A Tomb Called Iwo Jima

by King, Dan

  In August 1943, the draft board sent Ōmagari a summons to appear for a physical exam. Ōmagari passed the medical exam with flying colors and was granted "A" draft status. Once he accepted his sheepskin, he faced being conscripted into the world's harshest army as a "two cent draftee," the nickname given to draftees who could be called up for the cost to send a pink-colored draft notice through the mail. The Japanese Army's reputation for brutalizing recruits meant he would be beaten and hazed by younger, less-educated men. The thought of this was disturbing to Ōmagari who came from a long line of educated men.

  Just before graduation, a visitor came to the college; a naval officer who gave a lecture on the merits of the Navy's Yobigakusei ROTC program. Ōmagari qualified for the program in which the Navy accepted university, college or trade school enrollees (or recent graduates) and bestowed upon them the rank of Warrant Officer. After a period of training, the reservists would become ensigns with the right to wear the coveted Kaigun Tanken navy dagger that was said to attracts beautiful girls, and wards off evil spirits.[34] Ōmagari was instantly sold on the idea. If he had no choice but to serve in the military, it was better to volunteer to be a naval officer than risk being drafted into the Army as private.

  After finishing their training, the reserve ensigns would return to their civilian jobs, or continue with their schooling until called for active duty. Traditionally, there only were two paths to becoming a naval officer; graduate from the Etajima Naval Academy, or work one's way up from the enlisted ranks as a "mustang." The first option was highly competitive, with only the brightest cadets able to gain admission; the second option required twenty years of hard work. The Yobigakusai ROTC program became the third option, and the fast track to a commission.

  On September 10, 1943, about a month before graduating with his two-year degree in mining, Ōmagari passed the entrance exam for the Yobigakusei program's 7th cycle.

  Upon graduation from Akita Mining College, Ōmagari went to Tsuchiura Naval Air Base for basic training. He thought it was a waste of time, because he had taken similar training in both high school and in college. The reservists took written and physical exams to determine if they were fit to become future aviators. Roughly half of the cadets were classified as potential aviators, a category that encompassed pilots, navigators, gunners, flight engineers and wireless operators. The other half would be slated to study specialties such as "general seamanship," "surface navigation," "aviation maintenance," "communications," "accounting and administration," etc. Ōmagari's request for aviation maintenance was granted, so on October 1, 1943, he went to the Yokosuka Naval Base's Oppama Naval Air Group to study naval aviation maintenance. The 7th cycle reservists were each given the status of Warrant Officer and placed in 100-man companies, called buntai, and spent the mornings in classrooms, and had hands-on training in the afternoons. At Oppama Naval Base, Ōmagari was assigned to the 17th Buntai, which was a company of men dedicated to the Type-1, twin-engine, land-based Betty bomber.

  Ōmagari was commissioned an ensign on May 30, 1944. "I purchased my navy dagger and was proud to wear it. I also felt a heavy weight of responsibility at being accountable for the lives of others," he said.58 Upon completion of his courses at the Oppama Aviation Maintenance School on July 15, 1944, the head instructor asked the newly minted ensigns where they wished to be assigned. Ōmagari had studied mining so was familiar with natural resources and mining operations across the globe. He knew Japan couldn't win a war with the United States and felt that his fellow college-student-officers generally shared his viewpoint. The question was not if Japan would lose, but where he would be when Japan lost the war. Ōmagari said he preferred to be in the homelands when that happened, but knew if would have expressed that sentiment publicly he would be labeled a coward. Like all of the reservists Ōmagari responded, "I wish to go to the front lines, sir."

  The next day, Ensign Ōmagari was among thirteen junior officers that received orders to report to the Nanpō Shotō Naval Air Group. Because of the south seas component to the name of the outfit, Ōmagari presumed it was located somewhere in the Philippine Islands. The group of thirteen reserve ensigns was told they would travel to their unknown destination via a transport ship carrying supplies and fresh conscripts. Meanwhile, their first act as officers was to issue uniforms to 300 inductees at Oppama Naval Base. "My first responsibility as an officer was that of a wet nurse," Ōmagari recalled.

  Roughly a week later, Nanpō Shotō Naval Air Group commander Captain Inoue sent an urgent request through the chain of command. He needed more junior officers to manage the hundreds of enlisted men arriving by the boatload. As a result, seven of the thirteen 7th Cycle ensigns (four were from Ōmagari's own 17th Buntai) were ordered to Kisarazu Naval Air Base for immediate air transport to Iwo Jima. The remaining six ensigns would follow in September, as originally planned, on a transport ship.

