View Full Version : Iwo Jima from the Japanese Infantryman's Perspective
Another good history YT channel. As few survived, not many first hand accounts from the Japanese experience. It's amazing we didn't lose even more men:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV7y8EzeNJE
Things went on longer than many realize, and it from ugly to something I can't even imagine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFj_JAp-4MI
The brutality of the battle is unimaginable. The fighting went on non-stop for weeks with no lulls at night, just constant fighting with one side on top of the island and one side underground. There are several good books but one of the best is “Iwo” by Richard Wheeler, who fought and was wounded there. One account he writes about that demonstrates how bad it was is a Marine who is severely wounded, losing a couple of limbs. As they are carrying him off the battlefield he is telling the stretcher bearers how lucky he is to leave that island alive.
The brutality of the battle is unimaginable. The fighting went on non-stop for weeks with no lulls at night, just constant fighting with one side on top of the island and one side underground. There are several good books but one of the best is “Iwo” by Richard Wheeler, who fought and was wounded there. One account he writes about that demonstrates how bad it was is a Marine who is severely wounded, losing a couple of limbs. As they are carrying him off the battlefield he is telling the stretcher bearers how lucky he is to leave that island alive.
5K+ KIA in a month on a two square mile island......those casualties would never be tolerated today.
5K+ KIA in a month on a two square mile island......those casualties would never be tolerated today.
Approx 2X more than our entire time in Afg. Considering their defenses and determination, always amazed we didn't lose even more. Just horrific.
FromMyColdDeadHand
04-09-23, 11:37
Why didn't we gas them?
I think the HBO series "The Pacific" didn't do as well as band of brothers because of the non-stop inhumanity of the Pacific theater. Granted, the Eastern front was bad for the Russians, but the Pacific was a whole other level. And that doesn't even get to what the Japanese did in Mainland China.
Why didn't we gas them?
They used all kinds of things. Vid touches on that. Most effective and horrific were the flame throwing tanks. If it's possible to narrow down the worst possible way to go in war, that's gotta be it.
I think the HBO series "The Pacific" didn't do as well as band of brothers because of the non-stop inhumanity of the Pacific theater.
That's because the Japanese made the Germans look like boy scouts in many respects. Per vid, Japanese soldiers where amazed how kind the US soldiers where to them when captured.
Granted, the Eastern front was bad for the Russians, but the Pacific was a whole other level. And that doesn't even get to what the Japanese did in Mainland China.
The Eastern Front was bad for the Russians, even worse for the Germans when the tide turned. The Russians paid them back with interest and then some. There was no quarter given, they didn't take prisoners for the most part.
So it's just a movie but, "Letters from Iwo Jima" does get into this stuff just a little bit. It's the companion film to "Flags of Our Fathers" told from the Japanese perspective. It's probably more than a little idealistic in portraying their humanity and misunderstood culture but it does give some insight into Japanese thinking at the time.
Why didn't we gas them?
Iwo Jima was one large, interconnected underground bunker complex. You take out one pill box and 15 minute later new guys are running it again.
StainlessSteelRat
04-09-23, 16:45
Smithsonian channel has a show called "The Pacific War in Color" with a ton of old color footage I'd never seen, and I thought I'd seen most of it over the years. You guys might also like The Unauthorized History of the Pacific War podcast on YouTube.
Iwo Jima was one large, interconnected underground bunker complex. You take out one pill box and 15 minute later new guys are running it again.
Yeah if you had a way to pump the CS gas into the tunnel system, like forcing it in and through instead of a grenade version, it would've caused problems for them and not violated any Geneva Convention stuff regarding "chemical" weapons. We used CS in Vietnam, and probably the GWOT.
What we had planned for the invasion of Japan itself would make even most hard-core military types blush. Nukes (what we would nowadays consider "tactical nukes" due to yield) were planned for the invasion beach AO's, no doubt due to little knowledge of what radiation exposure was like even after-the-fact. Poison gas (I don't recall which one) was also planned for, but met with some resistance from the higher-ups. The invasion of Japan would've been textbook "no holds barred" warfare; what the Russians did to the Germans while defeating them would've paled in comparison.
