Iwo Jima: Hell On Earth (Part 1)

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The bombardment force, which had arrived off Iwo Jima the same day the carrier planes hit Tokyo, buried the island under an avalanche of high-explosive shells.

Wrapped in a shroud of smoke and flame, nothing of Iwo Jima could be seen from the fleet, except sporadically the peak of Mount Suribachi.

The projectiles arced towards the island in parabolic trajectories, high and low, according to the caliber of the gun and the distance that each warship lay off shore.

The successive explosions merged into a solitary and unbroken roar.

Men watching from the rails of the ships felt the blast concussions in their viscera.

Warm puffs of wind caused their shirts to flutter against their chests.

A formation of B-24s soared overhead, and diagonal glints of steel fell away from the open bomb bays.

A series of explosions walked across the heart of the island, and spikes of orange and yellow flame shot above the boiling smoke and dust.

War correspondent Bob Sherrod, who had witnessed landings on Tarawa, Kwajalan, and Saipan, called it more terrifying than any other similar spectacle I had ever seen.

EW Toll in Twilight of the Gods describing the opening bombardment of Iwo Jima on 16th February, 1945.

Welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk USA with me, Al Murray, James Holland, and John McManus, whose voice you heard just there.

And yes, it's Iwo Jima that we're looking at in this next couple of episodes, the Island of the Damned.

Yes.

This is an extraordinary story.

Was this bombardment going to be enough?

That's the question, and we're going to find out.

But what I would say is, you know, whether it is or it isn't is neither, that's almost not the point.

The point is, wow, what a kind of, what an amazing description of extraordinary material might.

You know, you've got B-24s pulverizing the island.

You've got these incredible warships pulverizing the island.

I mean, this island is five miles by two, three.

I mean, it's, it's tiny.

And yet all this effort is brought to bear at the start of the three-day bombardment on the 16th of February, 1945.

Beautifully described by Ian Toll as only he can.

I mean, John's done his magisterial trilogy of the U.S.

Army in the Pacific.

Ian W.

Toll has also done a

truly amazing trilogy as well about the U.S.

Navy in the Pacific.

And really, everyone should have all six of those books.

Three of John's, three of Ian Toll's.

Anyway, some books.

Let's try to buy.

But, you know,

we don't do a hard sell on this podcast.

John, if they had to choose which three to buy first.

Well, it'd be mine, obviously.

I mean, you start with me,

of course.

But I mean, I suppose the question that has to start with is, why Iwo Jima?

You know, if it is a tiny island that's a volcanic ash, famously, as I think people know, and that's a sort of porkshot-shaped thing with one hill on it, why?

What's going on?

Or a turkey drumstick with a knuckle.

That's pretty much what it is.

Yeah, I mean, it has to do with the strategic bombing campaign that's going to be in the offing now that when the Americans get the Marianas

in the summer of 1944, that's really beginning the inner ring of Japan's defenses.

And it allows the Americans then to be within striking distance of strategic bombers, particularly the brand new B-29 that can bring the war to Tokyo itself and elsewhere in the home islands.

So Iwo Jima is geographically located like right between them, more or less on the route you're going to have to take to the home islands.

And so it emerges as

something of a bone in the throat.

Could be a Japanese fighter base, could be an early warning station.

If you possessed it, you could base your own fighters there or maybe use it as an emergency landing field, you know, whatever.

But just by geography, this forlorn, god-forsaken place, just like a lot of other places in the Pacific, becomes kind of solid gold real estate in the view of the strategists.

Yeah, it's one of those things that great friend of the show, Steve Prince, the head of the Nava Historical Branch, he always talks about the plus one, minus one.

So it's not just what you're then denying the Japanese, you're also gaining for yourself.

So it's a double benefit by taking it.

That's the idea.

But, you know, it's 3,000 miles from Pearl Harbor, but only 700 less south of Japan, which, you know, sounds like a long way, but in the vast open space of the Pacific isn't so very far.

And it's part of the volcano and Bonin Islands.

And it first comes under American attention on the 4th of June, 1944.

And then again on the 4th of July, your Independence Day, John, 1944.

But on the 3rd of October 1944 comes this directive from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which is, okay, we want you to come and occupy one or more positions of the Nampo Shoto, which is the volcano Bonin Islands.

So one of them.

And in one way, kind of an obvious one is probably Chichijima, which is 168 miles north of Iwo Jima.

But they choose instead to go for Iwo Jima.

This is a decision made by Nimitz, I think.

So the die is cast.

Do we know why?

Why is his preference for them?

I think my understanding of it is that Chichijima is just substantially bigger.

So

in theory, it takes a bigger effort to take it.

It's closer to Japan.

So, you know, maybe that's not a good thing if you're wanting to use this as a B-29 base.

Actually, having it a little bit further away from Japan is probably no bad thing.

And I think they just feel it's a, I think Nimitz just feels it's a more viable proposition because it's further south.

You know, the further north you go, the more problematic it is.

You know, it's 168 miles, another 168 miles that a task force have got to travel, et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah, and closer to their land-based air against our ships, and then farther away for our land-based air to support, too.

So there's that factor as well.

I mean, there's a lot of concern among the carrier types at this stage, even though they really want to get close enough to launch raids on Japan itself, the vulnerability of their carriers in those waters, too.

And so, Chichi Jimo would be a little bit more dangerous kind of choice in that respect.

9th of October, the decision is made, and he informs our old friend, General Holland Howling Mad Smith.

Your favorite commander, John.

Oh, I love him.

Yeah, he's such a thoughtful, open-minded kind of guy.

Yeah, Holland Smith has been sort of kicked upstairs by now.

Yes.

And 8th of December starts 74 days of consecutive aerial bombing of the volcano Bonin Islands.

Although they have actually been attacking a little bit beforehand as well, but not as a sustained campaign.

They've been kind of a bit more kind of testing the water, haven't they?

Doing little attacks, you know, out of the blue, just sort of here and there.

Yeah, they're keeping the Japanese off balance, they hope, and they're beginning a process by which they think they're going to soften whatever defenses the Japanese have.

One of the patterns you see in the Pacific War is that the Japanese seem to be about six months ahead in terms of fortifying an objective of our capability to invade it.

And, you know,

Gejo's six-month-ahead theory, yeah.

I mean, it really is because it's similar, isn't it?

Because it's like,

if you look, for instance, like at Saipan or Guam or Pelelu or whatever, if if the U.S.

had been able to invade them six months or more earlier, it wouldn't have been anywhere near as bad.

Kind of similar to Omaha Beach, I guess, in that respect, too, isn't it?

