by Daniel Wrinn
The 23rd Marines on Yellow Beach took the brunt of the first round of enemy combined arms fire. Troops crossing the terrace were confronted by two massive concrete pillboxes—still lethal after the bombardment. Overcoming these positions proved costly in men and time and. More fortified positions rose from the broken ground beyond. Requests for tank support could not be fulfilled because of the congestion problems on the beach. Still, the regiment clawed its way several hundred yards toward the eastern edge of the airstrip.
The 25th Marines immediately ran into a “Buzz-Saw” trying to move across Blue Beach. General Cates was correct in his appraisal: “The right flank was a bitch, if there ever was one.” The 1/25 Marines scratched, scrambled, and clawed their way 300 yards forward under heavy enemy fire in the first half-hour. The 3/25 Marines took the heaviest beating of the day on the extreme right flank while trying to scale the cliffs leading to the rock quarry.
According to Lieutenant Colonel Justice Chambers leading the 3/25 Marines: “Crossing that second terrace, there was fire from automatic weapons coming from all over. I could’ve held up a cigarette and lit it on the stuff going by. I knew immediately we were in for one hell of a fight.”
But this was only the beginning. When the landing forces tried to overcome the enemy’s infantry weapons, they were blind to an imperceptible stirring taking place among the rocks and crevices in the interior highlands. General Kuribayashi’s gunners unmasked their big guns—giant mortars, heavy artillery, rockets, and antitank weapons held under the tightest discipline for just this precise moment. Kuribayashi had waited patiently until the beaches were clogged with troops and material. Gun crews knew the range and deflection at each landing beach by heart: all weapons had been pre-registered on these targets long ago. At Kuribayashi’s signal, hundreds of weapons opened fire. It was shortly after 1030.
This bombardment was as horrifying and deadly as any the Marines had ever experienced. There was no cover. Enemy mortar and artillery rounds blanketed every corner of the 3,000-yard-wide beach. Large caliber coastal defense guns and dual-purpose antiaircraft guns fired horizontally. This created a deadly scissor of direct fire from the high ground on both flanks. Marines stumbled over the terraces to escape the rain of lethal projectiles only to encounter machine-gun fire and minefields. Landing force casualties mounted at a shocking rate.
Major Karch of the 14th Marines expressed a begrudging admiration for the Japanese gunners: “it was one of the worst blood-lettings of the war. They rolled artillery barrages up and down the beach—I don’t see how anybody could’ve lived through such a heavy fire barrage. The Japanese were superb artillerymen—someone was going to get hit every time they fired.”
At sea, naval gunfire support desperately tried to deliver fire against enemy gun positions shooting down from the rock quarry. It took longer to coordinate this fire: the first enemy barrages wiped out the entire 3/25 Marines Shore Fire Control Party.
When the Japanese fire reached a crescendo, assault regiments issued grim reports to the flagship. Within fifteen minutes, these messages buzzed over the command net:
From 25th Marines 1036: Catching hell from the quarry. Heavy mortar and machine-gun fire.
From the 23rd Marines 1039: Taking heavy casualties and cannot move forward. Mortars are killing us.
From the 27th Marines 1042: All units pinned down by mortars and artillery. Heavy casualties. Need tank support fast to move.
From the 28th Marines 1046: Taking heavy fire and forward movement stopped. Artillery and machine-gun fire heaviest yet seen.
The landing force was getting bled but did not panic. The abundance of combat veterans throughout the rank-and-file beach regiments helped the rookies focus on the objective. Communications were still effective. Aerial observers spotted some of the now exposed gun positions and directed effective naval gunfire. Carrier planes screeched in low and dropped napalm from their belly tanks. But heavy enemy fire continued to take an awful toll throughout the first day and night—but would never again be as murderous as that first hour.
Sherman tanks played hell getting into the action on D-Day. Later in the battle, these combat vehicles were the most valuable weapons on the battlefield. This day was a nightmare. The assault divisions had embarked many tanks on board LSMs (Landing Ship Medium), sturdy craft that could deliver five Shermans at a time. But it was a challenge to disembark them on Iwo’s steep beaches. The LSMs’ stern anchors couldn’t hold in the loose sand and the bow cables parted under the strain.
