The Meat Grinder: Hill 382, Turkey Knob and the Amphitheater

On 27 February 1945, the eighth day of the battle (D+8), men of the 3d Battalion, 23d Marines, reached the crest of Hill 382 on the east side of Iwo Jima. They fought hand to hand around the ruins of a Japanese radar station until a heavy artillery and mortar barrage drove them off the top. Ordered to consolidate on ground where they could keep solid contact on both flanks, they pulled back to about the line they had left that morning (Bartley, p. 156; Garand and Strobridge, p. 653). The 4th Marine Division would attack that hill, and the knob and bowl to its south, every day for two weeks. Its Marines called the whole complex the “Meat Grinder.” This chapter follows the division from 25 February to 10 March. For the wider battle, see the Battle of Iwo Jima hub.

Why it mattered

By 25 February the V Amphibious Corps held both southern airfields and most of the central one, but the Japanese still held about three-fifths of the island. The 4th Division’s intelligence officer (D-2) judged that they would “conserve his strength and continue his stubborn underground defense” to make the capture of the airbase “as slow and costly as possible” (Bartley, p. 155). The eastern bulge was where that plan was carried furthest. Prisoners described its defenses as the most extensive and powerful on the island (Bartley, p. 149 and n. 2).

Hill 382 was the highest point north of Suribachi (Alexander, Closing In), and guns dug into it covered the main runway of Airfield No. 2. Turkey Knob overlooked the whole southern end of the island (Bartley, p. 149). Once both were lost, the division noted, Japanese artillery without that observation was confined largely to area fire (p. 168). The price of taking them, and the slow wearing-out of a Marine division, are the subject of this chapter.

Terrain and objectives

Bartley calls the sector “fantastically rugged” ground that the defenders had turned, by digging and building, into “a mighty fortress” (p. 149). The hill the Japanese called Nidan Iwa stood 382 feet high, about 250 yards northeast of the east-west runway of Airfield No. 2. Its top carried the wreck of a Japanese radar station and had been hollowed out to hold field pieces and antitank guns in concrete housings, each covered by as many as ten machine-gun positions. The rest of the hill was tunneled. Tanks with 57-mm and 47-mm guns, parked in crevices around it, could fire down the length of the main runway (Bartley, p. 149; Garand and Strobridge, p. 646).

From the hill the land fell south and east in ridges and draws that Bartley compares to “giant steps.” Six hundred yards south rose Turkey Knob, not high but crowned by a reinforced concrete communication center and an observation post over the southern end of the island. Southwest of it lay a bowl the Marines called the Amphitheater, with three tiers of concrete emplacements in its south-facing slopes, its own communications and electric lights. The fourth position was the “smashed village” of Minami, just east of the knob (Bartley, p. 149; Garand and Strobridge, p. 646). Alexander identifies the knob’s blockhouse as the post of Col. Chosaku Kaido, Kuribayashi’s chief of artillery; the two earlier official histories call it only a communications center (Closing In).

Beyond lay what the division’s intelligence report of 5 March called a “volcanic, crevice lined area.” Its crevices ran out from Hill 382 like spokes toward the southeast, so every advance had to cross them, and they made ideal mortar pits. Caves and tracks were everywhere, but the defenders’ camouflage was so good that an aerial observer could rarely find troops (Bartley, p. 150).

Turning east, 25–26 February

Early on 25 February (D+6) the 21st Marines returned to the 3d Division, which took over most of Airfield No. 2. The whole eastern bulge stayed with General Cates. At 0630 the 23d Marines came back from corps reserve and attacked on the division’s left in a column of battalions, while the 24th Marines, with 2/25 attached, attacked on the right (Bartley, p. 150). Mines and antitank guns blocked tanks from the division’s own zone, so the Shermans went forward through the 3d Division’s area to fire from the 23d’s left boundary. Not until about 1430 did engineers with an armored bulldozer open a tank route through the 23d’s own zone. Company K, 3/23, crossed the airstrip to high ground on the north; Company L pushed east along Charlie-Dog Ridge (pp. 150–151).