  In the early morning hours of Tuesday, August 15, 1944, Ōmagari hitched a ride in a Tabby transport plane courtesy of the 1023rd Naval Air Group. The Tabby was license-built version of the civilian Douglas DC-3 transport. There were several Tabbys heading to Iwo Jima that morning carrying water, food, ammunition, personnel and mail. In one of the accompanying planes rode Rear-Admiral Rinosuke Ichimaru and his staff. As the planes droned south towards Iwo Jima, Ōmagari was plagued with doubts: would he be able to command older, more experienced men?

  After the C-47 lookalike Tabbys landed, Ensign Ōmagari and the other freshly minted junior officers were directed towards the air control shack to report for duty. Tired and feeling cramped from the long flight, the young ensigns walked across the field towards the control tower when they were attacked by an angry lieutenant who ordered them to line up. He demanded to know to which unit they were assigned, and it was Ōmagari who replied, "Nanpō Shotō Naval Air Group, maintenance section, sir." The officer then yelled at all them for their sloppy way of shuffling along. The lieutenant said, "This is a war zone, people die here. Since you don't seem to understand that, I will teach you a lesson." He then punched each of them in the face. The college boys later discovered that the lieutenant that "taught them a lesson" was Commander Wachi's Executive Officer Lieutenant Mineo Togiwa. The ensigns did their best not to become the subject of his attention in the future.

  The ensigns were then handed over to the Nanpō Naval Air Group's Lieutenant (jg) Hideo Koshi of the 3rd Aircraft Maintenance Unit. Their new boss gave them a much warmer reception than they had gotten from the snarly Lieutenant Togiwa. Lieutenant Koshi assigned the shave tails to the position of special 200-man buntai commanders: Ensign Kenichi Yoshida was ordered to lead the 1st Buntai; Ensign Yutaka Nakamura took over the 2nd Buntai; and Ensign Satoru Ōmagari took the 3rd Buntai.

  Ensign Ōmagari was escorted to his quarters located in a building about 100 yards from Captain Samaji Inoue's Nanpō HQ Bunker. He dropped off his gear and was taken to visit the main bunker. Ōmagari said, "It was a huge maze. It had a diesel-powered generator for lights and radios. In my smaller air raid shelter we used kerosene lamps and candles in hurricane lanterns." Even though he was an officer, Ōmagari slept on the ground when in his air raid shelter. "I had two white wool navy blankets, and a helmet for my pillow," he said.

  Since Ensign Ōmagari had a degree in mine engineering, one might rightly assume his talents were put to good use supervising the construction of tunnels and air raid shelters. On the contrary, Ōmagari's primary function was to oversee aircraft maintenance. He stated that the following aircraft were operable when he touched down on August 15th; six Tenzan Jill torpedo bombers (752nd NAG), eleven Zero Fighters (252nd NAG) and two Gekko "Irving" Night Fighters (131st NAG). Since Iwo Jima no longer had a permanent air presence, planes would come and go, but this is what was on the airfield when Ōmagari landed.

  Ōmagari's first operational task on Iwo Jima was to clear the airfield of wrecked aircraft. Looking every bit like slaves building the pyramids, Ensign Ō
magari's men used ropes to haul smashed aircraft hulks to the edges of the airfield. They hooked chains to a truck to drag heavier pieces off the flight line. "The transport aircraft engines were too big for our truck to drag away, so I submitted a request through the chain of command for one of the 26th Regiment's tanks. A tank was dispatched to the airfield, which greatly sped up my efforts," said Ōmagari. The work continued for the next few months as aircraft regularly arrived and were destroyed on the ground in American air raids. Some of the aircraft hulks that Ōmagari cleared off the field were converted into air raid shelters.

  The secondary role of the maintenance men was to fill in American bomb craters on the airfield. It was important to maintain a serviceable runway for the Betty bombers that usually arrived from Japan around 4:00 p.m. for their late-night missions to the Marianas. Ōmagari's men would refuel the thirsty Bettys that were headed to bomb the captured airfields at Saipan, Guam and Tinian. The ladies would trundle off around 7:00 p.m., drop their bombs on their respective targets around midnight, thread the gauntlet of night fighters and make it back to Iwo Jima around 4:00 a.m. Rushing to beat the inevitable retaliation raid that would come the following day, Ōmagari's sleepy-eyed men topped off the bombers' fuel tanks for the return trip to Japan.

