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ARMAGEDDON ISLAND

Christopher Hudson

Daily Mail

Saturday November 25, 2006

[We have included this article on our bulletin board

TRIBUTE

To OUR

AMERICAN COUSINS

Alongside whom we have fought and on a number of occasions -we have been more than thankful for their support.

We will not always agree but at least we can understand each other .For that we must thank our kin of hundreds ago who made a home for religious and political freedom and

the respect for the

English Law and Ancient ‘Rights and liberties’. ]

[‘It is almost 400 years since that May morning of 1607 when ships landed a part of England on the shores of the later

New England

And still later the

United States of America.

‘They carried with them in theory the rights of freeborn Englishmen-inheriting the tradition of the 17^th century struggle for liberty.

‘This was specifically asserted in Virginia’s first charter which declared that the settlers were to have all the liberties, franchises and immunities as if they had been within this Realm of England.

‘They were to have the protection of Magna Carta and the Common Law.

‘From almost the beginning of their history they began to rear their own fabric of constitutional government contending for a stronger representative system, control of the purse, and fuller guarantees of personal liberty.’

We in England in 2006 almost four-hundred years later wish for similar ideals.]

Sacrifice

ARMAGEDDON ISLAND

Measuring five-and-a-half miles long by two miles wide IWO JIMA

Is probably the world’s biggest single war grave.

Sacred to two nations,

Japan

And the

United States

-the island is a dry wasteland of volcanic ash and stinking sulphur beds in the middle of the Pacific.

Its soft black sand is interspersed with what look like outcrops of rust-coloured rock. They turn out instead to be rusty fragments of shells, million of them, still carpeting the lifeless ground.

In February and March 1945, during 36 days of ferocious fighting the island claimed almost 26,000 U.S. casualties, including 7,000 dead.

Of the 22,000 Japanese defenders, scarcely 1,000 survived.

The battle was vital in the Pacific campaign. Iwo Jima was being used by Japan as a base for kamikaze attacks and the U.S. wanted its airfields so it could strengthen bombing campaigns against the Japanese mainland.

Iwo Jima in Japanese means the Island of Sulphur. Its poisonous fumes mummified many of its dead. Decades after the war, the bodies of Japanese could still be found, perfectly preserved their spectacles still in place over the dry sockets of their eyes.

This winter, Iwo Jima has been stirred from its 61-year sleep. A major Hollywood film, directed by Clint Eastwood and co-produced by Steven Spielberg, opens in the UK next week.

Flags Of Our Fathers

-is based upon a best-selling book by James Bradley, whose father was one of the six men photographed raising the

Stars and Stripes

on the summit of Iwo Jima’s mount Suribachi after four days of terrible carnage.

It is probably the most famous war photograph of World War II, an image of victory and hope for an American public reeling from the casualty lists. Endlessly reproduced, it was sculpted in bronze for the

U.S. Marine Corps

Memorial

Alington National Cemetery,

But what happened to those six men immortalised by cameraman Joe Rosenthal?

And can we ever be sure the scene was not posed ,as many people suggested since?

The six men were part of E.Company of the 2ndBattalion, 28^th regiment of the 5^th Marines Division.

James Bradley’s father, Jack, the only man clearly identified in the photograph, came from a German-American family in Wisconsin, his father a railroad worker.

Aged 19, he joined the U.S. Navy and became a medical orderly. His platoon was led by Sergeant Mike Strank, a veteran of 25 who would calmly encourage his young charges through the storm of steel.

In January 1945, a 70-mile-long convoy of ships left Pearl harbour for the 4,000-mile journey to Iwo Jima.

As James Bradley writes, it carried enough supplies to feed the assault troops for two months, together with 30,000 gallons of water and 100 million cigarettes.

The ships carried flares, plasma, bandages, holy water, crucifixes and canisters of disinfectant to spray on corpses.

The Marines did not yet know that they were heading towards the most heavily fortified piece of earth on the planet, 600 miles from Tokyo.

At this point, only the officers would have been shown maps of the Island covered in black dots marking the enemy’s defences:

Pill Boxes – Machine-Gun and Artillery Emplacements – Rifle Pits – Anti-Tank Weapons and Coastal Defence Guns.

Since early December, B-29 Superfortresses and B-24 Liberators had been carpet bombing the island trying to wipe it off the military map; in an aerial photograph showed 5000 bomb craters.

Yet despite this ‘softening up’ the pictures revealed something incredible: the Japanese installations on the island were actually multiplying.

All that was missing were structures to house the Japanese defenders, estimated by American intelligence to number some 12,000. In fact, there were 22,000 of them and they had dug themselves into what became a city underground.

