THE LAST OF THE ISLANDS

IWO JIMA AND OKINAWA

As the US forces advanced across the Pacific, drawing closer to Japan with each successive island and archipelago, the resistance from the Japanese armies that they encountered became stronger rather than weaker. As the hopelessness of their military position became more apparent, so the Japanse commanders and their men relied more upon the ancient tenets of their culture and less upon the Western military wisdom that their nation had learned so quickly since the latter part of the nineteenth century. Instead of making rational decisions to retreat, or surrender, as any Western army would have done - and indeed did in Germany - when hopelessly outnumbered, outgunned and surrounded, the Japanese fought relentlessly to the point of starvation or the last bullet, and even then launched themselves into last bids for suicidal glory, desperately seeking to take as many as possible of their enemy with them to a certain death. The most difficult part of beating the Japanese was that they could not honourably acknowledge themselves to be beaten.

By the end of 1944, the US commanders had recognised this fact, and the horrifying potential for bloodshed that the Japanese attitude to war and defeat promised should America ever attempt an invasion of mainland Japan. It was clear that Japan must be bombed into submission, but even this presented major obstacles. Although the capture of the Marianas brought Japan within effective range of the new US Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers, the presence of substantial Japanese air bases on islands closer to Japan meant that the bombers could be intercepted and damaged en route. Without bases or emergency airstrips nearer to their target than their home base, damaged aircraft were likely to have to ditch in the vastness of the Pacific, which in turn usually meant the total loss of the aircraft and the death of the crew.

Thus it was primarily to secure vital airfields, both to prevent their use against US aircraft, and to make them available as emergency landing facilities, that the US Chiefs of Staff reluctantly ordered the assault in February 1945 on the tiny island of Iow Jima - just over four and a half miles long by two and a half miles wide, but with two operational Japanese-built airfields, and a third airfield under construction. Not surprisingly, the commander of the Japanese troops on the island, Lieutenant-General Kuribayashi, was aware of its importance to the defence of Japan, and of its potential value to the US forces. He had been given orders as early as 1942 to prepare to defend Iow Jima to the last, and had set his men to work on what became probably the most comprehensive and best-planned defensive system in the Pacific theatre of war. The island's eight square miles had 800 pillboxes and an incredible three miles of tunnels connecting them and the deep concrete shelters designed to protect the troops from an expected pre-invasion bombardment. Not only were the beaches fully protected by guns with overlapping fields of fire, but there was a series of further defence lines with saturation coverage of the ground before them at carefully chosen intervals inland from the beaches. There were almost a thousand field guns, howitzers, anti-aircraft guns, rocket launchers and mortars. There were 20,000 light guns and machine-guns, with 22 million rounds of ammunition. Almost 21,000 Japanese troops were on the island by the time the American assault began. There were even 22 tanks - and all within less than five miles by three.

Of course, Allied intelligence knew quite a bit about this and was aware that the island was exceptionally heavily defended. Throughout the second half of 1944, from June through to January 1945, a constant air offensive was maintained in preparation for an assault that, in mid-1944, was probably going to be necessary and, by the end of the year was positively planned. What the American Intelligence men had not discovered or appreciated was the extent to which the defenders were protected by tunnels and deep shelters. Thus, the erroneous assumption was made that, by the time the three-day bombardment by the US Navy that preceded the invasion was completed, the Japanese defence would have been reduced to a fraction of its former power.

In fact, when the 4th and 5th Divisions of the US Marine Corps under General Holland Smith swarmed up the beaches of Iwo Jima just after 9 am on February 19th 1945, the ferocity of their reception was unprecedented. Withering machine-gun fire from emplacements in a wide arc before them mingled with mortar fire, and many Marines died there and then on the beaches. Using flame-throwers and explosives, tanks brought ashore in the second wave and every assault weapon available to them, the Marines managed by the end of the first day to isolate the Japanese troops defending Mount Suribachi, a 550ft extinct volcano that dominates the topography of the little island, and thereby secure a beach-head.

Under any normal conditions, the US Marines might then have expected to mop up the defence of the hill and move on to other matters within a few hours, but the defensive positions around Mount Suribachi were so strong, and the Japanese defenders were so determined, that it was not until late on February 21st, two days later, that the hill was totally surrounded, and not until the 23rd that a patrol under Lieutenant Harold Shrier managed to take the summit and plant the Stars and Stripes.

