Battle of Iwo Jima (1945): The Marines and Mount Suribachi

The Battle of Iwo Jima was fought between United States Marines and the Japanese garrison of a small volcanic island in the western Pacific from 19 February to 26 March 1945. It was one of the bloodiest battles in the history of the US Marine Corps and produced one of the most famous photographs ever taken: Joe Rosenthal’s image of a flag being raised on Mount Suribachi.

The island covers only about 21 square kilometres (8 square miles), yet roughly 70,000 Marines were needed to take it. Its defenders fought almost to the last man, and the battle became a symbol both of American determination and of the terrible cost of invading Japanese territory.

Background

By late 1944 the United States had captured the Mariana Islands and begun bombing Japan with long-range B-29 Superfortresses. The bombers had to fly about 2,400 km each way, and Iwo Jima lay almost exactly on their route. Japanese radar and fighters on the island gave early warning of raids and attacked the bombers, while damaged B-29s had nowhere to land on the long return flight.

American planners saw three benefits in seizing the island. Its airfields could take crippled bombers, base fighters to escort the raids and deny the Japanese an outpost. Iwo Jima was also part of Japan proper, administered from Tokyo, so its loss would be a heavy blow to Japanese morale.

The attack followed the long American advance across the Pacific that had begun after Midway and Guadalcanal. Planners initially hoped the island could be taken in a matter of days.

The Japanese defence

The garrison was commanded by Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, who had served as a military attaché in the United States and had few illusions about American industrial power. He knew he could not hold the island. His goal was to make its capture so costly that the Americans might hesitate before invading the home islands.

Kuribayashi rejected the earlier Japanese practice of meeting invaders on the beaches and launching mass “banzai” charges. Instead, his roughly 20,000–21,000 men dug into the soft volcanic rock, building hundreds of bunkers, pillboxes and gun positions linked by a long network of tunnels. Many positions were so well hidden and protected that weeks of air raids and naval bombardment did little damage.

Conditions for the defenders were harsh. The island had no springs or streams, so water came from rain cisterns and was strictly rationed, and the tunnels were filled with heat and sulphurous fumes from volcanic vents. The island’s civilian population of about 1,000 people had been evacuated to the Japanese mainland in 1944.

The landing

The invasion force was the V Amphibious Corps under Major General Harry Schmidt, made up of the 3rd, 4th and 5th Marine Divisions. Lieutenant General Holland Smith commanded the expeditionary troops, under the overall naval command of Admiral Raymond Spruance’s Fifth Fleet. Three days of naval bombardment preceded the assault; the Marines had asked for more.

On the morning of 19 February 1945 the first waves landed on the island’s south-eastern beaches. At first resistance was light. Then, as men and vehicles bogged down in the loose black volcanic sand, the Japanese opened fire from prepared positions covering the entire beach. By nightfall around 30,000 Marines were ashore, but more than 2,000 had been killed or wounded on the first day.

Among the Marines ashore were Navajo code talkers, who passed radio messages in a code based on their language that the Japanese never broke. Their speed and accuracy in the first days of the battle were later singled out for praise by Marine signal officers.

Mount Suribachi and the flag

The 28th Marines were ordered to cut off and capture Mount Suribachi, the 169-metre (554-foot) extinct volcano at the island’s southern tip, which overlooked the landing beaches. After four days of fighting they reached the summit.

On the morning of 23 February a patrol led by First Lieutenant Harold Schrier raised a small American flag on the summit, an event photographed by Marine Sergeant Louis Lowery. Later that day a larger flag was sent up so that it could be seen across the island, and a second group of men raised it in place of the first. Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal captured that second raising in a single frame.

Rosenthal’s photograph was published in American newspapers within days, won the Pulitzer Prize for Photography in 1945 and was used to promote a war bond drive. It later became the model for the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Virginia, dedicated in 1954.

The fight for the north

The capture of Suribachi did not end the battle. Most of the defenders were concentrated in the rugged northern part of the island, around the airfields and a maze of ridges and ravines. For more than three weeks the Marines advanced yard by yard, using flamethrowers, demolition charges and tanks to destroy bunkers one at a time.

