by King, Dan
According to Ōmagari, Commander Urabe campaigned for the traditional "waterline defense strategy" (Suisai Gekimetsu Sakusen), the same defense that failed at Tarawa and Saipan. MajGen Ōsuga, Captain Inoue, and staff officer Colonel Hori agreed with Commander Urabe who said, "The Navy will transport the necessary supplies for the Army to build 300 blockhouses concentrated at the southern beaches. There is no other place for the enemy to come ashore. We will destroy them as they land."
LtCol Kaneji Nakane, Kuribayashi's right hand man, argued against the beach defense strategy. Nakane wanted an in-depth siege defense saying, "Only a child would think bunkers could stand up to the big guns that the US Navy will bring to bear. We must dig in deep and make them pay dearly."
LtCol Nakane asked Commander Urabe for his own personal opinion on the matter, but Urabe continued to state he was there to represent the Navy High Command and was not in a position to share his own opinions. Urabe's refusal to state his own opinion sent Nakane into a tailspin that escalated into a shouting match. Nakane roared, "The Americans have control of the air and sea, yet the Navy High Command expects us to meet them on the beaches? Have they lost their minds?!"
Nakane presented the case of the defenders of Peleliu, an island half the size of Iwo Jima that was invaded two weeks prior but was still holding out. Until the battles of Peleliu and Biak, the Japanese had tried to defend the beaches and lost. But on Peleliu, Japanese combined forces moved into caves and bunkers in the center of the island to engage in a stubborn, no-retreat battle. At the time of this meeting, the final outcome of the battle for Peleliu had not been determined, but the evidence was encouraging to LtCol Nakane who continued to push for the siege defense. He requested the Navy transport supplies so the Army could build inland defenses at the high ground areas.
During the meeting that lasted for hours, Ōmagari took detailed notes and recalled high levels of tension between the two factions. It wasn't a simple "Navy vs. Army" argument. The navy and some of the army officers supported the beach defense, but the Peleliu-inspired defense strategy was an army only proposition.
According to Ōmagari, Kuribayashi said, "I have listened to, and understand both sides. I agree with LtCol Nakane's plan for an in-depth defense." Even after Kuribayashi openly sided with the siege defense plan, Commander Urabe would not budge so the meeting adjourned without a consensus being reached. The key difference was the defense of the airfields. The Navy saw the Chidori and Motoyama Airfields as an all-or-nothing prize to be protected, while the Army was prepared to hand over the airfields like a chess piece in a protracted siege. Neither side would bend, but a compromise was necessary in order to move forward with either plan. Tempers flared as everyone recognized that precious time was being wasted arguing about how to proceed.
Ensign Ōmagari learned that after several months of in-fighting between Commander Wachi and Captain Inoue, General Kuribayashi stepped in to settle the feud. Kuribayashi contacted the Naval General Staff in Tōkyō to request a transfer for Wachi. On October 15, 1944, roughly eight months after arriving as the island's naval commander, the former spy was promoted to captain and flown to Kisarazu Air Base. As Wachi's transport plane lifted off the dusty runway, he felt sad about leaving his men behind. He wrote, "That was the most unwilling transfer I experienced in my naval career."[35] He was granted an unprecedented 30-day shore leave, which he spent with his son at a hot springs in Atami. Wachi's position as Keibitai commander was folded into Captain Inoue's Nanpō Shotō Naval Air Group.
Kuribayashi requested replacements for officers who disagreed with his in-depth defense strategy. In December 1944, Kuribayashi fired 2nd Mixed Brigade commander MajGen Makoto Ōsuga, and replaced him with MajGen Sadasue Senda. Colonel Tadashi Takaishi replaced Chief-of-Staff Colonel Shizuichi Horie who was sent to Chichi Jima. Kuribayashi also fired two of his battalion commanders who failed to back him on the in-depth defense plan.65 66 Unlike the newly-promoted Captain Tsunezō Wachi who was sent back to Japan, the dethroned MajGen Makoto Ōsuga and Colonel Shizuichi Hori stayed on Iwo Jima where they later died.