But it's a quiescent admission by the Japanese, though, isn't it, that they are going backwards.

They're anticipating that they're going to be going backwards months ahead of the Americans pushing forwards.

I mean, it's a sort of entirely a strategy of defeat, but a strategy of defeat that involves extracting the highest price from the Americans as possible to try and bring them to peace via bloodshed, essentially.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

And they've been in denial about it.

Yeah, but the softening up process, I mean, we'll get on in a minute to talk about the defensive setup on Iwo Jima, but the 74 days of consecutive bombing, that's all about the softening up before the invasion.

But this general assault on the volcano Bonin Islands, I mean, we should just mention this amazing rabbit hole, which is known as the Chichijima incident, which actually takes place in September 1944.

So it's before the kind of all-out assault on these islands.

But this is a time where nine nine Grumman TBM Avengers, which are the dive bombers, from Air Group 51, and they're based on the USS San Jacinto, and they're all shot down while attacking Chichijimba.

And I can't quite go to the bottom of this because all the nine pilots escape, but they usually have crews of three, don't they?

Or two or three in Avengers?

Three, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, but it seems like they're just on their own on this particular instance.

This doesn't seem to be any, unless there was just three of them, three players and all three.

There were three main crews.

So it's three Avengers that are shot down which amounts to nine crew that's my understanding yeah okay great all nine men get out but eight of them then get captured because they're very close to chichijima and they're shot down by flak and the eight that get captured just face an unspeakable next few weeks and months where they're repeatedly tortured and brutalized and all the rest of it and eventually they're executed and several of them are cannibalized and it's not quite clear whether this is some sort of trophy thing or whether it's just because they're starving.

But anyway, they are.

Only one of them survives.

And he gets picked up by the United States Navy submarine Finback.

And he's in his little dinghy floating around.

He's got a head wound.

He's got blood pouring down his face.

He's weeping with fear and just general kind of despair at his plight.

And suddenly this submarine emerges from the sea like a sort of...

angel or something and they they they whip him aboard and at first he thinks he's hallucinating then he gets on board and he can only gasp, happy to be aboard.

And this pilot is the future president, George H.W.

Bush.

Yeah, isn't that amazing?

And he's all of 20 years old at this point, I think.

So he's insanely young.

He felt, this is, I think, the measure of who he was on some levels.

He felt really quite guilty the rest of his life about his two crewmen whom he couldn't save because as the officer, he felt responsible for them.

This is, of course, an incredibly traumatic event in his life.

There's also actually footage, I guess, from the Finnish.

Yeah, which I think is just amazing in retrospect when you think about that.

But it also, it points to mind another corner of the Pacific War that I think we tend to overlook.

Of course, the devastating effectiveness of U.S.

submarines in, of course, crippling the Japanese merchant fleet by now.

Really, did U.S.

subs do to Japan what the Germans had hoped to do to the Allies in the Atlantic.

But beyond that, the subs are out there on important recon missions for any typical invasion.

They're going to be taking photos of the beach.

The beaches are going to land in, and also they're up there picking up air crew too.

You'd seen that in the in the Mariana's turkey shoot, that battle.

They're able to recover a lot of the downed aviators who had run out of fuel and whatever.

So Finback is doing those joint missions.

In addition, they're also doing mining and all that kind of stuff around Japanese waters.

But here they are just happening to be in the neighborhood.

And I don't know whether it was planned or not, but they're in the neighborhood to pick up Bush.

And it's really quite quite incredible.

And Finback is a legendary sub as well, isn't it?

I mean,

it's one of the big ones.

Yeah.

Oh, is it largely because of that?

Not only because of that, but in part because of that.

Because on top of everything else they're doing, savaging Japanese shipping.

They pick up what turns out to be a future president.

It's amazing.

Absolutely.

Amazing story, isn't it?

And actually,

there's a very entertaining book about this called Flyboys, which is by James Bradley, who also wrote Flag to Our Fathers, which we might touch on

in a later episode.

But anyway, I mean,

they're incredibly well written and engagingly written.

And, you know, it's very much sort of human drama drama first isn't it kind of reportage style rather than sort of deep dive academia but great fun we we said we weren't going to go down that rabbit hole jim and we've shown uh a tremendous self-control there i feel um but we have to go back to it we have to go back to it imagine i'm afraid yes we do we do we absolutely do and the thing is that the japanese and as you you touched on this earlier john they're expecting this to get to be invaded they're in full anticipation that this is the way the direction the americans will be taking and i mean it's i mean it's worth talking about the the landscape there because it dominates how they seek to defend the place how they end up and what the fighting's like so it's it's i mean these are volcanic islands literally volcanic islands they're made of ash sulfur volcanic ash a few cane fields and there's three airfields or two airfields and one under construction isn't there on the yep on the island it's cliffs it's uh steep angled beaches they aren't sand it's volcanic cinder so you can't it's not like you can do a heavy vehicle beach assault on it you can't bring tanks on on first principles at least because we'll see that there is a demand.

Well, on both levels, both because of the steepness of the beach shore and also because of this cinder.

I mean,

it's a double negative from an attacking point of view.

Although we do see armor later in this story, which is quite

interesting, the sort of improvisation that occurs.

But basically, on the plane, so there's a plain and then there's Surabachi Mountain, which is only 550 feet tall.

And it's basically a kind of big hollow dome.

You know, there's like a big crater in the middle of it.

Yeah.

It is a proper volcano.

No one could ever assume it's anything other than that.

And it's sulphurous, literally literally a place of sulfur.

I mean, you know, it's a portal to hell, isn't it?

Essentially,

you're looking at the gate gates to Hades, aren't you?

Yeah.

And so what are the Japanese plans?

Because as we say, they've been planning to, they know they're anticipating this.

What are their plans?

So their plans initially center around what they usually had done, which is try and resist the U.S.

at the waterline and then launch what they would think of as on-site counterattacks.

The Americans often call them bonsai charges because they amounted to just suicide charges.

Now, ultimately, that's going to change once the new commander, Tadamichi Kurabashi, comes into play by the summer of 1944,

who is quite thoughtful in terms of, you know, he's studied the Pacific War, the pattern of it, and he's seen that, you know, once the Americans control the air and the sea, they're probably going to get ashore.

So it really makes more sense to kind of hunker down and bleed them the best you can and not expend your resources with these wasteful attacks.

I mean, and it points to a larger reality, I think, that you see in this war.

When the Japanese and the Americans are fighting in any typical engagement, the Japanese are generally not very effective on the attack.

They don't manipulate combined arms well.

They certainly are vulnerable to U.S.

firepower on a massive level.

