Why Japanese Hated Fighting American Marines More Than Any Other Unit….
February 23, 1945. Mount Suribachi, Ewoima. Private First Class Tadashi Yamamoto crouched in a concrete bunker, hands trembling as he wrote words that would have earned him execution if discovered by his own officers. The Marines are not human. They do not die like other men. Everything we were told about American weakness was a lie.
through the firing slit. He had just witnessed something that contradicted every assumption drilled into him during training. Six marines had stormed his position under withering machine gun fire. Three fell, but the others kept advancing.
When his comrades unleashed a grenade barrage, one marine absorbed the blast with his own body to shield his squad, then continued fighting with catastrophic wounds until he physically could not hold his weapon. The survivors took the position within minutes. 21,000 Japanese defenders occupied Ewoima, dug into 18 km of tunnels and fortifications.
They had been promised they faced soft American troops who would break under pressure. What they encountered instead would shatter every military assessment the Imperial Japanese Army had made about their enemies. The mathematics of this miscalculation were being written not in strategic plans, but in the savage reality of close quarters combat that would leave 26,000 marines as casualties in just 36 days.
The collapse of Japanese confidence had begun long before Ewima. August 7th, 1942. Guadal Canal in the Solomon Islands. Corporal Hideo Takahashi, veteran of the China campaign where Japanese forces had seemed invincible, wrote in his diary after the first week of fighting. The Americans who landed are different from any enemy we have faced. They do not retreat when surrounded.
They do not surrender when their position becomes hopeless. Most disturbing, they fight at night as if darkness gives them strength rather than fear. Guadal Canal was Japan’s first defensive battle in the Pacific, and the Imperial Japanese Army expected an easy victory over inexperienced American forces.
The first Marine Division that came ashore numbered just over 16,000 men. Japanese military intelligence had described Marines as elite troops, yes, but still Americans, products of a soft, democratic society that valued individual comfort over collective sacrifice. Within days, every assumption proved catastrophically wrong.
Lieutenant Shigeru Fukodome commanded a reinforced company ordered to retake Henderson Field on the night of August 20th. His unit of 200 men had defeated Chinese divisions three times their size. They advanced in textbook fashion, confident that Americans would panic in darkness. The Marines were waiting in carefully prepared positions with interlocking fields of fire. Fukuodome’s company walked into a killing ground.
What happened next defied everything in Japanese tactical doctrine. Rather than fortify and defend, the Marines immediately counterattacked into the darkness using automatic weapons with devastating precision. Fuku’s diary recovered after his death 3 days later, recorded his shock. They attacked us in the night. We are the ones who attack at night. They moved through jungle we considered impenetrable.
They killed in silence, then vanished. By dawn, 90 men remained from my company. The Americans had suffered 12 casualties. The pattern repeated across Guadal Canal. Japanese forces, accustomed to enemies who crumbled under banzai charges, discovered Marines who held positions until physically overrun, then fought handto hand with bayonets, knives, and fists.
Sergeant Kenji Matsumoto, who survived 4 months on Guadal Canal before evacuation, wrote in a letter intercepted by American intelligence. We were taught the Americans are individualistic, that they will not sacrifice for their comrades. This is false.
I watched a Marine machine gunner continue firing with both the legs shattered until Japanese infantry killed him at arms length. His assistant immediately took the weapon and continued firing. We lost 40 men to that position. The marine training that created such soldiers baffled Japanese military analysts. Private Yamamoto, who would later face Marines on Ewima, first learned of them during intelligence briefings in 1943.
The instructor, a staff officer who had interrogated captured Marines, seemed genuinely disturbed. The American Marines undergo training that would be considered criminal abuse in any civilized army. They are broken down mentally and physically, then rebuilt into something that barely resembles the soft civilians who entered. They are taught to view death in combat as honorable, to never surrender, to fight until physically incapable.