On the right, artillery, naval gunfire and carrier planes worked over the Amphitheater and Minami, and armored amphibians tried to support 1/24 from offshore until choppy seas forced them out. Both battalions of the 24th Marines were stopped after about 100 yards, with key officers and NCOs among the casualties (Bartley, pp. 151, 153). That evening, before the main assault had even begun, the division estimated its combat efficiency at 55 percent (Garand and Strobridge, p. 648).

On 26 February the 25th Marines passed through the 24th, starting forward at 0530. Delays in shifting 2/25 held the attack until 0820 (Bartley, p. 153; Garand and Strobridge give 0830, p. 649). After about 100 yards, 1/25 and 2/25 ran into machine-gun fire from the Amphitheater and Turkey Knob. Tanks could not find the guns and drew mortar fire, and two OY-1 planes of VMO-4, just landed on the island, could not spot the mortars. A platoon of Company C, 1/25, tried to work around toward the knob; mortars killed several men, including its leader, and the rest withdrew under smoke (Bartley, pp. 153–154).

On the left, Colonel Wensinger attacked Hill 382 at 0800 with 1/23 and 3/23 abreast. Minefields on the taxiway and around a radio weather station kept the Shermans of Company C back; mines destroyed two and damaged a third. Using flame, rockets and demolitions, 3/23 reduced the outer positions, and late in the day elements of Company I reached the southwestern slopes before rocket and mortar fire drove them back. The regiment gained about 200 yards. The D-2 called the resistance “bitter” and reported that the enemy “was determined to deny us Hill 382” (Bartley, p. 154). Garand and Strobridge write that the 309th Independent Infantry Battalion, caught between the 23d and 25th Marines that day, was “for all practical purposes annihilated” (p. 651).

Medal of Honor

Pfc. Douglas T. Jacobson, 3d Battalion, 23d Marines

On 26 February 1945, as his unit fought toward the summit of Hill 382, Jacobson took up the bazooka of a Marine who had been killed and destroyed a 20-mm antiaircraft gun and its crew. When his platoon was stopped, he knocked out two machine-gun positions, a large blockhouse, a pillbox and a cluster of six rifle emplacements, then helped an adjacent company and smashed the turret of a Japanese tank firing on a Marine tank. His citation credits him with 16 enemy positions destroyed and about 75 Japanese killed.

Citation →

Jacobson, born in Rochester, New York, on 25 November 1925, was 19. President Truman presented the medal at the White House on 5 October 1945. His citation places him in the 3d Battalion, 23d Marines, which fits the attack above; the Medal of Honor Society’s summary lists Company L, 3d Battalion, 24th Marines, which does not (Congressional Medal of Honor Society).

The radar station and the woods, 27–28 February

For two days the division attacked with five battalions abreast after a 45-minute artillery preparation each morning (Bartley, p. 155). On the 27th, 3/23 climbed the southwestern slopes while 1/23 worked around the north. Garand and Strobridge say both battalions were down to little more than company strength. Shortly after 1400, as 1/23 started up the reverse slope, engineers with a tank dozer cut a path for Shermans to fire on the top (pp. 652–653). Marines of 3/23 found the crest hollowed out and lined with gun positions, and the fight around the radar station followed (Bartley, pp. 155–156). At 0043 on the 28th Marines saw parachutes dropping 400 to 600 yards ahead and shelled the drop zone (p. 156). Garand and Strobridge say the loads were medical supplies and ammunition from planes based elsewhere in the Bonins (p. 654).

On the 28th Company G of 2/23 gained 200 yards up a corridor southeast of the hill by 1200 before fire from both sides stopped it. Company A, 1/23, worked around the north side and at 1415 attacked the reverse slopes, where bazooka men knocked out two dug-in Japanese tanks. By evening the hill was nearly surrounded, but its defenders, supported by mortars and rockets from the rocks to the east, still held (Bartley, pp. 156–157).

South of the hill the 25th Marines kept attacking head-on. On the 27th, 1/25 could not jump off until 1500, when 3/23 had advanced enough to open a route above the Amphitheater. Two of its tanks were knocked out by 47-mm antitank shells, and at 1715 Company A fell back to the previous night’s line. On the 28th the battalion tried a double envelopment of the knob. Its lead company got 50 yards into a patch of woods north of the knob before mortar, rocket and machine-gun fire stopped it, and by 1200 Bartley calls the situation “critical.” At 1215 two more companies went into the woods while Company B attacked around the base of the Amphitheater with two tanks. Grenades and mines thrown down from the high ground stopped it, and two tanks that fired 75-mm rounds at the blockhouse on the knob had little effect. At 1645 everyone withdrew under smoke (Bartley, pp. 158–159).

