by King, Dan
The entire group stumbled into relatively quiet area that contained a cluster of bunkers belonging to Baron Takeichi Nishi's 26th Tank Regiment. It was located in the Maruman area, which became known to the US Marines as "Cushman's Pocket."[67] At the entrance to one of the bunkers a tanker soldier questioned Ōmagari about why he was not at his post. Ōmagari paused, I can't tell him we're lost, "We are on the General Attack," he answered.
The tanker asked, "What attack? No such attack has been authorized. You must return to your post at once."
Ōmagari and the man argued, each claiming to be in the right. In response to what sounded like a drunken bar fight, an army officer thrust his head out of the bunker and bellowed at the men to get inside because their squabbling would draw unwanted attention.
Once underground, the heated argument continued between the tankers and the newcomers, some of whom accused Baron Nishi's tankers of cowardice for not joining the attack. Ōmagari was equally puzzled to find so many soldiers buttoned up inside the bunkers while their comrades were dying all around them. A few of the tanker officers began to side with the navy personnel, and talked of joining the banzai charge.
Two of Ōmagari's classmates, Ensign Yutaka Nakamura and Ensign Kenichi Yoshida, arrived at the bunker in the middle of the discussion. The trio of college boys were happy to see that the others had made it thus far unharmed. There was disagreement among the junior naval officers as to whether or not to follow the final order given by Captain Inoue, or listen to Baron Nishi who was adamant that all troops must stay in position.
Baron Nishi said that although Captain Inoue and MajGen Senda had informed Division Headquarters of their general attack order, they had done so ex post facto, and that Geneal Kuribayashi countermanded the general attack However, Ōmagari was suspicious that the Olympic medalist was lying so he could commandeer the navy troops. Ōmagari felt conflicted because he knew Kuribayashi's standing orders were to defend one's own position to the death. Baron Nishi ended the discussion with a written message that proved that Kuribayashi had countermanded the banzai order.
Baron Nishi explained that since he had lost so many men, he had enough food and water to accommodate the newcomers. Eventually, both the army and navy officers who had led their men into Nishi's bunker complex agreed it would be foolhardy to grope their way through streams of machine gun fire to return to their original bunkers. Ōmagari reluctantly turned over his sailors to Baron Nishi and his Executive Officer Major Matsunaga.111 The tankers gave each newcomer a quart of water and five hardtack biscuits.
Ōmagari noticed American weapons inside the bunker and examined what he called a "repeating rifle" (M-1 Garand Rifle) and a "machine pistol" (Thompson sub-machine gun, or possibly an M-3 ‘Grease Gun'). The Japanese had no qualms about taking weapons, water, food or cigarettes from dead Americans. A seaman named Okoshi said, "We lost our humanity. When we found a dead man we didn't feel sorry for him, we checked his pockets."112 There was no respect for the dead, either friend or foe. During his subsequent movements around the island, Ōmagari said that debris fields usually marked where skirmishes had occurred. The Marines and US Army soldiers discarded cans of food, boxes of rations, canteens, bandages, helmets, grenades, webbed gear, clothing, ammunition and sometimes weapons, too. Firefights resembled the aftermath of a tornado. "Whether the Americans were advancing or retreating, they left a trail of trash that was treasure to us," Ōmagari said.
Shortly after Ōmagari found refuge in Baron Nishi's bunker complex, the General Attack fizzled and stalled. Back inside the Nanpō HQ Bunker, tattered men staggered back inside. "No one was talking, but it was obvious the General Attack had been a failure," Akikusa said.[68] The attack had died out, but the Americans continued mopping up until noon. Subsequent Fourth Marine Division advances uncovered large numbers of dead Japanese that were caught in the artillery barrages cast by the Marines. Captured documents revealed that in addition to the Nanpō Naval Air Group and Navy keibitai, in the attack there were elements from the 310th Independent Infantry Battalion, 3rd Battalion, 145th Infantry Regiment, 314th Independent Infantry Battalion, and an engineer unit. The Americans tallied 784 Japanese bodies. The Americans suffered 347 casualties, 90 of which were killed-in-action.113
As the sun rose following the general attack, a small group of heavily armed naval officers and petty officers, men who were unknown to Akikusa, entered the Nanpō bunker. Their leader was Lieutenant Commander Sonosuke Tachikawa, an Etajima Naval Academy graduate and dive-bomber pilot.114 Commander Tachikawa addressed the survivors in a booming voice saying, "The Japanese military has been rendered ineffective. To ensure that proper discipline is maintained, I assume command of all remaining forces in this sector. You will follow my orders with no deviation." Akikusa said that it was through intimidation of force that the officer, who bragged often that he was a pilot, took control of the bunker.