This sounds familiar. Yes, they have copied our bushido, but added something we did not anticipate. American industrial capacity. The combination proved devastating. Japanese soldiers trained in the code of Bushido expected death before dishonor, but they fought with equipment increasingly inferior to American weapons.
Marines underwent training nearly as harsh as Japanese soldiers endured, creating warriors just as willing to die. But those Marines landed with overwhelming firepower that made Japanese positions untenable. November 20th, 1943. Tarawa Atoll, Rear Admiral Ki Shibasaki, commanded 4,500 defenders in fortifications considered impregnable. The second marine division proved him wrong in 76 hours.
Private First Class Tadashi Ogawa, one of only 17 Japanese survivors, told interrogators what he witnessed. The first wave was massacred in the water. We killed hundreds. More craft arrived. The second wave died on the beach. More came. The third wave reached our positions with flamethrowers. They did not stop until we were dead, or they were. The mathematics were brutal. Nearly 64 100 men died on Terawa in 76 hours.
The Marines who survived had demonstrated they would take any objective regardless of cost. Documents captured on Saipan in 1944 revealed Japanese intelligence reports describing Marines as quote shock troops displaying fanatical devotion to objectives. Marines refuse orders to retreat and will counterattack even when tactically disadvantaged.
Casualties inflicted on Marines do not degrade unit effectiveness until the unit is completely destroyed. End quote. This classification emerged from systematic study. Captain Yoshio Kobayashi, who survived Guadal Canal, provided detailed comparisons. American Army infantry tactics are sound and conventional. The Marines operate differently.
They advance aggressively regardless of casualties. They accept casualty rates that would cause any rational commander to halt. This is unprecedented. The speed of Marine operations proved as devastating as their firepower. Lieutenant Colonel Kunio Nakagawa, who commanded on Pelu, planned defenses based on previous campaigns where American forces paused after landings. The Marines never paused.
They landed September 15th at 08:30 and controlled half the airfield by nightfall. Nakagawa’s diary recorded his shock. My defensive plan collapsed because it assumed the enemy would act rationally. The Marines do not act rationally. They act with total commitment regardless of circumstances.
This total commitment manifested in ways that seemed suicidal to Japanese observers but proved devastatingly effective. Sergeant Kenji Matsumoto captured on Bugganville described watching a Marine platoon assault a fortified hilltop position. The approach was across open ground swept by machine gun fire from three bunkers. Japanese doctrine would have required extensive artillery preparation followed by infantry assault under smoke cover.
The marine lieutenant assessed the position for perhaps 30 seconds then ordered the assault with no preparation. The platoon charged directly into the fire. Seven men fell in the first 20 seconds. The survivors reached the first bunker and destroyed it with grenades and demolition charges.
Three more men fell assaulting the second bunker. The remaining Marines took it. The third bunker fell to the last five men standing. The platoon suffered 12 casualties from 37 men to take a position we considered impregnable. The entire action took 4 minutes from order to completion. This was not courage. This was systematic application of acceptable casualties to achieve objectives faster than we could respond.
The concept of acceptable casualties horrified Japanese officers trained to value their soldiers lives within the context of achieving objectives. Marines calculated casualties as the cost of victory and paid that cost without hesitation when the objective warranted it. This created a psychological advantage beyond material superiority.
Japanese commanders, knowing Marines would accept 50% casualties to take a position, faced impossible decisions. Defend with insufficient force and lose the position. Defend with adequate force, but weaken other positions. Abandon the position and seed terrain. Every option led to defeat. The only variable was timing.
Major Yoshi Takahuri, senior staff officer on Ioima, who survived the battle, analyzed this dilemma in postwar interrogations. General Kuribayashi understood that we could not stop the Marines. Our defenses were designed to delay them and inflict maximum casualties. We succeeded brilliantly at inflicting casualties. Over 20,000 Marines were killed or wounded in 36 days.
