Apprehension. Agony. Fear. Those were the feelings shared by 60,000 United States Marines on 880 ships whose latest job was to storm the beaches of the little island known as Iwo Jima. The island, just over four and half miles long and two and a half miles wide, was within bombing distance to the main islands of Japan. By 1944 the U.S. had for the most part pushed the Japanese back to their islands and destroyed most of their navy. The reason for the island to be taken was enormous; there were two air bases on it that could be used by American bombers. We had lost many planes and airmen when they flew too close to the island on the way to and from bombing Japan.
The plan that the Americans had was that they were going to invade the island on the southern end, and then take Mt. Surbachi, which overlooked the whole island. They hoped that all the bombings they had done from June 1944 to January 1945 had wiped out the majority of the Japanese army on the island. For the three days preceding the invasion there had been constant bombings. The reason for the extensive bombings was that intelligence showed that the island was heavily defended; to what extent they didn’t exactly know. The unfortunate part of the intelligence is that they didn’t know about the cave and tunnel system the Japanese had on the island.
In the early morning of February 19, 1945 the United States Marines stormed the shores and didn’t encounter enemy fire until they were firmly on the island and then the Japanese opened fire. The cave and tunnel system was so elaborate that it was able to conceal more than 20,000 Japanese soldiers. They were able to surprise the Marines from pillboxes around and on Mt. Suribachi. More than 115 heavy guns fired at the Marines from the mountain. By the end of the first day the Americans had separated Mt. Suribachi from the rest of the island. But the fighting for the mountain wasn’t done there; it took until February 23rd to finally plant the U.S. flag at the top. That moment in time was memorialized by the famous picture of the men raising the flag, but the fighting was far from finished.
Through the first two days of fighting the U.S. had 5,372 casualties but the island hadn’t been taken yet. The fighting for the airfields began after the mountain was taken. It took until February 28th to break through the Japanese lines and capture the airfields. The push was on to get to the other end of the island. Finally on March 10th the U.S. Marines reached the shore and split the Japanese troops. From this point on it was smaller mostly hand to hand fighting. The last push for the Japanese on Iwo Jima came on March 26th when 200 Japanese soldiers rushed out of their caves and attacked. The Japanese didn’t let up; they fought until the last breath was taken from them. The Japanese soldiers on the island knew that they would defend their island to the death.
By capturing Iwo Jima it lead to the saving of tens of thousands of airmen’s lives in the later bombings of Japan. As beneficial as that was it did come with a cost, in all the Americans suffered 25,851 casualties, and of those 6,825 were killed. The Japanese suffered close to 22,000 deaths, only 216 were captured.