Lieutenant Commander Sosonosuke Tachikawa landed on Iwo Jima in December 1944, as a passenger in a Tabby transport aircraft. Tachikawa once commanded the Navy's 4th Reconnaissance Squadron in the central Philippines. When the squadron's aircraft were destroyed, he was forced to march north with the other naval aviators to Tugeugarao. He was evacuated to Taiwan, and then ordered to Iwo Jima.115 116 Tachikawa was assigned to Captain Inoue's Nanpō Shotō Naval Air Group bunker after Akikusa was transferred to the Tamana-yama bunker, which explained why Akikusa didn't recognize him. One of the men with Tachikawa was PO2/c Riichi Koyatsu, who told a similar story. Koyatsu had been one of Captain Inoue's orderlies; but claimed that Tachikawa returned to the bunker only after Captain Inoue was killed.117
Akikusa said that the cantankerous Tachikawa took command of the survivors, but displayed few qualities that were typically associated with leaders. Tachikawa didn't take inventory of weapons or supplies, never took a roll call, nor inquired about the wounded. From their lack of wounds, and uniforms that bore no suggestion of having crawled across rocks and dirt, Akikusa suspected that Tachikawa's group didn't participate in the General Attack, but hid in one of the side tunnels until it was over. While the others that returned from the attack wore bloody and tattered uniforms, on the contrary, Commander Tachikawa's band of men looked out of place with their fresh appearance.
Akikusa and another man decided to fend for themselves and set out in search of water in the tunnels. The pair picked up a length of hollow rubber tubing and moved along the many corridors searching for 55-gallon drums that might still contain some water. There were about 500 barrels so it was only a matter of time before they found one that still had water in it. They pushed over the nearly empty barrel at an angle, revealing its reflective contents. With anticipation, Akikusa lowered the hose into the liquid, took a deep breath, and sucked the contents into his dry mouth. It was water mixed with kerosene. There was sand in it, too, that created a gritty feeling in his mouth. He coughed as he spat out the oily fluid.
They moved along to the Aid Station section of the cave. Akikusa held his grenade firmly in his left hand as he limped along with his bamboo pole. They checked more barrels but had similar results. In the darkness, Akikusa made a wrong turn and ended up alone in a dead-end tunnel. The smell emanating from the inky darkness told him that he was at the morgue pit. This wasn't intended to be their final resting place, but the loss of the island had ensured that it would be.
The Japanese require a Buddhist funeral ceremony in which they believe chanting will cleave the spirit from the body and send it into the joyous afterlife. Failure to conduct the ceremony, and ensuing cremation, would cause the spirits of the dead to wander the earth in an unholy form of limbo. Akikusa stared at the bodies of men who would receive no funeral rites. He could make out the ghastly pale glow of their mummified hands and faces peering back at him from the mound on the floor that had once been a deep pit. Small bits of luminescent light, resembling candle flames, drifted as if on their own volition. He remembered the tales
of ghosts visiting the dead during the summer obon season, but this was no campfire ghost story, this was real. The tiny orbs hovered up and down, coming from all directions at once. He backed away, never taking his eyes off the pile of dead men. He began to panic. He recalled a Buddhist chant his grandmother taught him as a boy, and softly recited it as he moved away. He realized he had lost his hand grenade somewhere along the way. Like one searching for a contact lens, he kneeled and felt the dirt around him but had no luck in finding his one-way ticket off the island.
Akikusa set down to rest in a large anteroom that had once been the Battle Operations Planning Center. The desks, chairs and shelves had been smashed, but thankfully the officers hadn't set the room on fire when they left. There were others in the room, too. He witnessed one of them lose his grip on reality as a man asked no one in particular, "Are my parents here yet? They said they were coming to visit me today. We should all go home." A muffled shot echoed out from the next passageway; it was a sign of something sinister.
