World Battlefronts: With Nobility and Courage

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From Iwo Jima this week TIME Correspondent Robert Sherrod radioed:

At Tarawa the 2nd Division marines paid the highest relative price: 1,000 killed and 2,000 wounded in exchange for one square mile of land. The 2nd and 4th Marine Divisions and the 27th Army Division suffered 16,500 casualties to win Saipan's 75 square miles. Iwo Jima is smaller (eight square miles) than Saipan, and its casualty ratio will hardly equal Tarawa's, but at the end of a fortnight's bloody fighting there is no longer any doubt that Iwo is the most difficult amphibious operation in U.S. history.

Until last week it seemed that this might not be so. At the end of the tenth day Major General Graves B. Erskine's hell-for-leather 3rd Division recovered from its long stymie around Motoyama Airfield No. 2, finally broke through for a 1,000-yd. gain straight up the middle of Iwo Jima. Here it seemed that the Japs might crack wide open. But the Jap flanks held and they tightened their grip on the craggy ravines. Instead of falling apart, the Japs fought more fanatically than ever and postponed their downfall.

Between the tenth and 14th days the bloody battle seesawed back & forth. The 4th Division, veterans of Kwajalein, Saipan and Tinian, has taken Hill 382 six times, has lost it five times (they will not lose it again) when Jap fire became unbearable. In spite of this the 4th edged over, around and beyond 382, and the 5th pressed forward relentlessly. Meanwhile Erskine's regiments pierced the center, nearly split northernmost Iwo.

Now the end is in sight; time has almost run out for the Japs. More than 70% of the barren little island is held by the marines, and only a miracle can bar complete occupation this week.

There are four reasons why Iwo Jima is the toughest target in the Pacific war. First is the weather, which has been rough beyond anything encountered along the Central Pacific way. Only heroic work by LST and LSM men and shore parties has kept supplies moving through the fairly steady mortar fire on the beaches. One-third of our small boats have been knocked out by high surf or by enemy fire.

The Hard Way. The terrain, made to order for defense, is the second reason. On Iwo the Japs dug themselves in so deeply that all the explosives in the world could hardly have reached them. Each hillside, every gully has its carefully camouflaged caves. One in the 4th Division area is estimated to be 800 yards long, with 14 entrances. Each cave entrance is protected by many pillboxes which can be spotted only at closest range. Around one entrance to a 200-yd. cave, I counted seven pillboxes which had housed machine guns covering every conceivable approach. Our chances of defilading these hillside cave openings are not good. Our chances of knocking out all the hidden pillboxes before we approach are worse. We have to do it the hard way: on foot.

The third reason is the weapons with which the Japs packed Iwo. The beaches were not so easily defended as the rocks and ravines to the north. Yet an incomplete count on the 4th Division's 1,500-yd. beach alone scored ten blockhouses, seven artillery positions, more than 50 pillboxes (the total of pillboxes on Iwo will run into the thousands). The Japs had planted many mints—more than they had in all the rest of their lost islands.