D-Day on the Black Sand: The Iwo Jima Landing, 19 February 1945

At 0902 on 19 February 1945 (times here follow the 24-hour military clock), the first armored amphibian tractors of the 2d Armored Amphibian Battalion ground onto the southeast beaches of Iwo Jima. Three minutes later, at 0905, the second wave, the first carrying troops, reached the shore. Bartley describes the landing ground as “the 3,500-yard strip of dark, repulsive looking beach” (Bartley, p. 52). Behind it rose terraces of loose volcanic ash, as high as 15 feet in places. Mount Suribachi stood to the left and the high ground around the Quarry to the right, both with guns already registered on the sand. For the next fifteen hours two Marine divisions fought to get ashore, to cut the island in two and to hold on. This chapter follows that day and the night after it. For the whole campaign, see the Battle of Iwo Jima hub.

Why it mattered

Everything that followed on Iwo Jima depended on the first day. The planners had chosen the southeastern beaches, and Kuribayashi had prepared for exactly that choice. Unless the Marines could get two divisions, their tanks and their artillery across those beaches and hold them overnight, nothing else in the plan could begin. The landing also tested the lessons of two years of Central Pacific assaults: the armored amtrac first wave, a naval gunfire barrage that moved ahead of the troops, tanks landed in medium landing ships, and artillery brought in by amphibian trucks.

The day also showed the Marines what kind of battle they were in. Marine intelligence expected the Japanese to try to throw the landing back at the water’s edge and then to counterattack in force on the first night (Bartley, p. 30). Neither happened. The garrison let the first waves land, then turned its preregistered mortars and artillery on the crowded beaches, and spent the night raiding and shelling rather than charging. Garand and Strobridge write that Marine intelligence had not anticipated that Kuribayashi “planned to conserve his manpower” (Garand and Strobridge, p. 523). That choice set the pattern for the next five weeks.

Terrain and objectives

The landing beaches ran northeast from the base of Suribachi along the island’s southeastern shore. Bartley gives the landing front as a 3,500-yard strip (p. 52). Behind the high-water mark the beach climbed in a series of terraces built by the surf, the first of them as much as 15 feet high, and it was made of black volcanic ash rather than sand. Marines sank to their ankles in it, and it would not hold a wheeled vehicle (Bartley, p. 52; Garand and Strobridge, p. 506).

Three features dominated the beaches. On the left, Suribachi, 550 feet high, looked straight down the length of the landing area. On the right, the cliff line above the Quarry, north of the East Boat Basin, overlooked the Blue beaches; Bartley says this high ground dominated them (p. 61). In the middle, the ground rose gently toward Airfield No. 1 on the plateau. Between the beaches and the west coast the island narrowed to a neck about 700 yards wide at its narrowest point (Bartley, p. 54).

The landing plan

The 4th and 5th Marine Divisions were to land abreast, the 5th on the left (Bartley, p. 26). The beaches were named by color from left to right. In the 5th Division, Col. Harry B. Liversedge’s 28th Marines (less its 3d Battalion) would land on Green 1 at the foot of Suribachi, cross the neck to the opposite shore and then turn south to take the mountain. Col. Thomas A. Wornham’s 27th Marines would land on Red 1 and Red 2, drive across to the west coast and turn northeast toward the O-1 line, the first phase objective. In the 4th Division, Col. Walter W. Wensinger’s 23d Marines would land on Yellow 1 and Yellow 2 and take Airfield No. 1. Col. John R. Lanigan’s 25th Marines would land on Blue 1, help take the airfield and seize Blue 2 and the high ground above it (Bartley, pp. 26–27; p. 53). Bartley’s own text is not quite consistent on the 25th’s landing beach: his table gives Blue 1, his plan narrative says the regiment was to seize Blue 2, and his D-Day account has it landing across Blue 1 and the southern part of Blue 2 (pp. 26–27, 61).

