The Battle of Iwo Jima was fought for more than a month in a rocky 8 square mile area lined with underground tunnels that sheltered and supplied the Japanese. Here's a look at some of the most chilling, sad, horrific details of the Iwo Jima conflict.
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00:00The Battle of Iwo Jima was fought for more than a month in a rocky 8-square-mile area
00:04lined with underground tunnels that sheltered and supplied the Japanese. Here's a look at
00:09some of the most chilling, sad, horrific details of the Iwo Jima conflict.
00:14The island of Iwo Jima wasn't some densely populated territory that was particularly
00:18culturally or socially important to Japan. Geographically, it's obscure and remote, sitting
00:23in the northwestern end of the Pacific Ocean. There were no towns, cities, or even outposts.
00:29Iwo Jima was too small, about 8 square miles, and the terrain too punishing. It's a rock
00:34on which very little can grow, certainly not enough to sustain life.
00:38There's no civilian population there. Every single person on that island is a Japanese
00:43soldier intending to sell it dearly with his life.
00:47But Iwo Jima sits smack in the middle between Tokyo and the U.S. territory of Guam, making
00:52it an ideal location for Allied forces during World War II who planned to use it as an observation
00:57post and staging area for air missions against Japan.
01:00"...America sees it as an emergency landing strip. They will both now use it as a slaughterhouse."
01:09But first, the Allies needed to drive out the Japanese in a bloody, barbaric battle
01:13made worse by the island's small size and rough topography.
01:17Despite its relatively small size, the Battle of Iwo Jima involved a staggeringly high number
01:21of combatants. Between the U.S. Marines' V. Amphibious Corps and several U.S. Navy
01:26battalions, about 70,000 Americans fought on Iwo Jima in 1945. Defending the island
01:32were 22,060 Japanese troops.
01:36Fighting lasted for 36 days, and both sides endured horrific losses. The American contingent
01:41lost 6,821 men, with about 20,000 more seriously injured. It was the highest number of losses
01:48in Marine Corps history.
01:50"...Over 3,000 Marines never leave that island. Included in that number are two of the cameramen
01:57who took that footage."
01:58The Japanese military presence was almost completely annihilated. Of the 22,060 troops,
02:04the vast majority of whom had been drafted, 18,844 died on Iwo Jima, a casualty rate of
02:1185 percent, and a further 216 Japanese troops were detained as prisoners of war.
02:17For the Emperor! Banzai!
02:21Of the 82 Marines who received a Medal of Honor for their service in the entirety of
02:25World War II, 22 fought on Iwo Jima. Of that figure, 14 received their awards posthumously.
02:32In early World War II battles on islands across the South Pacific, the Japanese met American
02:36troops head-on and hand-to-hand. However, Iwo Jima was unique in terms of its physical
02:41features, and Japanese General Tanimichi Kurobayashi exploited these, taking his troops
02:46deep into the island's interior to wait. Before U.S. units landed on the island, they pummeled
02:52it with airstrikes and coastal bombardments from nearby battleships. They planned to hit
02:56the island for 10 days before moving in, but thanks to Kurobayashi's strategies, the Japanese
03:01weren't taking many losses.
03:03As American troops arrived on Iwo Jima's beach on February 19, 1945, they struggled to literally
03:09gain a foothold. Iwo Jima is volcanic, covered in soft, hard-to-traverse ashy material covering
03:14steep slopes, and the Japanese used this to their advantage.
03:18"...Phillips are whistling past us. We are in the open. Japanese mortars and also small-arm
03:24fire are occasionally dropping around us."
03:27To ensure the heaviest losses, they waited until the beaches were filled with Americans
03:30before opening fire from gunner stations concealed in the surrounding terrain.
03:35Despite being trapped between the enemy and the sea, some Americans evaded the charge
03:38and managed to seize part of an island airfield, which was one of the primary goals of the
03:43invasion.
03:44Iwo Jima took up a mere eight square miles, but that's just the surface. Below ground,
03:49there was ample opportunity for the Japanese military to hide, plan, strategize, and conduct
03:54attacks in ways that confused American forces. Kurobayashi realized the Allies would eventually
03:59try to seize the island, so he formulated an ambitious plan to line the island with
04:03a network of secret tunnels.
04:05"...It's a classic sort of guerrilla strategy being pursued by the Japanese on this island."
04:09Vast, complex, and difficult to navigate, the Japanese built 1,500 distinct underground
04:16areas to be used as bunkers, armories, and safe rooms, connected by more than 11 miles
04:21of protected tunnels within which troops could freely move without detection. Not only could
04:25the Japanese stockpile weapons in these caves, but they had safe places to retreat to when
04:29cornered above ground. They could also use the maze of tunnels to move to ambush their
04:33baffled adversaries.
04:34"...It's almost like fighting ghosts. First you see them, then you wouldn't."
04:39Once the Americans figured out the plan, however, the Japanese were trapped underground. Being
04:43cornered by well-armed Americans is how many Japanese troops lost their lives on Iwo Jima.
04:49Japanese troops armed with machine guns felled scores of American soldiers in the first few
04:53days of the invasion of Iwo Jima. Marine Herschel Woody Williams recalled to History,
04:58"...As we attacked, they would just mow us down, and we would have to back off."
05:03Tanks weren't doing much good, either. So an officer asked Williams to be his regiment's
05:07flamethrower operator, and that's when things changed.
05:09"...It's one of the most brutal, horrifying weapons. Nobody wants to be burned alive.
05:14He had to sort of adjust himself morally to what he was going to be asked to do."