On February 24th, the battle to take the airfields of Iow Jima began. Despite an air strike, a naval bombardment lasting more than an hour and constant artillery fire, the deep, thick concrete emplacements that protected the Japanese defenders held up, and the advancing tanks of the 4th and 5th Divisions of the Marines, moving down the two side of the airfield, were once again extremely hard put to it to achieve any gains. The 4th Division advance was stopped by mines and guns; the 5th was just 500 yards nearer the Japanese positions after a day of fierce fighting. Next day, the newly-landed 3rd Division began their attempt to capture the plateau at the northern end of Iow Jima. It took three days of determined fighting, culminating in the use of tanks with flame throwers to incinerate the Japanese in their bunkers, to break through the Japanese line.

By the 28th, the three divisions of the US Marines had captured all three airfields and were mopping up, but there remained a major fight ahead. Two hills, each honeycombed with tunnels built by the Japanese defenders, became the centre of costly battles, as the Japanese army fought fiercely and, as always, to the death. One of them, known as Hill 382, had an associated rocky outcrop christened by the Marines "Turkey Knob". Nearby was a natural hollow, filled with defence emplacements and hull-down Japanese tanks, which became known as "The Amphitheatre". It took ten days, and hundreds of American casualties, just to capture those features, and it was not until March 10th that they were in American hands. Almost as long a time elapsed before the Marines captured Hill 362A, whose tunnels and surrounding rough ground gave the defenders a tremendous advantage. But on March 8th, that hill fell too. Even then the Japanese kept attacking, but their artillery was gone, and their last major effort was more in the nature of a mediaeval charge than a modern battle.

After March 10th, organised resistance on Iwo Jama was finished, but each isolated defensive position fought on to the bitter end, most of them to the death. Not until March 25th was the Battle for Iwo Jima finally over. It had taken more than a month, and the lives of almost 6,000 Marines - with more than 17,000 wounded - to capture the tiny island. Of the 21,000 Japanese on the island, only 216 were captured. The remainder died in accordance with their ancient code.

To put the Marine losses in perspective, the battle for Iwo Jima proved subsequently, by providing emergency airfields for American aircraft, to have saved nearly 25,000 aircrew from almost certain death. The Marines did not die in vain.

Okinawa

The next target was Okinawa, a much larger island some 60 miles long, and, although 18 miles wide at one point, a mere two miles wide at its narrowest. US Intelligence once again underestimated the enemy, this time as a result of being unable, because of the extreme range of Okinawa from any available US air base during the planning phase, to get adequate aerial reconnaissance pictures. The Intelligence estimate of Japanese army strength on the island was 65,000. In fact there were well over 100,000 defenders, including locally recruited soldiers and a force of auxiliaries whose function it was to transport ammunition and supplies and thereby relieve the front line troops of support duties and keep them in the fighting line. Lieutenant-General Ushijima, in command of the defenders, accepted from the outset that there would be no victory. His objective was simply to hold out for as long as he could, kill as many Americans as he could and delay an American advance on the Japanese mainland, only 350 miles away. He therefore decided to concentrate the bulk of his 32nd Army in the Southern part of the island, with its four important airfields, and put up only a token defence in the northern part.

The newly designated US 10th Army that put 154,000 men into the struggle for Okinawa that began on April 1st 1945 was in fact made up of seven of the toughest and most battle-hardened divisions in the Pacific war - XIV Corps under General Hodge included the 7th and 96th Infantry Divisions, III Amphibious (Marine) Corps under Major-General Geiger was made up of the 1st and 6th Marine Divisions, and the reserve included the 27th and 77th Infantry Divisions and the 2nd Marine Division. The two Corps that made the initial landing totalled about 116,000 men. Just before the main Okinawa landing, the nearby islands of the Kerama Retto group were captured by the 77th Division under Major-General Bruce between March 26th and March 29th to prevent their being used as bases for counter-attacks.

Air attacks were made by carrier-borne US bombers on the airfields on Kyushu from which the Japanese might (if they had had sufficient fuel, which was doubtful) have launched fighter bomber raids on the invasion force. Vice-Admiral Blandy's Task Force 52 spent a week before the invasion both clearing the dense minefield off the Okinawa beaches and bombarding them with over 13,000 shells. More than 3,000 sorties were flown by fighter bombers from Blandy's Task Force against targets on Okinawa. In fact, it subsequently proved that much of this fire power had been wasted on areas North of the centre of the island in which there were relatively few Japanese defenders.

The bombardment from the sea continued right up to the time when the invasion fleet landed - only to find that the landing itself was virtually unopposed. More than 60,000 American troops were ashore at the end of the first day. At the same time as the first wave had landed in the morning, a dummy assault mounted by the 2nd Marine Division had diverted Japanese attention from the main landing by seeming to approach for an amphibious landing in the South, only to turn away again. This ruse was repeated on the second day, and helped to tie down the Japanese forces in the South while the beach-head was established.

