by King, Dan
But as more and more vehicles and boats arrived, he grew worried. "The Marines were digging in down at the water's edge. There were so many of them," said Akikusa. "It reminded me of a crowd of baseball fans waiting for the stadium to open. I saw their numbers swell from several hundred to a few thousand. Each new wave piled on top of the last one," he said. He was worried that the lack of concentrated counter-fire meant that the Americans would overrun the island. Why weren't our big guns firing? he thought.
Akikusa was encouraged by the sharp sound of bugles echoing over the landscape. To the Marines in the first couple of waves, the staccato Japanese melody would have sounded like a cavalry charge from a John Wayne western movie. The cheery notes belied its dark lyrics, dete kuru, dete kuru, minna minna korose (Come out, come out, kill them all). The buglers' lips pressed hard, splitting against the metal mouthpieces, blowing with all of their might. They poked their bugles out of vent holes and observation ports to blow the the 4-second-long repetitive tune that cut through the ensuing explosions and gunfire.
Ensign Ōmagari heard the bugles, too, and exited the Nanpō tunnel complex to place his men in their spider holes.[58] For the sixty men under his direct control, Ōmagari had only twenty Type-38 Arisaka bolt-action rifles, two Type-89 50 mm "knee mortar" grenade launchers, and 120 Type-97 hand grenades. He told his men, "Iwo Jima will be our tomb."93
Radioman Tsuruji Akikusa said, "A runner brought a message from Kuribayashi's HQ asking if the enemy had landed. Another runner came with a message that congratulated us for repelling the invasion. This made me angry because it meant the Army wasn't engaged in the fight. It was the (naval) Southern Defense Sector doing all the work," Akikusa said. He saw Japanese rocket-bombs explode on the heavily packed shoreline. The Marines were pushed back into the surf as mortars, machine guns and artillery rounds rained down on the crowded beaches. "The beaches were so full of men, boats and vehicles, that there was no way to miss them. Many were forced back into the water. Yet, I saw many small boats coming and going, bringing even more Marines," Akikusa said.
One of those boats was piloted by 17-year-old Boatswain's Mate Third Class (BM3/c) John McKenzie in LCVP No. PA-159-24, from USS Darke (AP-159). McKenzie was carrying thirty Marines, from the 4th Marine Division, and was about 200 yards away from Red Beach 2 when he was broadsided by another LCVP that was heading back out to sea. "The other boat's crew had their heads down so they couldn't see where they were going. I tried to steer clear but a fully loaded Higgins boat doesn't turn very well and the other guy smashed into our side. We started to take on water," McKenzie said.94 He made it to the beach and offloaded the Marines, but discovered that he couldn't completely raise the bow ramp because the hull was damaged. McKenzie and his three crewmembers abandoned their boat and headed south towards Mount Suribachi in hopes of catching a ride back to USS Darke. "I don't know how we were able to move down the beach and not get hit by Japanese mortars," McKenzie said.
BM3/C John McKenzie continued down to Red Beach 1 where he found an LCM (Landing Craft, Mechanized) from USS Darke and hitched a ride. However, the mother ship had moved farther away from the island so McKenzie and his men spent the night aboard the LCM and transferred back to their ship the following morning. With their LCVP destroyed, McKenzie and the others would not be returning to Iwo Jima.
According to Ensign Satoru Ōmagari, on the night of February 19th, the Japanese received a shot in the arm from an American radio transmission. The Americans had not encoded the message that was intercepted and translated. The message stated that the Americans wanted more hospital ships. It also mentioned devastation from a "new weapon." Ōmagari was in Captain Inoue's bunker when the message came in and said that he scratched his head because he knew of no such "new weapon" that would send the invasion force into a panic.
Down on "Green Beach," Captain Dave Severance's E Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Marine Regiment (E/2/28) landed and quickly pushed across the narrow neck of the island to cut off Mount Suribachi. In neighboring F Company were BAR gunners Privates First Class George Dunn and William Sayer. The pair had gone through boot camp together and was inseparable. Alongside them was rifleman PFC Donald Ruhl. Neither Dunn nor Ruhl would live long enough to witness the flag raising captured by photographers Joe Rosenthal and Sgt Bill Genaust, and only PFC Sayer would survive the battle.