One lead tank stalled on top of the ramp and blocked the others, leaving the LSM at the mercy of the violent surf. Other tanks threw tracks or got bogged down in loose sand. Several tanks that made it over the terraces were destroyed by huge horn mines or were disabled by accurate 47mm antitank fire from Suribachi. Still, the tanks kept coming. Their mobility, armor protection, and 75mm guns were a welcome addition to the scattered infantry along Iwo’s lunar-looking, shell-pocked landscape.
The division commanders committed their reserves. The 26th Marines were ordered in just after noon, General Cates ordered two battalions of the 24th Marines to land at 1400. The 3/24 Marines followed several hours later. The reserve suffered heavier casualties than the initial assault units crossing the beach, because of the punishing enemy bombardment from all island points.
Aware of a probable Japanese counterattack in the night to come, and despite the fire and confusion along the beaches, both divisions ordered their artillery regiments ashore. This frustrating and costly process took most of the afternoon. The surf and wind picked up as the day wore on and caused more than one low-riding amphibious truck to swamp with its precious 105mm howitzer cargo. Getting the guns ashore was one thing; getting them up off the sand was another.
The 75mm howitzers did better than the heavier 105s. Marines could quickly move them up over the terraces—at significant risk. But the 105s had a mind of their own in the black sand. The effort to get each weapon off the beach was a saga. Despite unforgiving terrain and enemy fire, Marines managed to get the batteries in place and registered them to render close-fire support before dark.
Plunging surf and enemy fire turned the battlefield into utter chaos. Later that afternoon, Lieutenant Mike Keleher, the battalion surgeon, went ashore to take over the aid station. (A sniper had killed the previous surgeon.) Lieutenant Keleher was a veteran of three assault landings. He was shocked by the carnage on Blue Beach: “such a sight on the beach. Wrecked boats, bogged down jeeps and tractors and tanks. Burning vehicles and casualties. Limbs of dead Marines were scattered all over the beach.”
Prowling Wolves
An enemy mortar shell took the life of the legendary John Basilone. He’d led his machine gun platoon in a brave attack against the southern portion of the airfield. All Marines on the island felt this loss. Farther east, Colonel Rob Galer (one of the Pacific War’s first fighter aces) survived the afternoon’s battle along the beaches and reassembled his scattered radar unit in a deep shell-hole near the base of Suribachi.
Later that afternoon, Colonel Donn Robertson led his Marines onshore to Blue Beach. He was shocked at the intensity of fire still directed at the troops so late on D-Day: “they were ready for us. I watched with pride and wonderment as young Marines landed under fire, took casualties, and stumbled forward to clear the beach. I asked myself, what impels a young man landing on the beach in the face of fire?”
Then it was Robertson’s turn. His boat slammed into the beach too hard. The ramp wouldn’t drop. His Marines had to roll over the gunwales into the churning surf and crawl ashore.
The savage battle to capture the rock quarry cliffs on the right flank raged. The beachhead was exposed to direct enemy fire all day. Marines had to storm them before any more supplies or troops could be landed. In the end, it was the fighting spirit of Captain James Headley and Colonel “Jumping Joe” Chambers who led the survivors of the Marines to the top of the cliffs.
The battalion paid a high price for this f
eat. They’d lost twenty-two officers and five hundred troops by nightfall. Assistant division commanders Generals Hart and Hermle of the 4th and 5th Marine Division spent most of D-Day on board the control vessels marking both ends of the line a departure—4,000 yards offshore. This was another lesson in amphibious techniques learned from Tarawa. Having senior officers close to the ship-to-shore movement provided landing force decision-making from the forward most vantage point. By dust, General Hermle chose to come ashore. On Tarawa, he’d spent the night of D-Day out of contact on a fire-swept pierhead. This time he would be in the fight.
Hermle had the bigger operational picture in mind. He understood that the corps’ commanders insistence on forcing the reserves and artillery units onshore despite the carnage to build combat power. Hermle knew that whatever the night brought, the Allies had more troops on the island than the Japanese could muster. His presence would help his division forget about the earlier days’ disaster and focus on preparing for the inevitable enemy counterattacks.