But the greatest asset they have typically is the willingness of their soldiers generally to fight to the death and to extract whatever damage they can from the attackers.

So if you hunker down and you fortify very, very well, you're going to use that asset extremely effectively.

And so he understands that Iwo provides some nice bunker-making kind of terrain and tunnels, too, so that you can just fight a subterranean battle that's going to bleed the Americans.

So you're really not going to stop them.

So he's fighting against his colleagues in a way for this concept.

And

so he largely gets his way, but not, I suppose, not 100%.

Well, let's talk a little bit about him because he's a really, really interesting character, isn't he?

So Kuribayashi, he's given command in the summer of 1944 of the 109th Division and the Ogasawara Army Corps, which includes all the garrison troops in the Volcano Bonin Islands, of which, of course, Iwo Jima is one.

He's 53 when he takes over command in 1944.

He gets there, doesn't he?

Just like a couple of days before the Battle of Saipan, I think, if I remember rightly.

And he's a sort of aristocratic samurai stock.

He's a military academy graduate.

He's also been military attached in Washington in 1928 to 1929.

Can speak English.

And while he was over in the US, he traveled widely through the country and really got to understand what America was about and what possibilities America had.

And right from a word go, he realized that America was not a nation that Japan wants to ever be at war with.

So he's dead against it.

And it's really interesting, isn't it?

You think about Yamoto as well.

You know, he's also been in America.

Also, he's dead against.

going to war with them.

Whereas most of the hawks are the ones who are kind of all chomping for it.

But those who have insider knowledge are going uh uh don't do it don't do it but anyway be that as it may you know he is where he is he commands a cavalry regiment in manchuria against the soviets in 1938 39 then it becomes a divisional commander in china and then he's transferred to tokyo to command the imperial guard you know which is like the sort of praetorian guard of old in the time of the caesars and that gives him direct contact with the emperor and

He's just got a very good reputation, hasn't he, as a kind of safe pair of hands, as a deep thinker, as reliable, reliable, dependable, you know, full of that kind of spirit of honor and duty and self-sacrifice and all this kind of stuff.

And when he gets the posting, Tojo, who is, of course, the prime minister as well as a general, says to him just as he's leaving, do something similar to what was done on Attu, which is, you know, in other words, defend the island to the last man.

So he knows it's effectively a suicide order.

He knows it's a one-way way order.

It's a bit like Yamashita going to the Philippines.

I mean, it's so simple.

They know.

And Kuribayashi, of course, tells his family that, that it's going to be a one-way trip.

He basically says goodbye to them, and he expects the same thing of his men, too.

It's more or less the same thing.

I've always thought that Kuribayashi is a sort of a prime example of the Japan that could have been.

I mean, he has these concepts of honor.

He's certainly committed to his army, to his country.

He's a professional soldier on many levels, but he also has a very open, scholarly mind.

His experiences in America, for the better part of two solid years, years, have created friendships that will last him until the war begins for the rest of his life, something of the rest of his life.

He studies the country even as he embraces it.

He realizes that this isn't the fight Japan wants.

And I really believe, in retrospect, the war was not inevitable.

It was a terrible tragedy that maybe could have been avoided.

And I think Kiribayashi is one of several really thoughtful officers.

who understand this was not in Japan's interest.

And of course, when war does come, though, obviously he's committed to serve his country the best he possibly can.

It doesn't make him a perfect human being.

I'm not saying that, because who knows what he could have made him responsible for in China or not.

I don't know.

But in relation to this, I think you see him perform absolutely the best he could for his country.

He's studied, by the way, Colonel Kunio Nakagawa, the defender of Pelelu, who had...

pioneered that inland defense.

Not that he didn't resist the marine invasion on September 15, 1944.

He did, but he husbands a lot of his strength to bleed them later on in the really good defensible terrain.

That made an impression on Kurabayashi.

He had studied that.

He knew what had gone on at Leyte, where you have something of the same thing.

And then, of course, closer to time, Luzon.

So that he's in contrast then.

Yeah, with some of his colleagues.

The other thing, too, in terms I mentioned earlier being in denial, you know, for much of 43 and maybe the early part of 44 pre-Marianas, I think a lot of the Imperial Japanese Army had been in denial about the wolf that was coming at their door, the American wolf.

And I think they had been tempted to think, well, you know, the Navy wanted this war against the Western powers.

That's their problem out there in the Pacific.

We're dealing with Asia.

We're dealing with China.

And that's where the bulk of the Imperial Japanese Army is still based as of even 1945.

But now you couldn't say that anymore.

And so Kuribayashi is one of several officers, Yamashita, another one you mentioned, who now have to take that kind of bull by the horns and say, well, you know, we're really front and center with this now, and it's absorbing a lot of our ground resources.

How do we deal with that?

And I think, you know, that's that is the answer.

That's his answer.

Well, he gets there, doesn't he?

And almost immediately he goes on a walking tour of the island, which let's face it, it doesn't take very long.

And he goes around using a stick and

he's got a kind of little water bottle over his shoulder.

And at the south edge of airfield number one, he lies down on the ground and using his stick as a kind of pretend rifle, works out the sight lines in a notebook and using his ADC to approach the airfield from different angles.

It's kind of, it's fascinating because again, it's, it's got little echoes of Manteufel going, Death von Manteufel going, going forward and checking out the layer of the land ahead of the launch of the Battle of the Bulge.

But anyway, he, and as you said, you know,

this is a moment where he just goes, okay, absolutely, we're not going to bother contesting the beach too much.

Well, obviously, we'll fire at them when they arrive and we'll shoot at them and whatever, but we're not actually going to contest the beaches.

We'll have our defensive network further inland.

And, you know, we're just going to go underground.

We're going to dig out this ant nest, this sort of honeycomb of tunnels and bunkers.

Navy are absolutely obsessed with pillboxes.

So he kind of concedes that point on the basis that the navies quite often have more sway than the army.

And so they're better able to get supplies.

And half of those supplies is better than none of those supplies.

So, you know, if that's what the navy wants, whatever.

Even though he's overall commander of the garrison, which is a mixed garrison, isn't it?

And by the time of the invasion, it's about 22,000, 24,000 strong, of which about 7,500 are imperial japanese navy and the rest are our army i mean that's pretty busy with people given how small it is isn't it yeah 24 000 people crammed onto this island i mean how many does he need is the question i suppose depends how long he wants to hold out for right yeah i mean it's basically a reinforced division but the problem that that everyone has on these islands is supplying them And, you know, Iwo Jima comes in for even more problems because it doesn't have any water that you can drink, you know, the salt water around in the sea.