PFC George Dunn was shot in the head while assaulting a bunker at the foot of Mount Suribachi. PFC Dunn left behind a wife and a 2-year-old daughter Kathy.
PFC William Sayer was severely wounded in the face the following day and evacuated.
On the morning of February 21st, while still engaged at the base of the volcano, PFC Donald Ruhl jumped on a Japanese grenade that put him on the growing list of posthumous Congressional Medal of Honor recipients. PFCs Dunn and Ruhl were initially buried next to each other in the 5th Marine Division Cemetery on Iwo Jima.
One of the Japanese units stubbornly defending Suribachi was Lieutenant Genichi Hattori's Independent 10th Anti-Tank Battalion. They were using the Type-1 47 mm anti-tank guns armed with armor-piercing shells. The guns had a range just over four miles, but they would be engaging the Sherman tanks at distances that could be measured in first downs. The commander, Major Haruhiko Matsuhita, said that many of his guns ran out of ammunition or were put out of commission. However, his guns still managed to take a heavy toll on the first day when they blasted four Sherman tanks from the 5th Tank Battalion. One Marine recalled seeing an anti-tank round slice into a tank and kill the 5-man crew, "It punched through the cold armor plate as a finger is punched through putty," said Sgt Thomas Gallant.95
As is evident by photographs, and the lone Sherman tank that still rests on Iwo Jima, the Marines up-armored their tanks. They applied additional appliqué armor welded to the sides; poured-concrete siding and oak planks to defeat magnetic charges; and welded rebar steel cages, or large nails, to the tops of hatches to prevent Japanese infantry from placing satchel charges directly against the hatches. But due to the close range, Japanese anti-tank gunners were able to exploit weaknesses, such as the vision ports that had armored glass, which could be defeated by a well-placed armor piercing round.
The Marines tankers had a shocking surprise for the Japanese defenders; some of their tanks could spit fire. Prior to the invasion, the Sherman M4A3 flamethrower tank was adapted by an inter-service task force of Seabees, Army Chemical Warfare Service technicians, and Fleet Marine Force tankers at Camp Tarawa on the big island of Hawaii. According to Lieutenant Colonel William R. Collins, commanding the 5th Tank Battalion, (who received the Silver Star on Iwo) the tinkerers modified the Shermans with a Mark-1 flamethrower to operate from within the turret, replacing the 75 mm gun with a look-alike tube.96 The Marines dubbed these special tanks "Ronson" and "Zippo" after the popular cigarette lighters of the day. The flame tanks were effective, but the ad hoc modification team had only sufficient time and components to modify eight tanks with a Mark-1 flame system; four each went to the 4th and 5th Tank Battalions for the Iwo campaign.
The Japanese anti-tank gunners fought hard but quickly ran out of ammunition. On February 19 and 20, Lieutenant Genichi Hattori and a squad of men were credited with dragging as many as fifty dead and wounded men into their bunkers.97 However, at the end of the third day, with most of his men wounded or dead and ammunition exhausted, Lieutenant Hattori joined a banzai charge at 2:00 a.m., on the night of February 21st (morning of February 22). Parachute flares illuminated Hattori as he drew his sword and led five men out of his bunker towards the Marines. Hattori and all but one man were killed outright. The sixth man crawled back into the bunker where he died from his wounds a few hours later.
Major Matsushita and thirty survivors moved north and hid out for almost four months. On the night of June 2nd, Major Matsushita and his survivors moved along the western shore where they took refuge in a wrecked Japanese LST. They were discovered, and after a firefigh
t that left as many as twenty Japanese dead, Major Matsushita and five of his men were captured by US Army troops. Of the original 303 men in the Independent 10th Anti-Tank Battalion, only these six survived the battle.
Lieutenant Hattori was given a posthumous promotion to captain. His headstone at the family cemetery in Nara is engraved with the death date of March 17, 1945, the blanket death date given to all of Iwo Jima's defenders. In December 1974, Major Matsushita visited the Hattori family home in Nara to introduce himself to the family of his Executive Officer. Matsushita felt guilty for surviving and wanted to share what he knew about Lieutenant Genichi Hattori's final hours. Thanks to Major Haruhiko Matsushita's testimony, the Hattori family learned the true date of Hattori's passing. Knowing the date of death is important for Japanese Buddhist funeral rites. Sadly, Lieutenant Hattori's father passed away in 1950, and never learned of his son's fate, but his mother Kurie, wife Sawako, and daughter Chikako were grateful to learn of Lieuteant Genichi Hattori's final hours. He didn't die on March 17th, as the government had told them, but in the early morning hours of Thursday, February 22nd at 2:00 a.m. Hattori's mother shared an entry in her diary dated the morning of February 22, 1945. She wrote of a nightmare she had of her son screaming, covered in blood, swinging a sword while charging towards her. The Hattori family was, and still is, at a loss to explain the incredible timing of her vision.