Ōmagari said that a compromise regarding the in-depth defense was reached in a subsequent meeting. The Navy agreed to transport for the Army: an unspecified amount of machine guns; ammunition; 12,000 tons of cement; 60 tons of nails; 15 tons of steel wire; and 750 tons of reinforcing rods for bunker construction. There was a condition, the Army had to agree to supply the manpower to build the Navy's beach defenses. In the end, it seems neither side got what it wanted or needed. Half of the materials that arrived on the island were used for the Navy's shoreline bunkers, and the other half was used to create the Army's inland fortifications.67 Instead of fully investing in a single defense plan, Ōmagari feels that the compromise weakened both designs.
Care Packages and the Rocket Men
Lieutenant Genichi Hattori's younger brother developed a friendship with a naval officer named Lieutenant (jg) Kazuo Yamada, so was able to circumvent standard Army channels to get his mail on a supply aircraft destined for Iwo Jima. On October 24th, Lieutenant Genichi Hattori received his first airmail care package; it arrived on a Tabby transport plane in a large wooden box marked "Military Priority." His younger brother Genji had previously sent five care packages via the Army's mail system, but none of them ever arrived. This box that came on the naval transport plane was the first to make it to Iwo Jima. Lieutenant Genichi Hattori wrote a thank-you letter that began with large, bold letters, "Dear Brother, thank you!" He then further conveyed his appreciation by writing, "thank you" eleven more times in a row. He continued, "There was a happy commotion when I opened the box. I shared the contents with the other officers and the NCOs in sickbay. The others asked how I was able to get such a wonderful care package when no one else was even getting postcards. I bragged about you, my clever younger brother."
In a scene reminiscent of passing out candy on Halloween, Hattori described handing out treats to grateful officers who crowded around him. In that thank-you letter (that the family still has) Hattori listed the contents of the care package: "Daily use items- Tins of tobacco, cigars, toilet paper, soap, small towels, shirts and other things; Edibles- candy, snacks, Katsuo (blocks of dried tuna); Letters- one each from you and Mother; Omamori (good luck charms)- one each from (the temples) Naritasan, Fugen, Moritasan, Ikomasan and others; Miscellaneous- two notebooks, a map, handmade cloth dolls and other items."[36]
At the end of the list Hattori wrote, "thank you" six more times in a row. Hattori wrote that a ship arrived that very night bringing his first Army mail call in three months. He received a total of nine letters; three from his wife Sawako, three from his mother Kurie, two from friends, and one from his younger brother. The postmarks on the letters varied from two weeks to two months prior. Hattori then wrote, "Today was a wonderful day. It was like my birthday, New Years Eve and the Obon summer festival all rolled into one!" He ended the missive by asking for two 1945 calendars and more tins of tobacco. The closing line read, "Thank you dear brother, when I return home I will pay you back ten times, no, I will pay you back 100 times over for the money you will spend on my care packages."
On November 14, 1944, in a letter to his younger brother, Lieutenant Genichi Hattori described B-24 and B-29 air raids on the island. "When our planes attack Saipan, the Americans are courteous in their instant, and overwhelming, return of the favor," he wrote with a hint of dark humor. In this letter, he asked for "seeds to grow vegetables that won't attract bugs; such as onions, green onions, scallions, and ginger." Hattori also wrote, "We endured a tremendous naval barrage on the night of November 11th that lasted until 2:00 a.m. A dozen enemy gunships shelled the island and fired star shells that illuminated the area like daylight. It was impressive, frightening and beautiful."
On November 18, 1944, amid a welcome rainstorm, a flight of four Tabby transport aircraft from the 1023rd Naval Air Group landed on Iwo Jima. According to the diary of one of the pla
ne commanders, the C-47 lookalikes were carrying sake bottles filled with water, and fresh vegetables; daikon radishes, spinach, sweet potatoes, and yams.68 A plane captain on one of the planes in this supply run was Ensign Yoshiyuki Nakasone who later died on February 28, 1945, on a transport run from Kisarazu to Iwakuni. Nakasone's plane flew into a blizzard and crashed into a mountain in Mie Prefecture killing all twelve men aboard.[37]
Due to regular visits by US Army P-38s and B-24s, it was no longer safe for the Betty bombers to use Iwo Jima as a forward operating base. As a result, Iwo Jima was left with a large stockpile of 60 kg and 250 kg bombs.69 A plan emerged to re-purpose the bombs by turning them into rockets. In the beginning of November, Ensign Satoru Ōmagari greeted a planeload of engineer eggheads that were culled from private industries, such as Mitsubishi and Nakajima Aircraft Works, and commissioned as officers. In charge of the group was Ensign Chozaemon Morishita, an engineering officer from the 2nd Naval Arsenal. The collective brain trust arrived to conduct field tests on a new weapon.