Next door, 2/25’s commander, Lt. Col. James Taul, had a 75-mm pack howitzer hand-carried into the line (Garand and Strobridge, pp. 656–657). It fired 40 rounds of direct fire, which let Company F gain about 75 yards (Bartley, p. 159). The two histories disagree on its target. Garand and Strobridge say it was the Turkey Knob blockhouse and that most shells bounced off; Bartley says it was a strong point that Company F destroyed the next day.

The 1st Provisional Rocket Detachment’s trucks drew counterbattery fire whenever they fired, so they ran in, fired and left. For a heavy barrage, six trucks fired, reloaded from rockets carried aboard, fired again and withdrew: a “double ripple” of 432 rockets in less than five minutes (Bartley, p. 157). Air support was uneven. On the 28th half the napalm dropped in front of the 25th Marines failed to ignite, and another strike hit the wrong area. Still, by that evening the division had outflanked Hill 382 on both sides (p. 159).

Taking Hill 382, 1–2 March

Before dawn on 1 March the 24th Marines relieved the 23d unit for unit. K-Hour was 0830. When 2/24 asked for deep support at 0935, napalm, corps 155-mm howitzers and naval gunfire followed, but Bartley notes it took three hours to get those fires (p. 160). Company G of 2/24 spent the day on the hill as assault squads blasted cave entrances “in a systematic yard-by-yard advance.” By evening it held the west ridge of the hill’s two-ridge crest; the Japanese held the second ridge, 100 yards east, and the two sides dueled across the gap with rifles, machine guns and rifle grenades (Bartley, pp. 160–161). Garand and Strobridge, drawing on a popular history, name the crest’s defender as Maj. Kenro Anso of the 3d Battalion, 145th Infantry, killed there by a flamethrower (p. 659); Bartley’s order of battle confirms a Major Anso commanding that battalion (Appendix VI, p. 230).

On the hill’s south flank, Company C of 1/24 lost its commander just before noon and his replacement two minutes after a 1300 jump-off, yet a third officer brought it onto high ground overlooking Minami (Bartley, pp. 161–162). Below grid line 74, 1/25 tried again for the woods north of the knob and was withdrawn under smoke (pp. 162–163). That evening the division’s combat efficiency was put at 55 percent (Garand and Strobridge, p. 661).

On 2 March 2/24 attacked at 0800 with four tanks and rocket trucks, but the tanks drew so much fire that they were pulled back. The battalion executive officer later wrote that the resistance close in “had to be dealt with as usual by the attacking companies” with grenades, rifles, mortars, flamethrowers, demolitions and bazookas (Bartley, p. 163). At 1100 the battalion commander decided to send a platoon of Company E and two tanks around the right. Company E’s acting commander was giving the orders when a large mortar shell burst in the command post, killing a platoon leader and seriously wounding three officers. The last platoon leader took over, and by 1500 the company, “with one out of six officers left,” had done its job (pp. 163–164).

Garand and Strobridge, following a later account, name the men: the commander, Roland Carey, hit by machine-gun fire; Capt. Pat Donlan, who took over and was wounded; 1st Lt. Stanley Osborne, killed as he moved to replace Donlan; and 2d Lt. Richard Reich, whose platoon was already fighting beneath the radar antenna and who was left as the only officer. With Company F beside it on the hill, 2/24 reported the objective secured at 1530 (pp. 662–663). The 24th Marines did not record the hill as secured until the next day (Bartley, p. 164). The division operations officer noted there seemed to be “underground passageways” into the hill, so that when one occupant of a pillbox was killed another came up to take his place. Sealing caves there went on for days (p. 164).