But the water on the island is sulfurous and salty and just, well, Japanese soldiers call it devil water or death water.

You know, they set up cisterns to try and collect the rain, but that's okay for a thousand troops, but it's not okay for 22,000.

So all the water has to come in from Chichijima, you know, 168 miles to the north, and has to be, of course, extremely carefully rationed.

And there's tales of Japanese soldiers sort of drinking from puddles like dogs.

And I mean, can you imagine?

I mean, it's just absolute nightmare.

Nikuribiyashi kind of, you know, sets a tone by just having one cupful of water today in which to kind of shave, wash his face and brush his teeth.

You know, so he's setting the example, but the conditions here are absolutely brutal.

And that's before the Americans have come anywhere near them.

You know, this is before the bombing campaign.

I mean, just imagine.

I mean, I think the ants' nest is just extraordinary because you have to understand that there's, you know, there's sort of geothermal heat under the surface.

There's little geysers of steam coming out all over the place.

And you're digging down towards that stuff.

I mean, it's just, you know, we're on an island where the physical exertion is going to be greater because of the heat and the stench and the conditions.

And you've got nothing like enough water.

Yeah.

He, I mean, it's one of the things he wrote about to his family, how much he'd like to just have a cool glass of water, just drink water.

Some all of us basically take for granted.

To him, that would have been the ultimate luxury.

And this is the general in command, much less imagine a private.

I mean, they're filthy, these guys, and they're in a stinking sulfuric environment they're dehydrated and that matters too because they're working hard to fortify the place too so they got to be sweating yes yeah yeah yeah absolutely well you know they're having to do most of it with picks and shovels i mean there are some dynamite and stuff but you know an average man can do three feet a day of tunnel i mean wow And yet they do how many miles?

I mean, it's easily 20 miles, something like that worth of tunnel, something crazy.

Yes.

So, I mean, he's working the men hard.

I mean, for all the talk earlier of him being a sort of thoughtful and one of the military intellectuals of the japanese establishment he's having to drive his people pretty hard to pull this off right so conditions just terrible conditions are rotten if you're a private soldier and oh they're just

they're just the worst you know i mean you know we we talk about about you know and rightly so we talk about the brutal conditions on the thai burma railway for example but the conditions here are brutal i mean they're not being bayoneted to death if they don't you know if they collapse or something here but it's pretty pretty hard i mean most are just sort of, you know, wearing loincloths and nothing more and sort of rubber-soled shoes.

And most men can only do about 10 minutes at the coal face before they've got to come back up and gasp for air.

I mean, that just tells you everything you need to know about just how awful the conditions are.

And some of these are really, really deep.

So the Imperial Japanese Navy command post ends up being 90 feet below the ground.

And one Japanese private says, Our hands were covered in blisters, our shoulders got stiff, and we gasped and panted in the geothermal heat.

Our throats would smart, but there was no drinking water to be had.

It's just, I don't know how they did it.

I don't know

because this is going on, the same thing is going on in Okinawa, whereas they have some water there because it rains and it's a little more normal conditions.

I don't know how they did it.

They do put in some electrical lighting.

They eventually bring in some ventilation systems, but I mean, kind of, oh, great, the lovely fresh air at the surface of this sulfurous island.

I mean,

you know,

it's sort of getting rid of the really awful and replacing it with the bad.

I mean, you know, there's also lots of, you know, because of the bombing over the 74 days and attacks, there's lots of wrecked aircraft on the island.

And so they use these as part of the sort of defensive system around the airfields, sort of bits of wing, bit of fuselage, whatever.

And one of the officers looks around and goes, good job.

These aircraft are serving the country twice.

Given the descriptions of the place, Jim, it seems improbable that there's a civilian population there who need to be evacuated, but there is.

Well, I was wondering the same.

But,

you know, home, sweet, home.

What on earth?

Yeah, I don't know.

Don't worry, darling.

We're going to move to Iwo Jima.

That'll solve all our problems.

Is it for the people?

There's a great life there.

Well, I think the civilians are there.

There's a small farming community.

There's a small, I guess there's a small fishing community.

And mainly they're people who've been brought into civilian workers working on the airfields, I'm assuming.

Right.

And then they're evacuated.

They get sent away, don't they?

In July of 44, so well in anticipation.

But in the end,

Kuribayashi gets there at the beginning of June.

So, you know, by July, the kind of the digging work is beginning.

But all men aged 16 to 40 are conscripted anyway.

So

it's not everybody.

You sure you need me?

I mean, I'm happy to go to Tokyo.

Do my patriotic duty there.

Yes.

Yeah, exactly.

He's, I mean, it's interesting, Kurubashi, because he's very determined, isn't he?

He'll sack his officers he thinks are shirking, including his own chief of staff, brigade commander, two battalion commanders, and brings younger people through.

But he does care about his men, even though, you know, in a Japanese imperial Japanese

Japanese yeah exactly within the boundaries of of the way the thing works he does care about his men and and one of the things that's really motivating him is that he doesn't want Tokyo to be bombed does he it's the thing that's so he writes to his wife Yoshi he says when I imagine what Tokyo would look like if it were bombed I see burned out desert with dead bodies lying everywhere I am desperate to stop them carrying out air raids on Tokyo yeah that's September 1944 Al yeah and he's clairvoyant isn't he that's exactly what's gonna come down on them in March.

In March.

45.

Yeah.

While he's still alive, I think.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

March 9th and 10th.

So at the turn of the year, Kuri Bayashi and his staff, they think invasion is imminent, even though the fortifications aren't quite finished, dissatisfaction.

And he wants a tunnel linking Mount Suribachi and the Motoyama Plateau, which is where one of the airfields is, but they can't pull that off.

It's too difficult.

Too much.

They're running out of supplies thanks to the dominance of allied American subs, as John mentioned earlier.

And the sea lanes are no longer safe.

So they're out on their own on this godforsaken lump of volcanic rock without any drinking water of their own, having dug sulfurous tunnels.

I mean, you know, I don't know.

I'd be not enough latrines.

I'd be going to the quartermaster asking if he had a white flag at this stage of proceedings.

I don't know about you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, 100%.

So you can just imagine it, can't you?

There's all these incredibly hot, sweaty people in these, you know, surrounded by the sulphurous stench.

There's not enough latrines.

Everyone's because of because the food and the conditions are so bad, everyone's getting the runs.

So then there's clouds of blow flies.

Everyone's thirsty, hungry, hot and sweaty all the time.

There's infestations of lice, fleas, ants, cockroaches.

You know, it's driving the men absolutely demented.

