Posted on 03/15/2005 5:07:59 AM PST by billorites
ON FEB. 19, 1945, 30,000 Marines splashed ashore on a small volcanic island in the central Pacific. After four days of bitter fighting, a small patrol reached the peak of Mount Suribachi, where it planted a U.S. flag in an iconic scene captured by photographer Joe Rosenthal. This famous image was hardly the end of the battle. Iwo Jima would not be secure until March 26. Almost all of the 21,000 Japanese defenders elected to die rather than surrender. Rooting them out cost more than 6,000 American dead and 20,000 wounded, making this the costliest battle in the storied history of the U.S. Marine Corps. It is right and proper that there should be 60th-anniversary commemorations of these heroics. For, as Fleet Adm. Chester Nimitz famously said, ". . . on Iwo Island, uncommon valor was a common virtue." Yet it would be a mistake to bury this battle in a haze of "Greatest Generation" sentimentality. Our awe at the bravery of the Marines and their Japanese adversaries should not cause us to overlook the stupidity that forced them into this unnecessary meat grinder. Selective memories of World War II, which record only inspiring deeds and block out all waste and folly, create an impossible standard of perfection against which to judge contemporary conflicts. That is why Marine Capt. Robert S. Burrell, a history instructor at the Naval Academy, has performed a valuable service by publishing in the October 2004 issue of the Journal of Military History an article called "Breaking the Cycle of Iwo Jima Mythology." Burrell examines the planning of Operation Detachment, as the invasion was known, and shows that it was badly bungled. The planners actually thought that Iwo Jima would be lightly defended. Nimitz had no idea that the Japanese had been preparing an elaborate defensive network of caves, bunkers and tunnels. As a result, he failed to allocate enough aircraft or warships to seriously dent the enemy defenses before the infantry landings. This oversight consigned the Marines to what a war correspondent called "a nightmare in hell." And for what? The rationales for taking the island were shaky at the time and utterly specious in hindsight. The original impetus came from the U.S. Army Air Corps, which wanted a base from which fighters could escort B-29 Superfortress bombers on missions over Japan. But Iwo Jima was so far away from most Japanese targets — a 1,500-mile round trip — that even the newest fighter, the P-51D Mustang, lacked sufficient range and navigational equipment for that purpose. In any case, Japanese air defenses were so weak that B-29s didn't need any escort; they were able to reduce Japanese cities to ashes on their own. When the fighter-escort mission didn't pan out, U.S. commanders had to come up with another rationale for why 26,000 casualties had not been in vain. After the war, it was claimed that Iwo Jima had been a vital emergency landing field for crippled B-29s on their way back from Japan. In a much-quoted statistic, the Air Force reported that 2,251 Superforts landed on Iwo, and because each one carried 11 crewmen, a total of 24,761 airmen were saved. Burrell demolishes these spurious statistics. Most of those landings, he shows, were not for emergencies but for training or to take on extra fuel or bombs. If Iwo Jima hadn't been in U.S. hands, most of the four-engine bombers could have made it back to their bases in the Mariana Islands 625 miles away. And even if some had been forced to ditch at sea, many of their crewmen would have been rescued by the Navy. Burrell concludes that Iwo Jima was "helpful" to the U.S. bombing effort but hardly worth the price in blood. In modern parlance, you might say that Iwo Jima was a battle of choice waged on the basis of faulty intelligence and inadequate plans. If Ted Kennedy had been in the Senate in 1945 (hard to believe, but he wasn't), he would have been hollering about the incompetence of the Roosevelt administration, which produced many times more casualties in five weeks than U.S. forces have suffered in Iraq in the last two years. No such criticism was heard at the time, in part because of the rah-rah tone of World War II media coverage but also because Americans back then had a greater appreciation for the ugly, unpredictable nature of combat. They even coined a word for it: snafu (in polite language: "situation normal, all fouled up"). It's a shame that so many sentimental tributes to the veterans of the Good War elide this unpleasant reality, leaving us a bit less intellectually and emotionally prepared for the trauma of modern war. Max Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Irrefutably so.
I wouldn't be suprised to learn that Russian influence managed to tip the balance as to where the Japs attacked first - Pearl or north from Manchuquo.