Even the Dead are Called to Fight
At Baron Nishi's tanker complex, Ōmagari said that Baron Nishi's tank crews were obsessed with destroying American tanks. The Japanese tanker crews had no more operational tanks, so they utilized suicide attacks using explosives.
On that first evening, the tanker officers gathered to pore over a well-used map. They deduced in which areas the Marine tanks would be operating, and assigned "tank-killer teams" to fan out and destroy them. Each member of the tank-killer team carried on his back a 10-kg plastic explosives charge in a wooden box. The four and five-man tank-killer teams would leave the bunker after midnight and were to reach the ambush areas by 3:00 a.m. The tank-killers were to lie in wait until a tank lumbered past, then hurl the explosive. The device could be detonated by pulling a cord, or by being crushed under a tank tread. If the tank-killer was lucky, he could survive the blast by ducking into a hole. If no Sherman tanks appeared, the teams were to return and try again the next night.
Ōmagari felt conflicted as his friend Ensign Yutaka Nakamura joined a tank-killer team and exited into the night. In the morning, the various teams returned without any of their naval troops. An army officer said that Ensign Nakamura and a few others had been gunned down, and the rest of the sailors deserted. Ōmagari couldn't believe it because his men had performed admirably during the previous General Attack. His men were not cowards. The next day produced the same results, so Ōmagari volunteered to accompany one of the tank-killer teams. He wanted to know why his sailors were deserting, and thought, if I die destroying an enemy tank, so much the better. He said, "I welcomed a quick end to my suffering."
At 10:00 p.m., a salty army corporal led his four-man tank-killer team made up of Ōmagari and two sailors. They kept to the shallow trenches as they moved slowly towards the ambush zone. Ōmagari admired the NCO's ability to keep them together in the darkness. Around 4:00 a.m., they arrived at the ambush site to the smell of decay. Dead bodies, in various stages of decay and dismemberment, carpeted the ground. The moonlit area was a killing field. Some of the dead were felled by flamethrowers that burnt off their flesh to expose glistening bones. The corporal whispered for the men to lie down amidst them. Ōmagari was numb inside, so had little trouble dragging bloated corpses by the feet. He sat down and leaned back into the pile of shattered men.
Before getting into his own position, the NCO crawled over piles of the dead to check on each man. He squirmed up next to Ōmagari and whispered, "You stand out like a sore thumb, sir. You don't look dead." Ōmagari wasn't selling it as a corpse. If the flamethrower tanks spotted him they would torch the whole group. The corporal instructed Ōmagari to smear blood on his face, and cover himself with intestines and organs. Ōmagari balked at coating his body in the guts of his countrymen. The NCO spoke through clenched teeth that if Ōmagari didn't convince the Marines he was dead, the flamethrower tanks would burn him and the others alive.
The NCO pulled his bayonet from its metal sheath and brought it down hard against a dead man's torso, splitting the belly open. He pulled out a slippery mass of viscera. He handed the bayonet to Ōmagari and pointed to another corpse. With the fate of the mission at stake, Ōmagari accepted the glistening bayonet. Ōmagari tried to open the buttons of a dead man's jacket, but the corpse was too bloated so he sat up on his knees and swung the bayonet down into the dead man's abdomen, hacking through the uniform and exposing the dead man's organs. Ōmagari used the tip of the bayonet to fish out a long string of intestines. Ōmagari unbuttoned his own jacket and stuffed the entrails inside. He hacked off a large section and inserted it into a tear in his pant leg. Seeing this, the NCO was satisfied and crawled away. "The dead were no longer seen as human beings, but as objects. Even the dead were called to fight," Ōmagari said.
Ōmagari lay on the cold rocky ground, intertwined with several corpses as he waited for the Sherman tanks to arrive.118 He sensed the unseeing eyes of the dead and thought, Will someone be wearing my guts tomorrow? He looked at the twisted face of a dead man whose mouth was open as if caught in a silent scream. The man's mouth was filled with what first appeared to be rice, but was a pile of fly larvae.
