MORE THAN 26,000 AMERICANS WERE KILLED OR WOUNDED IN THE ASSAULT ON IWO JIMA- THE ONLY BATTLE OF THE WAR IN WHICH U. S. CASUALTIES EX- CEEDED THOSE OF THE JAPANESE.
now approaching an island that was only two-and-a-half miles wide and five miles long. We could never have imagined it would take 36 days to claim that little piece of rock, but we didn’ t have much intelligence. We didn’ t know that the Japanese had 23,000 soldiers on the island. We didn’ t know all the miles of tunnels they had hollowed out. The pillboxes were pretty well concealed because they would dig them out and then pile sand on top of them, which if you were up in the air looking down, were nearly invisible. Even if you could make out the outline of a pillbox from the air, we didn’ t know the number of pillboxes that were there. I later read they had as many as 800 pill boxes on that little island.
When we got there, we were way out in the ocean. We could hear the explosions, but we couldn’ t see anything. We were just sort of waiting to see whether they would ever need us or not. Forty thousand Marines hit the island on the first day. Prior to Iwo
Jima, Japanese defense had primarily focused on keeping the enemy from coming ashore. If we never made it ashore, we couldn’ t capture the island, so it seemed like a sound strategy. But the Japanese commanding general on Iwo Jima took a different approach. His strategy was to let us ashore, figuring that once we touched ground, we’ d have nowhere to go. The landing beaches were only so big, and he had his weapons centered on the one and a half miles of beach. The result was one Marine after another coming ashore with nowhere to go. Needless to say, we lost a lot of men on that first day and by the evening we knew we’ d be heading ashore.
We had breakfast at 3 a. m. the next morning and boarded boats headed to the rendezvous area. The waves that
ON OCTOBER 5, 1945, WOODY WILLIAMS WAS AWARDED THE MEDAL OF HONOR BY PRESIDENT HARRY S. TRUMAN.
day were rough, running 10 to 12 feet high. We went out and had a group of 15 Higgins boats running in a circle off the shore. We were waiting on the signal from the beach master on shore to come in, but it never came. We bobbed around in those boats all day long. Everyone got sea sick. It was a terrible day. We went back aboard the ship that night before going through the same procedure again the following day. Fortunately, by noon that next day the 4th Division had cleared enough of the beach for us to move in. Once we landed, we became the spearhead of the group. It was our job to move forward with the 4th and 5th divisions on our left and right moving up the coastlines on either side.
As we made our way across the island, we had to pass over one of these airfields and we lost even more Marines because there was really no protection. There was a shell crater that had formed when a bomb or piece of artillery had landed there, but since the hole would quickly fill with Marines, we were told not to take cover there. Of course, survival became more important than simply following orders, so we did what we had to do. But we lost many Marines running across that airfield. For those of us that made it to the other side, we came across a line of reinforced concrete pill boxes; metal and concrete structures that couldn’ t be destroyed by bombing or artillery fire. Even bazookas couldn’ t take them down since they were so thick and well supported by iron rods. The Japanese had all the advantage with a full field of fire, but our men had to aim for the little apertures along an otherwise impenetrable wall.
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