in a shallow depression in the terrace; he was inert, like a statue. On the left, three men were heaped oddly. They had to be dead.

  Frenzied, Matthews pumped his legs into the soft ash of the sheer terrace, awkwardly holding his rifle aloft to keep sand out of the breech. At last he was on top. He started for a shell crater but wallowed helplessly in the sand. What a fine target I am! he thought. He fell again, and rolled weakly into the hole. He swallowed for saliva but his swollen tongue scraped dryly against his palate. He retched and at last saliva flowed. He surveyed the scene. Now he was a veteran; he knew he too might be killed.

  The first walking wounded were reporting to regimental aid stations. One, his jaw hanging by threads of flesh, suffered himself to be bandaged but refused to be evacuated. He tried to talk, then knelt and wrote something in the volcanic ash. The words filled in immediately. He scuffed the sand disgustedly and allowed himself to be led away.

  The first tanks lumbered ashore at 9:30 A.M. They floundered in the soft ash. Some managed to climb over the terrace, but more were trapped and knocked out systematically by antitank guns. The 4th Division in particular had been counting on their support, and its drive toward the airfield was painfully slow. Caught in murderous cross fire from innumerable pillboxes and blockhouses, its troops had to subdue each one with demolitions and flamethrowers.

  Second Lieutenant Benjamin Roselle, Jr., didn’t land until 1 P.M. with his naval gunfire liaison team. Burdened with radio gear, they struggled up the terrace at the extreme right end of the battle line. Roselle’s left foot was almost blown off by a mortar round. His men put a tourniquet on his leg while he cracked jokes. Another mortar shell landed on them, killing two of his men and peppering Roselle’s good leg with shrapnel. He was left with one man, and the two of them hugged the ground until a third round detonated just above them. Roselle was hit again, this time in the shoulder. The enlisted man’s right leg was blown off, and he silently crawled down the terrace, the stump dragging behind him. All by himself now, Roselle could think of nothing but his mother and father in Royal Oak, Michigan. A mortar barrage started walking up from the shoreline toward the terrace. Roselle felt himself lifted—and dropped. He didn’t care. He glanced at his watch just as shrapnel ripped through his wrist. The watch was gone; in its place was a gaping red hole. This is what it feels like to be crucified, he thought.

  To the Americans on the beach the fire seemed intense, but Kuribayashi’s gunners were still firing with restraint, and many batteries up the island were not firing at all. Ammunition was husbanded; every round had to count. In his first radio report to Tokyo the general cited the commander of a platoon of antitank guns for knocking out more than twenty enemy tanks before succumbing, and requested that he be promoted posthumously to captain. He praised two other antitank commanders, an infantry officer and the entire 145th Infantry Regiment. He also reported that company funds totaling 120,000 yen were “hereby donated to the National Treasury”—the money had been burned.

  By dusk thirty thousand Marines were ashore. Five hundred and sixty-six had been killed or were dying of wounds. The rest were crowded into a small beachhead, 4,400 yards long and 1,100 yards at its deepest point. They had failed to reach the first day’s objectives and were digging in for the expected counterattack. But Kuribayashi was as careful of his men as he was of his ammunition. Unlike the commander at Saipan, he was not going to waste troops in futile night charges. He did something far more effective: ordered harassing mortar and artillery fire.

  Throughout the night Marine ammunition dumps were detonated one by one with mystifying accuracy, as if there had been an observer within American lines. Finally a Marine heard a low clicking sound coming from the hulk of a beached Japanese transport. With a few comrades, the Marine crept up to the derelict. He made out a ghostly figure inside—a Japanese with a radio transmitter strapped on his back. Although his death brought a sharp decrease in Japanese artillery accuracy, the beach area was so crowded that casualties continued to be severe. Neither could anything stop the havoc wrought by rockets screaming out of the dark night. They were not conventional missiles. Japanese naval aviation ordnance men had somehow found a way to convert 60- and 250-kilogram bombs into rockets, launching them electrically along slanted wooden ramps. The “rocket” flew up the 45-degree incline, arched some 2,000 yards in the general direction of enemy positions and exploded on contact.

  “The first night on Iwo Jima can only be described as a nightmare in hell,” wrote Sherrod. By dawn dead littered the black sand. Nowhere in the Pacific had he seen such badly mangled bodies; legs and arms lay fifty feet from torsos. A light rain was falling. It was cold. The naval bombardment started at 7:40 A.M., an hour later than on D-day. After fifty minutes the Marines attacked. On the left, at the base of Suribachi, the going was arduous; the 28th had made little more than two hundred yards by dark even with the help of artillery, half-tracks, and supplementary shelling by destroyers which approached within 250 yards of land.