Enemy mortar and artillery fire raked the beachhead. An enormous spigot of mortar shells (Marines called them “flying ashcans”) and rocket-boosted aerial bombs were loud, whistling projectiles that tumbled end over end. Many of them sailed over the island, but those that landed along the beaches of the southern runways caused dozens of casualties. Few Marines could dig a proper foxhole in the sand. It was like trying to dig a hole in a barrel of wheat. With urgent calls to the control ship for plasma and stretchers and mortar shells came repeated sandbag requests.
War combat correspondent Lieutenant Cyril Zurlinden (soon to become a casualty himself) described his first night ashore: “On Tarawa, Saipan, and Tinian, I saw Marines killed and wounded in a shocking manner. But I never saw anything like the ghastliness that hung over the Iwo Jima beachhead. It was utter frustration, anguish, and a constant inner battle to maintain at least some semblance of sanity.
Accounting for personnel was a nightmare under those conditions. But assault divisions eventually reported a combined loss of 2,375 men to General Schmidt—503 killed and 1,755 wounded, 18 missing, and 99 combat fatigues. While these statistics were sobering, Schmidt had gotten 30,000 Marines ashore. A casualty rate of eight percent left the landing force in better condition than Saipan or Tarawa’s first day. It was a miracle the casualties hadn’t been twice as high. Did Kuribayashi wait too long to use his big guns?
The first night in Iwo Jima was an eerie affair. Mists of sulfur spiraled from the earth. Marines who were used to the tropics now shivered in the cold, waiting for Kuribayashi’s samurai warriors to come screaming down the hills. Marines learned this Japanese commander was different. There would be no wasteful banzai attack tonight. Instead, small teams of infiltrators, “Prowling Wolves,” would probe the Marine lines and gather intelligence. A barge full of the elite Japanese Special Landing Forces tried a counter landing on the western beaches—they died to a man under the alert guns of the 28th Marines and supporting LVT crews.
That night was one of continuous indirect fire from the Highlands. A high velocity round landed directly in a fighting hole occupied by the 1/23 Marines commander Colonel Ralph Hass and instantly killed him. Marines took other light casualties throughout the night, but at dawn, the veteran landing force stirred.
Five infantry regiments moved to the north, while the sixth turned to the business at hand in the south: Mount Suribachi
Suribachi-yama
Marines knew this dormant volcano as “Hotrocks.”
The Japanese called it Suribachi-yama. Allied planners knew their drive north would never succeed without first securing that hulking rock dominating the southern plain. According to one Marine: “Suribachi took on a life of its own. It watched over us. It loomed over us. That mountain represented more evil to us than the Japanese.”
Colonel Atsuchi commanded 2,000 enemy soldiers and sailors in the Suribachi garrison. The Japanese had honeycombed the mountain with machine-gun nests, tunnels, and observation sites. But Atsuchi had lost many of his large-caliber guns from the three-day naval bombardment. Atsuchi’s command at Suribachi was semiautonomous. General Kuribayashi realized the invaders would soon cut communication lines across the island’s narrow tip. Kuribayashi hoped Atsuchi could hold out for at least ten days and maybe even two weeks.
Some of the strongest defenses on Suribachi were down along the rubble-strewn base. Here, over seventy camouflaged concrete blockhouses protected the mountain’s approaches. Another fifty blockhouses bulged from the slopes within the first hundred feet of elevation. Then came the caves, and the first of hundreds the Marines would face on Iwo Jima.
The 20th Marines took 407 casualties cutting across the neck of the island on D-Day. The following day in a cold rain, they prepared their assault. Colonel Chandler Johnson, commanding the 2/28 Marines, set the morning’s tone as he deployed his tired troops forward: “it’s going to be a hell of a day in one hell of a place to fight this damn war.”
