With 12,500 Americans dead, and another 36,500 wounded, it had been the bloodiest battle in US naval history. The Japanese had fought with suicidal fanaticism. In Okinawa a few weeks later, the butchery had been even more hellish. Nearly every one of the Japanese, some 21,000, had died fighting. In a futile effort to defend a little island in the Bonins eight months earlier, a speck called Iwo Jima, the Japanese had killed close to 7,000 American Marines and wounded 20,000 more. All anyone knew for certain was that horrific numbers of young men would die.Īlready the carnage in the Pacific beggared comprehension. They would try to occupy half the island - enough, it was hoped, to force the Japanese to surrender. 1, 1945, 770,000 American troops - more than five times the number of soldiers who fought at Normandy on D-Day - would land on Japan's southern island, Kyushu.
