Battle over Iwo Jima continues

Battle over Iwo Jima continues

On Feb. 19, 1945 the United States finally brought World War II to Japan itself as, after a massive prior bombardment, Marines landed on the island of Iwo Jima, which lay between U.S.-held Saipan and Guam to the south, and Tokyo to the north. Jakarta Post Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin visits the island as the Americans get ready to remember the famous battle which the Japanese prefer to forget.

IWO JIMA, Japan (JP): Fifty years after U.S. Marines stormed ashore here, finally carrying the Pacific War to the Japanese home islands, Iwo Jima is a dormant fortress which continues to divide the U.S. from its ally, Japan.

Iwo Jima (Sulphur island) is much as the Marines found it on Feb. 19, 1945. The famous John Wayne movie later had the Marines fighting on the The Sands of Iwo Jima but there is no sand on Iwo. The island is an inactive volcano, and the steeply inclined beaches are composed of a soft black ash which was one more impediment as the Americans tried to form a beachhead on Feb. 19, 1945.

The Japanese did not immediately try to push the Marines back into the sea.

By February 1945, the Japanese knew that winning the war was no longer possible, so their main strategy was to take as many Americans with them as they themselves died.

By February 1945, the Americans had hundreds of deadly B-29 bombers stationed on Guam, Saipan, and Tinian islands which lie some 900 miles south south east Iwo. Then, Iwo's airfields lay three-fifths of the way on the B-29's route to Tokyo.

The Marines hoped to take Iwo Jima in four or five days. Instead, a murderous battle was fought from Feb. 19 until March 26. The Americans took control but the Japanese succeeded in their aim, too, as 6,821 Americans and nearly 21,000 Japanese gave their lives in the battle. 25,851 Americans were wounded while only 1,083 Japanese surrendered or were captured.

Iwo was returned to Japanese sovereignty in 1968. Today, while Iwo is nominally under the control of the Tokyo municipal government, it is in fact run by the Self Defense Forces. All local inhabitants were removed from Iwo in July 1944 and never returned.

Four hundred Japanese military run the air base. The last Americans on the island, Coast Guardmen manning a navigational station, left recently when their equipment was automated.

Fifty years on, as sixty Japanese and foreign journalists descend on Iwo in advance of the fiftieth anniversary commemorations of the famous battle, the Japanese military reception is as unfriendly as it was hostile fifty years ago.

The Japanese base commander does not welcome the visitors and none of his subordinates put in an appearance either, not even to greet their fellow-countrymen.

A small company of U.S. Marines have arrived on the island from Okinawa to prepare for the commemoration and they look after the visiting media. They carefully stress, in response to press queries, that the Japanese military have been very helpful. The fact remains that the Japanese and American soldiers still live separate lives on the tiny island.

There are none of the signs of solidarity that alliances -- such as that which exists between the U.S. and Japan -- are supposed to exude. Japanese as well as American veterans will be coming to the main remembrance on the island on March 14th, but the Americans alone are hard at work cutting back the vegetation and generally tidying up around the many memorials that dot the island battlefield.

Whether this is because the Japanese have declined to help, or because the Americans want to do it their own way, is never made clear.

For the most part, the island's numerous monuments, most of which are Japanese, are well looked after. The most famous monument commemorates the moment on Feb. 25 when a handful of Marines hoisted the Stars and Stripes on the top of Mount Suribachi, a steep 500- foot hill which contains the crater of the dormant volcano.

That moment was caught forever by an AP cameraman in what became for Americans the most famous and inspiring picture of World War II. Today Marines are hard at work polishing the inscription. It hasn't been touched for a long time. On the one hand, the Japanese garrison doesn't look after it. On the other the Americans don't come regularly from Okinawa to maintain it.

The lack of allied solidarity on Iwo Jima has evidently been reduplicated diplomatically between Tokyo and Washington. Numerous stories have appeared recently in the Japanese press indicating Japanese unhappiness with any American celebration of their victory on Iwo Jima.

Since the two nations commemorated the 40th anniversary in 1985 without any backbiting, and since the Americans have not been so crass as to stress Iwo Jima as their "victory", it appears that Japanese bureaucrats are manufacturing an incident for their domestic audience.

Nevertheless on Feb. 14 the Japanese Foreign Ministry officials said that it had been "decided to officially support" the 50th anniversary ceremonies on Iwo Jima since "the U.S. side confirmed its intention to look at the events as a joint service to mourn those who died (on Iwo Jima) instead of a commemoration of the U.S. victory over Japan".

As the Japanese officials protested so loudly to their own people about the U.S. victory, they heavily underlined, once again, how far Japan is from properly coming to terms with its own defeat.

Back on Iwo Jima, for a moment it seemed that some progress was being made after all. A young Japanese correspondent looked into a Japanese TV camera wielded by Japanese cameramen, and firmly told her viewers that "While most Japanese have never heard of the battle that took place here, most Americans hold this to be an unforgettable and sacred battleground".

It seemed like the sort of comment Japanese viewers ought to hear. But the Japanese were all working for an American television network.