Battle of Iwo Jima
The Americans took an island of twenty-one square kilometres in five weeks in 1945 and suffered more casualties than the defenders. Iwo Jima was wanted as an emergency airfield for bombers returning from Japan and as a base for escort fighters, and it was the first Japanese home territory to be invaded, which is why it was defended as it was. Kuribayashi had abandoned the doctrine of defending the beach. He built some eighteen kilometres of tunnels connecting bunkers, gun positions and command posts under volcanic rock, prohibited the mass banzai charges that had destroyed earlier garrisons, and ordered every man to kill ten Americans before dying. Three days of naval bombardment achieved almost nothing against positions under ten metres of rock. The landing on 19 February was unopposed for about twenty minutes while the marines struggled in volcanic ash that would not support vehicles, and then the whole island opened fire. The flag was raised on Mount Suribachi on the fifth day, and the photograph — of the second, larger flag, taken by Joe Rosenthal — became the most reproduced image of the war and the model for the Marine Corps memorial. The fighting went on for another month. Nearly 7,000 Americans were killed and 19,000 wounded; of some 21,000 defenders, about 1,000 were taken alive. The last two Japanese soldiers on the island surrendered in 1949. The casualty ratio at Iwo Jima and Okinawa fed directly into the arguments made that summer about invading Japan. Kuribayashi's own letters home, published later, are unusually clear-eyed. He had spent time in the United States as a young officer, wrote that it was the last country Japan should fight, and told his family that he did not expect to return.
- Year: 1945 CE
- Category: Military