The team would attach rocket motor tubes to the leftover bombs and launch them from wooden chutes. Iwo's naval troops would provide the brawn for transporting the bombs and fabricating the Rube-Goldberg-looking launching frames that resembled rain-gutters on stilts. The program needed a local junior officer to function as a liaison for the engineers. Ōmagari's classmate Ensign Kaneko was selected to help the newly arrived boy geniuses. Ōmagari said, "I teased Ensign Kaneko for having drawn such a harebrained assignment with no chance of success."
On November 30th, Hattori sent a letter to his brother thanking him for a group of three care packages that arrived together. In the letter, Hattori asked about their ailing father and requested that his brother send "incense money" to the families of two of his men who were killed. He thanked his brother again, writing the words "thank you" five times in a row. Hattori wrote that the boxes he received contained magazines, newspapers, high quality tinned tobacco, cigars, military-issue cigarettes, peanuts, rice crackers and dried peas. There were sweet treats as well: cherry flavored candy, rock candy, mochi[38], yokan[39], and tanbaguri chestnuts. "My fellow officers are deeply grateful to you," wrote Hattori.
Corporal Nishi and the Oscars
On November 29, 1944, a flight of four Army Ki-67 Peggy bombers landed on Chidori Airfield carrying Corporal Shinjirō Nishi and a group of army aircraft mechanics, their equipment and gear. Shinjirō Nishi was born in 1923, in a little country village in Kagoshima, Kyūshū.[40] Nishi's father was Dr. Morinoshin Nishi, a physician and chairman of the Kagoshima Medical Association. As the son of a physician, Shinjirō Nishi's four sisters and three brothers lived a life of affluence, that is, until their father passed away from kidney failure in 1936.
Nishi's doting mother couldn't afford to send him to a private college, but thanks to his excellent grades, he was accepted into a government-run college in Tōkyō and deferred from the draft. While a college student, Shinjirō Nishi lived with his uncle Haruhiko Nishi, a civilian official that had previously been personally appointed to the Japanese consulate in Tsingtao (Aoshima) by Mamoru Shigemitsu. Haruhiko Nishi was later called back to Japan by Foreign Minister Shigenori Tōgō and appointed Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs. It was at this time that Shinjirō Nishi lived with him and learned a great deal about life and the outside world. Vice-Minister Haruhiko Nishi maintained that he had no foreknowledge of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and resigned his post along with Foreign Minister Shigenori Tōgō on September 2, 1942.
In October 1943, University student Shinjirō Nishi joined the tens of thousands of other college, university, and trade school students across the Empire that were harvested for military service under the "Great Student Draft."[41] Shinjirō Nishi, despite being enrolled in college, would be drafted as a private in the army. Unlike ROTC volunteers Ensign Minoru Tada and Ensign Satoru Ōmagari, Shinjirō Nishi did not volunteer for the military. He chose not to join the ROTC where he could have become an officer. Nishi said, "Most of us university students resented the college draft. We felt that it wasn't our war. We didn't start it, so why did we have to fight?" The college draft is represented by film footage taken of a somber parade of rain-soaked students in their school uniforms carrying rifles as they march around Meiji Jingu Shrine's track and field arena. Since 1924, the Olympic quality track had been used for sporting events, but was now had turned into the scene for a parade of future residents of the Yasukuni Shrine.
Nishi's mother gave the reluctant soldier a typical sendoff party at which time she presented him with a hand-stitched sennin-bari (1,000 stitch good luck belt). It was customary for boys and men entering the military to receive a wide cotton or silk belt with hundreds of red stitches sewn into it. They would wrap them around their stomachs under their uniforms. The belts could take weeks to assemble as women visited friends and relatives to collect stitches. Each girl or woman said a prayer as she dropped a single stitch in the pattern. Females born in the year of the tiger were considered good luck, so they could contribute ten stitches. Tiger motifs are common on 1,000 stitch belts, due to the expression, "A tiger will roam a thousand miles and always return to its den." Shinjirō Nishi's belt has both a 5-sen and a 10-sen coin as symbols of his mother's wish that he experience neither suffering nor death. A mystery, even to him, is the addition of a stone-hard nut that his mother sewed into the fabric. He thinks she intended for him to be resilient like the tough nut, but never thought to ask her to explain it before he left for basic training.