To the south the 25th Marines tried surprise. At 0630, 90 minutes before K-Hour and without a preparation, 1/25 began infiltrating the high ground north of the knob. At about 0650 rockets, mortars and machine guns opened up. Eight tanks came forward, and 1,000 gallons of flamethrower fuel and many 75-mm shells were thrown at the blockhouse without breaking the defense. By 1430 Company B was 65 yards from closing the ring. At 1445 a barrage drove it back with many casualties, more than 30 by Garand and Strobridge’s count, and replacements reached the battalion at 1730 (Bartley, p. 164; Garand and Strobridge, p. 664).

Grinding down the salient, 3–7 March

On 3 March the division again attacked at 0630 without a preparation; Bartley notes that twilight had begun at 0541 (p. 165). The 23d Marines made the main effort against the Amphitheater–Turkey Knob salient, with tanks and a platoon of the 4th Engineer Battalion attached to 1/23. The blockhouse’s approaches were mined and covered by fire, and engineers cleared a path under that fire so a flame tank could get close (Bartley, p. 165). Garand and Strobridge say the path was open by 1400 and that flame tanks and demolition teams partly reduced the blockhouse by evening, but the Japanese still held the knob (p. 667). North of the salient the 24th Marines met concrete emplacements with firing ports to the front and both flanks, among hillocks and steep-sided corridors. Mortars fired within 50 yards of the Marines, and small teams with demolitions, flamethrowers, bazookas and grenades did the rest. Losses among junior officers and NCOs “seriously retarded” the attack, but the regiment gained up to 350 yards in the center (Bartley, pp. 165–166). By that evening the 4th Tank Battalion had 36 tanks running, 12 destroyed and 8 damaged, and division combat efficiency stood at 50 percent (Garand and Strobridge, p. 668).

4 March dawned “gray and sullen,” and showers grounded all air strikes. Flame tanks helped 3/23 mop up the partly bypassed Amphitheater, and the best gain of the day was 150 yards (Bartley, pp. 166–167). The 24th Marines used 2,200 pounds of explosives to blow cave entrances, and by evening combat efficiency had fallen to 45 percent, the lowest yet (Garand and Strobridge, pp. 668–669). Alexander gives 50 percent that morning and five points less by nightfall (Closing In). Bartley describes survivors “extremely exhausted” by attack after attack, yet also a cautious optimism: the division believed it had broken through the main cross-island defense belt (pp. 167–168).

On 5 March the corps paused. Cates picked the 23d Marines for the next attack and put the 25th back on the right, where a provisional battalion under Maj. Edward L. Asbill, built from the Division Reconnaissance Company and Company L, 3/25, took over the salient (Bartley, pp. 168–169). Garand and Strobridge, quoting a popular history, note more than 400 casualties on the line that day though there was no attack (p. 671).

On 6 March the corps attacked behind 12 artillery battalions and naval gunfire; Garand and Strobridge count 132 guns firing 22,500 shells in a little over an hour (Bartley, p. 169; Garand and Strobridge, p. 672). Company G of 2/23, with four Shermans, gained 300 yards. Company E lost its commander to a mortar barrage, and at 1900 another barrage wounded his successor and 22 men and killed the executive officer. The battalion intelligence officer who came forward became the company’s seventh commander since D-Day (Bartley, p. 169). The division’s best gain was 350 yards; the great preparation had changed little (p. 170).

In their words

The results of fatigue and lack of experienced leaders is very evident in the manner in which the units fight.

That night 40 to 50 Japanese got into the lines of 1/25, some into Marine foxholes, and 13 Marines and 50 Japanese were killed. At 0502 a large rocket hit the 2/23 command post, wounding the battalion commander and four of his staff and killing the communications chief. After daylight Lt. Col. Edward J. Dillon, the regimental executive officer, relieved Maj. Robert H. Davison, who had been “badly shaken by the blast” (Bartley, p. 170; Garand and Strobridge spell it Davidson, p. 674). The 7 March attack began at 0800; 2/23 gained about 150 yards in its first hour and little after. The commander of Company C, 1/24, was killed by a rifle bullet (pp. 170–171).

The plan was now what Bartley calls “a hammer and anvil.” The 23d and 24th Marines would drive southeast to the coast against the 25th Marines’ line on the south. The 3d Battalion, 25th Marines, laid an antipersonnel minefield and two belts of wire about 75 yards apart with trip flares between, and emplaced three 37-mm guns with canister (pp. 171–172). A captured map, drawn for a January exercise, showed that the Japanese had rehearsed this defense almost exactly as it happened (p. 172).