And you can imagine, it's just, you know, this is

a line that Ian Toll says.

He says, there's the labor of the damned.

Perfectly said.

And he's absolutely spot on.

You know, the bottom line is, is on the eve of the invasion, I mean, Iwo Jima is a truly terrible, terrible place.

You know, 68,000 tons of bombs are dropped from the air up until the 16th of February, and that's 74 consecutive days on an island five miles by three.

To put that into some perspective, that's more than were dropped on Malta during the entire war.

And it's also a greater density of bombs that were dropped on London.

Only 18,000 tons of bombs dropped on London during the Blitz.

You know, we've been through the nuance of that before, Al, but you know what I mean.

I mean, it's just, it's just interesting.

Every square yard has been photographed and analyzed by the Americans, but all this effort has not disturbed at all the antness, the honeycomb of tunnels, both in Suribachi, the mountain at the one end, the knuckle of the turkey leg, or in that northern kind of fleshy bit of the turkey leg.

And as Captain Thomas Fields of the 26th Marines put, and it's just absolutely brilliant this.

He goes, the Japanese weren't on Iwo Jima.

They were in Iwo Jima.

And he's right.

He's absolutely right.

That's the whole key to it.

And it also, it shows the limitations of traditional strategic bombing, conventional strategic bombing at that point.

I mean, because what is it, about three plus months of bombing raids on this place?

You know, I mean, and that I think also those raids pointed to the Japanese, you know, or made it clear to them why they did have to tunnel, why they did have to dig in.

Because if they didn't, then they are going to be vulnerable to the planes.

You know, like you said, Jim, with the wrecked aircraft serving the country twice, the guy says, so yeah, I mean, that's up there on the airfield, right on the runway, and that's a vulnerable target.

But if you are in your subterranean world, that's a completely different thing.

And so I think it's the irony of this whole thing that Iwo Jima is probably the best prepared in terms of aerial bombardment, at least, target that you have in the whole Pacific War.

And yet it almost doesn't

stop.

Probably didn't diminish them all that much, did it?

Yeah.

No.

Well, the caring, sharing Kuribayashi, because he's so tender about his men, issues six courageous battle vowels before the invasion.

Well, these make

aren't they?

But these make the Falci Miegas rules of battle look decidedly lily livered.

They're really not trying.

I mean these are quite extraordinary, aren't they?

Well, you're going to read them out.

Yeah, why not?

One, we shall defend this place with all our strength to the end.

Two, we shall fling ourselves against the enemy tanks, clutching explosives to destroy them.

Three, we shall slaughter the enemy, dashing in among them to kill them.

Four, every one of our shots shall be on target and kill the enemy.

Five, we shall not die until we have killed ten of the enemy.

Six, we shall continue to harass the enemy with guerrilla tactics, even if only one of us remains alive.

I mean, it's important to remember that Kurubayashi is a sensitive flower.

He's got his gun.

Well, I mean, that's where we are by this point.

And so Kurubayashi understands that that has a strategic purpose, that that's what it's come to.

That bleeding the Americans is the only way really to alter the strategic balance.

You know, if we take such terrible losses, that maybe there will be some sort of end to the war short of Japan being occupied and the end of the emperor and the empire and so on and so forth.

And this is a possibility, you know.

So he's doing this for his wife and kids, isn't he?

I mean,

that's at the forefront of his mind.

And he knows that they're all on a one-way trip.

Yeah, and this isn't new, by the way.

This is what's gone on with other garrisons and other places.

Tarawa would be an example.

Yes.

So would Saipan and so would Guam.

And this is sort of the pattern of the war.

It's what Yamashida is dealing with in the Philippines.

And so

Kuribayashi is sort of continuing in that line

that that's what the war has become for these guys, that their job is to bleed the Americans.

And, you know, it's pretty stark.

It's very stark.

But, you know, one thing I should point out, earlier in the war, in the Battle of Guadalcanal, when the Marines weren't really sure if the Japanese were going to overrun their perimeter or whatever, there were orders among the Marines that if that happened, that the Marines would spread out and fight as guerrilla warriors.

So it's like both sides are pretty committed, not, of course, you know, as hardcore for the Marines and also the Army and Guadalcanal, as you see expressed here.

But, you know, I think there's the same level of commitment at some level.

If it gets to a certain stage, we're all going to continue resisting in another manner, is maybe the point.

Right.

Well,

we need to take a very short break and then we shall return as the offensive begins because it's one of those episodes where we are actually going to start the battle

rather than nudge you on to part two.

Yes, we'll see you shortly.

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Welcome back to We Have Ways of Age You Talk with me, Al Murray, James Holland, and John McManus.

Now, great.

Well, we've set the scene, and one of the things that's on Kuribarayashi's mind, as we pointed out earlier, is the bombing of Tokyo.

And unfortunately for him, from his point of view, that has begun, hasn't it?

Yeah, yeah.

It's amazing.

You know, you assume that kind of Japan is being hit regularly by this sort of phase of the war stage of the war.

But actually, it's not until the 16th of February that the first carrier-borne aircraft bomber raid takes place on Tokyo.

And this is the first time that aircraft taking off from a carrier have hit Tokyo since the Doolittle raid back in April 1942, you know, nearly three years before.

I mean, it's amazing, really.

Yes, it is absolutely massive.

And if it, and the thing I think is so interesting about these Tokyo raids of the 16th and then the 17th of February 1945 is the enormous scale of them.

I mean, there are 17 carriers.

I mean, just imagine what that looks like.

You know, that's just the carriers.

Forget about, you know, that also comes comes with a whole load of escort ships, by the way.

This is the U.S.

Navy's Task Force 58 is lying 60 miles west of Honshu and 125 miles from Tokyo.

So, you know, it's in.

It's really close to Honshu.

It's really, really close.

This is commanded by Admiral Mark Mitcher.

And he's pretty good, Mitcher, isn't he?

He is.

He's absolutely.

Now, he's had some rough moments earlier in the war.

He kind of fudges the whole Midway after action report thing.

And, you know, but bottom line, he's probably our leading carrier admiral, aviation admiral at this point in the war you know and it what i should point out too i mean not to not to integrate what what he and the the 17 carriers have done but from an army air forces point of view it's almost like oh that's that's that's nice you little guys there with your little uh dive bombers we've got b-29s and uh yeah and uh so these are

real so you're talking you know from these 17 carriers you're talking 1100 aircraft i mean 1100 aircraft just from carriers i mean that's just mind-blowing To make your carriers that vulnerable, that close to enemy shores is a hell of a thing, isn't it?