Each assault regiment put two battalions ashore abreast, except the 28th, which landed its 1st and 2d Battalions in column. From left to right, the eight assault battalions were 2/28 and 1/28 on Green 1, 2/27 and 1/27 on the Red beaches, 1/23 and 2/23 on the Yellow beaches, and 1/25 and 3/25 on the Blue beaches (Bartley, p. 54). The 5th Division held 3/28 and 1/26 as its reserve; Col. Walter I. Jordan’s 24th Marines were the 4th Division reserve. The rest of the 26th Marines were corps reserve, and the 3d Marine Division, under MajGen. Graves B. Erskine, was Expeditionary Troops Reserve, to land over the same beaches on or after D+1 (Bartley, pp. 25–26, 61).

Dawn: the bombardment and the run to the beach

“Land the landing force!”

The assault shipping of Admiral Hill’s Attack Force, carrying the 4th and 5th Marine Divisions, reached Iwo Jima in the early morning and joined Admiral Blandy’s Amphibious Support Force, which had been bombarding the island for three days. Bartley counts more than 450 ships of the Fifth Fleet in sight at dawn; Alexander gives 495 ships for the whole expedition, 140 of them amphibious ships (Bartley, p. 51; Alexander, Closing In). The weather had cleared to fair skies and unlimited visibility with a gentle northerly breeze (Bartley, p. 51). At 0640 the heavy support ships opened fire. At 0645 Turner signaled “Land the landing force!” (Alexander, Closing In, “D-Day”).

The signal to launch the amtracs came at 0725. About twenty minutes later, Bartley says, 482 tractors carrying eight battalions were in the water (p. 51); Alexander counts 68 armored LVT(A)4s and 380 troop-carrying LVTs (Closing In, “D-Day”). At 0805 the naval guns lifted while 72 fighters and bombers from the Fast Carrier Force struck Suribachi, the beaches and the northern high ground, followed by 48 more fighters, including 24 Marine Corsairs under LtCol. William A. Millington (Bartley, p. 51). Col. Vernon E. Megee had told the Marine pilots to “go in and scrape your bellies on the beach” (Garand and Strobridge, p. 503). Naval gunfire resumed at 0825; Garand and Strobridge count more than 8,000 shells on the beach area in less than thirty minutes (p. 504).

The rolling barrage

The ships did not simply stop when the troops landed. LtCol. Donald M. Weller, the naval gunfire officer, and LtCol. William W. Buchanan, an artillery officer, devised a modified rolling barrage: 5-inch batteries would walk their fire inland ahead of the assault, “always remaining 400 yards to their front,” with air spotters regulating the pace, and would repeat prearranged fires if the troops fell behind (Alexander, Closing In, “D-Day”; Bartley, p. 50). Bartley explains that the method grew out of Saipan, where fire had lifted too far inland too early (p. 50).

The record does not give the barrage’s actual lifts minute by minute (Garand and Strobridge, p. 504). Bartley notes only that at 0857 naval gunfire shifted inland and to the flanks (p. 52); the Corsairs shifted their strafing about 500 yards inland as the first wave landed (Garand and Strobridge, p. 506).

0902 and 0905

At 0830 the first wave, 68 LVT(A)s, crossed the line of departure about 4,000 yards out, with gunboats firing rockets and 40-mm shells into the beach. The following waves crossed at intervals of 250 to 300 yards (Bartley, p. 52). The second wave, 1,360 Marines, was two minutes behind the first, and eight more were to follow at five-minute intervals, putting about 9,000 men ashore in under 45 minutes (Garand and Strobridge, p. 506).

The first LVT(A)s touched down at 0902 and the first troops at 0905 (Bartley, p. 52); Garand and Strobridge put the first wave ashore between 0859 and 0903 (p. 506). The armored amtracs were meant to climb the first terrace and cover the waves behind them, but the terrace “masked the fires of many,” and those that could not support from the beach backed into the water and fired from there (Bartley, p. 52).

Initial resistance was light: scattered mortar, artillery and small-arms fire, a few land mines, and no man-made obstacles on the beaches (Bartley, p. 53). Garand and Strobridge write that “the defenders remained strangely silent as the first assault troops approached the beaches”; the first sign of the enemy that morning had been antiaircraft fire that brought down a 5th Division observation plane (p. 506). A Japanese observer on the slopes of Suribachi reported that at nine o’clock several hundred landing craft “rushed ashore like an enormous tidal wave” (Alexander, Closing In, “D-Day”).

