Inferno - Max Hastings [399]
BUT THE MAIN BUSINESS of closing the ring on Japan was meanwhile being done in the Pacific. On the morning of 19 February, three U.S. Marine divisions began to land on Iwo Jima, an island pimple 3,000 miles west of Pearl Harbor and less than 700 miles south of Japan. An American watching the prelanding bombardment said: “We all figured nothing could live through that, and the carrier planes were giving it hell, too.” But the defenders were well prepared and deeply dug in. Carnage was severe—proportionately worse than that on D-Day: at nightfall, 30,000 marines were ashore, but 566 were already dead or dying. The living trudged through volcanic ash up to their knees, in a moonscape devoid of cover; a rainstorm worsened their plight. A marine, Joseph Raspilair, wrote: “In all my life I do not think I have been as miserable as I was that night. All you could do was lay in the water and wait for morning so you could get out of the hole.” Weeks of painful fighting followed. Corp. George Wayman, a bazooka man, was in such pain from wounds as he lay for hours in a shellhole that he felt tempted to draw his bayonet and kill himself; he was eventually evacuated only after hours exposed to the Japanese fire that pounded the marine perimeter.
Replacements trudged forward to reinforce line units, where many were hit before even learning the names of their comrades. Lt. Patrick Caruso kidded one such young man about being underage; soon afterwards the boy was killed, after just two hours on the island, without unslinging his rifle from his shoulder or glimpsing the enemy. The defenders’ ingenuity seemed boundless: a marine was amazed to see a hillside suddenly open before his eyes, to reveal three Japanese pushing out a field gun. It fired three rounds, then was dragged back into the cave. Mortars eventually destroyed the gun, but a hundred such positions had to be taken out before the defences were overwhelmed. Officers learned to discourage men from seeking souvenirs, which the Japanese often booby-trapped. “The best souvenir you can take home is yourself,” a laconic marine commander told his company.
By 27 March, when Iwo Jima was secured, the Americans had suffered 24,000 casualties, including 7,184 dead, to capture an island one-third the size of Manhattan. Its airfields proved useful to B-29s returning from missions damaged or short of fuel, but they were little employed for offensive operations. Geographically, Iwo Jima seemed a significant landmark on the way to Japan; but strategically, like so many hard-won objectives in every campaign, it is hard to argue that its seizure was worthwhile—the Marianas were vastly more important. The U.S. Navy’s almost absolute command of the sea made it impossible for the Japanese to move forces from Iwo Jima, or indeed anywhere else, to impede American operations. Japan was bleeding from a thousand cuts. All that was now in doubt was how its rulers might be induced to acknowledge their defeat, and in the spring of 1945 they still seemed far from confronting reality. Japan’s generals believed that a negotiated peace could be won by imposing on the Americans a heavy blood price for every gain, and, above all, by convincing Washington that the cost of invading the Japanese mainland would be unacceptably high. They sought to emphasise this by mounting a rising tempo of air attacks against the U.S. Navy.
Cmdr. Stephen Juricka, the navigating officer of the 27,000-ton carrier Franklin, was one of thousands of shocked witnesses of the devastation wreaked by air attack. “I saw … destroyers get hit, burst into flames, men jumping over the side to avoid flames … It did not take long for the crews of the picket destroyers to feel that they were being put out there as bait.” Early on the morning of 19 March 1945, it was the Franklin’s turn to fall victim. Two