The Japanese defending Iwo Jima on D-day displayed superb tactical discipline. As Lieutenant Colonel Justus M. ‘Jumpin’ Joe’ Chambers led his 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines, across the first terrace on the right flank of the landing beaches, he encountered interlocking bands of automatic-weapons fire unlike anything he had faced in Tulagi or Saipan. ‘You could’ve held up a cigarette and lit it on the stuff going by,’ he recalled. ‘I knew immediately we were in for one hell of a time.’

The Battle of Iwo Jima represented to the Americans the pinnacle of forcible entry from the sea. This particular amphibious assault was the ultimate’storm landing,’ the Japanese phrase describing the American propensity for concentrating overwhelming force at the point of attack. The huge striking force was more experienced, better armed and more powerfully supported than any other offensive campaign to date in the Pacific War. Vice Admiral Raymond A. Spruance’s Fifth Fleet enjoyed total domination of air and sea around the small, sulfuric island, and the 74,000 Marines in the landing force would muster a healthy 3-to-1 preponderance over the garrison. Seizing Iwo Jima would be tough, planners admitted, but the operation should be over in a week, maybe less.

By all logic, the force invading Iwo Jima should have prevailed, quickly and violently. But the Japanese had also benefited from the prolonged island campaigns in the Pacific. Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi commanded the 21,000 troops on the island. Formerly a cavalry officer, Kuribayashi was a savvy fighter, one who could glean realistic lessons from previous combat disasters. He decided to junk the defensive tactics used by his predecessors in the ill-fated campaigns in the Gilberts, Marshalls and Marianas. Significantly, Japanese forces on Iwo Jima would defend the island in depth–from hidden interior positions, not at the water’s edge–and they would eschew the massive, suicidal banzai attacks. Kuribayashi figured if the garrison could maintain camouflage and fire discipline, husband its resources and exact disproportionate losses on the invaders, maybe the Americans would lose heart. His senior subordinates may have grumbled at this departure from tradition, but Kuribayashi’s plan made intelligent use of Iwo’s forbidding terrain and his troops’ fighting skills.

Two well-armed antagonists had thereby set the stage for a violent confrontation close to Japan’s home waters. The ensuing battle produced memorable results:

• Thirty-six days of unremitting hell on a small, wretched, reeking island.
• The only major battle in the Pacific War in which the U.S. Marines suffered greater casualties than they inflicted on the Japanese defenders.
• Lingering controversies over the high costs and disputed dividends of the Pyrrhic victory.
• An enduring tribute–now embodied in the world’s largest bronze sculpture–to the fortitude of young Americans of all services who surpassed themselves under conditions we today can hardly imagine.

Iwo Jima means ‘Sulfur Island’ in Japanese. It is one of the Volcano Islands that extend east of Okinawa and roughly south of Japan itself. The island is about 12 square miles, larger than Tarawa, but much smaller than Saipan or Guam. Hilly, rocky, and generally barren, the island did not figure in the grand strategy of the Pacific for the first several years of the war. Formosa was the longtime goal of the Americans’ Central Pacific drive, once General Douglas MacArthur had recaptured the Philippines. But Formosa was huge, stoutly defended, and still a long stretch for bombing runs against the empire. Meanwhile, the Japanese built airstrips for their own bombers and fighters on previously unoccupied Iwo Jima. Planners on both sides could see the geographic reality. Iwo Jima was almost exactly halfway between the Marianas and the Japanese home island of Honshu.

Operational airfields represented valuable rungs in the strategic ladder leading to Tokyo. The American seizure of the Marianas in mid-1944 brought the main Japanese home islands within range of the newly developed Boeing B-29 Superfortress of the Army Air Forces. B-29s based in Saipan and Tinian began striking targets in Japan in late 1944, but the strikes were not yet truly effective. The thorn in the side was Iwo Jima.

