Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [182]
Neither then nor later did the Americans perceive much useful to be learned from Iwo Jima and its notorious killing grounds—Turkey Knob, the Amphitheater, Charlie-Dog Ridge, the Meat Grinder—save about man’s capacity to inflict and endure suffering. The experience renewed the usual fierce criticism from the army about the Marines’ allegedly sacrificial tactics. Maj.-Gen. Joseph Swing of the 11th Airborne Division, for instance, wrote an angry letter home on 8 March in response to rumours that Nimitz rather than MacArthur was to command the invasion of Japan. Swing regarded the admiral as standard-bearer for Marine methods which he held in low esteem: “It makes me sick520 when I read about the casualties on Iwo Jima. It can be done more scientifically. We laugh at the fruitless method of the Jap in his banzai attacks and yet allow that fanatic”—he referred to Lt.-Gen. Holland Smith of the Marines—“to barge in using up men as if they were a dime a dozen.”
There were those, including Holland Smith, who persuaded themselves that a longer preliminary bombardment of Iwo Jima would have made the early days, especially, less costly. There was agreement that more heavy artillery was needed, especially eight-inch howitzers. Yet there is no reason to suppose that any alternative tactical method would have changed anything, in that close and densely fortified area. Many Marines argued that the only effective means of shortening the battle would have been to pump poison gas into the Japanese underground complexes. They derided the brass in Washington for being squeamish about such methods. Even Nimitz later expressed regret that gas was not used.
Though it often seemed to the Americans that the battle would never end, they prevailed at last, occupying the entire wretched island. A Marine had fallen for every Japanese, a most unusual balance of loss in Pacific battles. On 26 March, some 350 Japanese staged a final banzai charge in the north-west. Startled Americans found themselves fighting hand-to-hand with swordsmen. The assault was broken up, the Japanese killed. General Kuribayashi emerged from his headquarters bunker one night, marvelling to see that the trees and foliage which had once covered the hillside were all gone, leaving only blackened rock and scorched stumps. He sent a last signal to Horie, his staff officer on neighbouring Chichi Jima: “It’s five days since we ate or drank, but our spirits are still high, and we shall fight to the last.” Then, on 27 March, he and his staff killed themselves. The senior naval officer, Admiral Toshinosuke Ichimaru, walked at the head of sixty men into the path of American machine guns outside his cave—yet survived, probably to his own disappointment. Having failed to get the enemy to kill him, he shot himself soon after Kuribayashi’s death.
In the struggle for Iwo Jima 6,821 U.S. Marines and 363 navy men died. A further 17,372 were wounded. Such a toll would have seemed negligible to the Red Army, fighting the Germans in Europe, but represented an extraordinary intensity of loss for a battle conducted over an area only a third the size of Manhattan Island. More than one in three of the Marines committed became casualties, including nineteen of the original twenty-four battalion commanders. In Maj. Albert Arsenault’s battalion, 760 men were killed or wounded. The 5th Division had required twenty-two transports to bring its men to the island, but was carried away in just eight. All but