This would have destroyed any other military force’s ability to continue offensive operations. The Marines reinforced and continued attacking without any reduction in intensity. We calculated that inflicting 10,000 casualties would halt their advance for at least a week. They suffered 10,000 casualties in the first week and their advance never slowed. This revealed the fundamental imbalance.
They could replace casualties faster than we could. They had 50 marine divisions in the Pacific theater or training in the United States. We had finite defenders on each island. Mathematics dictated our defeat. The mathematics extended beyond simple manpower.
Marines landed with logistical support that enabled sustained operations at intensities Japanese forces could not match. Second Lieutenant Toshio Yamamoto, captured on Saipan, witnessed the contrast firsthand during a nighttime infiltration. I led a patrol to observe American positions 3 days after their landing. We expected to find exhausted troops with limited supplies as Japanese forces would have been after 3 days of intense combat on a contested beach head.
Instead, we found Marines eating hot food, receiving ammunition resupply by truck with medical tents treating Tamatum wounded and rest areas where units rotated off the line. Their supply dumps contained more ammunition than my entire regiment possessed. They had mobile kitchens preparing fresh meals. They had portable showers and laundry facilities.
They were fighting the most intense battle of the Pacific War and living better than we did in garrison. This demonstrated that defeating them was impossible. They would never run out of food, ammunition, medicine, or replacements. We would. The relentless American logistics created a form of attrition warfare that favored Marines despite higher initial casualties. Japanese defenders fought from fixed positions with limited supplies and no reinforcement.
Every casualty was permanent. Every round of ammunition expended could not be replaced. Marines fought from an expanding beach head with supplies arriving daily by ship and air. Casualties were evacuated and replaced. Ammunition was unlimited. The longer a battle lasted, the weaker Japanese defenders became while Marines grew stronger.
This dynamic proved decisive on Paleleu where Colonel Nakagawa’s defense lasted from September 15th to November 27th. First Marine Division suffered such heavy casualties that it was withdrawn and replaced by elements of 81st Infantry Division in October. A second marine division continued operations until army units relieved them.
The battle that Japanese planners expected to last one week lasted 11 weeks. Japanese defenders inflicted over 10,000 American casualties, but the Americans could afford those losses and continue attacking. Japan could not afford to defend every island at such cost. The arithmetic was unsustainable. The unsustainability became clear to Japanese military leadership by mid 1944.
Intelligence summaries distributed to garrison commanders acknowledged that Marines could not be stopped, only delayed. One document captured on Tinian provided guidance that revealed complete abandonment of any hope for victory. When defending against marine assault, do not expect to hold positions indefinitely.
The objective is to delay the American advance sufficiently to enable other strategic objectives. Each day of resistance is valuable. Each marine killed or wounded is valuable. But understand that the position will fall. Prepare accordingly. Stock positions with maximum ammunition. Create redundant defensive positions. Plan to fall back in stages. Accept that you will likely die in the defense. Your sacrifice buys time for the empire.
There is honor in this sacrifice. Even without victory. This grim calculus defined Japanese defensive strategy for the final year of the Pacific War. Defenders no longer fought to win battles. They fought to make those battles so costly that Americans might negotiate rather than invade Japan itself.
Marines by accepting casualties that would have forced other armies to halt negated this strategy. They paid the price demanded and continued advancing. No cost was too high. No position was too strong. The offensive never stopped. Private Tadashi Gawa, one of the few survivors from Terawa, later described the psychological impact of facing such an enemy. After the first day of battle, we knew we would lose.
The Marines had landed in overwhelming force. They had naval gunfire that destroyed our positions. They had air support that bombed us continuously. But we still believed we could make them pay such a terrible price they would reconsider future invasions. Then we watched them continue attacking despite horrific casualties.
They walked through machine gun fire that killed dozens. More Marines came behind them. We killed them too. More came. We fought for 3 days with absolute commitment. We inflicted thousands of casualties. We died almost to the last man and the Marines took Tarowa on schedule.