Since no American fighters had the ‘legs’ to escort the Superfortresses to and from Japan, the B-29s were often at the mercy of fighter interceptors launched from Iwo’s airstrips. And Japanese bombers based on Iwo were an even graver threat. In fact, the Twentieth Air Force lost more B-29s to enemy bomber raids from Iwo Jima than it did on any of its long-range forays over the Japanese homeland. The absence of an emergency landing or refueling field for B-29s along the return route from Tokyo was yet another problem for strategic planners. In American hands, Iwo Jima would provide fighter escorts and a suitable divert base; the threat from Japanese bombers would be erased. These were compelling reasons to seize the island. On October 3, 1944, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) ordered Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief Pacific, to prepare for the seizure of Iwo Jima early in the coming year.

The JCS orders contained a contingency clause: Nimitz must continue providing covering and support forces for General MacArthur’s liberation of Luzon. Japanese defense of the Philippines proved tougher than anticipated, and the Iwo Jima invasion slipped a month. General Kuribayashi took maximum advantage of this grace period. The Japanese army’s general staff sent Japan’s best fortifications engineers, men with combat experience in China and Manchuria. Iwo Jima’s soft rock lent itself to swift digging. Japanese artillery pieces and command centers moved underground. A labyrinth of tunnels connected many positions, especially in the north. Engineers and laborers built five levels of underground defenses within some hills.

Mount Suribachi, dominating the island at 556 feet, eventually contained a seven-story interior structure. Kuribayashi had plenty of weapons, ammunition, radios, fuel and rations–everything but fresh water, always at a premium on that sulfuric rock. Indeed, American intelligence experts concluded that the island could support no more than 13,000 defenders because of the acute water shortage. Kuribayashi had many more men than that, but all of them were on half-rations of water for weeks before the invasion even began.

Admiral Spruance picked veterans of amphibious operations to command the major subordinate forces of the Fifth Fleet for the seizure of Iwo Jima. Vice Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner commanded Task Force 51, the joint expeditionary force, which included nearly 500 ships. Rear Admiral Harry Hill commanded Task Force 53, the attack force. Marine Maj. Gen. Harry Schmidt commanded the V Amphibious Corps, comprised principally of the 3rd, 4th and 5th Marine divisions. Operation Detachment, the code name for the invasion of Iwo Jima, would be the largest combat employment of U.S. Marines in history. Spruance and Turner asked the old warhorse Lt. Gen. Holland M. ‘Howlin’ Mad’ Smith, U.S. Marine Corps, to come along as commander of expeditionary troops. This was a contrived billet. Unlike the preceding operations in the Central Pacific, Operation Detachment would focus on a single island. General Smith, the amphibious pioneer, had enough strength of character to keep out of Harry Schmidt’s way.

Roughly half the Marines in the three assault divisions had experienced previous combat. Some, like Gunnery Sgt. ‘Manila John’ Basilone, were veterans of the first offensive, years earlier, at Guadalcanal. Basilone had received the Medal of Honor for his actions as a machine-gunner on ‘Starvation Island,’ but he had since refused a commission and volunteered to return to the Pacific for more action. Other veterans were younger. Private First Class Anthony Muscarella had joined the Corps illegally at age 14. Two years later, a veteran of heavy fighting in the Marianas, he was one of the best machine-gunners in the 4th Marine Division.

General Schmidt planned to land on Iwo Jima’s southeast beaches with two divisions abreast, the 4th Division on the right and the 5th on the left, next to Mount Suribachi. Schmidt kept the 3rd Marine Division in reserve initially. The amphibious assault of Iwo was a classic in its own right, favorably reflecting the lessons learned at such high cost starting with Tarawa 14 months earlier. The preliminary naval and aerial bombardment, however, disappointed most Marines. By D-day, the Americans had hit the island with 6,800 tons of bombs and 22,000 Naval shells. But the issue was accuracy, not volume. General Kuribayashi’s well-built, artfully camouflaged gun positions were hardly affected by the bombardment.

Some of Kuribayashi’s subordinate commanders lacked his iron will. When American underwater demolition teams approached the landing beaches in lightly armed LCIs (landing craft, infantry) during a daring daylight reconnaissance on D-minus-2, the defenders hiding in prepared positions along the slopes of Mount Suribachi were unable to resist opening fire. The frogmen and landing craft took grievous casualties but accomplished the job, finding no mines or underwater obstacles offshore. More important, many of the Japanese gun positions on Suribachi were revealed for the first time to Navy spotters. The fire-support ships had a field day.

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