The B-29 Superforts which had been flying from Saipan to Tokyo since November 24 had been suffering severe losses. Japanese antiaircraft fire was savage. There were many fighter planes left to defend the Japanese home islands, and some would ram a Superfort if they could not shoot it down. And there was no chance of surprise because Iwo-based radar warned the homeland in time to fly off fighter protection.
Worst of all was the long 1,500-mile flight home. Crippled Superforts unable to fly more than a few hundred miles from Tokyo fell into the sea and were lost with their crews. Those which fell between Iwo and Saipan might be reached by Dumbo rescue planes, but if the crews were saved, the enormously expensive B-29’s were surely lost.
With Iwo Jima in American hands, the Superforts could fly much closer to Tokyo undetected, they could be escorted over the Japanese capital by Iwo-based fighters, and men shot down off the very shores of Japan might even hope for the arrival of Iwo-based rescue planes. Most important, any Superfort capable of flying halfway home could be saved by an emergency landing at Iwo. With the eventual use of Iwo Jima as a regular stop-off on return flights, smaller gasoline-loads would make possible bigger bomb-loads. Iwo’s own raids on the Marianas would cease, bringing about the release of Marianas-based fighters for use elsewhere, and possession of the island would nail down the right or eastern flank of the Okinawa operation.
Such was the importance and urgency of Iwo Jima in early 1945. Rarely before had an objective been so clearly necessary. Perhaps never before had so much counted on the seizure of such a no-count place.
It was only 4? miles long, 2? miles wide, this Iwo Jima or Sulphur Island. It was a loathsome little cinder clog, a place black and charred and shaped like a lopsided pork chop. To Major Yokasuka Horie, who had come to it in late 1944, the place was an abomination. It was “only an island of sulphur, no water, no sparrow and no swallow….” Major Horie’s detestation of Iwo was evident in what may stand as one of the world’s most original defense plans, the one he submitted to his superior, Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi.
“Now we have no fleet and no air forces,” Major Horie’s plan stated. “If American forces will assault this island it will fall into their hands in one month. Therefore it is absolutely necessary not to let the enemy use this island. The best plan is to sink this island into the sea or cut the island in half. At least we must endeavor to sink the first airfield.”
General Kuribayashi rejected the plan. After a few more disagreements with his staff officer, he transferred Major Horie to Chichi Jima, 160 miles to the north. Tadamichi Kuribayashi was like that: curt, stern, cold—one of those moon-faced, pudgy men who are all ruthless energy and driving determination. The troops did not like him. They had no girls of the “comfort troops,” no saki, only duty. They called him a martinet. But Tadamichi Kuribayashi was something more than that: he was a perfectionist.
He had begun his career in the cavalry, the elite service of the Japanese Army. In 1938 and 1939 he was a colonel commanding the 7th Cavalry Regiment during action in Manchuria. In 1940 he was promoted to major general and given the 1st Cavalry Brigade. Two years later he was transferred to Canton and made chief of staff of the 23rd Army. He was called to Tokyo in 1943 on the ineffable assignment of reorganizing the Guards Brigade into the 1st Imperial Guards Division. And Tadamichi Kuribayashi had met the Emperor. Not many Japanese below cabinet rank are so favored, but Tadamichi Kuribayashi was going out to command at Iwo Jima, and Iwo Jima was in the very Prefecture of Tokyo.
He reached his unlovely black pork chop in June, 1944, taking over the usual mixture of Army and Navy troops which would eventually reach 21,000 men and of which his own 109th Infantry Division formed the nucleus. He sent the civilians back to Japan and grimly told his troops that it looked like a fight to the death. For comfort, he issued the Iwo Jima Courageous Battle Vow. It said:
Above all else we shall dedicate ourselves and our entire strength to the defense of this island.
We shall grasp bombs, charge the enemy tanks and destroy them.
We shall infiltrate into the midst of the enemy and annihilate them.
With every salvo we will, without fail, kill the enemy.
Each man will make it his duty to kill 10 of the enemy before dying.
Until we are destroyed to the last man, we shall harass the enemy by guerrilla tactics.
The Vow may have sounded like the same old Bushido, but there was a new and coldly logical mind behind the defense plan which Kuribayashi drew up.
Like any good plan, it took utmost advantage of Iwo Jima’s unusual terrain. Unlike many plans, it had the genius of placing the right number of men at the right points. Lieutenant General Kuribayashi had hit on the great secret of proportion. Luck had given him the 21,000 men which was all that he needed and had also spared him the confusion of a crowd. With this force, with his engineers, with all the guns and ammunition he needed, with a sufficiency of stored water and the materials of fortification, he was going to make Iwo Jima into a fixed position at least unsurpassed in modern military history.
At the southwest end of this southwest-northeast-slanted island—at the very tail of the pork chop—stood Mount Suribachi, a dead volcano humping 550 feet above the sea. Here General Kuribayashi stationed from 1,500 to 2,000 men in a semi-independent position. Between Suribachi and the point north where the chop bellies out to Iwo’s extreme width of 2? miles was a flatland of volcanic ash about 1? miles wide and two miles long. Here was the island’s finest airfield, Airfield Number One. Here General Kuribayashi put only light infantry defenses, for here, either to west or to east, were Iwo’s only landing beaches. Here the enemy would have to come, and once the enemy was ashore, with his vehicles and ammunition and stores piling up behind him, with his boats coming ashore by the literal thousands, here would fall all the fire of Kuribayashi’s guns sited on Suribachi to the south and the high Motoyama Plateau to the north.
How many guns?
12 320-mm. spigot mortars
22 150-mm. trench mortars
4 15-cm. coast defense guns
4 14-cm. coast defense guns
9 12-cm. coast defense guns
12 12-cm. short coast defense guns
30 12-cm. dual-purpose guns
6 10-cm. dual-purpose guns
5 8-cm. dual-purpose guns
18 7.5-cm. dual-purpose guns
1 150-mm. howitzer
4 120-mm. howitzers
6 10-cm. howitzers
4 90-mm. howitzers
5 75-mm. pack howitzers
17 75-mm. field guns
24 70-mm. battalion guns
70 90-mm. or 81-mm. mortars
380 50-mm. heavy grenade discharhers (knee mortars)
54 47-mm. antitank guns
15 37-mm. antitank guns
4 40-mm. antiaircraft machine guns
213 25-mm. machine guns
9 23-mm. antiaircraft machine guns
4 20-mm. machine guns
168 13-mm. machine guns
30 tanks dug in as pillboxes
61 flame-throwers
350 heavy machine guns
480 light machine guns