By the numbers

4th Marine Division combat efficiency, 25 February–8 March 1945

The division’s own estimates of its fighting strength, in percent

25 Feb (evening)55%

1 Mar (evening)55%

3 Mar (end of day)50%

4 Mar (evening)45%

6 Mar (D-3 report)40%

8 Mar (dusk)40%

The night counterattack, 8–9 March

On 8 March the division attacked at 0620 without a preparation, its main effort now in the center. A Japanese strong point astride the boundary between the 23d and 24th Marines held all day, and that night Company E, 2/23, and Company I, 3/24, held long, difficult lines around it (Bartley, p. 172). At 2300 both battalions reported large-scale infiltration along the boundary, and at 2330 “a full-scale counterattack hit Company E, 2/23” (p. 172).

Although some attackers shouted and screamed, Bartley writes, “this was no wild banzai charge.” They crawled close through the broken ground first. A few reached the 2/23 command post and threw grenades from 10 to 15 yards; some carried stretchers and called “Corpsman” to get through the lines (pp. 172–173). Shortly after midnight Company E ran short of ammunition, and a jeep and trailer brought more up a road with Japanese on it. The company alone used 500 grenades, 200 high-explosive and 200 illuminating 60-mm mortar rounds and uncounted small-arms ammunition, and ships fired 193 star shells over the front (p. 173).

By daylight the fight had nearly ended. About 650 Japanese dead were counted in the area of the main attack, and reports from other sectors brought the total to “nearly 800,” though the exact number could not be determined. Marine losses for the night alone are not available; the 23d and 24th Marines together lost 90 killed and 257 wounded on 8 and 9 March, a period that includes the daytime fighting (Bartley, p. 173 and n. 35). Garand and Strobridge attribute those figures to the counterattack itself (p. 679).

Who led it?

The official accounts differ. Bartley relies on documents taken from the dead, which identified the main unit as the 1st Company, 310th Independent Infantry Battalion, reinforced, with elements of the 3d Battalion, 145th Infantry, the 314th Independent Infantry Battalion, an engineer unit “and naval units.” A map with the attack order named the “Airfield,” “South Beach” and “Suribachi” as objectives (Bartley, p. 174). Prisoners later said Capt. Inoue, the naval land force commander, was killed on 8 March near Higashi (p. 191). Garand and Strobridge, drawing on Richard Newcomb’s popular history and a 1964 letter from Fred Saito to Newcomb, make it a naval attack of about 1,000 men under Capt. Samaji Inouye, aimed at Suribachi without his superiors’ approval; Inouye died in it (pp. 677–680). Alexander credits Maj. Gen. Senda, who he says led 800 of his surviving troops (Closing In). The record supports Army battalions of Senda’s brigade and naval troops in the attack and the naval commander’s death that night. Who planned and led it is less certain.

Timeline

The Meat Grinder, day by day

1. 25 Feb, 0630The 23d Marines rejoin the division; the 4th Division turns east.
2. 26 Feb, 0800The 23d Marines attack Hill 382; Pfc. Jacobson’s actions on its slopes.
3. 27 Feb3/23 fights at the radar station ruins on the crest and is driven off.
4. 28 Feb, 1415Company A, 1/23, attacks the hill’s reverse slopes; two dug-in tanks destroyed.
5. 1 MarCompany G, 2/24, holds the west ridge of the crest; the Japanese hold the east ridge.
6. 2 Mar, 15302/24 reports Hill 382 secured; Company E has one officer of six left.
7. 3 Mar, about 1400Engineers clear a path for a flame tank to the Turkey Knob blockhouse.
8. 6 MarCorps attack; the D-3 puts combat efficiency at 40 percent.
9. 8 Mar, 2330The counterattack hits Company E, 2/23.
10. 9 MarNearly 800 Japanese dead counted.
11. 10 Mar, 1500The 23d Marines are 500 yards from the east coast; patrols reach Tachiiwa Point. The salient is eliminated.

