13. Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands, February-March, 1945
The 1945 attack on the Japanese held island of Iwo Jima became controversial after the Americans seized the heavily fortified position only to find it of little value to the army as a staging base or the navy as a fleet support base. The three airfields on the island, all heavily damaged in the fighting, were rebuilt by construction battalions for the use of them as emergency landing facilities for B-29s which suffered damage over Japan, but their effectiveness remains questionable. 6,821 American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines were killed in the five week battle to secure the island, another 19,217 were wounded. Uniquely for the Pacific War, total American casualties exceeded those of the Japanese, who started the battle with 21,000 troops garrisoning the island. Of those only 216 survived the battle to be captured by American forces.
The Americans fighting on the island itself encountered an eleven mile long network of tunnels connecting defense positions and bunkers (out of what had been a planned 17 mile system). Tanks were placed in defensive positions, camouflaged, and used as artillery, since there was a shortage of available fuel on the island and the Japanese had no means of resupplying the garrison. The tunnels enabled the Japanese to remain hidden and secure during the pre-invasion naval and air bombardments, and some of the bunkers contained supplies sufficient for its occupants to hold out against an assault for weeks, and in some cases even months. The navy bombarded the island for several months before the invasion, beginning in June 1944, though the actions did little to weaken the island’s defenses. Iwo Jima’s biggest impact on the war effort was the hard-learned lessons about the Japanese defenses, which were taken into account during the planning for the invasion of Okinawa.