The Battle for Iwo Jima

falling when, at a quarter to seven, a kamikaze came boring in on Bismarck’s beam. A destroyer saw the plane but withheld fire, believing it to be friendly. It was not, of course, and the suicide plane struck squarely amidships. The stricken ship bucked and quivered. Torpedoes fell from a rack and exploded. Parked airplanes caught fire. Ammunition fell into the flames and began exploding.

At seven o’clock came the order: “Abandon ship!” Over the side, into the cold, black water, dove 800 American sailors and Marines. Down came the Japanese aircraft to strafe them while escort ships rushed to their rescue and fought off their inhuman assailants. Then there was a rocking explosion. Bismarck Sea’s stern had blown off, and she rolled over and sank. Lost in the waters around her were 218 Americans.

Three other American ships were also attacked that night, but none was lost. And of the 50 enemy aircraft that had come from Japan in the only successful counterstroke of the Iwo campaign, not one returned to base.

In the early morning darkness of February 22, the 3 Division entered the fight. Its 21 Regiment relieved the exhausted 23 of the 4 Division. Now forces advancing up the island consisted of the 5 on the left, the 3 in the center and the 4 on the right. But the 3 could make little headway in the center, attacking during a cold rain and under heavy enemy fire. By nightfall they had gained only 250 yards. The men of the 3 had quickly learned that Iwo Jima was indeed an iron nut of an island to crack.

On the right, meanwhile, the 4 did little more than hold tight. But there were still casualties, and one of them was Jumpin’ Joe Chambers. A machine-gun bullet struck him in the left collarbone, piercing his lung and going out his back. As Colonel Chambers lay on the ground receiving medical treatment, Captain Jim Headley came up and tapped him gently on the foot. “Get up you lazy bum,” Headley teased. “You were hurt worse on Tulagi.” But Jumpin’ Joe could not get up this time, and with his evacuation the 25 Regiment had lost all three of the battalion commanders who had landed on D day.

On Friday, February 23, when the flag was raised over Suribachi the news was broadcast to the men attacking to the north.

“Mount Suribachi is ours,” a beachmaster blared over his bull horn. “The American flag has been raised over it by the Fifth Marine Division. Fine work, men.”

Marines in the north who dared to take their eyes from the front turned to squint to the rear. Some of them saw the flag. But they did not cheer, because their objectives still had to be taken. The bull horn might blare again: “We have only a few miles to go to secure this island,” but these young Marines knew what they would have to pay for a few miles. “Only,” they repeated. “Only…”

In the 3 Division’s central sector the Marines would knock out a bunker or a pillbox and discover that they had ventured into a wicked maze that struck at them from every side. It was just not possible to find a weak spot. The destruction of a single position did not blast a hole which could be widened for a breakthrough. This was because Kuribayashi’s defense system was “mutually supporting.” An attack on one position not only drew the fire of its guns, but also the massed, converging fire of the other positions around it. Knocking out one position put only one small dent in the enemy’s front. It was as though the Japanese had constructed a gigantic Swiss cheese made of steel and concrete. Into this the 3 Division rammed again and again with very little success.

One company simply could not move. While trying to budge the enemy they had lost eight of their nine flame throwers. The ninth was carried by Corporal Hershel Williams. Covered by four riflemen, Williams attacked. The first yellow burst from his flamer incinerated a Japanese sniper. Next, he destroyed four more enemy soldiers. Moving slowly forward, Williams burned out position after position. In a four-hour assault he destroyed one of the enemy’s key networks, and he won the Medal of Honor.

Nevertheless, the center had not moved forward far enough. The 3 still lagged behind the 5 on the left and the 4 on the right. This prevented the formation of a straight line of attack from coast to coast. The flank divisions did not dare to move ahead for fear of opening gaps between themselves and the 3. General Schmidt saw the necessity of straightening the line of attack when he came ashore on the 23 to take charge of the entire assault. It was also painfully obvious to General Erskine, commander of the 3, who had landed on Iwo, too. That night he told his Marines that they must drive forward next day “at all costs.”

