Battle of Iwo Jima (1945)

[NormanStewart]

Pittsburgher and 60 men start across Iwo, 3 make it

Lieutenant crosses island in 90 minutes through maze of pillboxes, gun emplacements
By Sgt. Keyes Beech, USMC combat correspondent

IWO ISLAND (UP, delayed) – Out of countless tales of heroism there came today the story of a Marine lieutenant and two enlisted men who fought their way through pillboxes, bunkers, blockhouses and machine-gun nests to cross to the western shore of this island only 90 minutes after they landed on the east.

When he hit the beach at H-Hour, February 19, 2nd Lt. Frank J. Wright, 25, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, had a platoon of 60 men.

By the time he had crossed the island an hour and a half later, two of the 60 remained with him and instead of being a platoon leader, Lt. Wright was a company commander.

Four of his company’s officers, including the company commander, were killed or wounded as they attempted to follow him across.

The company was part of a 5th Marine Division assault battalion which was assigned to cut directly across the island to the western shore and then pivot toward Mortar Mountain, as it is now called, to the left.

The two men with whom Lt. Wright blazed a death-strewn trail for 800 yards from shore to shore were Pvt. Lee H. Zuck, 22, of Scranton, Arkansas, and Pvt. Remo A. Bechelli, 26, of Detroit.

Lt. Wright is a son of Mr. and Mrs. Martin Wright of 2324 Primrose Street. He formerly attended Duquesne University where he played football. He was a certified accountant when he joined the Marines more than three years ago. He was commissioned in November 1943.

Lt. Wright said:

We weren’t trying to run a foot race. But our orders were to get across the island as fast as possible, and that’s what we did.

The going was almost too easy at the beach. It was still easy coming up those terraces. But when we hit the crest of the ridge, everything changed.

What happened was that the Japs had withdrawn from the beach and the terraces and taken their positions on the ridge. Some of them had gone all the way down to Suribachi [Mortar Mountain].

I would move along ahead while Bechelli and Zuck kept me covered with their BARs [Browning automatic rifles]. As soon as I could see where we were going next I’d motion to them to come on up.

That way we made pretty good time. but we never would have gotten across as soon as we did if it hadn’t been for the help the tanks gave us. We blew up some pillboxes but it was the men behind us who had to do most of the fighting.

We were leading the way.

We saw some Japs, seven or eight of them, running along a hill. I guess they must have been a mortar crew, because they didn’t seem to be armed. I think we got all of them.

At one point the three men came to an enemy 20-mm gun emplacement. There didn’t seem to be a way around it, so Pvt. Zuck leaped to the top of the emplacement and sprayed its occupants with his BAR, killing or wounding all of them.

Later in those 90 dramatic minutes, Pvt. Bechelli did virtually the same thing.

It was the first time any of the three men had been in combat.

[NormanStewart]

Hope, pain and patience are heritage of wounded

Shot through throat, jaw by Jap on Iwo, Keith Wheeler writes from Saipan hospital
By Keith Wheeler, North American Newspaper Alliance

Keith Wheeler, severely wounded on Iwo, is now writing from the base hospital on Saipan. This is the first of a series.

AT AN ARMY STATION HOSPITAL, Saipan (Feb. 25, delayed) – It is now five days since I was wounded by a Jap bullet on the beach at Iwo Jima.

When I was first hit, I thought I was killed and I accepted my death without much inner protest. Sometime late in the first hour, I began to hope that I would survive. The hope has progressed gradually, until now I am convinced my eventful recovery is a reasonable certainty.

In these 120 hours since the bullet smashed through my throat and jaw, I have run the usual course of experiences of those wounded in battle. Twice men of great courage who were strangers to me saved my life at great risk of their own.

Becomes pincushion

My wounds have been dressed and probed and x-rayed and I have become a pincushion for needles carrying morphine, Novocain, penicillin, whole human blood, plasma, and probably several other specifics I did not feel at the time.

Now, at the end of five days, my crushed lower jaw has been hemstitched to the upper in a rigid embroidery of stainless-steel wire and rubber bands. The enormous swelling that once had my neck and head a great shapeless, julpy balloon has gone down by half. The surgeon’s next job is to dig some stray bone splinters out of my flesh and to force one triangular chunk of bone into an approximate plumb with what used to be my jawline.

Thereafter I will settle down to a minimum of two months of eating only such liquids as I can suck through by clenched teeth and restraining my conversation to grunts. It may need much longer than that.