Further up the beach, towards the quarry, is where another company of Marines, led by Captain Lawrence Snowden (later Lieutenant General), came ashore. Snowden was a senior at the University of Virginia when the war started, and like many of his generation, went to the Marine Corps recruiting office to volunteer on December 8, 1941. The University of Virginia noted his exceptional academic record and extracurricular activities, which included the glee club and managing the basketball team, so permitted him to graduate early in April 1942. He received his college degree the day he entered Officers Candidate School, shortly after his 21st birthday.98 Snowden was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in July 1942.
By the time he arrived on Iwo Jima, Snowden held the rank of captain and was a veteran of the Roi-Namur battle in the Marshall Islands, and both the Saipan and Tinian battles. On Iwo Jima, 23-year-old Captain Snowden was the commander of F Company, 2nd Battalion, 23rd Marine Regiment, Fourth Marine Division. Captain Snowden and his company landed in the third wave at a place designated "Yellow Beach 2."99 Snowden said that the latest intelligence photos had shown a gentle sloping beach, "So we expected to ride in our LVTs straight onto the airfield." But they were met by a 15-foot high sand berm that caused his LVT to spin and grind to a halt. "Get out!" Snowden shouted as men spilled over the edges of the vehicle. Snowden and his adjutant Sergeant Leonard Ash found cover in a bomb crater. "We couldn't dig in because the volcano ash was so soft that the sides caved in," he said. There were several LVT(A)4 armored amtracs, with snub-nosed 75 mm cannons, that were mired in the sand ahead of his position. The armored vehicles arrived ahead of the first wave to clear the way for the troop-laden LVT-2s and LVT-4s but had become bogged down by the terraces and the soft volcanic ash.
Captain Lawrence Snowden's position was among those farthest from Mount Suribachi, but one of the closest to the Kugishō rocket-bomb firing positions located above the quarry to the right. Snowden described in detail the nerve-rattling screech of the rocket-bombs and heavy spigot mortars that wobbled as they traveled overhead. Due to their appearance, some Marines nicknamed the 600-pound spigot mortar rounds, "flying ash cans."
"In order to track the heavy mortars I'd hold out my finger out in front of my eye, and if it moved left or right I'd know it wasn't coming down near me. But if my finger blocked it for more than a slit second, then I knew I was in trouble," explained Snowden. Sergeant Leonard Ash suffered a serious leg wound from one of these large mortar rounds. Seeing the horrific injury, Captain Snowden shouted for a corpsman and heard, "On the way!" When help arrived, Snowden reluctantly advanced leaving Sergeant Ash behind. "That is how we were trained, we had to keep moving forward," said Snowden. The pair were reunited years later and were thankful that the other had survived.
The corpsman that tended to Sergeant Ash might have been Hospital Apprentice Second Class (HA2/c) Danny Thomas, an 18-year-old Texas native who was a naval corpsman assigned to Captain Snowden's Fox Company. "I was in a shell crater, doing my job...plugging chest wounds, injecting morphine if needed. Then I was dodging artillery, mortars — you name it— to get to the next crater where more wounded lay," said Thomas.100 The former corpsman also said, "The noise was unbearable, the chaos was unbelievable. There was intense smoke as our planes bombed the Japanese. I was so scared. I wanted to run and hide, but where? There was no cover, and the only way to go was forward. My buddies were being shot. I tried to help them ... to stop their bleeding, but all the time I was close to panic. I'd never seen dead people before, and they were piled up around me."101
Eight days after he landed, Captain Lawrence Snowden was wounded by shrapnel from a 320 mm spigot mortar and was evacuated to Guam. He talked his way back onto Iwo Jima but after a second wound, Snowden was evacuated for good.