  On the right the 4th Division broke through to Airfield No. 1, then pivoted north and encountered Kuribayashi’s first
major defense line. Throughout the long day of combat, dogs brought ashore by their Marine masters roamed the beach. One named George was already a veteran of two previous landings. Another, a feisty fox terrier, contemptuous of the nerve-shattering explosions on all sides, romped with a live grenade, rolling it around, flinging it in the air. He carried it to a foxhole, scattering its occupants. He trotted after them, refusing orders to drop it. Finally he obeyed, but as soon as a Marine reached for the grenade he would playfully snatch it up again. They tempted him with food but he wanted to play. The men threw sticks to distract him; he wouldn’t abandon his new toy. Finally someone thought of ignoring him. After a few minutes the fox terrier abandoned the grenade; it was retrieved and the battle against the Japanese resumed.

  After dark the bomb-rockets again hurled into the closely packed Marines. During a lull the men crouching in Sherrod’s shell hole felt the earth jar under them, followed by a weird noise like “someone banging on the radiator in the apartment below.” It was probably a mild tremor, but no one jeered when a sergeant said, “Oh, my God, the Japs are digging underneath us now.”

  3.

  On the third day, February 21, the naval bombardment once more commenced at 7:40 A.M., and again the Marines launched attacks fifty minutes later with close support from carrier planes. By early afternoon the 28th Marines had blasted through formidable stone and concrete defenses, almost to the base of Suribachi. The general attack to the north also started well, particularly on the extreme left, where tanks could maneuver. Here the 5th Division pushed ahead 1,000 yards. On the right, the 4th Division encountered rugged terrain and heavier fire, and made half that distance.

  At dusk the Japanese struck from the air for the first time. Five kamikaze based near Tokyo broke through the fighter screen around Saratoga, which lay thirty-five miles off Iwo Jima. The first two suicide planes were set afire but kept boring in. They skipped off the water and into the carrier. The remaining three smashed directly into Saratoga and exploded. Before the blazes were brought under control, five more planes appeared. Four were shot down, but the fifth dropped a bomb that tore a 25-foot hole in the flight deck. The badly damaged Saratoga was compelled to start directly back to America for extensive repairs. A few miles away a single kamikaze started fires on the jeep carrier Bismarck Sea which could not be contained. Blazing from stem to stern, she plunged to the bottom a few minutes after midnight.

  That evening’s “Home and Empire” broadcast in Tokyo mentioned the landings of enemy soldiers on Iwo Jima, and spoke of their leaders with uncharacteristic admiration:

  “This man Turner is called and known as the ‘Alligator’ in the American Navy.* He is associated with this name because his work is very similar to that of an alligator, which lives both on land and in the water. Also, the true nature of an alligator is that once he bites into something he will not let go. Turner’s nature is also like this.

  “Spruance, with a powerful offensive spirit, and Turner, with excellent determinative power, have led their men to a point where they are indeed close to the mainland, but they find themselves in a dilemma, as they are unable to either advance or retreat.

  “This man Turner, who has been responsible for the death of so many of our precious men, shall not return home alive—he must not, and will not. This is one of the many things we can do to put to rest the many souls of those who have paid the supreme sacrifice.”

  The steady, cold rain continued throughout February 22 as the Marines tightened their hold on “Hotrocks,” code name for Suribachi, completely surrounding the volcano except for a 400-yard stretch on the west coast. The Japanese commander, Colonel Kanehiko Atsuji, informed Kuribayashi by radio that his casualties were heavy:

  NOW ENEMY IS BURNING US WITH FLAMETHROWERS. IF WE REMAIN IN OUR POSITIONS WE SHALL BE EXTERMINATED. WE WOULD LIKE TO GO OUT FOR THE FINAL ATTACK.

  Suicidal attacks had dominated Japanese military philosophy since Guadalcanal, to the enemy’s advantage. Kuribayashi curtly replied:

  I HAD ASSUMED CHIDORI [Airfield No. 1] WOULD BE OVERRUN QUICKLY BY THE ENEMY BUT WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO MAKE MOUNT SURIBACHI FALL WITHIN THREE DAYS?