It is, but it also speaks to a major institutional commitment on part of the Navy to take a leading role in the actual bombing of Japan.

And so some of this is

a bit of a bureaucratic struggle between the Army Air Forces and the Navy.

Yeah, some inter-services stuff, which after all, is because there's no allies really in this.

Not yet.

Not yet, not really.

This is the arm wrestle that's going on inside the American military establishment.

Yes, but it's also not just about hitting Tokyo.

This is about hitting aircraft factories and aircraft installations and airfields and fighters should they come up.

I mean, this is point blank all over again.

I mean, this is the same principle.

If you get rid of the fighter defenses of Japan, it's that much easier to bomb, you know, because you don't have to contend with them.

Because the greatest threat to a bomber is an enemy fighter plane, not a flat gun.

And that's the whole point of this.

And you have to say, this is pretty successful.

In another sort of comparison, the Japanese japanese pilots were absolutely stupendously good um in 1942 end of 1941 1942 500 hours in their logbooks before they're joining their squadrons you know only the absolute creme de la creme can be fighter pilots and you know be flying around in zeros and oscars and what have you but they've just gone you know from a from a point of view of production of aircraft the the standard of the you know still the same zero was in 1942 and the americans have overtaken them with their latest models like hellcats and corsairs and and what have you and the quality of the training of course and inevitably has fallen off as well because there isn't enough fuel to train and blah, blah, blah.

It's exactly the same problem that the Luftwaffe faces.

So they're coming up against American fighter pilots who've got at least 350 hours before they get anywhere nearer a carrier.

And they're just qualitatively as well as quantitatively vastly superior, just as the fighter pilots of the US 9th Air Force and 8th Air Force back in England were in the lead-up to D-Day.

It's exactly the same comparison, really.

At this point, the Americans are still thinking in terms of a kind of targeted strategic bombing campaign, like you said, Jim, to destroy their fighter capacity, their factories, you know, their capacity to make war in terms of production and whatever else.

We're just about to transition in March to the idea of mass firebombing raids.

In other words, the heck with all that precision stuff that we talked about in Europe and we tried here, and it wasn't working, you know, because we were bombing at too high a level in terms of altitude.

You had the

jet stream, you know, all this kind of stuff intrudes on the accuracy.

And we're about to transition to firebombing.

So, So you're, you know, the February raids that the Navy launches are sort of on something of the last hurrah of that idea that the target of strategic bombing.

And they're pretty successful, aren't they?

They're less successful on the first day than they are on the second day, where they kind of really do hammer a lot of the aircraft plants in and around Tokyo.

36 fails to return on the first day, which is, you know, out of 1,100 is actually pretty good when you're flying fighter planes over, you know, a decent stretch of the ocean.

But on those two days, Task Force 58 shoots down 100 100 Japanese planes in the air, further 150 on the ground.

Airfields and factories are left in ruins.

Total losses, 60 carrier planes in combat and 28 just on operations.

But the carriers and the screening ships are completely unscathed.

Yeah, that's huge.

It's amazing.

And that is because one of the big risks about this is you're dancing pretty close to

the edge.

Yeah, so close to enemy land-based air, and that's never a good thing.

Yeah.

And I think the other thing, just again, to go back to that that comparison to the, you know, the U.S.

8 First boss in the start of 1944, 50% of the pilots

on these two raids, this was their first combat operation.

You know, they pull it off.

And Mitchell writes in his report, he goes, too much credit cannot be given to the Naval Aviation Training Organization and its methods.

And you just have to say, yeah, you betcha.

Definitely.

I mean,

they really honed it by this stage.

They just, you know, because not only are they teaching people to fly and they're giving them the kind of the oxygen to do it properly and consistently in good weather over over the United States.

They're also learning from what they've absorbed in North Africa, in Sicily, in the Mediterranean, in Italy, in Europe, and of course in the Pacific as well.

And they're learning those lessons and bringing them to bear when they're training these pilots.

So when they get shipped out from California to Hawaii and then from Hawaii, you know, most of these fighter pilots tend to do a stint in Hawaii first to kind of, you know, get the layer of the land and sort of, you know, practice their carrier landings and takeoffs and all the rest of it and bring themselves up to speed.

Then they're shipped out to wherever, to Guam or whatever.

And they're absolute muts-nuts by that point, as proved by this.

Yeah, it's very risky, isn't it?

Because the Japanese have started doing kamikaze operations by this point of the war.

That's right.

So you're really putting those carriers out on a limb, aren't you?

Big time.

They're the thing you don't want to lose.

There's that peculiar thing, they defend themselves, and without themselves, they can't defend anything.

You know, like

they create a circle, don't they?

As a sort of circular problem if they're destroying them.

Yeah, but

as John says, it speaks of the commitment to the U.S.

Navy.

Oh, I know, it's extraordinary.

Extraordinary.

Yeah.

So on the 16th of February, so an invasion fleet assembles offshore at Iwo Jima.

I mean, encircling the entire island,

which is just amazing.

You think about this, the scale of this effort.

It looked like a mountain range had risen up out of the sea, one Japanese observer says.

The Americans have done this before in the Marshalls and the Marianas.

Well, we're pretty much the same team.

That's the point.

Yeah, the Fifth Fleet under Raymond Spruance.

So it's Spruance with Task Force 51 under Vice Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner.

It's around 450 ships.

And I think what's interesting is this is you have the Secretary of State for the Navy, James Forrestal, along for the ride, which I think is extraordinary.

Yep.

He's just there to observe.

Don't mind me.

Here I am, Secretary of the Navy.

Here I am.

I'll just sit here and watch.

I won't get in anyone's way.

Don't you worry.

I mean, honestly.

This is the largest operation of the Department of the Navy, in a way, if you think about it.

All that naval hardware, and then obviously the Marine Corps, which comes under the auspices of the Navy, the Department of of the Navy.

And this is primarily a Navy operation, except for some U.S.

Army garrison troops and the 147th Infantry Regiment.

Other than that, the assaulting divisions are going to be all Marine Divisions, 3rd, 4th, and 5th, under the 5th Amphibious Corps.

But, John, just to make this point about, you know, the Japanese observers saying it looks like a mountain range had risen up out of the sea.

I mean, if you're a Japanese soldier on, you know, Suribachi and you look out and you see this, you're just going to think you've been entombed, aren't you?

Oh, yeah.

I mean, imagine how demoralizing that must have been and how overwhelming it must have been.

Just looking out to sea and seeing all those ships and knowing.

Yeah.

I mean, I think you knew ahead of this the hour of your doom was coming.

Everybody's there on a, you know, one-way trip, as we said.