The guns open

The quiet did not last. Yellow 2 came under moderate mortar fire within two minutes of the first wave’s landing. By 0920 the Yellow and Blue beaches were reporting heavy fire, and by 0935 the Green and Red beaches were under a brisk mortar barrage (Bartley, p. 53). The defenders had sat out the bombardment in underground positions and came up only after the fire lifted ahead of the advancing troops. Their guns on Suribachi and on the northern plateau had been registered on the landing beaches in advance (Bartley, pp. 52–53).

Alexander puts the opening of the full weight of the Japanese artillery, mortars, rockets and antitank guns shortly after 1000. Kuribayashi, he writes, “had patiently waited until the beaches were clogged with troops and material,” though he adds his own judgment that the general “had possibly waited a little too long,” since the assault battalions were already inland (Closing In, “D-Day”). That is the historian’s inference, not the Japanese record.

Between 1036 and 1046 all four assault regiments radioed the flagship. The 23d Marines: “Taking heavy casualties and can’t move for the moment. Mortars killing us.” The 27th: “All units pinned down by artillery and mortars. Casualties heavy. Need tank support fast to move anywhere” (Alexander, Closing In, “D-Day”). By then elements of all eight assault battalions were ashore (Bartley, p. 54).

In their words

Catching all hell from the quarry. Heavy mortar and machine gun fire!

Across the neck: the 28th Marines

1st Battalion to the west coast

On the far left, the 28th Marines’ first task was to cut the island in two. LtCol. Jackson B. Butterfield’s 1st Battalion went in first, Companies B and C abreast, “to clear the path so that the 2d Battalion could make a turn toward Suribachi” (Bartley, p. 54). Its officers led from the front and paid for it. Capt. Dwayne E. Mears of Company B went after a pillbox with only a pistol and kept going, mortally wounded, until he was too weak to move; Capt. Phil Roach led Company C across and was wounded (Garand and Strobridge, p. 510).

At 1035 a small group from Company B reached the western beach, and Company C followed soon after (Bartley, p. 55). Garand and Strobridge name Lt. Frank Wright and four men of the 1st Platoon as the first there, joined by Lt. Wesley Bates and six men about 1100 (p. 512). Suribachi was cut off, “like cutting off a snake’s head,” in one Marine’s words; the regiment’s early report was “Resistance moderate, terrain awful” (Alexander, Closing In, “D-Day”).

The dash left the battalion badly disorganized, with heavy casualties that Bartley does not number (p. 55). Company A, the battalion reserve, was committed to mop up the positions the assault companies had bypassed. One of its men was Cpl. Tony Stein.

Medal of Honor · Posthumous

Cpl. Tony Stein, Company A, 1st Battalion, 28th Marines, 5th Marine Division

On 19 February 1945, his citation records, Stein was “the first man of his unit to be on station after hitting the beach in the initial assault.” With “a personally improvised aircraft-type weapon” he covered his platoon, drew fire to locate enemy machine guns and charged pillboxes alone, killing 20 of the enemy. He made eight trips to the beach under fire for ammunition, helping a wounded man back each time, and covered his platoon’s withdrawal although “his weapon was twice shot from his hands.” He was killed on Iwo Jima on 1 March 1945.

Citation →

Turning toward Suribachi

LtCol. Chandler W. Johnson’s 2d Battalion began landing behind the 1st at 0935 and tried to deploy facing the mountain, but mortar and artillery fire broke its companies apart (Bartley, p. 54). LtCol. Charles E. Shepard’s 3d Battalion, released from division reserve at 1039, was all ashore by 1306 after losing men and equipment on the beach (p. 55).

Company C, 5th Tank Battalion, with 14 Shermans, two flame tanks, a tankdozer and a retriever, came ashore over Red 1 about 1130 and had to move north to find exits. One tank was lost getting off the beach, and an antitank gun hit four more before it was silenced about 1400 (Bartley, pp. 55–56).

The attack south was set for 1545, but 3/28 could not get into position. At 1645 2/28 jumped off alone with Company C’s tanks; by 1730 it had gained only about 150 yards and pulled back to tie in with 3/28 for the night (Bartley, pp. 55–56). Suribachi was isolated but untouched. Its capture is the subject of the next chapter.