  The next morning the Marines resumed the assault on the battered volcano, edging up its sheer sides in the face of concentrated fire. Where the defenders ran short of ammunition, they rolled rocks down the steep inclines. Pillboxes and underground galleries were seized. Marines bellied into smaller caves, knives in teeth, to eliminate the enemy in close combat. First Lieutenant Harold Schrier and forty men neared the summit. He had an American flag and instructions from Lieutenant Colonel Chandler Johnson, his battalion commander, to place it “on top of the hill.” At about 10:15 A.M. they reached the rim of the crater, which was blanketed with dead Japanese. At the lip they were momentarily pinned down by a burst of fire from a small group on the other side. During this skirmish, somebody found a long piece of pipe. The flag—it was 54 by 28 inches—was secured to one end, and at 10:20 Lieutenant Schrier and five men, including an Indian, Louis Charlo, raised the Stars and Stripes. A photographer from Leatherneck magazine began taking pictures, but a sixteen-year-old, Pfc. James Robeson, disparaged his entreaty to pose: “Hollywood Marines!” Two Japanese charged from a cave, one with a grenade, the other with drawn sword. Robeson shot the latter. The other lobbed his grenade at the photographer, who leaped into the crater and tumbled down fifty feet with his camera. It was smashed but the pictures were intact.

  From the beach area below, the small flag was barely visible. Men in foxholes cheered and punched one another. There were tears. Ship’s whistles and horns screeched. Fortuitously James Forrestal, who had become Secretary of the Navy after the death of Frank Knox, was coming ashore with “Howlin’ Mad” Smith. “Holland,” Forrestal said gravely, “the raising of that flag on Suribachi means a Marine Corps for the next five hundred years.”

  Colonel Johnson, who had sent up the flag, turned to his adjutant: “Some son of a bitch is going to want that flag but he’s not going to get it.” He ordered the original brought down, and another put in its place. A much larger flag from an LST was attached to the pipe at noon. Joe Rosenthal, who had photographed the landings at Pelelieu and Guam for The Associated Press, had arrived too late for the initial flag raising. He almost missed the second in his frantic efforts to pile up stones so he could get a better vantage point. As the chubby photographer balanced himself atop his rock heap, six men started to swing up the flagpole. Rosenthal barely had time to get the shot; other photographers began suggesting different poses. One Marine stood under the waving flag, then three. Finally twenty were persuaded to yell and brandish their rifles. This was the only picture Rosenthal thought might rate a wirephoto; he sent off his film packs to Guam for routine processing.

  The Marines attacking north heard the news from the beachmaster. “Mount Suribachi is ours!” he announced over the loudspeaker used to direct the unloading operations. “The American flag has been raised over it by the Fifth Marine Division. Fine work, men.” The exhausted fighters took time out to turn toward the flag fluttering on top of the volcano. The loudspeaker continued, “We have only 2,630 yards to go to secure the island.”

  “Only,” someone grunted, “only …”

  That afternoon General Harry Schmidt came ashore, ready to direct the Landing Force, the largest body of Marines to fight under a single command, three full divisions. He met with the commanders of the 4th and 5th divisions; it was agreed that the reserve division, the 3rd, which had come ashore, would drive directly up the middle toward Airfield No. 2, with the 4th on the right and the 5th on the left. Sherrod asked General Schmidt how long the campaign would last. “Five more days after today,” Schmidt replied. “I said last week it would take ten days and I haven’t changed my mind.”

  The first line of Japanese defenses was giving way, but more than twenty-five infiltration teams charged suicidally into the Marine positions, against Kuribayashi’s orders, and were wiped out to the man. Just to the rear
, however, in the center of Iwo, Airfield No. 2 was heavily fortified with hundreds of pillboxes and concealed batteries. For two days it withstood almost constant pounding by ships, planes, artillery and tanks. Now it was up to the infantry of the reserve division—two battalions of the 21st Regiment. “We have got to get that field today,” the commander of the 3rd Battalion told his men on Saturday, February 24. At 9:30 A.M., behind a rolling artillery barrage, the two battalions launched themselves at the seemingly impregnable positions. It was one of the most resolute charges since Pickett’s at Gettysburg. The Marines flung themselves at pillboxes with grenades and bayonets. When weapons became clogged by volcanic ash, they closed the enemy with rifle butts, picks—even entrenching tools.

  The Japanese—the remnants of the 145th Regiment—would not retreat, and the carnage on both sides was awesome. In minutes a Marine company lost four of its officers, but the two battalions swept onto the airfield. Beyond, the terrain changed from volcanic dunes to “a wild, barren stretch of rocky ridges, cut into crags, chasms, and gulleys.” It reminded Sergeant Alvin Josephy, a combat correspondent, of “the Bad Lands of the American West—or, as someone said, like hell with the fire out.” From one of the ridges a frenzied horde of Japanese poured out, flinging back the Marines, who re-formed and charged at the ridge again. For an hour and a half the two opponents battled savagely with bayonets and grenades. When it was all over, one third of the island was American.