197 Okinawa and Iwo Jima
31.7.4: Okinawa and Iwo Jima
Hard-fought battles on the Japanese home islands of Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and others resulted in horrific casualties on both sides but finally produced a Japanese defeat.
Learning Objective
Connect the battles for Okinawa and Iwo Jima with the greater American “island hopping” strategy
Key Points
- The Battle of Iwo Jima (February 19 – March 26, 1945) was a major battle in which the U.S. Marines landed on and eventually captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II.
- After the heavy losses incurred in the battle, the strategic value of the island became controversial; it was useless to the U.S. Army as a staging base and useless to the U.S. Navy as a fleet base.
- The largest and bloodiest American battle of the Pacific theater came at Okinawa, as the U.S. sought airbases for 3,000 B-29 bombers and 240 squadrons of B-17 bombers for the intense bombardment of Japan’s home islands in preparation for a full-scale invasion in late 1945.
- At Okinawa, the Americans suffered 75,000 casualties on the ground; 94% of the Japanese soldiers died along with many civilians.
- Many military historians believe that the Okinawa campaign led directly to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a means of avoiding the planned ground invasion of the Japanese mainland.
Key Terms
- island hopping
- A military strategy employed by the Allies in the Pacific War against Japan to bypass heavily fortified Japanese positions and instead concentrate the limited Allied resources on strategically important islands that were not well-defended but were capable of supporting the drive to the main islands of Japan.
- “typhoon of steel”
- American nickname for the battle of Okinawa, named for the ferocity of the fighting, the intensity of Japanese kamikaze attacks, and the sheer numbers of Allied ships and armored vehicles that assaulted the island.
Iwo Jima
The battle of Iwo Jima (“Operation Detachment”) in February 1945 was one of the bloodiest battles fought by the Americans in the Pacific War. Iwo Jima was an eight-square-mile island situated halfway between Tokyo and the Mariana Islands. Holland Smith, the commander of the invasion force, aimed to capture the island and use its three airfields as bases to carry out air attacks against the Home Islands. Lt. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, the commander of the island’s defense, knew that he could not win the battle but hoped to make the Americans suffer far more than they could endure.
From early 1944 until the days leading up to the invasion, Kuribayashi transformed the island into a massive network of bunkers, hidden guns, and 11 miles of underground tunnels. The heavy American naval and air bombardment did little but drive the Japanese further underground, making their positions impervious to enemy fire. Their pillboxes and bunkers were all connected so that if one was knocked out it could be reoccupied again. The network of bunk