WWII Warriors Revisit Island Hell on Earth

Harvey Garner looked down and fell silent for a moment as his feet sank into the black sand of Invasion Beach.

“This feels familiar,” he said, tears welling in his eyes. “This feels very familiar.”

From its eerie caverns to the crumbling gray pillboxes that dot the landscape, Iwo Jima is an island haunted by its bloody past.

But 50 years after Americans came here to find their own little hell on earth, Garner and several hundred other veterans of the battle to win this isolated outcropping put some of those ghosts to rest Tuesday.

“I don’t feel bad about coming back here,” the Tampa, Fla., man said as he walked down the beach. Fifty years ago, he ran for his life up the same stretch of sand, with Japanese shooting at him from both sides. “I thank God I made it. Many didn’t.”

Garner was among more than 800 American vets and their families who came to Iwo Jima for a 50th anniversary memorial.

U.S. troops stormed ashore on Feb. 19, 1945. Tuesday’s ceremony, the only official one planned by the military, commemorated the island’s capture after weeks of bitter fighting.

A handful of Japanese survivors, along with 100 or so relatives of soldiers who fought here, including the son and widow of the Japanese commander on Iwo Jima, Tadamichi Kuribayashi, also attended the ceremony.

The Japanese government, which has distanced itself from 50th anniversary ceremonies, sent no Cabinet-level officials. The Americans were represented by Navy Secretary John H. Dalton and Marine Commandant Gen. Carl E. Mundy Jr.

Dozens of drab green trucks shuttled the veterans around the island to the sites of some of the worst fighting. As they looked out over the thick brush, the veterans pointed to spots they remembered or to the many plumes of steam from the island’s volcanic depths.

Today, the island’s only full-time inhabitants are a few hundred Japanese soldiers who operate an airfield.

“I just wanted to come back and see it again, to get a feel of it again,” said Richard David, who flew bombing runs over the island during the battle. “I’m glad I came.”

Few Americans would have said that during the war.

Memorial guest Walter F. Mondale, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, described the battle for the tiny island as one of the fiercest in the history of war.

In 36 days of ground fighting, progress was measured in feet and yards. Killed in battle were 6,821 Americans and most of the 21,000 Japanese who tried to defend the island. Only 1,083 Japanese survived.

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IWO JIMA: Steppingstone to Victory

Fifty years ago, 70,000 American troops attacked Iwo Jima, a tiny Pacific Ocean island devoid of water and trees and covered by volcanic ash and cinders. The objective? To provide a place for emergency landings of American B-29 Superfortress bombers on missions between the Mariana Islands and major targets in Japan, and a base for fighter escorts, because no fighter plane could fly the entire distance. Iwo Jima, lying midway between the Marianas and the Japanese mainland, was the answer.

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THE IMAGE THAT WILL LAST FOREVER

The famous photo of troops raising the American flag at Iwo Jima was in fact the second such raising. A battalion commander, seeing the original flag from down below Mt. Suribachi, decided it would probably be pulled down by souvenir hunters. He also believed that the 28-by-54-inch flag was too small. The battalion commander ordered the men to find a larger flag. AP photographer Joe Rosenthal snapped the second flag-raising, and the result is the memorable picture that became the symbol of the valor of U.S. Marines.

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Name: Iwo Jima means Sulfur Island.

Distance from Tokyo: 760 miles.

Size: 4.5 miles long, 2.5 miles wide.

Mt. Suribachi: Mt. Suribachi, a 550-foot extinct volcano. Beaches extend from the base of Mt. Suribachi for more than two miles north and east.

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THE JAPANESE DEFENSES

A) The primary defense point on the island was Mt. Suribachi, where 200 guns and 21 blockhouses were placed in rock and concrete.

B) From the volcano’s rim the Japanese could observe everything on the island.

C) Lt. Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi, based in a concrete pillbox in the high ground above the second airfield, maintained contact with all the island’s units and with Imperial Headquarters in Tokyo.

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AMERICAN FORCES MOVE IN

1) For two weeks prior to the landing, the Army Air Corps dropped 6,800 tons of bombs on the island. The Navy delivered 22,000 rounds of shells.

2) On Feb. 19, fighters and bombers attacked the eastern and northern slopes of Mt. Suribachi and the landing areas with rockets, bombs and machine guns.

3) 24 Marine Corsairs (F4Us) ravaged the same areas with napalm, rockets and machine guns.

4) Gunfire support ships opened up again.

5) About 30,000 Marines began to move ashore on the eastern beach. Naval gunfire shifted inland and to the flanks. Simultaneously, the planes strafed the beaches in close support.

6) Americans came under heavy fire from artillery, mortars, rockets, machine guns and rifles.

7) As darkness fell, the Marines counted 548 dead and 1,755 wounded. Marine historians reported that this was the largest number of Marines ever killed in one day.

8) In following days, the battle raged with flamethrowers, bayonets and grenades. The Marines advanced.

9) On Feb. 23, the 28th Marine Regiment scaled Mt. Suribachi. It was the first piece of land under the direct administration of Tokyo to be captured by American forces during World War II.

10) The fighting continued for a month. The last Japanese strongpoint on Iwo Jima was destroyed March 9, and the island was secured a week later. By the end of March, three airfields were ready for American planes.

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TOLL ON IWO JIMA Americans: (out of an assault force of 70,000) Marines: 5,931 dead; 17,272 wounded Navy: 881 dead; 1,917 wounded Army: 9 dead; 28 wounded Total American dead and wounded: 26,038 *** Japanese: (21,000 troops on island when attacked) Total dead and wounded: 20,703 Captured: 216 ***

THE ISLAND TODAY

The island was returned to Japan on June 26, 1968. The Japanese continue to use it as a naval and air force base.

Sources: Headquarters U.S. Marine Corps, History and Museums Division; “Iwo,” by Richard Wheeler; “The Two-Ocean War: A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World War,” by Samuel Eliot Morison; “World War II in the Pacific: Remember Pearl Harbor,” by R. Conrad Stein; “History of the Second World War,” by B.H. Liddell Hart; Associated Press

Researched by EDITH STANLEY / Los Angeles Times