By the winter of 1944, the Japanese High Command knew it could not defeat the Americans in the Pacific War. All it could do was to make each island a killing field, so that the U.S. would eventually decide it was not worth its while to invade the Japanese mainland.

The stand the Japanese made on Iwo Jima, under their tactically brilliant commander General Kuribayashi was bound to be tougher than anything the Marines had yet experienced, for one good reason. Iwo Jima was Japanese soil –

And no invader in history had ever conquered Japanese territory.

For months, mining engineers and labour battalions had worked at building a vast subterranean cave system on three layers which were connected by stairways and 16 miles of underground tunnels.

Some 1,500 rooms, many with plaster walls and electric lights were gouged out of the rock at depths of 30-50 feet. Furnished with multiple exits to reduce the risk of troops being buried alive, they included communications centres, refectories, a sewage system and hospitals complete with beds and operating tables.

General Kuribayashi would direct Iwo Jima’s defence from a bomb-proof command centre, 75ft under the ground. He concentrated his above-ground defences on the only landing place on the island, a two – mile stretch of beach. Concrete and steel blockhouses with tiny slits for machine-guns covered every inch of the island with crossfire.

Tanks were hidden behind high rock walls, Snipers took their prearranged positions in the entrances of caves and tunnels, a pile of hand grenades beside them for when the enemy came closer.

On board the American armada, 70,000 young Marines readied themselves for combat. On Iwo Jima, 26,000 Japanese soldiers contemptuous of the Marines because they believed they did not have the courage to fight to the death, went to ground.

At 7am on February 19, the boys of Easy Company – as E Company were known occupied the amphibious tractors which would take them to the shore. Above them Navy Hellcats strafed Mount Suribachi.

Shells the size and weight of cars slammed into the island, sending up clouds of white and yellow dust.

The Americans expected a barrage of fire, as on D-Day beaches. But Kuribayashi shrewdly held his fire until the attackers filled the beach, struggling up the sand, before giving the order to attack.

IT WAS A MASSACRE.

Marines clawed frantically into sand which had the consistency of talcum powder. Along with the zipping bullets, Japanese mortars sent Jeeps spinning into the air and vaporised men they hit.

As more Marines landed, they shoved the men in front of them towards their death. The photographer Joe Rosenthal noted:

‘Not getting hit was like running in the rain and not getting wet,’

In all 566 Marines were killed on the first day, and 1,755 were wounded

The difference between living and dying was purely luck.

The enemy was invisible; there were no targets to shoot at. Whenever machine-gun posts were shot out, the Japanese pulled the dead away and others came up from the tunnels to repopulate them.

Marines sat in the sand, cut in half holding their entrails in their hands. Legs and arms lay 50ft away from the nearest body.

YET SLOWLY, as more American assault waves reached the shore, gains were made, heroic Marines charged Japanese pillboxes and threw in grenades. Within hours the first objective was won: a defensive line was created across the peninsula to cut off Mount Suribachi, the highest point on the island.

‘A’ Company which made a suicidal 700-yard dash to help achieve this , ended the day with just 37 of its 250 soldiers.

‘Doc’ Bradley of Easy Company moved from one casualty to the next, binding up their wounds, pumping them full of morphine and pointing them towards the first aid station. The more badly wounded waited on stretchers and hoped not to be blown to pieces.

As the day progressed, it took longer for the arriving Marines to get to shore because the shallows were filled with bodies, facing because of the air in their backpacks.

As night fell, groaning men littered the beaches waiting for boats to take them to hospital ships, while parachute flares and phosphorous shells bathed the island in a ghastly light.

Japanese shellfire continued through the night. The Marines had orders to shoot any moving object; Bradley had to call out his name as he crawled from casualty to casualty.

The bodies were so mangled that they could not be given individual graves. Instead a bulldozer would excavate a 100ft-long trench and bury the dead in rows.

On the third day on Iwo Jima, Easy Company was one of those detailed to attack the most fortified mountain in history.

Suribachi bristled with guns of every description . Entrances to caves and tunnels running through the mountain were fortified with concrete parapets from which the Japanese gunners had a wide range of fire. Around them were pillboxes and infantry trenches.

The 28^th Regiment was expecting tank support which would give it cover, but the tanks were all pinned down elsewhere. It meant the Marines would have to run across 200 yards of open terrain without cover.

For a moment, realising the enormity of what lay ahead, every man paused, silently. Then a lieutenant in Easy Company’s 3^rd Platoon got to his feet and started running.

Behind him, hundreds of young soldiers levelled their rifles and did the same, the six future flag-raisers among them. As they ran, many of them were cut down in a hailstorm of bullets and shells which ripped open stomachs and amputated limbs.

