Recounting the Story of The Battle of Iwo Jima Essay example

The Japanese had it made. They had all they needed in their caves. You would of thought that the Japanese would have paid a bunch of money to fortify the island but they really did not. The had many of the Empire's most gifted mining engineers to dig tunnels throughout the volcanic mountains. It took them no time to have miles of tunnels running through the mountains. These tunnels made it easy for the Japanese to move from one position to the other. But life was not to great in the caves because the United States Seventh Air Force bombers dropped bombs on them daily in hope to soften them up before the massive invasion. Another helpful aspect to the Japanese was the sand on the beaches. The sand wasn't like in paradise. It was black and loose making running across the beachhead very difficult. The only flaw to the island that did not help the Japanese was the surf. The surf was too rough to plant anti boat mines. "The entire island is flat except for the promontory of Mount Suribachi, and extinct volcano, which is 556 feet high in the southern portion of the island."(Siefring 117)

Conditions were perfect, sunshine with a little cloud cover the Americans were expecting strong opposition as soon as they touched down on the beaches but there was little opposition to meet them. Weather considerations were minimum, heavy rain was the only key factor in the battle which made the ground muddy and troop movement and resupply at times could become difficult. Okinawa is 60 miles long and 18 miles wide. The terrain in northern Okinawa is extremely mountainous with elevations of 1,000 feet or more usually with steep cliffs associated with them. With such uneven terrain troop movement in the north was very difficult. With poor road conditions vehicle movement was not much better. The southern part of Okinawa where the main part of the fighting took place had a number of different terrain obstacles. Rolling hills, with the majority of this half under cultivation and contained three fourths of the population of the island. The terrain gave the Japanese Army a slight advantage with natural caves and burial tombs that they turned into underground positions. There are more roads in the south due to the increased population but still not suitable for military vehicles.

War can be defined as “an active struggle between competing entities. It’s truly hard to tell who is right or wrong during a war. Both sides are fighting for what they believe in and what is true to their heart. In the end there is always two things promised – destruction and death. These two objects can explain the result in every facet of war from the physical to emotional.

Iwo Jima is an island in the Bonin chain, situated about 575 miles from Japan. It’s prominent feature is Mount Suribachi, a volcanic mountain on the southern tip of the island. Iwo Jima did not have a civilian population but was well protected by roughly 23,000 Japanese soldiers in caves, foxholes, and pillboxes (pillboxes were concrete boxes with small holes for shooting enemies). Before the land invasion, Iwo Jima endured a heavy bombardment by ships and planes, which, however, did very little to destroy the Japanese resistance.

Iwo Jima remains the Marine Corps’s deadliest campaign. February 19, 1945 was the day of the initial assault on Iwo Jima. That morning nearly eight hundred vessels, ranging from battleships, cruisers, and destroyers to

The battle of the Plains of Abraham was fought on the 13th of September 1759. It was the result of a three-month British siege of the French North American capital of Quebec City. Although the battle lasted for a short period of time, involved comparatively few troops, and caused few casualties, the effects of the battle were far reaching. The British victory at the battle resulted both in the death of the French general – the Marquis de Montcalm – and the British major general James Wolf. More importantly, the battle resulted in the capture of Quebec, which in turn, led to the capture of the remaining French territories of North America.

There were 26,000 casualties and 6,800 dead Americans at Iwo Jima, with 20,000 casualties and 1083 dead Japanese. (1. "Battle for Iwo Jima, 1945." The Navy Department Library) At Okinawa there were 65,000 American casualties and 14,000 dead, while the Japanese lost 70,000 soldiers out of the 130,000 stationed on Okinawa. (2. "Battle of Okinawa." History.com) The bloodshed from these two battles gave the Americans a taste of the militaristic Japanese, and that a battle for the homeland of Japan would be astronomically worse. The Japanese were prepared to use any means necessary to stop the Americans because of “Yamato Damashii”, which was a virtue of the samurai that went hand in hand with the Bushido code, and it made the Japanese value the country and the emperor above all else, and that fighting to the death was greater than surrender. and it came in the form of Kamikaze attacks, suicide troops, and guerilla warfare. At Okinawa, 193 kamikaze attacks were launched at the Americans damaging 368 ships and destroying 36. (3. "The Battle of Okinawa." History Learning Site) The Japanese were prepared to sacrifice everything they had to destroy American ships and troops. The Japanese also used their own people to fight against the Americans.