They paid the price we demanded and continued their advance across the Pacific. That was when we understood the war was lost. An enemy who will pay any price to win cannot be defeated by making victory expensive. This realization spread through the Japanese military as survivors from each battle carried their experiences to the next.
By the time Marines landed on Ewima in February 1945, every Japanese defender knew they faced the most implacable enemy in the Pacific. They knew they would die. They knew the Marines would take the island. The only question was how many Marines would die with them. General Kuribayashi’s defensive plan accepted these realities and built strategy around them.
His orders to troops acknowledged what official propaganda denied. We cannot win this battle. We can only make the Americans bleed for every meter of ground. That is our mission. Accept death. Inflict casualties. Delay their advance. This is how we serve the empire in its darkest hour. This assessment proved accurate in battle after battle.
February 19th, 1945, D-Day onima provided the most comprehensive Japanese military analysis of marine capabilities. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, arguably the most capable defensive commander Japan fielded in the Pacific, spent months studying marine tactics and creating defenses specifically designed to defeat them. His preparations were extraordinary.
But before I tested Kuribayashi’s theories, marine raiders had demonstrated capabilities beyond standard excellence. These elite units conducted deep penetration operations that created terror disproportionate to their small numbers. Japanese forces discovered that raiders operated in darkness with devastating effectiveness.
Colonel Kono Ichiki learned this fatally on Guadal Canal in August 1942. His 900 men had defeated Chinese forces through aggressive night attacks. Japanese doctrine held that Americans feared darkness. Ichi planned a textbook night assault against marine positions on the Tanaru River. Raiders from First Marine Raider Battalion waited in prepared positions.
Ichiki’s force waded into the river at 0130 hours on August 21st. Raiders opened fire at point blank range with automatic weapons supported by pre-registered artillery. The battle lasted 20 minutes. Japanese casualties exceeded 700 killed. Marine casualties numbered 35.
The raiders were eventually disbanded and integrated into regular marine divisions in 1944, but their tactics spread throughout the core. Bya, standard marine infantry employed techniques raiders had pioneered. Night patrols probed continuously. Small units made independent decisions. Communications allowed unprecedented coordination. The result was an enemy that fought 24 hours per day with intensity Japanese forces could not sustain.
Corporal Hideo Takahashi, who fought on three islands before his capture on Okinawa, summarized the experience. The Marines never stopped. Day attacks with overwhelming firepower. Night attacks by small units infiltrating our positions. constant artillery harassment preventing rest. Air attacks throughout daylight hours. We were under pressure continuously from landing to defeat.
Japanese forces traditionally controlled the night and could rest and regroup after daylight battles. Against the Marines, there was no rest. There was no safe time. There was only continuous combat until we were dead or captured. This was industrial warfare applied without mercy. The industrial aspect of marine operations fascinated and terrified Japanese military analysts.
Unlike Japanese forces that relied on spirit and individual sacrifice to overcome material limitations, Marines systematically applied maximum force to every problem. When faced with a fortified position, they did not rely on courage or clever tactics.
They identified the position, called in artillery that fired hundreds of shells to destroy it, brought forward tanks with flamethrowers to burn out survivors, then sent infantry to secure the position. If resistance continued, naval gunfire from destroyers or battleships would obliterate the entire area. This methodical destruction was horrifying in its efficiency. Second Lieutenant Saburo Endo, artillery forward observer on Saipan, watched Marine combined arms tactics during the June 1944 invasion.
His diary recorded detailed observations. The Marines landed under covering fire from warships that fired continuously for 3 hours before the first landing craft touched the beach. Aircraft bombed our positions for 2 hours before the landing. When Marines came ashore, every movement was supported by tanks, artillery, naval gunfire, and air strikes.
