Sulfur Island (Iwo Jima, 1945)

Sulfur Island (Iwo Jima, 1945)

Iwo Jima was the largest Marine amphibious battle of all time. It was also the costliest. The all- Leatherneck landing force sustained more than 26,000 casualties – the equivalent of losing a division and a half of Marines. More than 6,000 died. So did 21,000 Japanese.

Seventy-two thousand U.S. Marines assaulted heavily fortified Iwo Jima island in February 1945 as the spearhead of a veteran amphibious force at the peak of its lethality.

The Marines expected a tough fight. Tokyo was 650 miles to the north, less than three hours flight time. The island itself was a defender’s dream – few beaches; broken, convoluted ground; a lunar landscape of cliffs, crags, and caves. With its pork chop-shaped area less than seven square miles, Iwo was bigger than Tarawa and Peleliu, but much smaller than the Marianas.

The volcanic island reeked of sulfur, leaked steam, and looked evil – “like hell with the fire out, but still smoking,” said one unimpressed Marine.

The Japanese spared no expense in fortifying the island, using the Empire’s most gifted mining engineers. They had plenty of big guns, heavy mortars, enormous rockets – and scores of the wickedly effective 25mm automatic machine cannons, emplaced to fire horizontally at troops and landing craft.

Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi commanded the Iwo garrison with an iron will and was well served by a brilliant artillery chief and several veteran infantry officers.

For the Marines, Iwo Jima would be the last battle for the old amphibious warhorse, Lieutenant General Howlin’ Mad Smith. One final time he would rage against the Navy’s parsimonious allocation of preliminary naval bombardment. When Smith darkly suggested the island would cost 15,000 Marine casualties, his Navy counterparts thought he was out of his mind.

The fine volcanic sand, lack of cover, and looming bulk of Mt. Suribachi in the background are all captured in Fourth Marine Division at Iwo Jima.

By Col. Donna J. Neary, USMCR (Ret.), 2000, oil on canvas.

While Holland Smith battled the Navy’s top brass, real leadership of the Marines storming Iwo Jima devolved to Major General Harry Schmidt, commanding the V Amphibious Corps. The 3d, 4th, and 5th Marine Divisions would provide the landing force, each unit as well led, trained, and equipped as any outfit that ever crossed the Line of Departure in the Pacific War.

The assault landing was an awesome spectacle, the pinnacle of the amphibious war, flawlessly executed by the veteran Navy-Marine team.

Within minutes General Schmidt had 8,000 Marines ashore, struggling through the soft, black sand of Sulfur Island.

Kuribayashi watched these developments intently, waiting for the beaches and inland terraces to become clogged with troops and equipment.

At his signal there was a barely perceptible stirring throughout the highlands – doors and hatches opening, enormous muzzles emerging. Another signal from the island commander, then all hell broke loose. Every gun, howitzer, and mortar on the island began pounding the exposed American Marines.

This was the bloodiest bombardment the Marines ever suffered in the war. The enormous 320mm spigot mortar rounds, visibly tumbling through the air like demonic fifty-five-gallon oil drums, blew groups of Marines to smithereens.

Marine Corps combat artist Charles Waterhouse portrays himself as a wounded Marine on Iwo Jima over 40 years later in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

By Col. Charles H. Waterhouse, USMCR (Ret.), 1989, acrylic on masonite.

Few people today are aware that the flag-raising on Mt. Suribachi captured in the famous photograph by Joe Rosenthal did not mark the end of the battle by any means. Even fewer know that Rosenthal’s photo actually captured the second flag-raising. Artist Howard Chandler Christy created a composite of both flag raisings in Flag Raising Iwo Jima, painted in 1945. Oil on canvas, Gift of the New York Detachment #1 Marine Corps League, June 1945.

Collection of the National Museum of the Marine Corps

The 25mm machine cannons swept across the open spaces like giant scythes, leaving wide swaths of bloody bodies. There was no shelter, the volcanic sand too loose for digging, the terraces heavily mined. The Marines cursed and kept moving ahead, thousands of men lurching forward, nearly blinded by the fire.

The Fifth Fleet did not take kindly to this unwelcome ambush of their landing force by Japanese gunners in the highlands. Ships and planes reacted quickly, giving Kuribayashi a taste of his own medicine, stinging his exposed gun positions with shrapnel and napalm. The little island seemed to rock and quake, literally hell on earth.

The Marines suffered and bled but did not panic. The veterans in the ranks steadied the rookies, junior men took over from fallen leaders, and shot-up units merged quickly to maintain the attack.

Field radios crackled with urgent pleas to the fleet for plasma, stretchers, mortar shells – and sandbags.

The loose sand would allow no foxholes (“like digging a hole in a barrel of wheat!”).

Marine infantry and tanks attack Japanese positions on rocky Northern Iwo Jima during a direct frontal assault. The explosion seen is an enemy mortar shell. This advance gained 20 yards at a cost of 30 Marines.

Photo courtesy of the Marine Corps Historical Collection

Schmidt and his marvelous staff filled each demand with an urgency of their own. The stuff flowed ashore – and somehow kept moving inland. So did the reserve battalions and regiments of the assault divisions. By dark Schmidt had an incredible 30,000 Marines ashore, well supported by tanks, half-tracks, and field artillery. Already the Marines outnumbered the Japanese on the island.

Just getting ashore was a bitch. Crossing the terrace minefields was a bitch. The Rock Quarry was a bitch (Jumping Joe Chambers lost 22 officers and 500 men from his 3d Battalion, 25th Marines, scaling those heights on D-Day alone!). And seizing Mount Suribachi was beyond a bitch.

