America at war! (1941–) – Part 4

9071

‘A very tough proposition’ –
Whatever the cost, Yanks will take Iwo, Marine leader says

Gen. Smith calls battle ‘most difficult problem’ for Leathernecks in 168 years
By Mac R. Johnson, United Press staff writer

ABOARD ADM. TURNER’S FLAGSHIP OFF IWO JIMA – Lt. Gen. Holland M. Smith, commander of the Fleet Marine Force of the Pacific, said today the Americans will capture Iwo Jima no matter what the cost.

Gen. Smith said the battle now taking place is “the most difficult problem with which the Marine Corps has been confronted in 168 years.”

“We expect to take this island and while it will be at a severe cost, it is our assigned mission,” he said.

The island is so small, he said, that it is almost impossible to maneuver ground forces. Therefore, frontal attacks on strongly fortified Jap positions are necessary.

Gen. Smith was deadly serious. His lips were set in a firm line and when he talked to correspondents, his voice was low-pitched.

He said:

We are up against a very tough proposition. We anticipated a severe battle and we are making slow progress. The beaches caused us some very serious difficulties due to its character.

There is a large amount of wreckage on the beach due to the destruction of our boats in landing operations. In spite of these difficulties, however, there have been sufficient water rations and ammunition to carry on the battle.

The casualties have not been any greater than I anticipated. It is my considered opinion that naval gunfire and air support since D-Day have been all that we could expect.

Gen. Smith said the Japs had been living in underground tunnels and caves.

“It must not be forgotten that the Japs consider Iwo Jima as the homeland,” he said. “There is every indication that our fanatical enemy will fight to the bitter end.”

He said that he believed that when the beaches are better organized and roads improved, the Americans will progress faster.

9072

Two miles of Iwo beach filled with wreckage – all ours

Japs aimed weapons at shore long before Yanks landed – and they didn’t miss
By Sgt. David Dempsey, USMC combat correspondent

IWO JIMA – The invasion beach of this island, stormed four days ago by Marines in the face of blistering Jap mortar and artillery fire, today is a scene of indescribable wreckage – all of it ours.

For two miles extending from Mt. Suribachi at the southern tip of the island is a thick layer of debris. Wrecked hulls of scores of boats testify to the price we paid to get our troops ashore on this vital island.

For two continuous days and nights, Jap artillery, rockets and heavy mortars laid a curtain of fire along the shore. Their weapons had been aimed at the beach long before we landed. They couldn’t miss and they didn’t.

Volcanic sand on this beach is so soft that many of our vehicles were mired down before they had gone 10 feet. In addition, a terrace a few yards from the water hampered their movements so that they became an easy prey for Jap gunners.

Only a few trucks got ashore and for two days practically all supplies moved by hand to the front. Even the unconquerable jeep was stuck.

One can see amphibian tractors turned upside down like pancakes on a griddle; derricks brought ashore to unload cargo are tilted at insane angles where shells blasted them; anti-tank guns were smashed before they had a chance to fire a shot. Even some bulldozers landed too early to clear a path for following vehicles. Artillery could not be landed for 24 hours.

Packs, clothing, gas masks and toilet articles, many of them ripped, by shrapnel, are scattered across the sand for five miles. Rifles are blown in half. Even letters are strewn among the debris as though the war insisted on prying into a man’s personal life.

Scattered amid the wreckage is death. Perhaps the real heroes of this battle for Iwo Jima are the boys who sweated out the invasion. They are the coxswains who steered the landing boats through a gauntlet of fire and who didn’t get back. They are the unloading parties who for one entire day unloaded hardly a boat because few boats made it.

Instead, they hugged the beach while shells hit into the sand all around them.

On D-Day, beach parties suffered heavy casualties in killed and wounded.

And there were the aid and evacuation stations which couldn’t move up to the comparative safety of the forward area. Our battalion aid station lost 11 of its 26 corpsmen in the first two days.

Death is not a pretty sight, but it has taken possession of our beach. An officer in charge of a tank landing boat received a direct shell hit while trying to free his boat from the sand. He was blown in half. A life preserver supports the trunk of his body in the water.

Marines killed on the beach were buried under the sand as the tide came in.

On the third day, we began to get vehicles and supplies ashore in quantity. Wire matting made the beach passable and naval gunfire knocked out most of the Jap artillery.

The miracle was that we were able to supply our troops at all during the two days of increasing shelling on this beach.

The boys who did it, as the saying goes, deserve a medal, but a lot of them won’t be around when the medals are passed out.

9073

U.S. planes sink Jap ship, 800 Yank prisoners killed

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9074

Wildcat strike shuts J&L mill, 8,500 men idle

Maintenance men defy Murray order

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9075

2 Congressmen trade punches

Liar, Communist charges hurled

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9076

U.S. casualties top 800,000 mark

WASHINGTON (UP) – U.S. combat casualties announced here passed the 800,000 mark today.

Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson also announced that Allied armies have captured more than 900,000 Germans in Western Europe since D-Day. These are in addition to the 100,692 German prisoners taken in Sicily and Italy and 134,300 taken in North Africa.