Shinjirō Nishi reported for duty in the Army on December 1, 1943. His basic training was at the Army's Seibu 101st Maintenance Training Unit. He said, "The Japanese Army was a sadistic machine, well-oiled with the sweat and tears of the recruits." In April 1944, Nishi went for advanced training with the 1st Air Force Aircraft Maintenance and Armor School in Mie Prefecture. Nishi befriended a Tōkyō University student named Hirō Hachiya who was also caught up in the college draft. Their college credits and test scores earned both of them spots in the Army's Officer Candidate Course. Nishi and Hachiya were on the fast track to becoming 2nd Lieutenants as aircraft maintenance specialists.
In August 1944, Nishi and Hachiya completed their training and were both promoted to corporal. They proudly sported cloth wings on their chest to denote they were in the Army Air Force. Pilots wore an additional second set of wings above the standard service wings worn by non-flying personnel. They were assigned to the 10th Air Division's 23rd Hikō Sentai (Air Combat Group) at Inaba Airfield.[42] By November 1944, the 23rd Air Combat Group was equipped with the Nakajima Ki-43 (II) "Oscar" fighter and the Nakajima Ki-44 (II) "Tojo" fighter. Shinjirō Nishi and Hirō Hachiya worked on the Oscars fighters that regularly engaged B-29s over Tōkyō and the Kantō Plain.
On November 30th, the 23rd Air Combat Group ordered twelve Oscar fighters and related ground crews to Iwo Jima. The Oscars would provide an umbrella of protection for transport vessels bringing men and supplies to the island fortress. Corporals Shinjirō Nishi, Hirō Hachiya and thirty other maintenance men flew out a day early aboard a flight of four, twin-engine Peggy bombers. The planes were packed to the gills with men, duffle bags, tools, food, tents, and sake bottles filled with fresh water. Nishi was glad that he and his buddy Hirō Hachiya had been assigned to the same plane for the long flight. The formation rose to 12,000 feet, passed the Izu Islands before flying three hours south, and crossing over the islands of Chichi Jima and Haha Jima. The Peggys flew the last leg at the gas-guzzling low altitude of 1,500 feet to avoid roaming American carrier-based fighters.
Nishi pressed his face against a window to get a better look as the Peggys circled the island. Unlike Naval radioman Tsuruji Akikusa, who first saw Iwo Jima from the rolling deck of a ship, Nishi got his first glimpse from the air. Nishi saw hulks of twisted ships beached on the western shore, half sunken, their bows poking above the surface like turtles in a pond. A rickety wooden pier gave a silent warning, point
ing in the direction of the unseen advancing US Navy.
As each of the bombers descended, Corporal Shinjirō Nishi saw wrecked aircraft lining the runways and initially assumed they were American, but none of them were. "Our planes looked like they been swept away by a giant broom. I felt then that we had lost the war," Nishi said. As the Peggys touched down on Chidori Airfield, Corporal Nishi felt a wave of despair. Nishi climbed from the plane and followed the others to the Nanpō Air Operations tent as Ensign Ōmagari's ground crews swarmed to unload the bombers. For the return journey, the Peggy bombers were loaded with wounded men and sacks of mail. Even before Nishi and the others had finished logging in with the air operations officer, the Peggys were grumbling loudly down the dusty runway. No pilot in his right mind would tarry a minute longer than necessary.
The army maintenance men boarded trucks for a bumpy ride to Motoyama Airfield where the Oscar fighters would be landing the following day. Nishi stood in the back of an uncovered truck as it rolled along, and was surprised to see very little of what he expected to encounter. Where were all of the defenders? The trucks approached the airfield and a scan of the apron revealed only four operational aircraft - the rest were damaged, or undergoing maintenance or repairs. The trucks came to a dusty stop amid a crowd of smiling sailors who were awaiting their arrival. Nishi said, "The navy boys shouted ‘Welcome', ‘Glad you're here' and ‘It's great to have the Army Air Force with us'. They wanted to know how things were back home."
The sailors were starving for fresh news. General Kuribayashi and Rear Admiral Ichimaru decided that morale concerns dictated that bad news – a growing supply of which was available by the time Nishi landed on Iwo Jima – was carefully screened for consumption by the enlisted ranks. The maintenance men brought with them valuable uncensored news from the homeland.