But Suribachi had to fall. From its cave-dotted heights Japanese gunners continued to shoot Marines in their backs as they wheeled north to wrest the first airfield from Kuribayashi’s disciplined defenders.

[On the fourth day a patrol from the 28th Marines fought their way to the summit, raised a small flag under fire, then replaced it with a larger flag, one that could be seen by “every sonofabitch on the island.” Associated Press combat cameraman Joe Rosenthal immortalized the second event with his iconic snapshot. Staff Sergeant William Genaust took the stirring motion picture footage simultaneously.]

Three of the six flag-raisers in the historic Rosenthal photograph would die in the fighting to come; two others would fall wounded. Photographer Genaust would die in a cave shoot-out. And the battle for Iwo Jima had only just been joined. Dead ahead lay Kuribayashi’s main defensive belt and the island’s increasingly broken terrain, all uphill from the landing beaches. The island was too constrained for major flank attacks; towering cliffs along the northern shoreline ruled out any end-run amphibious landings.

Schmidt had no option other than attacking frontally into the teeth of the Japanese strength.

The fighting took a heavy toll of proven Marine leaders. Five of the twenty-four infantry battalion commanders who landed on Iwo Jima were killed in action; twelve others fell wounded.

Iwo Jima took such a toll on leaders that junior officers and enlisted men assumed roles of responsibility unimaginable in garrison.

Sunday, March 4, the end of the second week of the battle, seemed at first to be simply another day of the extended bad dream, another cold and drizzly day, another day of slaughter. The V Amphibious Corps had already sustained the loss of 13,000 Marines, including 3,000 dead. The thrilling sight of the flag being raised on Suribachi ten days earlier seemed like a lifetime ago.

But now two events occurred to turn the tide of battle – one unseen and only later realized, the other visible to every man on the island.

Without knowing it, the Marines had finally cracked Kuribayashi’s main defensive belt across the central highlands and killed Colonel Chosaku Kaido, the gifted artillery chieftain. Kuribayashi would this day abandon his well-sited command post and take refuge for the remaining three weeks in a cave in an ungodly gorge on the northwestern tip of the island, still in command, but considerably less in control.

The second key event of March 4 occurred unexpectedly that afternoon when the B-29 Superfortress Dinah Might, crippled in a raid over Tokyo, made an emergency landing on the fire-swept and still unconverted bomber strip on Iwo.

Marines in every foxhole let out a resounding cheer. “That’s why we are here!” said one.

The Marines renewed the battle with multiplied fury, led by their tanks.

Iwo Jima marked the largest deployment of Marine Corps tanks in the war, 150 Shermans, and they were invaluable. The tank battalions combined forces to lead the Marines’ assault across the hotly disputed second airfield against galling fire from Japanese 47mm and 57mm antitank guns, a spectacular, high-explosive firefight.

Eight of these tanks had been field-modified to mount an experimental flamethrower that could spout napalmthickened fuel at a range of 150 yards through a look-alike tube in place of its main turret gun. The “Zippo Tanks” became the weapon of choice of the landing force – and the target of most urgent priority for the Japanese 109th Division.

General Kuribayashi had exhorted each of his troops to kill at least ten Americans in exchange for their own lives. While few achieved this distinction, the ratio of 1.25 Marine casualties (killed, wounded, missing) for every Japanese killed was the highest in the war. It was the first and only time a Marine landing force suffered greater casualties than they inflicted on the defending garrison.

The Battle of Iwo Jima also featured the largest concentration of Navajo Code Talkers in the war to date. The Navajos spoke one of the most unique dialects in the world. They drove Japanese cryptologists crazy in their repeated attempts to break or translate U.S. tactical communications.

African-American Marines made their mark at Iwo Jima as well.

Black Marines at Iwo served as ammo humpers and stevedores by day – keeping the vital flow of combat cargo moving north into the lines – and fought the Prowling Wolves at night. Privates James Whitlock and James Davis received Bronze Stars for their valor in derailing a violent Japanese counterattack with unerring carbine fire at great personal risk.

Once the Marines forced General Kuribayashi to evacuate his headquarters in the central highlands for the northwest coast, the discipline of his principal subordinates began to crumble.

A brigade commander who had successfully withstood the assaults of the 4th Marine Division in the “Meat Grinder” for weeks gave in to despair one night and launched a traditional banzai attack.

The 4th Division, glad to have live targets in the open for a change, reacted calmly, set the stage with illuminating rounds from the ships offshore, laced the approaches with artillery and mortars, shredded the attacking columns with well-sited machine guns, then rose up with a vengeance to greet the survivors at bayonet point.

The Japanese brigade commander and 700 of his troops lay lifeless among the rocks at daybreak.

Given this windfall, the 4th Marine Division accelerated its advance to clear the east coast, finishing the job with a flourish two days later.

The 3d Marine Division reached the north coast on March 16, the advance patrol leader sending a canteen of seawater back to General Schmidt marked “For inspection – not consumption.”

On that date the top brass declared the island secured, a communique received with snorts and hoots by the 5th Marine Division, still fighting desperately against a wellarmed, intractable enemy near Kuribayashi’s final cave in what was now being called “The Bloody Gorge.”

Using time-proven but costly “blowtorch and corkscrew” tactics to clear the final gorge took the division another ten days of bitter fighting. [Major General Graves] Erskine’s 3d Division took over part of the sector for the final knockout blows. Abruptly the great battle was over. Admiral Chester Nimitz’s accolade would endure longest, now chiseled into the granite base of the enormous bronze statue of the Suribachi Marines and their faithful corpsman at Arlington Cemetery: “Uncommon valor was a common virtue …”