Positions such as Hill 382, the Amphitheater and Turkey Knob, collectively known as the “Meat Grinder”, cost thousands of casualties. Japanese soldiers emerged from tunnels behind American lines at night. At sea, kamikaze aircraft sank the escort carrier USS Bismarck Sea and badly damaged the carrier USS Saratoga on 21 February.

The island was declared secure on 16 March, but fighting continued. The final Japanese attack, by a few hundred men near one of the airfields in the early hours of 26 March, marked the end of organised resistance. Kuribayashi is believed to have died around this time, though the circumstances remain uncertain.

Key people

Tadamichi Kuribayashi organised one of the most effective defences of the Pacific War. Respected by his opponents, he was later portrayed in Clint Eastwood’s 2006 film Letters from Iwo Jima.

Holland Smith and Harry Schmidt led the Marine ground forces, while Richmond Kelly Turner commanded the amphibious fleet that landed them.

Joe Rosenthal, a civilian photographer for the Associated Press, took the battle’s defining image. The flag-raisers themselves were at first misidentified. After investigations in 1947, 2016 and 2019, the Marine Corps identified them as Michael Strank, Harlon Block, Franklin Sousley, Ira Hayes, Harold Schultz and Harold Keller.

Casualties, consequences and legacy

The battle was unusual in that total American casualties were higher than Japanese ones, although far more Japanese died. Of the garrison, only about 216 men were captured during the battle; most of the rest were killed. Some survivors hid in the tunnels for months, and a few for years: the last two known holdouts on the island gave themselves up in January 1949.

Whether the island was worth its cost has been debated ever since. Supporters point to the airfields and the bombers they saved; critics argue that the island’s value as a fighter base proved smaller than expected, because long-range escort missions to Japan were fewer than planned, and that the strategic gains did not justify such heavy losses.

American engineers quickly extended the airfields. By the end of the war B-29s had made more than 2,000 emergency landings on Iwo Jima. Claims that this saved the lives of tens of thousands of airmen are debated by historians, since many of those aircraft could have landed elsewhere or ditched, but the island clearly saved many crews.

The battle’s cost shocked the American public and military leaders. It shaped expectations for the even larger Battle of Okinawa that began only days later, and for the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands.

The United States administered Iwo Jima until 1968, when it was returned to Japan. Since 2007 the island has officially been called Iwo To, its pre-war name. It has no civilian population, and veterans from both countries have held joint reunions of honour there since 1985.

Rosenthal’s photograph remains the best-known image of the Pacific War and one of the most reproduced photographs in history. The battle has been retold in books, memorials and films, including the two Eastwood films of 2006 that told the story from the American and Japanese sides.

Myths and facts

Myth: The flag-raising photograph was posed. Rosenthal photographed a genuine replacement of the first flag. Confusion arose because he later took a deliberately posed group shot of Marines cheering under the flag, and because there had been an earlier raising.

Myth: The flag-raising marked the end of the battle. It took place on the fifth day. More than four weeks of fighting followed, and three of the six men in the photograph were killed later on the island.

Timeline

• 1944, June – December: Kuribayashi takes command and fortifies the island.
• 1945, 16 February: US naval bombardment of Iwo Jima begins.
• 1945, 19 February: Marines land on the south-eastern beaches.
• 1945, 21 February: Kamikaze attacks sink USS Bismarck Sea.
• 1945, 23 February: Two flags are raised on Mount Suribachi; Rosenthal photographs the second.
• 1945, 4 March: The first damaged B-29 makes an emergency landing on the island.
• 1945, 16 March: The island is declared secure.
• 1945, 26 March: The last major Japanese attack ends organised resistance.

Why it matters

Iwo Jima showed how costly an invasion of Japanese territory would be, influencing American planning for the final months of the war. It also gave the United States an air base on the doorstep of Japan and, through Rosenthal’s photograph, one of the enduring images of the Second World War.