They advanced slowly and carefully, destroying everything in their path. When we stopped them at prepared positions, they called in battleship fire that literally erased hills from the landscape. They did not try to overcome our positions through courage or clever tactics. They used overwhelming force to eliminate the positions, then advanced. This is not warfare as we understand it.
This is industrial destruction applied systematically until resistance becomes impossible. We fought with rifles and light machine guns. They fought with an entire industrial nation’s resources. Endo’s observations captured what many Japanese soldiers realized too late. The Pacific War was not a test of warrior spirit or tactical excellence.
It was a contest between Imperial Japan’s limited industrial base and America’s overwhelming production capacity. Marines were the cutting edge of that production capacity. Warriors trained to exploit American advantages ruthlessly while accepting casualties that leveraged superior numbers and replacements. Against such an enemy, Japanese courage and tactical skill meant nothing.
The outcome was mathematically determined from the start. Only the duration and cost remained variable. Kuri Bayashi banned the banzai charges that had wasted Japanese lives in previous battles. He created a defense in depth that channeled marines into killing zones covered by multiple bunkers.
He positioned artillery to deliver devastating fire on landing beaches. He built 11 mi of tunnels connecting 1500 cave positions. Every approach was registered for mortar and artillery fire. The beach was a death trap. Three marine divisions, 70,000 men, landed on Ewima on February 19th. Kuribayashi’s defenses worked exactly as planned. Naval bombardment barely scratched the fortifications.
Marines landed in neat waves and immediately took catastrophic casualties. Within minutes, the black volcanic sand was covered with dead and wounded. Japanese artillery observers called down perfectly coordinated fire. The assault seemed to be failing. Then something happened that Kuribayashi had not anticipated, though he should have from previous battles.
The Marines did not withdraw to regroup. They advanced into the artillery fire. They found the gaps between Japanese positions and exploited them. When bunkers stopped the advance, demolition teams crawled forward under fire to destroy them. When those teams died, other marines took their place. The attack never stopped.
Private First Class Tadashi Yamamoto watched from his bunker as Marines assaulted the position to his right. His diary records the incomprehension Japanese defenders felt. A Marine flamethrower team approached the bunker. We killed the operator. His assistant picked up the weapon and continued. We killed him. A third marine took the weapon. We wounded him severely. He continued firing until the weapon was empty.
Then he threw grenades into the firing ports until we killed him. By then, demolition engineers had reached the bunker entrance. The position was lost. This happened 30 times in the first hour. How do you defeat men who will not stop? The answer, as Japanese defenders discovered, was that you could not. The brutal arithmetic of Eoima demonstrated marine doctrine in its purest form.
70,000 Marines landed. 26,000 became casualties, including nearly 7,000 killed. But all 21,000 Japanese defenders died except for 1,6 who were captured, most because they were unconscious or too wounded to resist. The Marines paid an almost unimaginable price, but they took every objective.
Kurubayashi himself, who survived until late March 1945, wrote his final assessment in a message smuggled to Tokyo before the position collapsed. The Marines are the most effective fighting force I have encountered. They possess several attributes that make them uniquely dangerous.
First, their training creates soldiers willing to accept casualties that would break other units. Second, their firepower exceeds ours by a factor of 5:1 in artillery and 10 to one in air support. Third, their junior leaders make decisions at squad, a level that our officers make at company level, allowing them to exploit opportunities faster than we can react.
Fourth, and most critical, they never stop attacking. There is no defense that can survive this combination indefinitely. This final point terrified Japanese defenders across the Pacific. Soldiers could accept defeat in battle. They could understand being outgunned or outmaneuvered.
What they could not comprehend was an enemy that simply would not stop regardless of losses. Corporal Hideo Takahashi, who fought on three islands before his capture on Okinawa, explained in a postwar interview, “You must understand the difference between Marines and other American forces. Army units would attack, take casualties, and pull back to reorganize. This is sensible military doctrine.
