Iwo Jima and Okinawa
By February 1945, the United States had turned back the Japanese advance in the Pacific and had re-taken a sweeping arc of islands that surrounded the enemy nation. For all these gains, however, two small islands remained crucial to an invasion of Japan: Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
Iwo Jima was attacked first. On 19 February, marines landed at the southeastern end of the island and began working their way toward Mt. Suribachi, a 550 foot dead volcano that the Japanese had turned into an island fortress. For two months preceding the attack, American bombers had blasted the Japanese defenses. But the almost daily attacks had forced the Japanese to just dig-in deeper. In addition to their concrete bunkers, they dug caves into the mountain linked by an intricate web of tunnels. Next came Okinawa. It presented a far more serious challenge. The island was within range of the land-based planes in southern Japan but beyond range of American planes launched from the Philippines. The American landing would, therefore, have to be covered by carrier-launched fighters—carriers that would then be vulnerable to attack. The Japanese had also deployed more than three times the force on Okinawa than they had committed to Iwo Jima. |
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