February 24 was a Saturday. It began with the full weight of American firepower falling on the entrenched, unseen enemy. But the Marines of the 3 Division had to attack without the benefit of their tanks. Very quickly two company commanders were killed. Lieutenant Raoul Archambault took over one of the companies. A decorated veteran of Bougainville and Guam, the tall, lanky Archambault was an inspiring leader. His men began to yell as he led them forward. Wind-whipped sand pelted their faces like fine buckshot. Yelling louder, the Marines swept through the first line of pillboxes. Then they sprinted up the slopes leading to Airfield Number Two.

Behind Archambault’s men the tanks were finally able to come up. They began to clean out the by-passed enemy positions. The Marines were at last punching out that long-desired hole. Now the yelling Americans swept over the airfield. Men in green dungarees fell, but others pressed forward. They rushed up a 50-foot ridge just north of the airfield, and then their own artillery fired on them by mistake. To avoid it, the Marines came back down the hill. The artillery fire stopped and they went up again. Then the Japanese counterattacked and drove them down once more. At this point, another company had come through the hole and joined Archambault’s. But both of them were being hit on their exposed flanks and the only way to go was forward.

For the third time, Archambault’s men surged up the ridge. As they did, a wave of Japanese soldiers flowed over the crest and came down among them. Brown mingled with green. Hoarse shouts arose in both languages. “Banzai! Banzai!” “Kill! Kill!” Standing back to back in ankle-deep sand, fighting with clubbed rifles and bayonets, with knives and fists, the Marines held firm. When the skirmish was over they stood alone among the bodies of 50 dead Japanese. Now the key ridge was theirs, and as they went up again and dug in for the night, the orders to advance “at all costs” were changed to “Hold at all costs.”

On that same Saturday the Japanese on the other end of the island received news that Suribachi had been conquered. The report came from one of their naval lieutenants and a party of men he had led through the American lines after their escape from the volcano. But the lieutenant, weary and bloodstained, got a strange reception when he arrived at the headquarters of Captain Samaji Inouye. The captain accused him of leaving his post.

“You traitor!” Captain Inouye bellowed. “Why did you come here? Don’t you know what shame is? You are a coward and a deserter!” Grasping his thick-bladed Samurai saber with both hands, Captain Inouye raised it above his head. “Under military regulations a deserter is executed right away,” he shouted. “I shall behead you myself!”

Without a word the lieutenant knelt and bowed his head. He would not argue with a captain. He would not even tell him that he had been ordered to escape. But the blade did not fall. Captain Inouye’s aides rushed up to wrest his saber away from him. They knew that the captain believed that every position must be defended to the last man. But they also knew that the lieutenant had escaped to report on Suribachi’s fall and to fight again in the north.

Still, Captain Inouye could not restrain his tears. Over and over he murmured, “Suribachi’s fallen, Suribachi’s fallen.” This, he well knew meant the beginning of the end. Thus, the Marines had begun to shake the enemy’s belief in their ability to defend Iwo Jima.

Victorious though the Americans might be, they were paying for their progress. After six days of fighting they had lost 1,600 killed, 5,500 wounded and 650 others hospitalized for “combat fatigue,” a phrase describing men so shocked or exhausted by battle that they simply cannot go on. In all, the Marines had suffered about 7,750 casualties. Such losses were staggering. With only a little more than a third of Iwo Jima in American possession, the reserve had already gone into action and replacements were being brought ashore to fill out riddled units.

These replacements were not “second-stringers;” they were good, trained men who were the equal of the dead or wounded Marines whose places they took. Instead of being assigned to a regular “outfit,” they were part of a big pool of men that each division took along on an invasion. They remained on the ships until they were needed.

Going into battle was doubly hard on replacements. They had no friends, because the squads they had trained in had been broken up so that the men could be fed piecemeal into the units already engaged. Replacements were the waifs of war. They joined a squad as perfect strangers and, as often happens, the “dirty duty” fell to them. A group of replacements arriving at the headquarters of a battle formation might receive a greeting like this: “Okay, you men are in F Company now. In a couple of minutes we’re going to be moving out. So