To the coast, 9–10 March

On 9 March 3/24 took the boundary strong point in a second assault at 0900 and pushed 300 yards; elsewhere there was no gain (Bartley, pp. 174–175). Companies were shifted between battalions to make up strength. The 24th Marines disbanded a company in each of two battalions, leaving 1/24 with Company A at 135 effectives and Company B at 115 under a new commander, Lt. Col. Austin R. Brunelli. The provisional battalion in the salient was disbanded, and a new 4th Provisional Battalion of 37 officers and 498 men from the support group, under Lt. Col. Melvin L. Krulewitch, swept the rear areas (p. 175).

On 10 March the division attacked at 0800 after the last coordinated corps and division artillery preparation of the operation. The 23d Marines bypassed small pockets for engineer-tank-infantry teams, and by 1500 had gone 700 yards to within about 500 yards of the coast. Patrols from 2/23 reached the shore near Tachiiwa Point without contact (Bartley, p. 175). On the right, 3/25 drove southeast and 2/25 swung northeast to meet it. Their companies joined shortly after noon, and the 25th Marines gained 600 yards. Marine lines met east of Turkey Knob, and “the infamous salient in that area was eliminated” (p. 176). Bartley concludes that “the Japanese counterattack had marked the turning point in the battle” (p. 176).

He sums up the fourteen days as “the closing of a giant door.” The right flank, which advanced less than 1,000 yards, was the hinge, and the rest of the division swung on it from Charlie-Dog Ridge past Hill 382, the Amphitheater and Turkey Knob, through Minami, almost to the sea (p. 176).

How the Japanese defended

Bartley calls the defense “astute,” crediting Kuribayashi with the plan and Maj. Gen. Senda, who held tactical control in this zone, with much of its execution (p. 176). The division’s intelligence officer described the daily pattern. The defenders sat out the preparation in tunnels, then moved men and weapons up, often within 75 yards of the Marines, and fired everything as the Marines advanced. Once the attack was pinned, most went back underground. When the spot was finally taken, it held few dead and few weapons but many empty cases and deep tunnel mouths, and the cycle had begun somewhere else (pp. 176–177). Bartley concludes that the division had no alternative to frontal assault until its left regiment could move down the ravines to the sea. He calls the 8–9 March counterattack “the one obvious mistake” of the defense (p. 177).

People

Most of the men who held this fight together were company officers and NCOs whose names survive only in unit reports. Company E, 2/23, went through seven commanders by 6 March (Bartley, p. 169), and Alexander uses that company to show the drain on junior leaders (Closing In). Within the first month of the battle, Alexander records, 13,737 wounded Marines and corpsmen were evacuated by hospital ship and 2,449 by air; 4th Division surgeons operated in an abandoned Japanese dugout behind the lines on men who might not survive the trip to a ship.

Maj. Gen. Sadasue Senda, a former artillery officer with combat experience in China and Manchuria (Alexander, Closing In), had his first headquarters just east of Hill 382. Bartley places his last command post in the final pocket near the east coast, where about 1,500 Army and Navy troops fought to the end. On 12 March the Marines held their attack for two hours to broadcast a surrender appeal to him, but the amplifier’s generator would not start. Prisoners later said he killed himself on 14 March (Bartley, pp. 184, 191). One prisoner taken by the division on 9 March, a former newspaper editor, told interrogators that Japan could not win and was trying only to lessen its defeat (Garand and Strobridge, p. 683). There were no civilians on the island (Alexander, Closing In).

Losses and uncertainty

Bartley gives the division’s losses from 25 February through 10 March as 4,075 (p. 177). In the online transcription of his table the lines read 642 killed, 205 died of wounds, 2,836 wounded, 1 missing and 301 combat fatigue, which add to only 3,985. Garand and Strobridge, citing the same page, give 391 for combat fatigue, which makes the lines add to 4,075 (p. 682). The 301 is probably a transcription error, and the chart uses 391. These figures cover the 4th Division for this period only.

By the numbers

4th Marine Division casualties, 25 February–10 March 1945

Total 4,075

Wounded in action2,836

Killed in action642

Died of wounds205

Combat fatigue391

Missing in action1

Other figures here have limits too. The Japanese dead of 8–9 March were “nearly 800,” not an exact count. The efficiency percentages are staff judgments. Times and yardages sometimes differ slightly between Bartley and Garand and Strobridge; where they do, both are given. Even the date Hill 382 fell depends on the report: 2 March for 2/24, 3 March for its regiment, and Alexander writes as if it had only just fallen on 4 March (Bartley, p. 164; Closing In).