But maybe there was some part of you that hoped maybe they won't invade.

Maybe we'll sit this one out somehow.

We'll win the war.

I don't know.

But now when you see those ships offshore, that possibility is gone.

They're coming.

And it's going to be the end for you.

I mean, that's the sad reality.

Yeah.

And for all the we will die to the last round talk.

Oh, all right.

Okay.

It looks like that is going to happen now.

It's really going to happen.

And these are, these are young guys.

These are ordinary people in a way.

They don't want to die.

No.

We may have that impression, you know, from the distance of history.

Oh, these are faceless fanatics or whatever.

No, they're, they're young men and they have hopes and dreams and lives.

They have families.

It's terribly tragic to them.

It's just that they're so, their culture expects this of them and they're so committed

and they're good soldiers and they're well-led.

But anyway, you were saying that the invasion, the main sort of, you know, troop force, the invasion force is going to have to get the hard yards of Iwo Jima for all this naval strength off out at sea.

It's still the guys who've got to hit the beaches and claw this territory, prize it away from the Japanese defenders.

This is the 5th Amphibious Corps of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Marine Divisions under the command of Major General Harry Schmidt.

You're saying that Holland Smith has been kind of bumped upstairs.

So

tell us about Schmidt, John.

Yeah, Schmidt's nickname is the Dutchman.

He graduated from Marine Officers School in 1911.

So he's got about 30-some-odd years of experience.

So he had commanded the 4th Marine Division at Roy Neumur

in the Marshall Islands in February 1944, had won a victory there, and then he commanded the division still in the Battle of Saipan the previous summer, you know, in 1944.

And he's he's courageous, he's professional.

I don't see him as particularly particularly innovative.

Not too many Marine general officers were

in World War II,

maybe in a doctrinal sense or whatever.

It didn't mean they weren't effective commanders at times, but that's not really what they're about.

They're about fighting a battle and doing it as quickly as they possibly can with the tactics at hand and the weapons at hand.

So Schmidt, I think, is a very solid performer.

I'm glad he was in charge rather than Holland Smith, to be honest with you.

Of course, no one will be surprised to hear me say that.

So, what is Holland Smith doing?

He commands like expeditionary level.

In other words, he's sort of like the administrative overseer of this whole thing, but he's not really going to be in operational control of the divisions.

That's Schmidt's job.

So, he's kind of chairman, isn't he?

He's kind of the chairman, and as usual, is aboard ship most of the time and kind of managing from afar.

Now, he's certainly helping in terms of the amphibious doctrine.

He understands that very, very well.

And I think he's one of America's leading thinkers in that regard.

So, he's been helpful in the planning.

He and of course Schmidt are famously going to be really concerned about the naval bombardment.

They thought it should have gone on longer.

They wanted 10 days of bombardment of Iwo Jima.

They get about three.

And I think that's really a fascinating thing to explore in a little bit because it tells you the difference in perspectives.

From a Navy perspective, you know, you got to think through all the shells you can bring along and what you're going to have to do for force protection, you know, and what's going to happen to the guns when you shoot off that many shells.

All that has to be calculated and planned for um and so it's easy for us say on the marine side to say well we want 10 days of bombardment but it's harder to make that happen in practice that that means you're going to have to make decisions that you know i just don't understand how they don't understand that though i you know that's

incredible i think it's yeah they're a core core level and expedition force level generals they should understand about the operational level of war and the constraints you have out at sea when you're you know asking asking the navy to do a 10-day bombardment and incidentally once the invasion starts, continue to support them.

Well, that's the two.

That's a great point, Jim.

Yeah, because we're going to need that continued support.

I mean, we'd all agree to that.

Why don't these guys understand that?

And that's sort of my point, that they're not particularly innovative or open-minded beyond like the burrow-in-the-ground tactical fight.

And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but they don't have that kind of larger appreciation for the issues of maritime warfare.

They're having to fight the ground battle.

And so they're thinking, and I think this is totally understandable too, is, hey, we're the ones going in with our lives on the line.

You need to give us all the support you possibly can.

And I think I would probably feel the same way if I'm them.

And the same thing happened at Pelelu.

So I think the Navy has a more detached view of, okay, here's the target list of 20 targets I've been given.

And I bombard them with a certain number of shells and then I scratch them off my checklist and everything's okay.

From my perspective, say, as a Marine going ashore, it looks very different then because it's not that clean and tidy.

And we know that a lot of them are still going to be fighting and alive.

So there was a little incident during the invasion of Pelelu that sort of summarizes this whole thing.

Chesty Puller, the famous, you know,

Chesty Puller, he was a regimental commander at that point.

And when he was, he was about to board a landing craft to go ashore at Pelelu.

And one of his naval officer friends said, well, we'll see you tonight for dinner.

And in other words, we've pummeled this place.

There's nothing going to be there to resist you.

And Puller just looks at the guy like, are you out of your freaking mind?

I'm not going to be back, you know, kind of thing.

And so I think you're seeing something of the same dynamic here at Iwo Jima.

Smith and Schmidt understand that a lot more bombardment is going to be needed to really fight this battle, that they don't necessarily quite grasp the challenges that the naval side has too.

And so you end up with this three-year-old.

As it is, they've got, you know, they've, you know, by the morning of the 19th of February, 1945, you know, there's 111,000 troops waiting to go in, 75,000 of the landing force, 36,000 army garrison force for later on,

tons of supplies.

I mean, just think about what that looks like.

I mean, it's absolutely insane.

You know, and the Navy has done incredible work to get this huge invasion fleet together.

And it's a sign of the U.S.

dominance and military might and command of the Pacific seas at this point that you can move these ships very quickly.

They don't have to sort of ziglag like crazy.

They don't have to do detour routes to avoid, you know, congestions of U-boats or the, you know, the equivalent or anything like that.

They can just absolutely go hell file ever.

And a case in point is the USS West Virginia, survivor of Pearl Harbor attack back on December 1941, spends 35 days at Lingang Gulf in the Philippines, supporting operations there, then pulls into the Alifi Atoll on the 16th of February, is loaded and refueled in 24 hours.

I mean, you know, this is a battleship, isn't it?

USS West Virginia.

This is huge.

In 24 hours, and then takes 50 hours only to travel 900 miles to Iwo Jima, and it arrives at 9:30 a.m.

on the 19th of February, ready to kind of join the party.

I mean, it's just absolutely the Ford logistics are incredible at this point, and that's why we can operate this way.

And by the way, three days' bombardment is absolutely immense.

I mean, this is

off the radar.

This is it.

You want 10.

I mean, six.

I mean, it's five, four, five, four,

nine.