Marines would attack, take casualties, and continue attacking over the bodies of their own dead. This is not military doctrine. This is something else entirely. The quality that made Marines so feared was deliberately created through training that broke recruits down to nothing, then rebuilt them into warriors whose identity was inseparable from the core itself.
Documents captured on Saipan included interrogation reports of a Marine prisoner who explained the transformation to bewildered Japanese intelligence officers. Boot camp lasts 8 weeks. For the first four weeks, drill instructors destroy everything civilian in the recruit. You are told you are worthless, that you will never be a marine, that you should quit and join the army.
The abuse is psychological and physical. You are pushed until you think you cannot continue, then pushed further. Those who quit are publicly shamed. Those who remain learn that surrender is not an option. The interrogation report noted the Japanese officer’s response. This resembles our own training but more systematic. However, the marine prisoner then described something that had no parallel in Japanese military training.
The second four or weeks, the instructors build you into a marine. You learn that you are part of something greater than yourself. That every marine who ever lived is your brother. This created something unique. Marines fought because to fail was to betray every marine who had ever lived.
The psychological pressure created fighters who would advance when rational calculation said to stop. Japanese forces encountered this mentality in its most concentrated form during banzai charges that should have succeeded but failed catastrophically. October 24- 25, 1944. Saipan.
Colonel Takuya Takasha led approximately 3,000 Japanese soldiers in a final banzai charge against marine positions. Japanese doctrine held that such an assault conducted with absolute commitment would shatter any defense through sheer ferocity and the defenders fear of being overrun. The Marines of the 27th Infantry Division, positioned in the attack’s path, were mostly sleeping when the charge began at 0300 hours.
Japanese soldiers poured into the marine lines, screaming, “Bayonets fixed, overwhelming forward positions through sheer numbers. Traditional doctrine would call for a fighting retreat to regroup. The Marines counterattacked immediately. Officers and sergeants organized desperate defensive stands at key positions.
Marines used every weapon available from artillery firing at pointblank range to trench knives in hand-to-hand combat. The fighting lasted 4 hours. When dawn broke, Japanese bodies covered an area 500 m deep. American casualties numbered 90 killed and 247 wounded. 3,000 Japanese soldiers died. Private First Class Teeshi Yoshida survived the charge with severe wounds.
His interrogation report filed three days later captured the shock Japanese soldiers felt. We were told that Americans fear close combat, that they rely on firepower because they are cowards at heart. We charged into their positions expecting them to break. They fought us handto hand and defeated us. I saw a Marine sergeant kill seven men with a bayonet and a pistol before he fell.
This is not cowardice. We were lied to. The lies extended to every aspect of Marine capabilities. Japanese propaganda had spent years describing Americans as soft, individualistic people who could not withstand hardship. Marines sleeping in foxholes filled with water, eating cold rations for weeks, fighting in 100 degree heat with 80% humidity, contradicted those claims.
Japanese soldiers supposedly trained for hardship watched Marines thrive in conditions that taxed Japanese endurance to its limits. Corporal Kenji Matsumoto, who survived Guadal Canal before transferred to Bugenville, where he was captured in February 1944, described the contrast in conditions. We were on reduced rations by September 1942, rice twice per day, sometimes less.
We supplemented with anything edible we could find in the jungle. We watched the Marines eat three full meals daily, sometimes more. They received regular resupply by air and sea. They had fresh water, medical supplies, ammunition without limit. We realized we were fighting an enemy who would never run out of resources.
That understanding broke something in us. The material superiority Marines enjoyed was devastating. When faced with fortified bunkers, Marines called in artillery that delivered hundreds of shells in minutes, brought forward Sherman tanks with flamethrowers, and used naval gunfire that could level hills. If that failed, demolition teams would pack hundreds of pounds of explosives against positions.
Lieutenant Chigeru Fuku, before his death on Guadal Canal, wrote the most comprehensive analysis of marine combined arms tactics captured during the war. The Marines do not fight like individual soldiers. They fight like the parts of a single machine. Riflemen fix our position. Machine gunners suppress our fire. Mortimer deliver smoke to blind our observers. Artillery destroys our bunkers.