Quickly, the Americans crossed the island, isolating the North from the South, still without significant Japanese opposition. Not until the 7th and 96th Infantry Divisions were sent South after learning from local inhabitants that the Japanese had concentrated in that area did the real battle for Okinawa begin. And what a battle it proved to be.

On April 5th, the US troops ran into determined opposition, but were still able to advance, although with difficulty. By the 9th, the resistance was so fierce that both divisions were brought to a standstill before a heavily defended position on Kakazu Ridge. For days the Americans attacked the ridge and were driven back. The Japanese took appalling casualties. By April 12th, more than 5,500 Japanese had died, against 451 Americans, and on that sad day when President Roosevelt died (to the joy of Adolf Hitler in far-away Germany) the two infantry divisions were still stuck in front of Kakazu Ridge. Suddenly the Japanese counterattacked, and for two fearsome days the American troops found themselves defending their hard-won positions against desperately determined Japanese soldiers. Each successive Japanese attack was held, and by the 14th April the front had settled down, with little change since the 12th. The Battle of Okinawa was beginning to assume something of the character of the Battles of the Somme.

Meanwhile, the 6th Marine Division had been sent to clear the Northern part of the island, a task which proved extremely difficult in the highly defensible narrow-necked Motobu Peninsula. General Geiger's troops spent twelve days in bloody battle before the peninsula was cleared, and even after it was declared secure parties of Japanese soldiers turned guerillas were harrying the US positions.

In the South, General Hodge had decided to try to bypass the Kakazu Ridge and thrust deep into the Japanese positions with an attack that began on April 19th and was a costly and bloody failure. Over 700 Americans died, and XXIV Corps was no further forward. Next day they tried again, pushing towards Machinato airfield, and again the attack failed. For a week they strove to take the airfield, and a terrible week it was. Not until April 27th was "Item Pocket", as the area had become known, declared secure. During the preceding three days, Kakazu Ridge had at last fallen, but every day's fighting was gaining only yards, and still the Japanese seemed able to hold the Shuri region for ever.

On May 4th, after another week's desperate and largely fruitless battle, General Ushijima launched a Japanese counterattack, attempting to split the US 10thArmy in half with an amphibious landing to capture Tanabaru Ridge at the centre of the American army. By the 7th, his attack had failed totally, and the American commanders decided to attempt to "wrong foot" the Japanese by attacking before they had time to regroup. This time the American attack succeeded, although slowly, and by the third week of May several important hills had been taken and the Americans seemed poised to begin the encirclement of Japanese positions. But the weather suddenly turned against the attackers. Huge rainstorms made the island a quagmire and rendered the American attack many times more difficult. Nonetheless, the American troops persevered and gradually advanced on either side of the Japanese army. Recognising the probability of encirclement, General Ushijima now decided to evacuate the Shuri region altogether, and withdraw for a last stand in the extreme South of the island. Overnight on May 23rd/24th, the 32nd Army began to pull back under cover of a rearguard action, and by the end of the month, most of the Japanese forces were well South of their front line in the Shuri, which was still holding against the American offensive. When, on May 31st, the Shuri line collapsed, the Americans were disappointed to find that they had not, after all, encircled an army. The bird had flown.

Now began the last phase in Okinawa. Between June 12th and June 17th the Americans fought, against an enemy who seemed to be more ferocious than ever, to capture what was identified as the Yaeju-Dake position. Every machine-gun nest, every foxhole, had to be blasted with unimaginable force before the defenders gave up - usually because they were dead. By the 17th, the survivors were in a pocket only eight miles by eight. After refusing an appeal to surrender and save his men's lives, Ushijima committed hara-kiri on the 21st June, and on the same day the last major Japanese position was taken. Isolated resistance continued until July 2nd 1945, when Okinawa was finally declared secure after one of the worst battles of the war for the Americans. Over 49,000 Americans had been killed or wounded, and 763 US aircraft had been lost. The Navy had lost 36 ships, and had had 368 damaged.

But the terrible toll of American life was as nothing to that of the lives of Japanese soldiers. Over 110,000 had died; only 7,400 prisoners were taken. In ten large-scale kamikaze suicide air attacks, 1,465 Japanese aircraft and pilots had been hurled at US ships. A reputed 7,800 Japanese aircraft had been destroyed, and the Japanese Navy had lost 16 ships, including the giant battleship Yamato , sent on a useless and ineffective suicide mission and sunk by US aircraft before even coming within sight of Okinawa.

There remained only the homeland of Japan to defend. As the wearisome battle for Okinawa had ground to its close, the bomber offensive against mainland Japan was reaching its climax. The chilling horrors of nuclear war were, unknown to all but a select few, about to be unleashed for the first time in the Earth's history. It was an awe-inspiring moment.