The center: the 27th Marines and Airfield No. 1

The 27th Marines landed on Red 1 and Red 2 with Maj. John W. Antonelli’s 2d Battalion and LtCol. John A. Butler’s 1st Battalion abreast (Bartley, p. 56). Antonelli’s battalion pushed inland against scattered resistance and reached the cliffs above the west coast about 1500 (p. 57). Butler’s had a harder start: Company B landed 200 to 300 yards left of its assigned place, and the reserve company was sent forward while it reorganized. By 1130 Company A was working across the southern end of Airfield No. 1 (pp. 56–57). The regimental executive officer, Col. Louis C. Plain, was wounded in the arm but finished his inspection and made his report before he was evacuated (p. 57).

Company A, 5th Tank Battalion, landed on the Red beaches at 0925, among the first tanks ashore. Four threw tracks in the loose ash and one drowned out, but the rest reached Airfield No. 1 (Bartley, p. 57 n. 10). It was the only tank company landed from LCTs; the others came in medium landing ships, because the heavier M4A3 Shermans rode dangerously low in LCMs (p. 33).

One of the Marines killed in the attack on the airfield was Gunnery Sgt. John Basilone, who had received the Medal of Honor for Guadalcanal. Alexander records that he was leading his machine gun platoon of 1/27 against the southern part of the airfield when a Japanese mortar shell mortally wounded him, late in the afternoon of D-Day (Closing In, “D-Day”).

General Schmidt released the 26th Marines (less its 1st Battalion) to the 5th Division at 0955, but the crowded beaches held it off until after 1500. Crossing Red 1 one battalion at a time, it finished landing at 1732 and dug in along the southern tip of Airfield No. 1 (Bartley, p. 58). At 1744 the regiments were ordered to consolidate. The 27th had reached the western shore and was placed to attack north along the coast (p. 58).

Yellow Beach: the 23d Marines

The 23d Marines landed on the Yellow beaches at H-Hour, LtCol. Ralph Haas’s 1st Battalion on Yellow 1 with Companies B and A in the assault and C in reserve, and Maj. Robert H. Davidson’s 2d Battalion on Yellow 2 (Bartley, p. 60). In front of them, Garand and Strobridge count two huge blockhouses and about fifty pillboxes (p. 517). The fire that hit Yellow 2 within two minutes of the landing never really let up.

By 1200, 1/23 was about 500 yards inland and some 200 yards short of Airfield No. 1, with 2/23 about 100 yards behind. At 1300 Maj. James S. Scales’s 3d Battalion was ordered ashore to support 2/23 with its 81-mm mortars. At 1405 the left flank of 1/23 reached the airfield, where antitank fire drove the supporting tanks back. About half an hour later 3/23 passed through 1/23 and kept going, and by 1700 it held the near edges of the airfield. In 2/23’s zone, Company F reached the airfield by 1730 (Bartley, p. 61).

The tanks had their own fight with the beach. Three medium landing ships carrying sixteen tanks of Company C, 4th Tank Battalion, hit the Yellow beaches at 1005. In LSM-216 the first tank bogged less than five feet from the ramp and blocked the four behind it; the ship did not get them off until 1300. Three tanks struck mines less than 150 yards inland, and for some time the front-line Marines got no tank support at all (Bartley, pp. 60–61 and n. 14).

General Cates ordered the 24th Marines ashore at 1405, and LtCol. Richard Rothwell’s 2/24 came in over Yellow 2 late in the afternoon (Bartley, p. 61); Garand and Strobridge say it relieved 2/23 by 1800 (p. 519). Earlier that day, in the 23d’s zone, a machine gun section leader of Company B, 1st Battalion, did the work that earned the regiment’s first Medal of Honor on Iwo Jima.

Medal of Honor · Posthumous

Sgt. Darrell S. Cole, Company B, 1st Battalion, 23d Marines, 4th Marine Division

On 19 February 1945 Cole led his machine gun section ashore and, under heavy fire, knocked out two enemy positions with grenades. When his last gun jammed, he went alone against three Japanese pillboxes with a pistol and one grenade, came back twice for more grenades and finished off the strongpoint. His citation says he was “instantly killed by an enemy grenade” as he returned to his squad, and credits him with letting his company seize its objective. The medal was presented to his widow, Margaret B. Cole, in Detroit on 17 April 1947.