Several 105mm batteries opened up overhead. Gun crews fired from positions dug in the black sand next to the 28th Marine’s command post. Troops learned that even their 155mm howitzers would hardly shiver the enemy’s concrete pillboxes. As the preparatory fire lifted, infantry advanced into heavy mortar and machine-gun fire. Colonel “Harry the Horse” Liversedge requested tanks. But the 5th Tank Battalion was having a frustrating morning. Tanks desperately searched for a defilade spot to rearm and refuel for the assault. But in those first few days on Iwo, there was no such spot. Every time the tanks gathered to service their vehicles, they were walloped by enemy artillery and mortar fire from the entire island. Getting the tanks serviced to join in on the assault took most of the morning. After getting battered all day, the tankers would now only refit, rearm, and re-equip at night.
The day’s slow start led to more setbacks for the 5th Tank Battalion. Enemy antitank gunners hid in the hodgepodge of boulders and knocked out the first approaching Shermans, crippling the assault’s momentum. While the 20th Marines overran forty enemy strongpoints and gained 200 yards a day, they lost a Marine for every yard gained. The tankers redeemed themselves when a 75mm round caught Colonel Atsuchi poking his head out of a cave entrance—blowing him apart.
Elsewhere on the morning of D +1 were discouraging sites of chaos along the beaches from Kuribayashi’s unrelenting artillery barrages and the violent surf. According to one Marine: “The wreckage was indescribable. I saw two miles of debris that was so thick there were only a few places our landing craft could still get in. The wrecked hulls of dozens of landing boats testified to the price we had to pay to put our troops ashore. Tanks and half-tracks laid there crippled from getting bogged down in the coarse sand. LVTs and amphibian tractors were victims of mines and well-aimed shells and were now flopped on their backs. Cranes were brought in to unload cargo and were tilted at insane angles. Our bulldozers were smashed in their own roadways.”
Then bad weather set in and complicated the unloading. Strong winds whipped sea swells into a nasty chop. The surf got uglier. These were the conditions Colonel Carl Youngdale faced while trying to land the 105mm howitzer batteries of his 4/14 Marines. All twelve of these guns were preloaded in amphibious trucks (DUKWs) one to a vehicle. Adding to that was the problem of marginal seaworthiness and contaminated fuel. Youngdale watched in shock as eight amphibious trucks suffered engine failures, swamped, and sank with a terrible loss of life. Two more amphibious trucks broached in the surf zone and spilled their guns into deep water. Youngdale managed to get the two remaining guns ashore and into firing position.
General Schmidt committed one battery of the 105mm howitzers to the narrow beachhead on D +1. These guns reached the beach intact, but it took hours to get the amphibious tractors to drag the heavy guns up over the terraces. The 105’s were in place and firing before dark. The deep bark of the guns was a welcome sound to the Marines. Concerned about heavy casualties in the first twenty-four hours, General Schmidt committed the 21st Marines from the cor
e reserve. But the seas were too rough. Troops had a harrowing experience trying to climb down the cargo nets and into the small boats—violently bobbing alongside the transports. Many Marines tumbled into the sea. The boating process took hours to complete. Once afloat, troops circled endlessly in the small Higgins boats waiting for the call to land. But after six hours of bobbing in the water and awful seasickness, the 21st Marines returned to the ships for the night.
Even the larger landing craft, the LSMs and LCTs, had a hard time breaching. Sea anchors were needed to keep the craft perpendicular to the breakers, and they rarely held fast in that soft bottom. Admiral Hill later wrote: “dropping that stern anchor was like dropping a spoon in a bowl of mush.”
Hill contributed to the development of amphibious operations in the Pacific War. He and his staff developed armored bulldozers to land in the assault waves. They experimented with hinged Marston matting, used as a temporary road on airfields to get vehicles over soft sand. On the beach at Iwo, bulldozers were worth their weight in gold. The Marston matting was only partially successful: the LVTs chewed it up, but all hands could see the true potential.
Admiral Hill worked with the Naval Construction Battalion (Seabees) to bring the supply-laden pontoon barges ashore. But again, the surf prevailed and broached the craft, spilling the cargo. Now desperate, Hill’s beachmasters turned to a round-the-clock use of amphibious trucks and LVTs to keep the combat cargo flowing. Once amphibious trucks got free of their crippling loads, they were fine.