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View Full Version : At long last, the killing and maiming would stop



thedrifter
04-09-06, 12:56 PM
Article published Apr 9, 2006
About Veterans: At long last, the killing and maiming would stop

The landings on Iwo Jima, Feb. 19, 1945, were part of our ongoing attacks in the waters surrounding Japan proper. This attack in Japan's back yard was a real milestone for the American effort to defeat this enemy, which had sneak-attacked us just a few short years earlier.

Our successes, starting with the Tarawa landings on Nov. 20, 1943, were truly astounding. In the succeeding months, we had sent to war the trained personnel to man the warships we had built; and within months we had learned how to fight a different war from what our men in the European theater were fighting.

We had captured islands and enemy bases across thousands of miles of ocean -- and no longer was the Japanese Empire dominant in all the waters from California to the eastern shores of Africa. The Indian and Pacific Oceans were now in our control, and we were in the process of attacking the head so that the body might die.

Iwo Jima was the closest we had come to Japan; actually, for administration purposes, it was part of Japan proper, and was so defended. To be honest, I believe we would have defended an attack on American soil just as vigorously and bravely. Japan lost almost its entire garrison of 21,000 men (only 216 were taken alive). But our losses were more than 5,000 killed and missing, and an added 20,000 wounded. Iwo Jima was the one battle in the Pacific in which we lost more men than the defenders.

But we were operating at Japan's back door, and we had to establish a base from which we could mount an attack on the Japanese home islands. Honshu, the southernmost island, was selected as the target, and we decided that our best base to mirror the effort in the European war (in which we used Great Britain as our unsinkable aircraft carrier off the coast of Europe) would be the island of Okinawa as our jumping-off base for the landings on Japan proper.

We did not expect it to be an easy invasion. We used an invasion fleet of 300 warships and more than 1,100 other vessels to land our invasion force of 180,000 Marines and Army soldiers. Our Okinawa landings on Easter Sunday, April 1, 1945, sent troops ashore at roughly the middle of the island (the island is about 60 miles long and from 2 to 18 miles wide). The initial landings were surprisingly easy: Landing craft merely sailed up to their designated beaches, landed their troops and sailed back for another load. By the end of the third day, we had pushed across the island to the opposite shore and cut the island in two. U.S. Marine units headed north to secure their part of the island and U.S. Army units headed south to secure that part.

Combat in the northern part of the island was sharp but brief, and the area was declared "secure" by April 20. The Marines then headed south to join Army units in the drive to conquer the whole island. It was some of the bitterest fighting of the entire war. The Japanese had sent about 130,000 of their best soldiers to Okinawa, stationed most of them in the south, and equipped them with the heaviest concentration of artillery that had been available to any Japanese commander in the entire Pacific war.

In addition, they had constructed in the southern part of the island three defensive barriers in depth, using all the terrain and digging-into-the-ground tactics that had proved so effective at Peleliu and Iwo Jima. Each defensive line had to be overcome. The fighting was brutal and costly: Every yard-advance had to be won deliberately and painfully. The determined Japanese defense gave us a taste of what we could expect in any invasion of the home islands.

Kamikaze aircraft were deadly at Okinawa. Our defenses shot down about 3,500 kamikazes around the island, but some got through. We lost 34 ships and an added 368 were damaged. We also lost 763 planes. More than 5,000 sailors were killed in these raids and an added 4,000 were wounded. These were the greatest losses ever sustained by the U.S. Navy in a single battle.

The land battles were equally deadly. It took 82 days, until June 21, before all three defensive lines were breached and the island was declared secure.

Our total casualties (land and sea) were 12,250 killed and 36,361 wounded. At least 100,000 Japanese were killed; only 7,821 Japanese soldiers were captured.

Adm. Raymond Spruance, commander of the 5th Fleet in the Pacific, called Okinawa "a bloody, hellish prelude to the invasion of Japan." The American Joint Chiefs of Staff considered that the next invasions, the home islands of Kyushu and Honshu, already scheduled for Nov. 1, 1945, and March 1, 1946, would be infinitely worse than anything so far seen in the war. Total American casualties were estimated at more than 1 million.

Our high command estimated that it would take 30 months, until mid-1948, to win the war against Japan.

When President Harry Truman agreed that the atom bombs had to be dropped on Hiroshima (Aug. 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (Aug. 9) a collective sigh of relief could be heard all across the Pacific. And in the United States. The killing and maiming would stop. The war, blessedly, was over.

•••

Charles G. Monnett Jr. of Greensboro was a rifle platoon leader on Okinawa during the bitter fighting there. He, along with Dr. William Ditto, was part of the Marine Special Officers Training group organized with the express purpose of leading combat Marines during the latter stages of the war in the Pacific.

For the Okinawa campaign, Monnett was in a combat unit for the entire operation. During a particularly difficult battle, he received orders to "wipe out a Japanese machine gun nest, (which, because of intense fire, was forcing his unit) to lie flat on the ground."

An article in the Greensboro Daily News on Thursday, April, 6, 1965, noted that "the (enemy) machine gun crew was well-positioned and had a clear view of the small field (the Marines) would have to cross to get to the machine gun.

"Monnett saw a tank nearby and scribbled a note to its crew. Then, at the risk of his own life, he ran to the tank and got to it on the side away from the Japanese machine gun and banged on its side until it stopped. Monnett slipped his note through a slit in the front of the tank. Following directions in the note, the tank crew summoned another tank by radio. The two tanks got into a 'bumper-to-bumper' position between the machine gun and the Marines, and then the Marines all walked on the 'off-side' of the tanks, shielded from the machine gun. They all walked away from the scene. Not a man was lost."

In a recent note, he mentioned that, "When Japan surrendered in August of 1945, the Sixth Marine Division was on Guam training for the invasion of Japan."

Incidentally, Monnett now lives in the same house he lived in when he left for combat in 1944.

Ellie