Yeah if you had a way to pump the CS gas into the tunnel system, like forcing it in and through instead of a grenade version, it would've caused problems for them and not violated any Geneva Convention stuff regarding "chemical" weapons. We used CS in Vietnam, and probably the GWOT.
What we had planned for the invasion of Japan itself would make even most hard-core military types blush. Nukes (what we would nowadays consider "tactical nukes" due to yield) were planned for the invasion beach AO's, no doubt due to little knowledge of what radiation exposure was like even after-the-fact. Poison gas (I don't recall which one) was also planned for, but met with some resistance from the higher-ups. The invasion of Japan would've been textbook "no holds barred" warfare; what the Russians did to the Germans while defeating them would've paled in comparison.
If you watch "Trinity: The Atomic Bomb Movie" it's astonishing how close we had people working near open air tests. We had to have taken decades off of their lives. We really didn't understand what we were dealing with and they also didn't care enough.
The invasion of Japan would have been the biggest thing we ever did. So many purple hearts were manufactured for the event, we still had them in inventory for the first Gulf War. We would have needed to kill nearly every person in the Japanese population until there just weren't very many left.
And Russia would have immediately invaded Hokkaido from the north, probably resulting in a partitioned Japan. Only "the bomb" and our demonstrated willingness to use it kept Russia out of Japan. A lot of people would not have had grandfathers who made it home.
So it's just a movie but, "Letters from Iwo Jima" does get into this stuff just a little bit. It's the companion film to "Flags of Our Fathers" told from the Japanese perspective. It's probably more than a little idealistic in portraying their humanity and misunderstood culture but it does give some insight into Japanese thinking at the time.
If you haven't read Fly Boys, get it...same author as Flags of our Fathers & gets into the weeds about how gruesome the japs really were towards their prisoners.
Mainly about how owning the air won the war...the design / manufacturing of new planes introduced to the war in the short amount of time is insane.
If you watch "Trinity: The Atomic Bomb Movie" it's astonishing how close we had people working near open air tests. We had to have taken decades off of their lives. We really didn't understand what we were dealing with and they also didn't care enough.
The invasion of Japan would have been the biggest thing we ever did. So many purple hearts were manufactured for the event, we still had them in inventory for the first Gulf War. We would have needed to kill nearly every person in the Japanese population until there just weren't very many left.
And Russia would have immediately invaded Hokkaido from the north, probably resulting in a partitioned Japan. Only "the bomb" and our demonstrated willingness to use it kept Russia out of Japan. A lot of people would not have had grandfathers who made it home.
Absolutely. Also the most costly in lives of any single endeavor.
Absolutely. Also the most costly in lives of any single endeavor.
Operation Downfall, the invasion of mainland Japan, predicted a million Allied casualties and 10 million Japanese casualties. To say dropping two atomic bombs saved a lot of lives is a huge understatement.
We killed way more japs with all the incendiary than we did w/ the two little & fat bombs...we roasted the mainland.
We killed way more japs with all the incendiary than we did w/ the two little & fat bombs...we roasted the mainland.
And it didn't stop them.
Only two things did.
The BIG ONE was the realization that the glorious mainland invasion may never come, that the US would just continue to drop these new science bombs on Japan until nothing was left alive. That really wasn't how they wanted to go out.
And behind the scenes they had been hoping Stalin might help them get a "conditional" surrender, which is why the Japanese fought so brutally, in an effort to convince the US that "some terms" were better than staggering losses. Instead on August 8, 1945 Russia declared war on Japan and began snatching up territory in former Manchuria. When Nagasaki was bombed the next day, the Japanese saw the writing on the wall...except of course for a few hardliners who wanted to go down with the ship.
Glory , Glory , Glory , the Marine Corps near bled out for that piece of shit island !
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