Mr. Stimson said U.S. Army casualties on all fronts compiled through February 14 were 711,497. This figure reflected actual events through the middle of January.

Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard casualties to date have totaled 89,665. The grand total of 801,162 was an increase of 18,982 over last week’s total.

The Army and Navy casualties included:

Army Navy Totals
Killed 138,723 33,862 172,585
Wounded 420,465 40,783 461,248
Missing 92,223 10,546 102,769
Prisoners 60,086 4,474 64,560
Totals 711,497 89,665 801,162

Of the wounded, Mr. Stimson said, nearly half have returned to duty.

9077

Kurils shelled, Japanese report

By the United Press

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9078

I DARE SAY —
Cockeyed world

By Florence Fisher Parry

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9079

Work-or-fight bill tightened by Senators

Labor hoarders would face prison

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House to probe Red commissions

New Army order to be investigated

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9080

Newspapers’ record lauded

Censor chief warns against ‘poisoning’

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9081

B-29s over Japan, Tokyo reports

By the United Press

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U.S. air losses drop in Europe

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9082

Despite new war on racket –
Numbers play rises, falls in various cities of U.S.

Some sections report policy gambling booms especially in view of horseracing ban
By the United Press

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9083

Bravest guys in world fighting on ‘Hell Island’

By the United Press

Iwo’s too crowded for both Yanks, Japs

U.S. PACIFIC FLEET HQ, Guam (UP) – Referring to the unparalleled density of American and Jap fighting troops on tiny Iwo, an American officer remarked today: “Someone’s going to have to get off and it isn’t going to be us.”

Iwo could well be named “Hell Island” where a battle beyond comparison with anything else anywhere is raging, a correspondent said today in a pooled broadcast from Adm. Richmond K. Turner’s flagship off the island.

The correspondent said:

The situation was terrific from first one side and then the other. But the Marines are going ahead and they’re driving the Japs back.

I saw the bravest guys in the world hiding in foxholes, running forward in a crouch, leaping into Jap emplacements and then finishing off the enemy at close quarters.

You know it takes guts to fight that way.

Replacements are constantly moving forward. There are Japanese bodies everywhere, too, and that makes you feel a little better.

He said the Jap artillery and rockets and the American warship bombardment throughout the night “makes a hell if there ever was one – and that is Iwo.”

Jap mortar and artillery fire is everywhere. When reinforcements arrive, there is a “Hail, hail, the ammunition is here.” We’ve got to have ammunition.

The beach itself is littered with scores of landing craft.

There is nothing anywhere to compare with the battle of this island – the Battle of Iwo Island.

9084

Last-stand Japs battle with spears

Yanks gain in Manila – Bataan mop-up ends

MANILA, Philippines (UP) – The last stage of the Battle of Manila degenerated into medieval warfare today with the Japs taking up spears in a desperate attempt to stave off certain annihilation.

U.S. troops encountered the frenzied tactics of the trapped enemy naval and marine personnel as they reduced the Jap pocket south of the Pasig River to less than one-tenth of a square mile.

The Americans were entrenched in a siege line along the playground and golf links, which once were the bed of the medieval moat around Manila’s ancient walled city.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur announced, meanwhile, that Bataan Peninsula was cleared completely and that the Jap forces on Corregidor were practically destroyed.

Bury 1,700 Japs

“So far as can be found, no living Japanese soldier is now on the peninsula,” Gen. MacArthur said, in disclosing the vindication of the famous American stand on Bataan three years ago.

More than 1,700 Japs were already buried on Corregidor, he said, and the count was only partially complete. Only isolated enemy stragglers holed up in caves remained to be mopped up on the island fortress guarding Manila Bay.

Reports from the front lines in Manila said the Japs apparently were running short of arms and were using spears in a bitter defense of their tiny pocket.

One group of 21 Japs was armed with only spears and grenades, while an enemy platoon fighting near the Army-Navy Club had only four rifles. The rest fought with spears attached to poles.

The Americans were withholding heavy shellfire from the area to avert as many civilian casualties as possible and the battle continued on savage hand-to-hand fighting.

Indicative of the situation was a report by Maj. Gen. O. W. Griswold, commander of XIV Army Corps which was attacking the holdout Japs.

“We will just go in fighting and kill every last Jap,” he said.

Blast Formosa

Gen. MacArthur’s communiqué revealed that Allied heavy bombers continued the steady attacks on Formosa, dropping 50 tons of explosives on installations near Heito and the barracks at Takao. Two more enemy freighters were sunk, one off the east coast of Formosa near Hong Kong.

9085

Major acquitted in looting case

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9086

Yanks seize more hills on Italian front

Vienna railyards hit by 15th Air Force

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Not a forgotten front, general says –
War in Italy ‘is definitely linked’ to plans for knockout of Germany

By Henry J. Taylor

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9087

Reds deny story of German committee

Assail U.S. papers and publishers

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9088

Petrillo snubs House hearing affecting him

‘Let him have it,’ Congressman says

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9089

A live shell in patient’s stomach –
Surgeons operate 105 minutes in peril of being blown sky high

By L. S. B. Shapiro, North American Newspaper Alliance

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9090

54 rescued nurses reach Honolulu

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