Because I am still relieved to be alive, because I still am physically strong and mentally interested and because I am not yet as hungry as I expect to become, I approach this prospect still with a certain cheerfulness. But I doubt if it lasts long.

I am truly and humbly convinced that the fact and circumstances of my wound are important to very few people. As they are the experiences of an individual, they are worth far less than I intend to write about them.

There were 600 wounded on my hospital ship alone. There were thousands more on others nearby. Every hour on the beach adds to the harvest of pain and disfigurement. There are far too many of us for any one of us to unique.

‘Some of us die’

Some of us lose arms or legs or eyes and some of us die. Some are paralyzed and some few are crazy when it’s over. Some of us may return to duty in a few days. Some of us never will be whole again. But the road to health is long and dark through pain.

Each of us is different, but all of us are alike. We are the wounded. If I write overmuch about the wounded me, it is because I know most about my own wound. When I write about me, I am in some sense writing about us all. About the fear and courage, stink and misery, discouragement and hope and disappointment, pain and patience that are the heritage of all of us who are the wounded.

[NormanStewart]

Völkischer Beobachter (March 2, 1945)

Schwäre Feindverluste auf Iwojima

Tokio, 1. März – Die Invasionskämpfe auf der Schwefelinsel der Bonin-Gruppe konzentrierten sich, Frontberichten zufolge, immer mehr, um die japanischen Flugplätze. Starke amerikanische Einheiten, die im Schutz von über 60 Panzern auf das Motoyama-Flugfeld im Inneren der Insel gelangten, wurden von japanischer Infanterie in blutige Nahkämpfe verwickelt.

Die Stellungen auf dem vulkanischen Berg im Süden der Insel, die in die Hände des Feindes gefallen waren, wurden in erbitterten Kämpfen von zahlenmäßig unterlegenen japanischen Streitkräften zurückerobert. Japanische Flugzeuge unterstützten die Verteidiger.

Wie die Berichte weiter besagen, ließ der stürmische Seegang, der die Bewegungen der feindlichen Flottenkräfte an den Vortagen behindert hatte, am 24. Februar soweit nach, dass weitere Transporter Panzer, Geschütze und andere Materialien landen konnten. Obwohl die feindliche Schiffsartillerie täglich bis zu 5.000 Schuss auf die Insel abgab, gibt selbst der Gegner zu, dass die Kampfmoral der japanischen Verteidiger ungebrochen ist.

Die feindlichen Verluste sind so hoch, dass der Gegner jetzt bereits zehn Lazarettschiffe in den Gewässern der Schwefelinsel einsetzen musste. Allein bis zum Abend des 22. Februar waren von den ersten drei amerikanischen Divisionen auf der Insel 14.000 Mann gefallen oder verwundet; sie dürften inzwischen die Zahl von 20.000 weit überschritten haben.

[NormanStewart]

U.S. Navy Department (March 2, 1945)

CINCPOA Communiqué No. 285

Attacking in the center of the enemy lines, the 3rd Marine Division drove a salient seven hundred yards deep into enemy positions and captured Hill 362 on Iwo Island on March 2 (East Longitude Date). Smaller advances were made in other sectors. The attack was launched after bombardment of enemy areas by Marine artillery, naval guns and carrier aircraft, and it was met by intense small arms, automatic weapons and mortar fire. The 5th Division beat off a counterattack in its zone of action.

A total of 7,127 enemy dead had been counted by 1200 on March 2. Prisoners of war total 32.

Destruction of enemy caves and strongpoints on Iwo Island is continuing. Restoration of the southern Iwo airfield is proceeding.

During the night of March 1, carrier aircraft made bombing and rocket attacks on Omura town and on the airfield on Chichi Jima in the Bonins, causing an explosion and fire. Seventh Army Air Force Liberators operating under the Strategic Air Force, Pacific Ocean Areas, bombed targets on Chichi Jima and Haha Jima on March 1.

Navy Search Venturas of Fleet Air Wing Two bombed and strafed airfield installations on Wake Island on March 1.

Fourth Marine Aircraft Wing Corsair fighters continued neutralizing enemy-held bases in the Marshalls.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 2, 1945)

Main defense belt on Iwo breached

Marines’ campaign near last phases

GUAM (UP) – U. S. Marines broke through the enemy’s main defense belt on Iwo in a hotly-contested advance to within 1,200 yards of the north coast today.