Citation →

Cole had been trained as a “field music,” the Marine equivalent of a bugler, and disliked the job. He fought on Guadalcanal, Roi-Namur, Saipan and Tinian before a request to transfer to the line was approved, and was known as “The Fighting Field Music.” The destroyer USS Cole (DDG-67) is named for him (Naval History and Heritage Command).

The Quarry: the 25th Marines

On the right flank, Colonel Lanigan’s 25th Marines landed two battalions abreast across Blue 1 and the southern part of Blue 2 (Bartley, p. 61). LtCol. Hollis U. Mustain’s 1st Battalion, on the left, pushed about 300 yards inland in its first half hour (Alexander, Closing In, “D-Day”; Garand and Strobridge, p. 519). It was about 600 yards inland by 1130 and finished turning to face north at 1330 (Bartley, pp. 61–62).

LtCol. Justice M. Chambers’s 3d Battalion, on the right, had the worst ground on the island that day: the cliffs and broken high ground of the Quarry, which looked straight down on the Blue beaches. It landed in column about fifteen minutes after H-Hour (Alexander, Closing In, “D-Day”). Company L and part of battalion headquarters came ashore about 200 yards out of position and became mixed with 1/25 (Bartley, p. 62). Chambers later recalled the fire as the battalion crossed the second terrace: “You could’ve held up a cigarette and lit it on the stuff going by” (Alexander, Closing In, “D-Day”).

The officer losses tell the story of the afternoon. Company K had lost eight officers by 1530, Company L five by 1630 and Company I six by 1700 (Bartley, p. 62). The supporting tanks of Company A, 4th Tank Battalion, landed on Blue 1 from 1020; a large horned mine destroyed the tankdozer, and the rest halted at a minefield about 100 yards inland (p. 62).

By noon a gap of about 100 yards had opened between 1/25 and 3/25. LtCol. Lewis C. Hudson’s 2d Battalion landed at 1250 and was put in to close it and take the high ground northwest of the Quarry (Bartley, p. 62). The regiment attacked again at 1400. By 1745 2/25 held the high ground, Company L of 3/25 reached the top of the Quarry about 1830, and contact across the front was restored at 1900 (p. 62). Alexander names Capt. James Headley as leading the survivors onto the cliff tops with Chambers.

That evening Chambers reported his front-line strength at “150 Marines” (Bartley, p. 63). Alexander writes that the battalion lost 22 officers and about 500 men by nightfall (Closing In, “D-Day”). Companies of the 24th Marines’ 1st Battalion relieved it by 2330 (Bartley, p. 63). The Quarry was held, and with it the right flank of the whole beachhead.

Medal of Honor

LtCol. Justice M. Chambers, 3d Assault Battalion Landing Team, 25th Marines, 4th Marine Division

From 19 to 22 February 1945, his citation records, Chambers landed immediately behind the assault waves, found the attack threatened by heavy casualties, and reorganized his “battle-weary men” under fire. He then led them against the “critical, impregnable high ground” from which the enemy was firing on the beach and the landing craft, carrying the flanking ridge top in an eight-hour fight despite “terrific casualties and the loss of most of his key officers.” On 22 February, directing the fire of his rocket platoon, he “fell, critically wounded,” and was evacuated under heavy fire.

Citation →

The beach behind them

Congestion, wreckage and the shore party

While the assault battalions fought inland, the beaches behind them filled up. Vehicles bogged before they were clear of the ramps, small craft broached and swamped, and Navy coxswains kept their boats running even when they were hit (Bartley, p. 54). The surf rose in the afternoon and wrecked more (Garand and Strobridge, p. 518). On the 4th Division beaches the Seabees and engineers took heavy casualties; one account in the official history likened the footing to “trying to fight in a bin of loose wheat” (p. 517).

The shore party, built around the 8th Field Depot under Col. Leland S. Swindler, with the 133d Naval Construction Battalion attached to the 4th Division and the 31st to the 5th (Bartley, pp. 32–33), could do little on D-Day but stack supplies above the high-water mark. Only “hot cargo” came ashore: ammunition, rations, water and signal gear (p. 67). Even so, the 81-mm mortar ammunition at the front lasted about an hour once the mortars opened fire (p. 67 n. 33).