05:18With four other Marines offering cover fire, of whom two died almost immediately, Williams
05:22and his flamethrower torched multiple Japanese fortresses in rapid succession. He then fired
05:27into a dugout port through an air vent, leaving no survivors. Williams made several runs back
05:32to the American side to refuel the gas-powered fire machine, but over the course of four
05:37hours he destroyed all of his targets. Williams' efforts allowed the Americans to make progress
05:41on Iwo Jima, and within a few weeks, the battle was over.
05:45At war's end, President Harry Truman awarded Williams the Medal of Honor.
05:49The Americans who fought at Iwo Jima were almost entirely Marines, and almost exclusively
05:54white men. However, a handful of U.S. Army units participated in the Battle of Iwo Jima,
05:59including the 476th Amphibious Truck Company, which was composed of 177 Black soldiers.
06:05A vital support unit, the servicemen of the 476th drove 32-foot-long vehicles around the
06:10island's beaches, dodging Japanese gunfire to deliver ammunition, bombs, and reinforcement
06:15to Marines engaged in combat.
06:17Since the U.S. military was segregated throughout World War II, no Black soldiers would have
06:22been part of the fighting brigades, and practice didn't end until 1948 via an executive order
06:27from President Truman. Another group of non-white Americans was crucial in the drive to win
06:31Iwo Jima. In 1942, the military brought in members of Navajo-affiliated indigenous tribes
06:37to assist in the war effort.
06:40The Navajo language is complex and differed from widely used European and Asian languages,
06:44so 29 Navajo speakers and writers created a memorized, coded message system to relay
06:49information to the front lines. Marines who identified as Navajo participated in the Battle
06:53of Iwo Jima as code talkers. Six specialists sent and received about 800 messages during
06:59the battle, none of which were ever decoded by the Japanese military.
07:03On February 23, 1945, Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal captured the iconic image of
07:09five American service members raising the U.S. flag atop Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi.
07:14One of the most famous news photos ever taken, it won Rosenthal a Pulitzer Prize. But the
07:19story is a bit more complicated.
07:22When Rosenthal got word that Marines were scaling Mount Suribachi, he followed them.
07:26When he reached the top, Sergeant Louis Lowery, photographer for the military publication
07:30Leatherneck, was there taking pictures of the Marines as they raised the U.S. flag.
07:35As American troops down below spotted it, celebratory gunfire broke out, triggering
07:39retaliatory shooting from Japanese soldiers. As Lowery ran to safety, he fell 50 feet,
07:44shattering his camera. On the way down the mountain, he ran into Rosenthal, now going
07:48back up with another photographer and a cinematographer. This time, he encountered another group of
07:53Marines bearing another flag. They'd been ordered to replace the initial one with this
07:57much larger, more visible one. As the Marines raised the replacement flag, Rosenthal took
08:02their picture. And that's the one that made history.
08:05I lost my fear. If those guys made it, I could. But it was false, that feeling.
08:11The planting of the flag didn't signal the end of the Battle of Iwo Jima. The flag-staking
08:15took place just five days after combat began. The island wouldn't fall to the U.S. until
08:20March 26, about a month later.
08:23The 36-day Battle of Iwo Jima ended on March 26, 1945, with the island securely in the
08:28hands of the U.S. military. When the fighting ended, U.S. servicemen scoured the island
08:33and uncovered about 3,000 Japanese troops in caves and tunnels. Most wouldn't surrender,
08:38and many were killed or forcibly captured as prisoners of war. But two soldiers eluded
08:42capture throughout the remainder of the war and for many years after.
08:46On the morning of January 9, 1949, nearly four years after the Battle of Iwo Jima and
08:51the end of World War II, a U.S. Air Force jeep driver picked up two Asian male hitchhikers
08:56dressed in fatigues walking on the road near a Coast Guard facility. At first, officers
09:00thought the pair might be crewmen from a Chinese naval vessel working nearby. After
09:04escaping from custody, the men were found again, and the island's commander put them
09:08through a lengthy interview. The two men served as machine gunners in the Imperial Japanese
09:12Navy. The holdouts had survived underground for years without being detected, living off
09:17the land and getting by thanks to canned food and necessities stolen from U.S. military
09:22outposts. They had even moved caves on occasion, lying low near well-traveled areas.
09:29Japan-led forces fighting in the Pacific Theater needed Iwo Jima for its strategic value. Although
09:33World War II came to an end in September 1945 with Japan's surrender, Iwo Jima remained
09:38under U.S. control for decades.
09:41On August 30, 1945, the first 15,000 American occupation forces landed on the Japanese mainland.
09:49As Japan rebuilt and recovered, American military and other officials maintained a presence
09:53in the country until 1952. Diplomatic relations developed between the two countries, who signed
09:58a security treaty in 1951, and Japan emerged as a major global player. But all the while,
10:04the U.S. continued to hold on to the small, rocky island of Iwo Jima, 600 miles from mainland
10:09Japan. U.S. military bases were operational there until 1968.
10:14The American contingent systematically returned Japanese areas it conquered during the war,
10:19beginning in 1953 with the Ryukyu Islands and ending in June 1968 with the handoff of
10:24the inhabited Chichijima and the officially uninhabited Iwo Jima.
10:29The Japanese reclaimed the island via a flag-changing ceremony held on Iwo Jima and an official
10:33government ceremony in Tokyo, which was attended by the Crown Prince and Prime Minister. The
10:38island now hosts a Japanese air base, as well as a U.S. military training center and a U.S.
10:43military cemetery.