“The Iwo campaign is moving into its last phases,” United Press writer Mac R. Johnson reported from the invasion flagship off Japan’s tiny front doorstep island.

“The end of the campaign may come within three to four days if the Marine tempo of 400 to 600-yard daily average advance is maintained,” he said.

The 3rd Marine Division at the center of the front breached the enemy’s main defense line in an 800-yard advance that carried across the western end of Iwo’s third and last airfield.

The breakthrough at the center threatened to split the surviving garrison of probably fewer than 10,000 Japs in Iwo for piecemeal annihilation.

Both the eastern and western flanks of the enemy line were also under attack, but the 4th and 5th Marine Divisions in these sectors still have as much as 2,500 yards to go to reach the northern beaches.

In the west, however. Maj. Gen. Keller E. Rockey’s 5th Division seized Hill 362, one of the highest observation posts in the northern area.

Maj Gen. Greaves B. Erskine, commander of the 3rd Division, reported the central breakthrough to Lt. Gen. Holland M. Smith, invasion commander, aboard Vice Adm. Richmond K. Turner’s flagship.

Gen. Erskine said his veterans of the Guam and Saipan campaign, had battled through a belt of blockhouses and pillboxes on high ground from which the Japs swept the advancing Marines with murderous crossfire.

A Marine spokesman aboard Adm. Turner’s flagship said the fighting for the defense line was at the closest range of the entire 11-day campaign.

“When our men got into the enemy-held ground, they found the Japs still were there,” he said. “They had to fight it out and killed them in what could nearly be called ‘hand-to-hand’ fighting.”

It was believed the remaining enemy defenses guarding the north coast were not so strong as those which the Americans have just pierced.

Behind their lines, 3rd Division forces cleared encircled Motoyama village, administrative center and largest town on Iwo.

The northern airfield on Iwo – Motoyama Airfield No. 3 – now partly occupied by the 3rd Division, was never completed by the Japs. Their other two airfields are in American hands.

A Tokyo broadcast said Jap planes had spotted and attacked a “concentration of American convoys” off the Bonin Islands, just north of Iwo.

The Marines captured their largest one-day bag of prisoners of the 11-day campaign yesterday. Seventeen were rounded up by the 3rd Division, bringing the total since the invasion February 19 to 27.

U.S. carrier planes carried out harassing attacks on enemy installations on Chichi in the Bonin islands, north of Iwo, Wednesday night.

In the Marianas, 37 more Japs were killed and 52 captured in mopping-up operations on Saipan, 35 killed and 11 captured on Guam, and seven killed and two captured on Tinian.

[NormanStewart]

Beach on Iwo flaming hell, wounded say

100 victims flown to Pearl Harbor

NAVAL HOSPITAL, Pearl Harbor (UP) – Iwo’s beach was “a mess” … “a blazing blur” … “a flaming hell” …

Those impressions, along with unforgettable memories of American heroism, were carried today by first combat casualties from Iwo as they tested here en route home in flying Army ambulances.

More than 100 Marine, Navy and Seabee wounded, who were hurt in the first day and a half after the landing, arrived yesterday from Guam to where they first had been evacuated.

Torrent of Jap fire

A Marine public relations officer from Ohio grinned from his hospital cot as he told of the torrent of artillery, mortar, rocket and small arms fire that poured down on the first waves to hit the Iwo beaches.

Mortar fire had broken his leg. He stayed all night in a foxhole under heavy fire and finally was evacuated to Guam after one landing craft was sunk under him on the way to the hospital ship.

He said:

The beach was a mess when we landed. We could see that something was wrong. Tanks, barges and supplies were piled up on the shore and men were trying to dig in with their bare hands.

The Japs were raking the beach furiously from Mt. Suribachi and from a quarry to the north. Everybody was pinned down.

Cigar between teeth

The bravest man I saw was a young Marine about 19 with a carbine slung over his shoulder and a big cigar clamped between his teeth. He leaped out of his foxhole every time a barge landed to haul supplies forward with a tractor while hell whistled around him.

One 5th Division Marine from Staten Island, New York, had difficulty recalling his impression of the landing.

“I got mine from mortars within 10 minutes after landing. Iwo was just a blazing blur to me,” he said.