The wounded suffered most. Men waiting on the beach were hit again, and the first two litter boats were destroyed (Garand and Strobridge, p. 516). Many wounded spent the night on the sand because they could not be taken off (Bartley, p. 67). Alexander records calls to the control ship for “plasma, stretchers, and mortar shells.”

Artillery comes ashore

The division artillery came in by DUKW, the amphibian truck, and the ash nearly stopped it. In the 5th Division’s 13th Marines, LtCol. Henry T. Waller’s 3/13 was first across the beach at 1400 and had a section of 105-mm howitzers registered within twenty minutes. Bulldozers of the 5th Engineer Battalion pulled 2/13’s trucks out of the sand one at a time. The last battalion, 4/13, came in after dark and lost two howitzers when three DUKWs swamped (Bartley, pp. 58–59). In the 4th Division’s 14th Marines, 1/14 manhandled its 75-mm pack howitzers up the terraces and had eleven in position by 1715, and 2/14 landed twelve 105s over Yellow 1; 3/14’s DUKWs would not all start, and it was ordered back aboard its LST, while 4/14 never left its ship (pp. 64–65).

BGen. Leo D. Hermle, assistant commander of the 5th Division, landed at 1430, the first American general officer ashore by Garand and Strobridge’s account (p. 516). Overhead, 606 support aircraft flew 26 missions, dropping 274,500 pounds of bombs and firing 2,254 rockets (Bartley, p. 67).

Timeline

D-Day, 19 February 1945, hour by hour

1. 19 Feb, 0640Heavy support ships open the pre-H-Hour bombardment.
2. 19 Feb, 0645Turner signals “Land the landing force!”
3. 19 Feb, 0805Naval guns lift; carrier aircraft and Marine Corsairs strike the beaches and Suribachi.
4. 19 Feb, 0830First wave of 68 LVT(A)s crosses the line of departure.
5. 19 Feb, 0902First LVT(A)s touch down.
6. 19 Feb, 0905First troops land on a 3,500-yard front.
7. 19 Feb, 0920Heavy fire reported on the Yellow and Blue beaches.
8. 19 Feb, 1030Elements of all eight assault battalions ashore.
9. 19 Feb, 1035Company B, 1/28, reaches the west coast; Suribachi is cut off.
10. 19 Feb, 1036–1046All four assault regiments report heavy fire and losses.
11. 19 Feb, 1405Cates commits the 24th Marines; 1/23 reaches Airfield No. 1.
12. 19 Feb, 16452/28 attacks toward Suribachi and gains about 150 yards.
13. 19 Feb, 1830Company L, 3/25, reaches the top of the Quarry.
14. 19 Feb, 1900Chambers reports 3/25 down to 150 Marines on the line.
15. 19 Feb, 2300Yellow and Blue beaches closed by shelling; barge landing destroyed by 1/28.
16. 20 Feb, after midnightLtCol. Ralph Haas of 1/23 killed in his command post.

The first night

By dark the V Amphibious Corps had six infantry regiments and six artillery battalions ashore, “nearly 30,000 men and thousands of tons of equipment” (Garand and Strobridge, p. 523; Bartley, p. 67 n. 34). The line ran from the base of Suribachi across the neck, along the southern edge of Airfield No. 1 and up to the Quarry, well short of the O-1 line. Most transports retired for the night; the command ships and hospital LSTs stayed (Bartley, p. 67). The 21st Marines had become corps reserve, and the rest of the 3d Marine Division was arriving in the reserve area 80 miles southeast of the island (Garand and Strobridge, pp. 515, 525).

The Marines expected a banzai charge. It did not come. Kuribayashi’s plan was a few infiltration attempts and heavier fire on the crowded beachhead, hurting the Marines “without his risking many of his own men” (Garand and Strobridge, p. 524). Shells fell on the lines and beaches all night, and the Yellow and Blue beaches were closed at 2300 (p. 525). Shortly after 2300 a barge carrying 39 Japanese approached the west coast; riflemen of 1/28 killed them as they tried to land (p. 526; Bartley, p. 65).

