The image posted below has been gathering pixel dust in my scrapbook for a while now, and it was a recent newspaper item that finally provided the impetus to post it and write some words as accompaniment. This year marks the 60th Anniversary of the end of the Second World War, and a contingent of American veterans, mostly Marines, made a recent pilgrimage to the site of one of the war's most ghastly battles, Operation Detachment, on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima.
Securing Iwo Jima was of critical importance to the American strategic bombing campaign underway against the Japanese mainland; positioned halfway between the B-29 bases in the Marianas and Japan proper, Iwo would eventually serve as a base for escorting fighters and an emergency landing field for bombers in distress. A crippled B-29 landed on Iwo scant weeks after the battle had begun.
The battle raged from February 19, 1945 to March 26. Soft volcanic sand slowed the progress of men and machines, black lava rock provided deep cover for the defenders and a heavy smell of sulphur nauseated all. By any measure, it was a hellish fight. Over one-third of the Marines who took part in the invasion became casualties: 28,686 killed, wounded or incapacitated out of an available force of 70,000. The casualty ratio among the defending Japanese was much higher: out of 27,000 defenders, over 20,000 were killed, with slightly over 1,000 surviving to become prisoners of war. Japanese soldiers on Iwo Jima were so securely embedded in their defensive positions - caves, lava tubes and ravines - that the Marines resorted to extreme measures to drive them out, including the use of flame throwers.
In a different time, and a different war, such measures would have been considered barbaric. The psychological ground had already been prepared, though. Both sides had so thoroughly dehumanized the other, in speech and images, that few measures were considered extreme.
The United States Marines, a 1943 comic book published by William H. Wise, depicts "A Leatherneck Flame Thrower" torching a grotesque Japanese octopus bearing the likeness of Hideki Tojo, Japan's wartime Prime Minister. The comic's cover image accomplishes two goals: it encourages American children to regard their enemies as animals, and to accept the use of flame throwers in combat.
To view an online timetable of the battle for Iwo Jima, the source for the dates and casualty figures noted,
click here.
Clem