Another Staten Island Marine, veteran of the Tinian and Saipan invasions, said:

It was a Jap rocket that got me. You can’t hear them or see them coming your way like you can the mortars. Two 1,000-pound rocket bombs landed among a bunch of corpsmen and doctors and a third one got me five hours after the landings.

Japs from all sides

A Marine captain from Texas said:

Jap fire seemed to come from all sides – before, behind and above – as I moved up with the men.

I saw three Marines and three Japs pegging grenades back and forth from a foxhole just a few yards apart during one lull. The Marines must have won because I saw them move up later.

[NormanStewart]

Regret about lost future follows wound on Iwo Isle

Reporter remembers surgeon prying into ripped throat, wasn’t frightened of death
By Keith Wheeler, North American Newspaper Alliance

Keith Wheeler, severely wounded on Iwo Jima, is now writing from the base hospital on Saipan. This is the second of a series.

ARMY STATION HOSPITAL, Saipan (Feb. 26, delayed) – I suspect the most vivid single memory of my life will always be the blow of the bullet that smashed through my throat and jaw at 1:30 p.m. February 20.

Exactly as I remember it, I cannot describe it. It was a violent blow, with a quality of redness and a quality of precise, intended savagery. I felt it strike the right side of my face.

And this is a curious thing, because three days later I learned the bullet actually had struck the left side, going out again on the right.

I was in the regimental command post of the 25th Marines, where for an hour I had crouched in the bottom of a two-man foxhole with young Maj. John R. Jones while the Japs threw 400 screaming artillery shells into our position. The earth quaked and we sucked occasionally on a blessed canteen which Maj. Jones thoughtfully had filled with Benedictine and brandy.

When the Jap barrage shifted to the right, I stood up to watch the shells bursting among the American tanks on the airfield above us. That’s when I got hit.

I fell forward slowly, doubling my chin against a bright, hot, red freshet of blood that leaped before my eyes. Somebody yelled: “Lie down; lie back; quiet!”

I obeyed.

I did not question that I would die. I had seen a Marine hit the same way at Tarawa and had watched the life gush out of him in less than five minutes.

I wasn’t frightened. I only wondered how long it would take and whether I would know when it came.

There was a strange feeling in this because more than anything else about war, I have always hated the corpses – the pitiful, smashed, helpless, yellow, black, swollen and stinking things that were once men – and always I had dreaded the chance that I might look like that. Now it didn’t seem important and I understood that being one of them, I would be with good companions.

I wondered why I hadn’t heard the bullet coming, remembering all the whines and crackles I had ducked fearfully for more than three years.

And I thought with regret about the lost future and I wondered how Soon my wife and daughter and parents would learn of what had happened to me.

The hot, gushing flood spread across my body and face with incredible swiftness. Two slippery hands clutched desperately at my throat.

“You’ll choke him,” somebody said. Both hands shifted to the right and I could breathe again, the harsh gasping of my lungs sounding strange in my cars.

I opened my eyes and with a sort of detached curiosity watched and listened and felt the earth tremble as the Japs began to shell again. I could see that Maj. Jones was holding my head while Lt. Cmdr. Howard S. Eccleston, the regimental surgeon, and Lt. Jack Mortell, the dentist, bent over me, working.

I could feel fingers and instruments prying into my ripped throat, but there was no pain, only numbness and a sort of patient waiting.

“Can you get it?” somebody asked. Cmdr. Eccleston grunted, then said he had the upper one but the other was hard to find in the wound and the rush of blood. I understood they were trying to get clamps on a severed artery.

Cmdr. Eccleston grunted again with satisfaction and then cursed as the clamp slipped off. The pumping spread again swiftly and I wondered why I was able to stay conscious so long.

Except that my neck was stiff and some blood gurgled in each breath, I was not uncomfortable. I was growing sleepy and thought with a sort of quiet, friendly gratitude how these men I had barely met were exposing themselves to deadly danger trying to save a life already nearly lost.

[NormanStewart]

U.S. Navy Department (March 3, 1945)

CINCPOA Communiqué No. 287

Under heavy fire from small arms and mortars the 5th Marine Division on the left flank and the 3rd Marine Division in the center pushed forward in a general advance of 200 to 400 yards on Iwo Island on March 3 (East Longitude Date). Progress of the 4th Division on the right flank was slow due to extremely heavy enemy resistance in that sector. Attacks by the Infantry were supported by Marine artillery but close carrier aircraft support was limited by the small dimensions of the area now held by the enemy. A strong pocket of the enemy in the 4th Division zone of action near Minami continued to hold back our lines in that sector.