This was going to be Ōmagari's final sunrise, and he hoped the end would be quick. The sun slowly warmed the ground, stirring the satiated blowflies. Some were too boated to fly and simply walked around on the corpses. Any sudden movement might alert the Marines, so the tank-killers fought to remain still as the flies wandered across their bodies. The sounds of distant gunfire and whining aircraft engines morphed into a macabre lullaby that caused Ōmagari to momentarily nod off. He awoke to the tickling sensation of maggots crawling on his throat, and for a moment wondered if he wasn't already dead. The stiffness in his back forced him to roll over on his side for relief, and as he slowly lifted his head he saw a group of Sherman tanks with 100 or more Marines trailing behind them. The lead tank was belching long, oily flames at a hillside. This is insane. It would be impossible for us to do anything if they came this way.
In one of the Zippo tanks was Alabama native First Lieutenant James Short, in command of a platoon of five tanks in Company C, 5th Tank Battalion, 5th Marine Division.119 He was recommended for the Silver Star almost as soon he came ashore on February 19th.
The day wore on for Ōmagari, but the Zippo tanks never came within range of his killer team. The sun dipped into the horizon, which was the cue for the Leathernecks to consolidate their lines for the night. Ōmagari heard the corporal moving towards him so he tried to sit up. But like in a ghoulish version of Gulliver's Travels, Ōmagari was pinned down by the strings of intestines that had shriveled and hardened in the sun. Ōmagari's uniform crackled as he rolled to his knees, breaking the corpse's grip. The tank-killer team silently returned to the bunker under cover of darkness. Ōmagari understood why his troops had deserted. Who could survive that and possibly bear to go out again?
Ōmagari bitterly complained to the Army officers who justified it by citing two previous successes. Ōmagari defiantly asked how many of the officers had gone out on such a mission. The room fell silent as a tanker officer gripped his sword and cursed for an apology. Ōmagari didn't budge. Another officer moved between the belligerents and the situation simmered down.
Ōmagari feels that Baron Nishi, like many officers on Iwo Jima, didn't have a clear understanding of the battle because he conducted his operations from deep inside his bunker complex.
Despite Ōmagari's complaints, the tank killer teams continued their activities. Ōmagari's classmate, Ensign Kenichi Yoshida, was sent out with a tank-killer team and torched alive by a flamethrower tank the following day on March 11th.120
On March 12th, Lieutenant James Short's Zippo tank was attacking enemy bunkers when he was hit in the face by a Japanese machine gun round that shattered one of the vision ports in the commander's hatch. Lt Short was temporarily blinded and left with a scar, but was able to eventually return home to his
wife and four-year-old daughter Paula Jean.
Kuribayashi's Farewell Message
Radioman Shōichi Kawai and his four-man communication unit were ordered to move to the hospital cave adjacent to LtGen Kuribayashi's 109th Division HQ bunker complex on March 7th. On the morning of March 15th, 1st Lt Inada informed Shōichi Kawai of his promotion to Sergeant. The lieutenant removed a metal star from his own rank insignia and handed it to Kawai saying, "Congratulations on your promotion. Add this to your cap rank." Kawai removed his rank insignia, added the small metal star (bringing the total of stars to two) and sewed it back on to his cap. Kawai wrote that he was deeply moved by the lieutenant's gesture.121 The lieutenant then told Sgt Kawai to report to Colonel Tadashi Takaishi, Kuribayashi's Chief-of-Staff, in the "battle operations center," a natural occurring high-ceiling cave inside Kuribayashi's HQ bunker. Humbled by the honor of meeting the Chief-of-Staff, Sgt Kawai did as instructed and then returned to 1st Lt Inada's bunker.
At 5:25 p.m., on March 16th, Kuribayashi sent his final farewell message to Imperial General Headquarters in Tōkyō via the radio relay station at Chichi Jima. The end of his message contained his jisei three-stanza death poem. It become famous in post-war Japan, even sparking a book bearing the title of one of the lines.
So sad to fall (in battle[69]), our ammunition is exhausted, we are unable to fulfill this heavy duty for the Nation.
I will pick up my sword, though my body lay decaying in the field, I shall reincarnate seven times to seek revenge. My earnest thoughts will go to the Empire long after this island is overgrown with ugly vines.