  After the Betty bombers left, Ensign Ōmagari's men scuttled back underground to wait for the inevitable air raid. As the American bombers came and went, Ōmagari and the others popped out of the ground to repair the damaged field with shovels, pick axes, handcarts, a few trucks and mechanized rollers. Ōmagari says his men were exhausted by the grossly inefficient and labor-intensive work, "Division wanted the airfields repaired after every raid. We did our best, but it was backbreaking work that took a heavy toll on my men. We should have gone along with the Army's plan to abandon the airfields, and focus our efforts on digging more tunnels and bunkers." After the war, Ōmagari was not shy in sharing his feelings, "The Imperial General Headquarters Staff sat behind desks pouring over production figures, reports and maps. They made unrealistic demands on both men and machines. They should have visited the frontlines to understand what was really going on."

  The 3rd Aircraft Maintenance Unit's commander Lieutenant (jg) Hideo Koshi gave his ensigns another task; to supervise the offloading of SB(T) landing craft, and smaller Daihatsu boats, that braved enemy submarines to bring in troops and supplies from Chichi Jima. Once the vessels arrived, usually during the night, the materials were off-loaded onto trucks and distributed to various army and navy supply depots across the island. On occasion, an army supply clerk would appear at Ōmagari's bunker complaining of being shortchanged on food. Ōmagari kept meticulous records that proved the army was allowing boxes to "fall off the truck." Ōmagari refused to budge, knowing that others would demand to be reimbursed for their so-called losses, too.59

  Naval airman Haruo Yoshino spoke of the pilfering that took place on Iwo Jima. They even had a nickname for men who stole from other units; the thieves were called ginbae (blowflies). Yoshino claimed that supplies had to be hidden or placed under guard or they would be spirited away by sneaky ginbae.

  After the disastrous air battles of July 1944, Iwo Jima's surviving Zero fighters and flight crews were evacuated to Mobara Air Base in Chiba Prefecture. Some of the pilots were later sent to the Philippines as escorts on Kamikaze missions, while others were sent back to Iwo Jima.60 Some of more famous Zero pilots who survived Iwo Jima were; Isamu Miyazaki, Kazuo Tsunoda, Minoru Honda, Ryōji Ohara, and Saburō Sakai.

  Ensign Kazuo Tsunoda was one of the few that were sent back to Iwo Jima with the reorganized 252nd Naval Air Group in August 1944.61 However, heavy losses forced Ensign Tsunoda and the other Zero pilots to leave Iwo Jima on August 19, 1944. Tsunoda's last memory of Iwo Jima was of sitting in the shade listening to birds singing in the bushes. He recalled watching a young pilot take a caramel candy from his emergency rations kit, and place it in the sun until it was gooey. The mischievous pilot then spun the viscous caramel around a twig, and halfheartedly attempted to snare a warbler that was perched in the bushes singing a happy tune. This angered Tsunoda who scolded the younger man for trying to harass such a sweet, trusting creature. Tsunoda's outburst sent the little bird to flight.

  More Letters from Iwo Jima

  We can see through Lieutenant Genichi Hattori's letters that the Army was not receiving supplies regularly. Due to the US Navy's submarine warfare, the mail bound for Iwo Jima was often sent to the bottom of the sea. In letters to his younger brother dated July 30, August 13, 18, 30, September 17, 18, 21, and 29, Hattori complained he was not receiving any mail. In one letter he wrote, "It seems like you aren't getting my letters because I am getting nothing from you." He repeatedly asked his younger brother to send him care packages with canned crab, canned fish and meats, canned fruit, dried foodstuffs, tobacco and photos of his daughter Chikako. He complained that the Army depended on cargo ships for mail but they were unreliable. Meanwhile, he bitterly noted that the island's naval personnel regularly received postcards, letters and care packages via air mail.

  Lieutenant Hattori was openly unhappy with the uneven mail delivery system and that stationary was scarce on the island that some men couldn't write home at all. As proof of this, some of Hattori's own letters from Iwo Jima were written in the margins of pages carefully cut from magazines. Lieutenant Hattori wrote, "Please send stationary, local newspapers and magazines. Novels are good too, even if they are old and tattered." Hattori also wrote, "We heard the enemy has landed on Yap and Peleliu. It won't be long before they come this way."