Questions readers ask

Why was it called the Meat Grinder?

The Marines gave the name to the whole complex of Hill 382, Turkey Knob, the Amphitheater and Minami during the fighting. The official histories record the name but not who coined it (Bartley, p. 149; Alexander, Closing In). The division lost 4,075 men there in fourteen days.

When was Hill 382 taken?

Marines got onto the hill on 26 February and onto its crest on the 27th, and were driven off both times. Company G, 2/24, held the western half of the crest on 1 March, and 2/24 reported it secured on the afternoon of 2 March, though caves were still being sealed days later (Bartley, pp. 154–164; Garand and Strobridge, p. 663).

Was the 8–9 March attack a banzai charge?

Bartley says not: the attackers crawled close under cover and used grenades, demolition charges and magnetic mines after an artillery and rocket preparation. Garand and Strobridge call it a “mini-banzai.” Its result, nearly 800 Japanese dead for no ground gained, is not in dispute (Bartley, pp. 172–174; Garand and Strobridge, p. 678).

How it connects

The Meat Grinder was fought beside the 3d Marine Division’s drive up the center, described in The Airfields and the Center; the 4th Division’s tanks used the 3d’s zone to reach Hill 382, and its companies kept losing and regaining contact along the boundary. On the west side the 5th Marine Division fought a similar battle of attrition, the subject of the next chapter, Hills 362 and Nishi Ridge. For maps and the full timeline, return to the Battle of Iwo Jima hub.

What happened afterward

The 23d Marines reached the coast on 11 March, but the 25th Marines ran into a last pocket of crevices and ridges northwest of the beach road. It took four more days, with flame tanks firing up the draws, before the regiment reported all resistance there destroyed at 1030 on 16 March (Bartley, pp. 182–184). The division’s cemetery was dedicated on 15 March. The division began loading out on 14 March and sailed for Maui on the 19th (p. 193).

Walking the ground today

The island is now Iwo To, a Japan Self-Defense Force base closed to the public. The main chance for Americans to stand on it is the annual Reunion of Honor, a joint U.S.–Japanese memorial ceremony held on the island. The Meat Grinder lies in the east-central uplands between the old central airfield and the east coast. In the United States, the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Virginia, modeled on the second flag raising on Suribachi, honors all Marines who have died for their country, and the National Museum of the Marine Corps at Triangle, Virginia, covers the battle in its World War II galleries. Check hours and access before visiting.

Sources and further reading

• Lt. Col. Whitman S. Bartley, Iwo Jima: Amphibious Epic (USMC Historical Branch, 1954), ch. VIII, “4th Division on the Right (D+6–D+19),” pp. 149–177: HyperWar text.
• Bartley, ch. IX, “The Final Phase,” pp. 178–193 (the 4th Division’s last pocket; prisoners’ reports on Senda and Inoue): HyperWar text.
• Bartley, ch. X, “Recapitulation” (engineers, p. 200): HyperWar text; Appendix VI, “Japanese Order of Battle,” p. 230: HyperWar text.
• 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. 10, “The 4th Marine Division Drive on the Right,” pp. 645–683: HyperWar text.
• Col. Joseph H. Alexander, Closing In: Marines in the Seizure of Iwo Jima (USMC History and Museums Division, 1994): HyperWar text; PDF at npshistory.com.
• Congressional Medal of Honor Society, citation for Pfc. Douglas T. Jacobson.
• Naval History and Heritage Command, H-Gram 042 (Iwo Jima): history.navy.mil.
• Photographs via Wikimedia Commons: 4th Division squad, 26 February 1945; Jacobson and Truman, NH I03857; Marine rocket truck.
• Visitor information: Marine Corps War Memorial (National Park Service); National Museum of the Marine Corps.

Photographs: U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Navy and other U.S. government photographs via the National Archives, the Naval History and Heritage Command and Wikimedia Commons, public domain unless noted. Rocket-truck photograph: Archives Branch, USMC History Division, Thayer Soule Collection, CC BY 2.0.