Carrier aircraft made bombing and rocket attacks on installations in Omura Town on Chichi Jima and on harbor installations at Haha Jima in the Bonins. One ship was sunk at Haha Jima.

Ships are unloading on both eastern and western beaches of Iwo Island.

Land-based aircraft have begun to use the Southern Iwo airfield for evacuation of the wounded.

Seventh Army Air Force Liberators operating under the Strategic Air Force bombed Omura Town and the airfield on Chichi Jima in the Bonins on March 2.

Two bridges were destroyed and fires were started on enemy-held islands of the Palaus after attacks by Corsair and Hellcat fighters of the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing on March 2.

Army Thunderbolts bombed airfield installations on Pagan in the Marianas on March 3.

Navy search Venturas of Fleet Air Wing Two bombed the Airfield on Wake Island through moderate anti-aircraft fire on March 2.

On the same date, fighter planes of the 4th MarAirWing struck neutralizing blows at enemy-held bases in the Marshalls.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 3, 1945)

Marines nearing north coast of Iwo

Leathernecks drive 700 yards in day

GUAM (UP) – The veteran 3rd Marine Division battled to within a half mile of the northeast coast of Iwo today in a determined bid to split the Jap garrison.

Maj. Gen. Graves B. Erskine’s 3rd Division resumed its attack early today after pushing ahead 700 yards to within 600 yards of sheer cliffs overlooking a 300-yard beach on the northeast coast yesterday.

A thrust to the northeast coast would isolate the Japs on the east coast from those on the northwest and speed final conquest of tiny Iwo, only 750 miles south of Tokyo. Front dispatches said the Iwo campaign was already entering its last stages.

Capture of a 362-foot height dominating Northern Iwo, by the 3rd Division yesterday, was expected to facilitate the drive to the northeast coast. The division was also within 1,200 to 1,400 yards of the northern tip of Iwo.

The Japs were still fighting desperately and exacting a steady toll of Marines despite losses of nearly three-quarters of the original garrison of 20,000 men.

The number of Jap bodies recovered by the Marines reached 7,127 – an increase of 2,343 since Monday – by noon yesterday and thousands more were known to have been pulled back by the enemy. Thirty-two prisoners have been taken.

A front dispatch from Marine Combat Correspondent Jim Lucas revealed that the Japs have begun attempts to supply the hard-pressed garrison from the air.

Jap planes dropped cargo chutes believed carrying tanks of water on northern Iwo for “thirst-crazed enemy troops,” Sgt. Lucas said. There are no springs or natural sources of water on Iwo.

The 4th and 5th Marine Divisions, slugging up the east and west coasts respectively, also made small gains yesterday over some of the most rugged and bitterly-defended terrain yet encountered in the Pacific.

Just ahead of the 5th Division lies the small west coast town of Nishi. The 5th Division yesterday beat off the first enemy counterattack since Tuesday.

Carrier planes made a bombing and rocket raid on Omura town and the airfield on Chichi in the Bonin islands, just north of Iwo. Army Liberators also attacked Chichi.

[NormanStewart]

Stretcher-bearers walk upright through heavy Jap shellfire

Wounded reporter knows only fear when told he will live – rain impedes Iwo evacuation
By Keith Wheeler, North American Newspaper Alliance

Last of a series.

176TH ARMY STATION HOSPITAL, Saipan (Feb. 26, delayed) – I don’t know exactly when I began to believe I had a chance to live, but anyway when I did, it made a coward of me.

Probably it was when Lt. Cmdr. Howard S. Eccleston, the regimental surgeon on Iwo, succeeded in keeping a clamp on the artery the Jap bullet had severed in my throat. He pressed a dressing down on the oozing wound and, his face bent intently over me, counted my pulse while someone else I couldn’t see drove a needle into my arm and started plasma pouring into me.

I was still conscious and my mind was clear. It occurred to me dimly that I had a chance.

So long as I had thought I was dying, I was unafraid. Now gradually fear and nervousness grew in me.

Had pitied wounded men

I always had pitied wounded men who stared at their doctors with terrible intentness, asking whether they would live. And I always had thought if I were wounded, I wouldn’t ask – knowing that if it were a near thing one way or the other, the doctor would try to make it easy for me.

