Hell in the Pacific

ORIGINS OF THE CAMPAIGN

As the final days of 1944 ebbed away the Japanese were facing defeat on all fronts. The heady days of conquest that had followed the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the occupation of the Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong, and the oil rich Dutch East Indies, were little more than a memory as they prepared to defend the homeland at the inner limits of their defensive perimeter.

After suffering staggering defeats at Midway, the Philippine Sea and Leyte Gulf, the Imperial Navy was impotent in the face of the massive US Task Forces that scoured the Pacific and accompanied every amphibious landing. In the west, British and Commonwealth forces of the Fourteenth Army had pushed the enemy back from the borders of India, and in bitter fighting in some of the worst jungle terrain in the world were driving the Japanese Army along the Irrawaddy River into central Burma. In the Central Pacific, General Douglas MacArthur’s army had advanced through the Solomons and across New Guinea and by October 1944, had invaded Leyte in the Philippines, redeeming his pledge that “I shall return.” Through the islands and atolls to the north, Admiral Chester Nimitz’s Marines swept onward in their “island hopping” campaign that had begun at Tarawa in 1943 and was to climax at Okinawa in 1945. Seizing only those islands that were essential for the support of further operations and bypassing and neutralizing the others, the Marines had by August 1944 occupied the main islands of the Marianas – Guam, Saipan, and Tinian.

The unique strategic location of Iwo Jima, midway along the B29 Superfortress route from the Marianas to Tokyo, made it imperative that the island should come under American control. Prior to the occupation of Saipan, Tinian, and Guam, the B29s had been limited to carrying out raids on southern Japan from bases in central China. With the problem of transporting all of their fuel by air over thousands of miles of inhospitable country and the limitations of small bomb loads, the attacks had little impact. But now, with the construction of five huge airfields 1,500 miles (2,414km) from the Japanese mainland, the way was open for the 20th Air Force to mount a massive campaign against the industrial heartland of Japan.

Initially the 20th Air Force had attempted to duplicate the technique which had been so successfully used by the 8th Air Force in their bombing campaign against Germany – daylight precision bombing. The experiment had failed largely because of unexpectedly high winds as the Superfortresses approached their targets at altitudes of 27,000–33,000ft (8,230–10,058m) in the jetstream. The 20th Air Force commander, Brigadier-General Haywood Hansell, became increasingly frustrated and blamed his crews for the disappointing results; and by January, 1945, the chiefs in Washington had decided that Hansell had to go. His replacement was Curtis LeMay, a brilliant technician who had previously been in command of the 3rd Division of the 8th Air Force in England. LeMay was to introduce a new term to the aircrews of the 20th Air Force – “area bombing.” Widely used by the RAF throughout the war, he proposed to firebomb the main cities of Japan at low level and by night in a dramatic reversal of Hansell’s earlier tactics. LeMay was aware that his career was on the line. He had not informed General Henry “Hap” Arnold, commanding general of the United States Army Air Force (USAAF), of this first low altitude raid: “If we go in low, at night, not in formation, I think we’ll surprise the Japs, at least for a short period. If it’s a failure and I don’t produce any results then he can fire me,” he said.