The Sands of Iwo Jima

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(Joe Rosenthal’s iconic picture of the flag raising on Mount Suribachi. Mac Showers approved it for release stateside. Photo Rosenthal/AP).

OK- there is no getting around it. I was sort of stalling for the 70th anniversary of the battle on Iwo Jima, which is this morning. I am not going to attempt to recount the savagery of the fighting, nor the innovative tactics used by the Japanese defenders that were a prelude to what would happen at Okinawa, and what was expected for the landings on Kyushu and Honshu.

This is the story of how the intelligence process worked then to support operational requirements. We are going to do beach gradients and landing surveys this morning. It is eerie to see the words of people who have gone on to the next phase of this grand adventure. Sitting with Mac at the Willow bar, I came to feel that I knew some of them.

Reading the words of Jasper Holmes, I felt that he was talking to me VFR direct. The year is 1945. Mac has deployed with the staff of Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz. He is on Guam. Jasper remained at Makalapa, at the Joint Intelligence Center- Pacific Ocean Area.

The matter at hand is the trafficability of the beaches on Okinawa, the next target of the island-hopping campaign. Operation ICEBERG, if completed successfully, would place the Allies on the doorstep to the Home Islands, and set the scene for the final conquest of the Empire of the Sun.

No one except a handful of Commanders had any inkling about the existence of the gadgets- Little Boy and Fat Man- that would render Operation DOWNFALL unnecessary . ICEBERG was a challenge, and what loomed beyond it was frankly unimaginable. One thing at a time.

Mac used to talk of the regular comings-and-goings of the staffs responsible for planning these operations through the crater. In this case, it was the planners of four Divisions of the 10th Army: the 7th, 27th, 77th and 96th and the 1st an 6th Marines. They were planning for a “typhoon of steel” in what was anticipated to be the most savage fight of the war to date.

That is in the context of what happened at Iwo Jima. Despite the iconic photo taken by Joe Rosenthal of the (second) flag-raising on Mount Suribachi, things had hardly gone as planned in the sharp fight for the small island. The Marines would ultimately take 22,000 casualties in the more than month-long fighting. And if you didn’t recall, Mac was the classification reviewing officer- the censor- for all the images coming off the little volcanic isle.

He approved Joe Rosenthal’s picture for release. He thought it was a pretty good picture at the time.

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Anyway, Jasper did not deploy due to his arthritis and stayed behind at the JIC. He was fighting to get women assigned to replace the male yeomen who had deployed with the forward staff- he was an early proponent of equality and believed women should have been integrated into the staff far earlier in the war based on their reliability, industry and attention to detail. Perhaps he was influenced by the legendary Agnes Meyer Driscoll, who joined the civilian side of the Navy as a cryptologist in 1918, and was responsible for some of the early progress against the Japanese Naval Codes. “Miss Aggie,” as she was known, mentored all the members of the Dungeon staff at one time or another.

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Iwo was secured by the end of March 1945 at horrendous cost. The strategic importance of the rock was debatable, and the price in lives and treasure was steep. One of the problems was the composition of the volcanic sand on the invasion beaches that snarled the treads of the tanks necessary to secure the initial objectives. The Japanese were so firmly and deeply concealed in their interlocking bunkers and tunnels that only the tanks provided with flame-throwers could advance close enough to douse the defenders in flames.

And the landing force did not know that the sands of Iwo were not compatible with the way the machines worked.

Accordingly, Jasper was casting about for the best information- hell, any information- about what the sand and soil on the invasion beaches were like, and whether the tracked and wheeled vehicles would be able to operate as designed. It was a matter of life and death for the solider and Marines.

Accordingly, Jasper send an urgent request to the 14th Naval District’s Intelligence Office to find someone- anyone- who knew something about the composition of the beaches on Okinawa.

In his book, Jasper credits LCDR Neil Vanzant with coming up with the answer. All recollection can get hazy- though I have only one real mystery left from all my discussions with Mac- but Jasper had this one wrong.

I will let the Chief Petty Officer who actually provided the contact information to the source that provided the precise information about what the landing force would confront when they hit the beaches.

I will have to get to the unique contributions of Kenneth Keanrs tomorrow. Sometimes knowing the right person is all that it takes, and he may have saved a bunch of lives by doing it.

It pays to keep your eyes and ears open. Loose lips sink ships, you know?

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Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

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