But anxious hope and resolution don’t mix. My right eye was drowned in blood but I stared at him with the other and croaked through my blood-filled throat, demanding what chance I had.

“You’re going to be all right now,” he said. It was what I wanted him to say, of course, but I didn’t really believe him. Nor fully disbelieve him either. I wished I hadn’t asked.

Starts to rain

“If you had to get hit, you couldn’t pick a better spot than this – five feet from the two best docs in the division,” Maj. John R. Jones’ voice said above me.

I lay and watched the clear amber level of the plasma going down in the jar somebody was holding above me, and I heard Maj. Jones telephoning for stretcher bearers. It began to rain and somebody folded a poncho around me and held a flap of it over my face.

And the earth still trembled and sand dribbled down the sides of the hole with the cadenced thudding of Jap shells.

Carried gently

I was feverishly impatient by the time the stretcher-bearers came, but I don’t really thing they took long. They lifted me out of the hole, holding my body gently all along its length, put me down on the stretcher and wrapped the poncho around me. The rain was heavier now, dismal and cold.

It was 500 yards to the beach through sand so soft and pitted with shell holes that it was practically a wading job all the way. The stretcher-bearers made it in three stages, stopping twice to change hands.

As we neared the beach, the shelling grew heavier and closer and by the time I saw the blackened prow of a wrecked Jap looming above me, we were moving through a roaring hell of sound.

Waits for boat

Upright, helpless, burdened by my inert weight, the stretcher-bearers trudged through the storm-like fury. A shell exploded so near that my upward-staring eyes saw the top of its plume of smoke and dirt.

Near the water’s edge, the shelling was so intense that we had to wait 20 minutes for a boat to come in. Cold and wet and sick, and by now nearly indifferent, I lay and listened to the shells, wondering whether I would lose now, having come so far.

While the shells crashed all around us, the stretcher-bearers lay close on either side of me, using their bodies to build a human foxhole for mine. They were strangers also; I’ll never know their names and if I did, there’s nothing I could do to thank them. It’s more than likely they’re dead or wounded by now.

The boat came at last and got out again safely through the barrage.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 4, 1945)

Yanks hem in Japs on Iwo

Marines push foe back to sea

GUAM (UP) – U.S. Marines pushed the bitterly-resisting Jap defenders of Iwo Island back toward the sea Saturday as the 3rd and 5th Divisions advanced 200 to 400 yards through intense enemy fire, Fleet Adm. Chester W. Nimitz announced today.

The American troops were now within 500 yards of the northern tip of the island.

The Marines drove the Japs into a long narrow arc-like sector – an area so small that carrier aircraft were unable to strike effectively at the decimated enemy garrison.

U.S. ships now are unloading on both eastern and western coasts of the tiny embattled island. only 750 miles from Tokyo. Land-based aircraft are using the southern airfield to evacuate wounded men.

The 5th Division on the left flank and the 3rd Division in the center of the front line hacked out bloody gains through the main Jap defenses. But the 4th Division on the right flank made slow progress against heavy resistance.

Although within 500 yards of splitting the enemy forces, the Marines were still meeting fierce opposition. Marine artillery supported the American drive all along the line.

Between one-half and three-fourths of the 20,000 Jap troops on the island when the Marines landed were estimated to have been killed or severely wounded. For the remainder death was not far away.

Front dispatches disclosed that enemy planes were dropping water to the trapped and thirst-crazed Jap troops.

A 700-yard Marine advance Friday, one of the longest of the campaign, was made after a terrific barrage by artillery, naval guns and carrier aircraft. Now the Marines are nearing the craggy northeast coast and when they reach it, they will have split Lt. Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi’s fanatical garrison.

The American Leathernecks held all three airfields on the island after occupation of the Motoyama Airfield No. 3, an 800-yard fighter strip still in construction.

[NormanStewart]

U.S. Navy Department (March 5, 1945)

CINCPOA Communiqué No. 289

During the night of March 4-5 (East Longitude Dates), the enemy made a number of attempts to infiltrate into our lines on Iwo Island and subjected the Marines to substantial small arms and artillery fire. All enemy efforts to move into our positions were broken up. No appreciable change was made in the lines of the opposing forces on March 5. Improved wind and weather conditions facilitated unloading of supplies on both Eastern and Western beaches.

Seventh Army Air Force Liberators operating under the Strategic Air Force, Pacific Ocean Areas, bombed the airfield on Chichi Jima in the Bonins on March 4.

