War Stories II (69 page)

The total of thirty-six days of fighting on Iwo Jima resulted in 19,000 U.S. troops wounded or MIA and 6,825 killed in action. The Marines had been fighting in combat for four years, but here—in just a month—the U.S. Marines suffered a third of all their casualties of World War II.

“Doc” Bradley, the Navy corpsman, in a letter home to his folks, wrote: “I never realized I could go four days with no food, sleep, or water, but now I know it can be done.”

Bradley was the only one of the three surviving flag-raisers on Iwo Jima who resumed a normal life after the war. He summed up his assessment of
the battle when he told his nine-year-old son upon his return, “James, I want you to always remember—the heroes of Iwo Jima are the guys who did not come back.”

Bradley returned to America to a hero's welcome by President Harry Truman, who sent Bradley and the other two survivors of the Iwo Jima flag raising on a war bond tour of thirty-three cities. Truman gave the men the impossible task of raising $14 billion in war bonds, which represented 25 percent of the national budget. The men accepted the responsibility and raised not $14 billion but $26 billion in two months—amounting to 47 percent of the U.S. budget.

Iwo Jima was one of the bloodiest battles in modern history. More Marines died there than in any other battle in the Pacific in WWII. And more U.S. Marines earned the Medal of Honor on Iwo Jima than in any other battle in U.S. history, while thousands of Marine veterans of that battle were awarded the Purple Heart. Twenty-seven Medals of Honor were awarded to Marines and sailors of Iwo Jima, many of them posthumously. Admiral Nimitz would remark after the battle, “Among the men who fought on Iwo Jima, uncommon valor was a common virtue.”

The Navy also lost two of its carriers at Iwo Jima. The famed USS
Saratoga
was hit by a kamikaze aircraft and sank. The escort carrier USS
Bismarck Sea
was likewise sunk. The Navy lost more than 1,000 sailors to the kamikaze attacks.

The Japanese defenders suffered 21,000 casualties, most of whom were killed in action. Surprisingly, in contrast to other island battles, more than 1,000 Japanese soldiers surrendered, despite their strong adherence to the samurai code.

And, as was the case on Tarawa and Peleliu, some Japanese stragglers hid in the caves until well after the war ended. The last two Japanese soldiers on Iwo Jima surrendered four years after the battle.

After the initial assault, the Marines didn't break through the last Japanese lines until 9 March. Iwo Jima wasn't declared secure until 26 March, following a banzai attack near the beaches. The Army's 147th Infantry Regiment relieved the Marines and assumed ground control of the island on 4 April.

After Iwo Jima was declared secure, more than 2,000 B-29 aircraft were able to make emergency landings on the island during later bombing raids of the Japanese mainland. These actions saved as many lives as there were total casualties in the Battle of Iwo Jima.

Chaplain Roland Gittelsohn said it best during the dedication of a battlefield cemetery on Iwo Jima:

Unfortunately, at the end of March, although the Marines of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Marine Divisions had secured Iwo Jima, they had no time to celebrate or even catch their breath.

The next island assault landings—on Okinawa—were just days away.

T
he morning of 1 April 1945 was Easter Sunday. It was also April Fools' Day.

Events on the two fronts were irrevocably bringing the world war to an end. In Europe, U.S. troops had encircled remaining German troops in the Ruhr Valley and the Soviet army had surrounded the capital city. In a Berlin bunker, Adolf Hitler and his henchmen were preparing for an ignominious end to their evil campaign for conquest of the West. 1 April was also D-Day for the Allied offensive into northern Italy, as the Axis began to crumble.

But for the more than 200,000 American soldiers, sailors, and Marines heading to Okinawa, it was “L-Day”—Landing Day—for a campaign the war planners called Operation Iceberg. Okinawa is the main island in the Ryukyu Islands group, halfway between Formosa and Kyushu. Tokyo was committed to the defense of Okinawa as long as they could. They sealed that determination with plans for maximum use of kamikaze attacks.

As the Allied troops aboard the invasion ships pressed closer to Okinawa, their officers stressed the importance of taking this final island, that it would help end the war. But they were also brutally honest. In light of the casualties inflicted at Iwo Jima, there was no reason to expect anything less at Okinawa. The question plaguing the Americans was how to fight an enemy so dangerous and so desperate that he was willing to kill himself in order to destroy you. The answer seemed obvious: The only option was to fight to the death—just as the enemy planned to do.