Shortly after midnight a shell hit the shell hole serving as the command post of 1/23 and killed LtCol. Ralph Haas and his operations officer; LtCol. Louis B. Blissard took command (Bartley, pp. 65–66; Garand and Strobridge, p. 526). Before dawn the 25th Marines’ ammunition and fuel dump blew up. A postwar Japanese account by Masanori Ito, quoted in the official history, credited such blasts to raiders moving at night like “small packs of prowling wolves” (Garand and Strobridge, p. 526). The correspondent Robert Sherrod called the night “a nightmare in hell” (p. 527).

By the numbers

D-Day casualties, 19 February 1945

Landing force casualties for the day, by category (2,420 in all)

Wounded in action1,755

Killed in action501

Combat fatigue99

Died of wounds47

Missing in action18

People

The record of the day is mostly a record of battalion and company officers, because those are the names it keeps. Many of the company commanders who led the first rushes were hit before noon: Mears and Roach of 1/28, and the nineteen officers lost by three companies of 3/25 before dark. Haas, who brought 1/23 to the airfield, did not survive the night. Basilone died at the edge of Airfield No. 1. Chambers fought on for three more days before he was evacuated.

The Navy’s part is easy to overlook. Coxswains ran their boats onto a beach under fire again and again, the crews of the medium landing ships kept trying to discharge tanks into ash that would not hold them, and the hospital LSTs stayed off the beaches through the night.

On the Japanese side, almost no individual appears in the D-Day record by name except Kuribayashi. Bartley puts the garrison at between 20,530 and 21,060 men (App. VI). The men who manned the mortars and guns on Suribachi and the northern plateau, the antitank gunners who stopped the tanks at the airfield, and the 39 men in the barge off the west coast are known only through what the Marines saw and through the postwar Japanese accounts cited in the official histories. The observer on Suribachi who saw the landing craft come in “like an enormous tidal wave” is not named. The island’s prewar civilian community, described in Chapter 1, does not figure in the D-Day record.

Losses and uncertainty

The official D-Day casualty total is 2,420: 501 killed in action, 47 died of wounds, 1,755 wounded, 18 missing and 99 combat fatigue cases (Bartley, p. 68). Garand and Strobridge give the same figures except for the wounded, which they print as 1,775 (p. 525); we have not been able to resolve the twenty-man difference and give both. Bartley notes that the total, though heavy, was below the five percent of the landing force that had been expected (p. 67). Alexander, measuring against the men actually put ashore, puts the rate at about eight percent (Closing In, “D-Day”). Both can be right, since they divide by different numbers.

Unit figures are thinner. For 3/25 there are three kinds of number: Bartley’s officer losses by company, Chambers’s report of 150 Marines on the line, and Alexander’s 22 officers and about 500 men lost. They describe the same ordeal and should not be added together. Missing counts were inflated by men separated from their units; 1/28 first reported 600 missing, many of whom turned up by D+2 (Garand and Strobridge, p. 525 n. 31).

Other details differ by source. The first wave touched down at 0902 in Bartley and between 0859 and 0903 in Garand and Strobridge. Bartley counts 482 amtracs launched; Alexander counts 448 vehicles in the assault waves. Alexander puts the main Japanese bombardment shortly after 1000, while Bartley records heavy fire on the Yellow and Blue beaches by 0920. The 26th Marines were released at 0955 in Bartley and “shortly after noon” in Alexander. Garand and Strobridge have Hermle ashore at 1430; Alexander has him landing at dusk. Bartley’s dump explosion was caused by enemy rockets; Garand and Strobridge time it about 0400 and link it to raiders. No source gives a reliable count of Japanese dead for 19 February.

Questions readers ask

Why didn’t the Japanese fire on the landing craft as they came in?

Because Kuribayashi had chosen not to fight at the water’s edge. His troops waited out the bombardment underground and opened up only after the naval fire lifted, with guns already registered on the beaches (Bartley, pp. 52–53). Garand and Strobridge note that no antiboat fire hit the waves on their final run (p. 506). The heavy fire began within minutes of the landing and reached its full weight once the beaches were crowded.

How many Marines landed on D-Day?

About 30,000 by nightfall: six infantry regiments and six artillery battalions (Garand and Strobridge, p. 523; Bartley, p. 67 n. 34). The plan called for about 9,000 in the first 45 minutes (Garand and Strobridge, p. 506). The whole Marine assault force for the operation was 70,647 (Garand and Strobridge, p. 475).