Corsair and Hellcat fighters and Avenger torpedo planes of the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing set an ammunition dump and a supply area afire and damaged a pier by bombing and rocket attacks in the Palaus on March 4. Two of our aircraft were lost.

Navy search planes of Fleet Air Wing Two strafed targets on Ponape in the Eastern Carolines on the same date.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 5, 1945)

Four-fifths of Iwo in American hands

Three-fourths of Japs on isle knocked out

GUAM (UP) – U.S. Marines completed the capture of four-fifths of Iwo today as the bloodiest battle of the Pacific war went into its third week on a rising note of fury.

More than 15,000 of the original enemy garrison of 20,000 troops have already been knocked out. But the remainder were fighting to the death for the shrinking strip of the north and east coasts still in their hands.

Stiffened enemy resistance reduced Marine gains to 100 yards yesterday. Hand-to-hand fighting with bayonets, grenades and even knives swirled through clouds of sulfurous steam rising from crevices in the volcanic terrain as the battle entered its final stage.

B-29 lands on Iwo

The Japs appeared to have chosen to fight from cave to cave and pillbox to pillbox until they finally have been thrown over the high cliffs of Northern Iwo into the Pacific. But a last “Banzai” suicide charge such as has marked the collapse of organized resistance on other islands is still a possibility.

Even as Marines continued their yard-by-yard advance to the north, Seabees repaired captured Motoyama Airfield No. 1 in Southern Iwo – first of three captured airfields – sufficiently for hospital planes to land and evacuate the wounded.

A Superfortress made an emergency landing for refueling on the airstrip yesterday after bombing Tokyo and took off four hours later. Eventually, Iwo’s airfields will be used regularly for refueling the B-29s and as a base for escorting fighters.

Find 12,846 bodies

Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, commander of the Pacific Fleet, announced that 12,846 Jap dead had been counted by 6 p.m. Saturday, an increase of more than 5,700 over the toll announced only 24 hours later.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands more enemy dead were believed behind the Jap lines.

Eighty-one prisoners had been taken by 6 p.m. Saturday, comprising 45 Koreans and 36 Japs, Adm. Nimitz said.

The 3rd Marine Division at the center of the front hacked out limited gains yesterday in its drive toward the northeast coast, a quarter mile away, in an attempt to split the enemy garrison.

Japs counterattack

The 4th Division, fighting through a ravine in the eastern sector, liquidated a troublesome Jap strongpoint near the town of Minami.

The 5th Division was engaged in hand-to-hand combat for enemy strongpoints on the northwest coast.

The Japs counterattacked the 5th Division in daylight yesterday and were repulsed with the loss of several hundred enemy troops.

Behind the front, other Marines were mopping up enemy stragglers and bypassed strongpoints. The Marines blew up the entrances to many fortified caves whose occupants refused to surrender.

Carrier planes teamed with Army Liberators in an attack on Chichi in the Bonin Islands, just north of Iwo.

[NormanStewart]

Devil’s cauldron seethes on Iwo

Sulfur fumes stem from crevices
By Lisle Shoemaker, United Press staff writer

WITH U.S. MARINE ASSAULT TROOPS ON IWO (March 3, delayed) – This volcanic terrain in Iwo’s mining district is the most horrible, grotesque and devilish ever imagined. It is what one would think the entrance to Hell looked like.

White clouds of sulfur fumes steam up from every crevice in the twisted crags and depressions of the nightmarish landscape.

Setting for ‘Macbeth’

This northern end of Iwo would make a perfect setting for the witches’ scene in Macbeth. It makes you think that all the witches in the world are crouched over a pot of devil’s brew on the other side of the next hill.

Half-obscured figures of Marines creeping through the evil-smelling clouds of sulfur fumes look like weird figures in a bad dream.

There are many dead Japs scattered around this fantastic spot just past captured airfield No. 2. Only a few sticks of charred, shattered wood mark the site of the house and sulfur mines of Motoyama.

Earth is warm

The earth is warm because of the sulfur boiling and bubbling underground. The troops who fight here merely dig down a little deeper when they are cold during the night.

There are a few dead Marines in sight, too. It takes only a glance at their bodies to realize that this hellhole is real and not a ghastly nightmare.