They want ten.

I mean,

I suppose they're thinking, you know, if you do 10 days, then it'll only take us a day to finish this off, and we can all get away quicker or whatever.

That's what they're thinking.

Yes.

That's what they're thinking.

Yes.

But the Navy are thinking about it.

But if three days doesn't do it, it's 10.

That's the point.

That's always been my idea.

Exactly.

Given what happens, if three days, 10 days, 6 days.

Schmidt goes to his grave sort of regretting that he hasn't had 10.

I mean, it wouldn't have made any difference at all.

I don't think it would have.

Because we've also bombarded the island from the air months.

With 68,000 tons of bombs.

It is what it is at this point.

And so, when the ground troops go in, they're going to face what they face.

I mean, I think maybe once you can observe targets later, maybe it would have made more sense to husband some of that ammo so that you could have observed fire later.

Once the troops are ashore and you do know where the Japanese are, you can get a better sense of accuracy, I guess.

But so, this is the island's tiny.

How many targets can there possibly be on a surprise

for a three-day bombardment?

Yeah, yeah, right.

And then, like, So, yeah, and so there's two divisions going ashore, the fourth and the fifth.

So, basically, that's like Omaha Beach, if you think about it.

You're landing two divisions, all the shipping that you have to do for that, all the coordination.

And the plan is for this is going to be on the southeastern side, a series of beaches with a pretty stiff beach shore, quite a steep shoreline.

And the fifth division is going to go on and take Suribachi.

That's the plan.

While the fourth division is going to push forward northwards and take airfield number one and then push on and take airfield number two.

And then once Suribachi's been neutralized, third infantry, third Marine Division will be brought in.

Fifth Division will be on the northern side, third division will be in the middle, fourth division will be on the southern side, and they'll just push forward and clear it, you know, from the kind of southeast to the northwest.

That's that's the plan.

But no one is thinking this is going to be easy, despite this incredible weight of firepower.

They've kind of sussed out that the Japanese have sort of squirreled down into the ground.

And yet they don't know.

I mean, in a way, they don't.

I mean, they know it's going to be tough.

But here, this is just amazing to me.

And of course,

again, I should say Holland Smith, of course, not my favorite, but this is a classic example of how little he and some of the other operational commanders understand about what the Japanese have in mind.

He gives a final briefing for war correspondence, and he basically says this.

It's a tough proposition.

That's why my Marines are here.

It's always my Marines.

It's, you know, like he possesses them.

The Japanese, in my opinion, will have a mechanized defense.

I don't know how they're going to do that on a volcanic ash island, but let's leave that aside.

Every man, every cook, baker, and candlestick maker will be down on the beaches somewhere with some kind of weapon.

So I don't know how a commander

could a commander at three-star level at that stage of the war truly believe that when you looked at what happened, if you were studying what happened at Luzon, at Leyte, at Pelelalu, at Biek?

I mean, on and on it goes.

And by the way, he's not alone.

The same thing happens with 10th Army when they go ashore to Okinawa.

They expect that, oh, the Japanese are going to be right there at the beach trying to resist us.

So Holland Smith isn't alone in his kind of ignorance, but it's amazing to me still that you could go on an operation that is this well planned and have that outlook because it's like you said, Jim, it's exactly wrong.

Yeah, it's completely wrong.

And of course, it's exactly the opposite.

And Kurubashi has said, Bayashi has said, no, we're not going to do this.

You know, you can absolutely fire at the invasion force from your positions inland, but this is going to be fought inland from where you are, in these tunnels, in these pillboxes, in these trenches.

The tanks he does have are not going to be mobile at all.

They're going to be dug in, you know, in in hull-down positions, basically used as kind of pretty much fixed artillery, effectively as anti-tank guns more than anything else.

So the scene is set.

You know, it's the night of the 18th, 19th of February.

The Marines are getting ready on board.

They're stripping down and cleaning weapons just a zillion times over.

There's briefings.

And those of you who've been listening to the podcast for a while may remember that we had an interview with Dick Jesser, who had been on the, I think he was 4th Marines, if I remember rightly.

But

he told us on that interview that we did with him, he said that his battalion commander gathered them around, you know, on the ship's deck the night before, the afternoon before, and said, by this time tomorrow, half of you will be dead.

What a thing to say.

I mean, you know, what a pep talk.

Yeah.

The Japanese equivalent is, we will do this and defend.

It's at least got some pep in it.

This is,

you know, I mean, the Japanese are embracing the fact they're all going to die rather than, you know, too bad.

Tough shit, lads.

Tomorrow, tomorrow you may not, you know, enjoy tonight.

Tonight tonight.

We got steak and eggs for you.

And you come back around to these are ordinary people.

These are young people who want to live their lives and not be, you know, hundreds of thousands of miles from home in a sulfurous hellhole.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean,

but no one thinks it's going to be a walkover.

Admiral Turner tells correspondents Irojima is as well defended as any other fixed position in the world today.

Well, he was right about that.

He's right.

Turner understands more than Holland Smith.

I mean, Holland Smith says, you know, he gets it.

His understanding of what opposition they're going to face is entirely wrong.

But the notion that they're going to have very heavy casualties, you know, that's absolutely been prepped for.

You know, he's expecting up to 15,000 casualties just getting ashore.

The fleet's even got converted LSTs.

They've got four of them as floating medical triage centers, you know, from which the wounded will be then sent onto two hospital ships.

So, you know, they're braced for it.

And that sort of filtered down from the top to the bottom.

You know, they all know they're in for a tough fight.

So early morning on the 19th of February, 1945, Marines start scrambling down the rope nets into Higginbows and into Amtrak's.

Conditions seem good.

What are they going to face?

What's to come?

I mean, so initially, the Japanese mainly let them get ashore.

Oh, no, John, you've got to stop here.

Oh, sorry.

No, no, that's great, John.

That's brilliant.

That's exactly the cliffhanger we require.

Join us for part two, Hell on Earth, Iwo Jima, in our next episode.

Thank you very much for listening to We Have Ways of Making You Talk USA with me, Al Murray, John McMillan, James Holland.

A tiny glimpse of ankle there from John.

If you want to listen to all this in one go, don't forget to become a subscriber on our Apple channel, Officer Class, or join our Patreon, We Have Ways of Making You Talk, or even better, if you want to see John himself this side of the Atlantic.

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Tickets at we havewaysfest.co.uk.

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I mean, surely you've heard the plug by now, but check it out.

We'll see you there.

And we will see you for our next episode of this series about Iwo Jima very, very soon.

Cheerio.

Cheerio.

See ya.