US Army combat photographer Ivan Prall once encountered the wooden base for a spigot mortar on Iwo Jima. He described it as having a stepped appearance like a Mexican pyramid. It was buried partly underground and seated at a 45 degree firing angle. It was sanded smooth and coated with a glossy lacquer finish, and the joints of the heavy wood beams fit perfectly together. "The base of the heavy mortar was an impressive piece of woodworking. I wish I could've taken it home with me," Prall said.
The wooden base found by Ivan Prall possibly belonged to Corporal Tadashi Abe's 20th Independent Mortar Battalion. They are the ones that fired the spigot mortars that wounded Captain Snowden.
Corporal Abe's body was never recovered. He left behind his wife Teruko and two daughters, Yoshiko and Michiko.102
The Kamikaze
Third Fleet commander Vice-Admiral Kinpei Teraoka made the decision to send Kamikazes to hit US ships near Iwo Jima. Captain Toshiichi Sugiyama's 601st Naval Air Group was selected for this mission that would be known as Dai 2 Mitate Tokubetsu Kogeki-tai (Emperor's Shield, Special Attack Force, No. 2). Captain Sugiyama, selected thirty-two aircraft for the mission: twelve escort Zero fighters from the 301st Squadron; twelve Judy dive-bombers from the 1st Attack Squadron carrying 500-kg bombs; eight Jill torpedo-bombers from the 254th Squadron armed with a combination of 800-kg bombs and 800-kg aerial torpedoes. The planes would attack in five separate waves.
The Judys and Jills and had two and three-man crews so technically only the pilots were needed for the mission, but the "back seaters" refused to be left behind. According to one of the surviving Zero pilots, the crews of the dive-bombers and torpedo bombers said that since they had trained and lived together they wanted to die together. Following the mission briefing, the Kamikazes walked to Katori Jinja Shrine to pray for success, which meant their deaths.
Barely sixty minutes passed from the time the Marines landed on Iwo Jima before Admiral Teraoka personally announced his official orders to the pilots and aircrews who had volunteered for the one-way mission. In the late afternoon of February 21, 1945, roughly twenty of the Kamikaze planes of the 2nd Mitate-tai broke through the American Combat Air Patrols and AA gunfire to strike several US ships supporting the invasion. The Kamikazes sank the carrier Bismarck Sea (CVE-95), and damaged the carrier Saratoga (CV-3), the escort carrier Lunga Point (CVE-94), LST-477, LST-809 and the anti-torpedo net tender Keokuk. Chief Petty Officer Saburō Kojima was one of the navigators in the fourth wave of Jills that struck Keokuk.[59]
The Flag
Akikusa said he didn't see the famous flag on top of Mount Suribachi, but others observed it and the word spread quickly. "The Marines may have raised their flag, but we still held most of the island," Akikusa said.
February 23rd was a memorable day for another man, Corpo
ral Hershel Williams of C Company, 1st Battalion, 21st Marine Regiment, Third Marine Division. He would use his flamethrower against the bunkers around Mount Suribachi containing troops from Lieutenant Hattori's Independent 10th Anti-Tank Battalion, and Corporal Tadashi Abe's Independent 20th Mortar Battalion. When Marine Corps tanks stalled in their advance through the maze of bunkers, Williams advanced with his flamethrower. For four hours Corporal Williams and a squad of Marines crawled along destroying Japanese positions with C-2 pole charges and a flamethrower.[60] Williams moved to and from the beach four times to retrieve fresh flamethrowers. It is unknown how many Japanese soldiers and sailors Corporal Williams engaged that day, but his actions helped the tanks break through and result in him being recommended for the Nation's highest award for valor.
William's Congressional Medal of Honor citation reads, in part, "…Covered only by four riflemen, he fought desperately for four hours under terrific enemy small-arms fire and repeatedly returned to his own lines to prepare demolition charges and obtain serviced flame throwers, struggling back, frequently to the rear of hostile emplacements, to wipe out one position after another. On one occasion he daringly mounted a pillbox to insert the nozzle of his flame thrower through the air vent, kill the occupants and silence the gun; on another he grimly charged enemy riflemen who attempted to stop him with bayonets and destroyed them with a burst of flame from his weapon. His unyielding determination and extraordinary heroism in the face of ruthless enemy resistance were directly instrumental in neutralizing one of the most fanatically defended Japanese strong points encountered by his regiment and aided in enabling his company to reach its' [sic] objective."