[NormanStewart]

Marine commandant’s son wounded on Iwo

WASHINGTON (UP) – The son of Lt. Gen. A. A. Vandegrift, commandant of the Marine Corps, was wounded in both legs in the invasion of Iwo.

He is Lt. Col. A. A. Vandegrift Jr., commander of an infantry battalion of the 24th Marine Regiment. He was hit by enemy mortar fire on the fifth day of the campaign.

Young Vandegrift received a leg wound during the invasion of Saipan last year. He is also a veteran of the Marshall Islands invasion and holds the Legion of Merit.

[NormanStewart]

U.S. Navy Department (March 6, 1945)

CINCPOA Communiqué No. 290

After the most intense artillery bombardment of enemy positions since the operation on Iwo Island began, elements of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Marine Divisions resumed the attack on the morning of March 6 (East Longitude Date). Fighting was heavy throughout the day with the enemy offering very stiff resistance and subjecting our forces to a heavy volume of small arms and mortar fire. By 1730 on March 6, the Marines had made small local gains on the left flank and in the center of the lines. Carrier aircraft supported the attack and naval guns were in action throughout the day.

The Marines had counted 14,456 enemy dead at 1800 on March 5.

Army fighters are using the southern Iwo airfield and air evacuation of wounded by transport plane continues. Unloading conditions continue to be favorable.

Army Liberators of the Strategic Air Force, Pacific Ocean Areas, bombed the airfield on Chichi Jima in the Bonins on March 5.

On the same date fighters of the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing bombed and set afire an oil dump, a supply dump and a house in the Palaus. Marine Corsair and Avenger torpedo planes attacked targets in the Palaus and on Yap in the Western Carolines on March 6.

Marine fighters strafed targets on Rota in the Marianas on March 6.

[rit_upy]

@NormanStewart

45 Koreans

Where they forced to fight for Japan, did they volunteering-ly signup for the empire?

[NormanStewart]

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 6, 1945)

Showdown drive imminent on Iwo

Leathernecks mass to annihilate Japs

GUAM (UP) – U.S. Marines were massing strength today for an all-out assault to split and annihilate the last thousands of Japs in Northern Iwo.

How many Japs remained to oppose the American push was not known definitely. A total of 12,864 enemy dead had been counted by 6 p.m. Saturday, but field dispatches estimated that at least three-quarters of the original garrison of 20,000 had been wiped out.

2,050 Yanks killed

American dead for the first 13 days – through Saturday – of the bloodiest campaign of the Pacific war totaled 2,050 (A Jap communiqué claimed “about” 20,000 Marines had been killed or wounded and 250 American tanks “either stranded or set afire” in the battle of Iwo).

The fighting front has remained virtually unchanged for more than 48 hours while the 3rd, 4th and 5th Marine Divisions brought up munitions and supplies for the attack. The 3rd Division, in the center, has only a quarter mile to go to the northeast coast to split the decimated enemy garrison.

Japs attack

The Japs tried time and again to infiltrate the American lines Sunday night and early Monday, only to be broken up and thrown back. Hundreds of the enemy were killed, but the infiltration parties did bring the Marines under “substantial” artillery and small arms fire.

Army Liberators bombed Chichi, in the Bonin Islands just north of Iwo, Sunday.

[NormanStewart]

Forrestal: Iwo battle points to long Jap war

Enemy force totals five million men

WASHINGTON (UP) – Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal, just back from a three-week tour of the Pacific, has dimmed any budding hopes of an early end to the war with Japan.

He told a press conference late yesterday that the battle on Iwo Island demonstrated clearly the stiffening resistance that the Japs will put up as the war nears their homeland. Up to last Saturday, he said, American dead on Iwo numbered 2,050 Marines – more than twice the number killed on Tarawa.

Despite “severe and costly casualties,” Mr. Forrestal said, overall results of the battle have been highly successful. And once the island is conquered, the United States can send fighter-escorted bomber fleets over the Jap homeland.

The lean, 53-year-old Navy Secretary drove home these facts about Japan:

That despite the enemy’s heavy losses, he still has an estimated five million men under arms in his far-flung conquests, while the Americans have never had more than 12 divisions – about 180,000 men – in action at any one time.

That “the task still ahead of us is obviously immense.”

That Allied forces must be prepared to deal with the Japanese “in whatever theater the final death struggle of Japanese militarism occurs.”

“Japan is still a formidable and fanatical foe,” Mr. Forrestal concluded.