Japan needed oil. The only developed oil fields of significant size within reach of the Japanese military were in the Dutch East Indies. Manchurian/Siberian oil was underdeveloped and expensive to extract. To me, the decision to go South toward the Dutch East Indies was a "No-Brainer".
Look at your potential opponent in Siberia: The Soviets. Yeah, they are in trouble, but they kicked your buts not too many years back when you sent an infantry force up against Soviet Armor.
Look at you potential opponents to the South: The ABDA-alliance (America/Britain/Dutch/Australia) -- plus the Vichy Colonial government in Saigon. If you assume that your Pearl Harbor Raid disrupts the US Fleet, the ABDA alliance will fold. (As it did).
My thoughts exactly. Just another Brit putting the U.S. down.
I wonder what he has to say about Britain's utter and complete debacle at Dieppe in 1942. Hmmmmm?
Ahh yes, hindsight armchair generals, where would we be without them?
I disagree. Stopping to regroup for a new plan implies alternatives. A new plan implies that manuver, surprise, or tactics could win a campaign with less cost. This is a small island with a determined enemy well dug in. The only alternative would have been to abandon the invasion thereby handing the Japanese a victory.
Further while Nimitz was "regrouping" the Japanese would have been too. Additionally any amphibious landing means that the invasion fleet is necessarily locked to a stationary fixed location making an excellent target. Although the Japanese surface fleet was finished by the Iwo Jima invasion they still had more than 150 subs and several hundred planes that could have reached Iwo and the invasion fleet. Consider that the loss of a couple of carriers might have meant the deaths of thousands of sailors while you are regrouping and second guessing yourself.
Too many Marines died unnecessarily.
This you may argue but the only alternative was not invading at all. Perhaps the intelligence was poor but its the best that there was in 1945 when the decision was made. Lastly I will point out that although it is trite it is also true that war is won by fighting the enemy where he is. By 1945 the next steps in the war with Japan were necessarily going to be bloody. Warfare is a hazardous undertaking. Thats why those that follow that trade of arms are referred to as heroes.
Irrefutably so.
True if the only objective is land for airfields. I will point out once again that wars are won by going where the other guy is and making him miserable. You can perhaps make the arguement that Iwo was unnecessary since the Okinawa campaign was just over the horizon but bloody invasions were a next inevitable step in the Pacific war.
That however misses the concern that Iwo also provided the Japanese with a base to attack the Marianas. And they planned to do just that. Imagine the potential damage of a suicidal air attack to the closely packed B-29's of Tinian.
I'll bet this guy won't write about the European mistakes of appeasement that emboldened the nazis. Iwo Jima is sacred American history and revising the reasons why we fought that battle 60 years later is an insult to the magnificent men who fought there. I know I would not want to be the man making life and death decisions in a conflict of the scale of WWII. Every decision was an agonizing decision.
As a 19yrear old marine in I Corps (Vietnam), I saw heroism. But I think it's our obligation to question tactics after the fact. Never did myself or my brothers not fulfill their duty. But to study the history of battle, in my opinion, is not arm-chair quarter-backing. It's our duty. Semper Fi.
Absolutely brother. I was in I Corps as well (three times). The situation of 1945 was (hopefully) unique to that war and that time. Certainly today given different weapons and capabilities a similar situation would indicate a different response.
The fac is that given the technology and the political climate of the times bloody battles on Iwo or anywhere else in the Pacific Campaign were an inevitable next step. Iwo as an air base in our hands was of marginal value but then also Iwo in the Japanese hands was a serious threat and both nation's knew it.
The effectiveness of the Marine Corps, besides our somewhat unique ethos, is that we have innovated far ahead of our opposition and even allies and the US Army. After all it was the Marines that pioneered close air support, amphibous landings, helicopter vertical envelopement, and dedicated special op teams. All these are accepted, very effective tactics today.
I was once told that what makes the Marines unique in innovation is that we learn not only from our mistakes but from our successes. After the Iraq War 8 commanders of units from battalion on up were quietly relieved. Not for losing or screwing up but for rather for not winning better.
Well said. Thanks for the reply.
Typical academic baloney.
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