Was John Basilone killed on D-Day?

Yes. Alexander records that Gunnery Sgt. John Basilone, a Guadalcanal Medal of Honor recipient, was mortally wounded by a mortar shell late in the afternoon of 19 February while leading his machine gun platoon of 1/27 against the southern part of Airfield No. 1 (Closing In, “D-Day”).

What was the “rolling barrage”?

A naval gunfire plan in which 5-inch batteries walked their fire inland ahead of the assault, keeping about 400 yards in front of the troops and repeating fires if the advance fell behind. It was designed after Saipan, where fire had lifted too far ahead of the first waves (Bartley, p. 50; Alexander, Closing In, “D-Day”).

How it connects

The landing was the moment the defensive system described in Kuribayashi’s Island, the previous chapter, was first tested. Its preregistered guns, underground positions and refusal to counterattack at the beach all showed themselves on 19 February. The 28th Marines’ drive across the neck isolated Suribachi, and the regiment’s fight for the mountain over the next four days, ending with the two flag raisings on 23 February, is told in the next chapter, Mount Suribachi. The Quarry and Airfield No. 1, taken or reached on D-Day, became the starting line for the drive north. For the whole battle, return to the Battle of Iwo Jima hub or the World War II collection.

What happened afterward

On D+1 the 28th Marines turned on Suribachi, and the 4th and 5th Divisions began the attack north across the airfield into ground even better prepared than the beaches, which stayed under fire for days. The first flag went up on Suribachi at 1020 on 23 February, raised by a patrol of Company E, 2d Battalion, 28th Marines, under 1stLt. Harold G. Schrier (Bartley, p. 76). Chambers was critically wounded on 22 February; Stein was killed on 1 March. The island was declared secured at 1800 on 16 March (Bartley, p. 189).

Walking the ground today

Iwo Jima, officially Iwo To since 2007, is a Japan Self-Defense Force base and is closed to the public. The landing beaches can be seen by most visitors only from the air or the sea, or during the annual Reunion of Honor, a joint U.S.–Japanese memorial ceremony held on the island, usually in March, for veterans, families and official parties. In the United States, the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Virginia, depicts the second Suribachi flag raising, and the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, Virginia, near Quantico, tells the Iwo Jima story in its World War II galleries. Check visiting hours before you go.

Sources and further reading

• LtCol. Whitman S. Bartley, Iwo Jima: Amphibious Epic (USMC Historical Branch, 1954), ch. III, “D-Day—19 February 1945,” pp. 51–68: HyperWar text.
• Bartley, ch. II, “Plans and Preparations,” cited at pp. 25–50 (landing plan, shore party, tanks in LSMs, rolling barrage): HyperWar text; App. VI, Japanese order of battle: HyperWar text.
• Col. Joseph H. Alexander, Closing In: Marines in the Seizure of Iwo Jima (USMC History and Museums Division, 1994), section “D-Day”: HyperWar text; PDF at npshistory.com.
• George W. Garand and Truman R. Strobridge, Western Pacific Operations, History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, vol. IV (1971), Part VI, ch. 4, “D-Day on Iwo Jima,” pp. 502–527: HyperWar text; ch. 2, “Offensive Plans and Preparations” (assault troop strength, p. 475): HyperWar text.
• Congressional Medal of Honor Society, citations for Cpl. Tony Stein, Sgt. Darrell S. Cole and LtCol. Justice M. Chambers; Chambers citation text also at HyperWar, Medal of Honor recipients A–E.
• Naval History and Heritage Command, “Sergeant Darrell Samuel Cole, USMCR” (namesake of USS Cole): history.navy.mil.
• Naval Historical Center Online Library photographs: NH 104211 (beach wreckage), 80-G-474795 (LVTs retracting), 80-G-310951 (initial waves), NH 103801 (Sgt. Cole).
• Visitor information: Marine Corps War Memorial (National Park Service); National Museum of the Marine Corps.

Photographs: Official U.S. Navy photographs (National Archives and Naval History and Heritage Command) and U.S. Marine Corps photographs, public domain. Marines digging in on the beach: Archives Branch, USMC History Division, CC BY 2.0.