Men zig-zagged from one shellhole to another, looking for any respite from the hail of bullets, but propelled forward by remembering their Marine training to keep cool, whatever the circumstances. Until they were close enough to the mountain’s base to grapple with the enemy. There, they used napalm flame –throwers to incinerate the Japanese gunners and start clearing the tunnels.

‘Doc’ Bradley was awarded a Navy Cross that day. Dashing from crater to crater, he focused on saving lives while bullets around him on this island where no birds sang.

OFTEN it was the medics who died. One of them, shot through his Adam’s apple, was helped by a fellow soldier William Hoopes, who reached into his neck to grasp the artery and clinch it off.

‘His blood was spurting,’ Hoopes recalled. ‘He had no speech but his eyes were on me. I couldn’t do it. The blood was so slippery I couldn’t get the artery. And al the while he just looked at me, looked into my face.

‘The last thing he did, as the blood spurts less and less , was to pat me on the arm, as if to say:

“That’s all right”. then he died.’

Word came that the Japanese survivors inside the mountain were assembling for the legendary death-and-glory banzai attack in which they would hurl themselves suicidally at the enemy. For a moment. All was still.

Then Sergeant Mike Strank leapt to his feet and bellowed:

‘Let’s show these bastards what a real banzai is like. Easy Company charge!’

The Japanese suffered massive casualties. By the end of the third day, the 28^th Regiment were ranged in a half-circle of steel around Suribachi.

The men of Easy Company that day lost 30 per cent of it’s strength, were awarded a Medal of Honour

Four Navy Crosses and numerous lesser medals in what remains one of the most decorated engagements in Marines history.

The next day, half the remaining Japanese survivors in Suribachi – about 150 men abandoned the mountain. All but 25 of them died in their attempt to reach forces in the north.

The following morning the battalion commander ordered a reconnaissance up to the top of the volcano. Nobody expected the patrol to return alive. They made slow progress, throwing grenades in every hole they passed and to their astonishment they reached the summit without being attacked.

The group raised a modest flag and from thousands of Marines far below came cheering, hooting and whistling. Ships offshore sounded their deep klaxons; the whole island above ground erupted in delight.

It was not the end – that was still a month away – but it was the beginning of the end.

And still to take place was an event which would put Iwo Jima on the map of history more decisively even than the military victory, which would give the Allies a vital staging post and sanctuary for bombers on their way to Japan.

The Secretary of the Navy wanted the flag as a souvenir, but the battalion commander had no intention of surrendering it. He called for another flag – A bigger one, which had been rescued from a sunken ship after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour – and sent a detail to the top of Suribachi to swop flags.

This detail comprised the six men from Easy Company

-who were to go down in history as the flag-bearers.

Along with ‘Doc’ Bradley and Sergeant Strank, there was French-Canadian mill hand Rene Gagnon, freckle-faced Kentuckian Franklin Sousley, Texan trucker and star football player Harlon Block and Ira Hayes, an American Indian from Arizona. They were all in their teens or early 20’s.

JOE ROSENTHAL, the photographer had almost turned back from his own climb when he learnt that the flag was already up. He trudged on after hearing there was a good view of the harbour.

At the top, he spotted some Marines dragging a heavy length of drainage pipe for the pole, and others handling a new , bigger flag. He moved a short distance away, then looked up and clicked off a frame just as the flagpole rose in the strong wind – not even looking in the viewfinder.

THIS was the shot which two days later, after being transmitted to a picture editor on GUAM AND SENT ON TO THE Sunday papers, electrified America. So perfect was it, the rumour quickly spread that it had been posed. But flag-raisers could and did vouch for the image’s authenticity.

Those who survived, that is, Harlon Block was killed the following day by as mortar which sliced him in two from the groin to the neck.

Mike Strank was killed by friendly fire.

Franklin Souseley, the happy-go-lucky Kentuckian, survived a whole month on Iwo Jima, by which time, like many other Marines, he was losing concentration.

He wandered into a road in a known area of a Japanese sniper fire and was shot through the heart. He died five days before the survivors of Easy Company were brought home.

Except for the occasional attacker, the Japanese soldiers inside Suribachi had given up the fight the day the flag was raised. A few days later, Marines stumbled on the bodies of at least 150 Japanese who had staged a mass suicide, each placing a grenade on his stomach and taking out the pin.

But a handful of them fought on for months. The last two defenders surrendered in 1949, long after the war was over.

Of the tree flag –bearing survivors, the Arizonan Indian Ira Hayes suffered post-traumatic stress. He went back to his Indian reservation and drank himself to death, aged 32.

Rene Gagnon, obsessed by his fame and unable to come to terms with it, died of a heart attack at age of 54.

ONLY ONE, ‘Doc’ Bradley lived peacefully into old age, dying aged 70 in 1994. And he did that by retreating into silence and doing his best

TO FORGET.

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NOVEMBER/06