  What makes Hattori's letters so unique is that the overwhelming majority of letters sent from Iwo Jima lacked details of the actual situation. Military personnel were not permitted to write "Iwo Jima" or mention anything that would cause their families concern. The senior officers, who strictly censored their subordinates' letters, however were themselves free to write openly. Hattori's letters from Iwo Jima are a valuable historic record of life on Iwo Jima before the Marines landed.

  In Hattori's letter dated October 5th, he wrote that he received his first letter from home. The letter arrived via boat through the regular Army mail system, and contained a photo of his daughter. "Thank you!" he wrote, I placed Chikako's photo inside the notebook that I keep in my breast pocket. I look at her cute face many times each day." In this same missive, Hattori stated that his men were suffering from malnutrition, exhaustion, dysentery, jaundice and night blindness. He asked for a magnifying glass because his own vision was failing.

  In addition to tins of tobacco, Lieutenant Hattori wanted rice crackers, canned food, rock candy and newspapers. Hattori acknowledged that it was against regulations, but asked his younger brother to mark the care package "military priority," and use his connections at the Kisarazu Naval Air Base to get them loaded onto aircraft bound for Iwo Jima.

  Hattori ended one particular letter informing his brother that "…air mail first goes to the Navy Headquarters then gets moved three or four more times before it arrives in our sector's military mail section. I have to retrieve my mail after it goes through several other hands, so please mark the package ‘Executive Officer, Matsushita Battalion' to ensure it is treated with the proper care."

  A House Divided

  Being an officer, albeit a junior one, Ensign Satoru Ōmagari was privy to many of the problems that plagued Iwo's command structure. The officers in the Nanpō Shotō Air Group bunker took their meals together as if on a ship at sea. Although normally the junior officers were not permitted to dine with the senior officers, but because there were only two-dozen officers, Ōmagari and his naval reserve classmates ate with Captain Inoue. "Our daily rations of cooked rice scarcely filled a mess kit lid, but we also had soup, canned fish, canned beef, dehydrated carrots and other dried vegetables." Ōmagari described the strict naval class system that existed even in the bunkers, "During meals we junior officers listened while the senior officers talked.
"62 It was at one of these meals that Ōmagari learned of the bickering between Captain Samaji Inoue and the head of the Keibitai, Commander Tsunezō Wachi. There had risen a dispute over the firing of the island's anti-aircraft guns at US Army bombers that were clearly out of range. Captain Inoue petitioned Commander Wachi to stop this practice, arguing that the ammunition should be reserved for blasting US Marines once they came ashore. Commander Wachi claimed it would be dereliction of duty not to fire his AA guns as long as enemy aircraft were overhead. Inoue reported to RAdm Ichimaru that Wachi was wasting valuable ammunition that could not be easily replenished.

  Ōmagari said that Inoue and Wachi made little attempt to conceal the bad blood between them.63

  In early October, Captain Inoue instructed Ensign Ōmagari to accompany him to a special meeting. The conference was held in a wooden structure in the north. Normally, the Nanpō Shotō Naval Air Group's accounting officer would travel with Captain Inoue to such meetings, but on this day Ōmagari was instructed to carry the captain's briefcase and take the meeting minutes. Due to Ōmagari's junior status, he did not warrant a seat at the table, but stood against a wall. He was intimidated by the number of staff officers dripping with shoulder cords that had flown in from the mainland. General Joichirō Sanada and Vice-Admiral Tasuku Nagazawa and their staff had flown in from Imperial General Headquarters, and Commander Kiyoshi Urabe flew in to represent the Third Air Fleet. RAdm Rinosuke Ichimaru and Capt Samaji Inoue were at the meeting to represent the local Navy presence. The Army's local representatives were MajGen Makoto Ōsuga, MajGen Sadasue Senda, Major Yoshitaka Horie, Major Fujie Shirakata and Colonel Koichi Hori.64 At the head of the table was the man responsible for the entire island, Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi. This was the first of only two times that Ōmagari saw Kuribayashi in person. The meeting was held to discuss how to effectively deal with the expected US invasion. Kuribayashi said that he would listen to the opinions of the Army and Navy representatives before making his decision.