In June of 1944, Lieutenant General Kuribayashi arrived on Iwo Jima to find discover a rivalry between the Army and the Navy. By late July, Kuribayashi had evacuated all civilians from the island and sent back officers he considered uncooperative. The civilians and the incorporating officers were no use to him and would only drain the water and food supplies. After these acts were completed, he began his act in building the fortress. Kuribayashi split Iwo Jima into five sectors. He would control the mountain area himself and would be leaving the volcano and its 200 men as an independent command under Colonel Atsuli. Kuribayashi's departure had been normal practice for the Japanese Imperial Army, but he predicted that American air and naval bombardments would destroy any defenses on the beaches.

Before their attack on Midway Island, the Japanese had to take over Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands in early May of 1942. Yamamoto planned the Battle of the Coral Sea with hopes of gaining new islands in the Pacific Ocean that would aid the Japanese during its attack on Midway

Typical of Japanese naval planning during the Second World War, Yamamoto's battle plan was quite complex.[15] Additionally, his designs were predicated on optimistic intelligence information suggesting USS Enterprise and USS Hornet, forming Task Force 16, were the only carriers available to the U.S. Pacific Fleet at the time. USS Lexington had been sunk and USS Yorktown severely damaged (and believed by the Japanese to have been sunk) at the Battle of the Coral Sea just a month earlier. The Japanese were also aware that USS Saratoga was undergoing repairs on the West Coast after taking torpedo damage from a submarine.

The Battle of Guadalcanal was a very important battleground that ended the Japanese ground advancement in the Pacific area of operations. Also, after they were defeated and removed from the island it showed that they were not an unstoppable foe that resulted in boasting the confidence of the United States and its allies. The amphibious assault that occurred on Guadalcanal was the first amphibious counteroffensive for the United States after the attacks on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese were attempting to build an airfield on the island and gain a foothold that would help to protect their flanks as they continued their offensive campaign through the Pacific. Having an established foothold on Guadalcanal would also give the

Brown led the Army’s 7th Division of three regiments of infantry, four battalions of artillery, the 13th Combat Engineer Battalion, and the attachment of the 50th Combat Engineer Battalion.1 Nearly a year before the battle took place, June 3rd, 1942, the Japanese seized Attu with only natives living there. The Japanese reestablished a base on Attu on October 29, 1942 under the leadership of Lieutenant Colonel Hiroshi Yanekawa.1 The Japanese set up strong defensive positions with antiaircraft and numerous caches of arms, ammunition and food spread across different locations on the island. U.S. forces did not have such advantage and had a difficult time with logistics due to the unforgiving elements. The islands beaches consisted of muskeg which created very difficult circumstances for U.S. vehicles that the engineers were crucial in resolving. Although the harsh climate and terrain caused many problems for both sides, it was more impactful against the Japanese due to the long period of acclimation they endured.2

World War II consisted of many devastating battles in both the European and the Pacific Theater. The Battle of Okinawa was fought in the Pacific theater. In the beginning of the battle there was little opposition from the Japanese soldiers but as the American troops traveled more inland the more resistance they met. Eventually, the 10th Army came against the fierce challenge of the intricate defense lines the Japanese held up. Many caves and pillboxes in the hills created a formidable challenge for American troops. Slowly though the Allies gained ground and continued to push back the defensive lines of General Ushijima and his troops. The Japanese tried to use kamikaze air and land attacks as successful offensive measures, these

Letters from Iwo Jima further errs when the movie tries to reenact the Battle of Iwo Jima. The motives for the Japanese defending Iwo Jima are misattributed. The Japanese guarded islands like Iwo Jima to prevent the Americans from, “setting up airfields on them, and then neutralizing the enemy bases through heavy bombing” (Kennedy 840). They did not fight to the death for honor or because they thought Iwo Jima was sacred, but because losing the island would mean increased fire bombing by American forces. Furthermore, the geography of Iwo Jima is imprecise in the movie. During the battle, the American landing zones were on the east side of the island (“The Battle for Iwo Jima”). Therefore, when the Japanese prisoner is taken to the landing zone near the end of the movie, he watches the sun set in the East and not the West. No where are the toils of living in the caves of Mount Suribachi mentioned. Since, “Iwo Jima is one of the volcano islands,” the temperature in the caves would have been scotching even without the high temperatures outside (“The Battle for Iwo Jima”).

The total strength of the Japanese army was an estimated five million men mid july in 1945, and it was seen in every major battle preceding this that in order to win the U.S. would not only have to match that number but double it in order to win. Not only would those ten million plus men most likely die, but while the fighting that would take place on Japan’s mainland commenced there would have been massive civilian casualties, and major destruction of the island itself. Given the fact that the battle was estimated to last until the latter part of 1946, so six months, and was to consist of an intensified sea and air blockade, then massive amounts of air bombing, and that was to be followed by the invasion of the island, the damage that the fighting could have done to the civilian population of