Tanks advance with infantry following. Aircraft bomb any position artillery cannot reach. This happens within minutes of contact, coordinated by junior officers using radios. we do not possess. We cannot counter this because we cannot coordinate at the same speed. By the time our commander understands the situation and issues orders, the Marines have already moved to exploit our weakness. This speed of execution was possible because Marines delegated authority to the lowest possible level.
Sergeants made decisions that Japanese doctrine reserved for captains. Corporals led assaults that required a lieutenant’s authority in the Imperial Japanese Army. The result was an enemy that adapted faster than Japanese forces could react.
When a bunker stopped a marine advance, a sergeant would immediately redirect the attack through a different approach while calling in, supporting fire, all without waiting for orders from above. Japanese defenders often found themselves fighting enemies who appeared in unexpected directions because Marines had identified and exploited weaknesses before Japanese commanders recognized they existed.
The most feared marine weapon was not rifles or artillery. It was the flamethrower. Japanese soldiers trained to die honorably in combat discovered that flamethrowers offered no honorable death. Corporal Hideo Takahashi, captured on Okinawa with burns covering 40% of his body, described the psychological impact.
We were taught to accept death in battle as glorious. Death by bullets, bayonets, artillery. These are warriors deaths. Fire is something different. You watch flames approach your position. You smell comrades burning alive. You hear the screaming. There is no glory in this death. It is industrial slaughter. This is what the Marines understood that we did not. Modern war has no place for glory.
It is about killing the enemy as efficiently as possible using the best tools available. This realization came too late for most Japanese defenders. By 1944, every Japanese soldier in the Pacific knew that facing Marines meant facing the most lethal combination of training, equipment, and doctrine the Americans possessed.
Intelligence reports distributed to garrison forces described Marines with a mixture of respect and dread that bordered on superstition. One document captured on Tinian in July 1944 provided detailed guidance on defending against marine assaults. The report acknowledged several facts that contradicted years of Japanese propaganda.
First, Marines are physically larger and stronger than Japanese soldiers on average due to superior nutrition since childhood. Second, Marines receive more ammunition, better weapons, and more reliable equipment than Imperial Japanese Army troops. Third, marine training emphasizes marksmanship to a degree unmatched by Japanese forces. The average marine rifleman can hit targets at ranges where our soldiers cannot.
Fourth, Marines operate with air and naval support that we cannot match or counter. Fifth, and most critically, Marines are trained to believe surrender is unacceptable. They will fight to death or victory. There is no third option. The report then provided tactical guidance that revealed how thoroughly Japanese confidence had collapsed. When facing Marines, do not expect them to retreat. Do not assume casualties will degrade their morale.
Do not believe superiority in numbers provides an advantage as their firepower negates numerical superiority. Do not attempt banzai charges unless no other option exists as marines will slaughter charging troops with automatic weapons and artillery. Do not expect them to fear nighttime attacks as they fight effectively in darkness.
The only effective defense is prepared positions protected by interlocking fields of fire with multiple fallback positions prepared in advance and with the understanding that the position will eventually fall. The goal is not to stop the Marines but to exact maximum casualties before the position is overrun.
This defensive doctrine acknowledged reality but offered no path to victory. General Tatamichi Kuribayashi preparing Iojima’s defenses in early 1945 understood this perfectly. He wrote to his wife in January, one month before the invasion. I am asked to defend Ewima against American Marines. This is a mathematical problem with only one solution. The Marines will land with 70,000 men.
They will have complete control of sea and air. They will bring unlimited ammunition and supplies. They will attack until Ewoima falls. My mission is not to defeat them. That is impossible. My mission is to make them pay such a terrible price that the Americans will reconsider invading the home islands.
Every day I keep them fighting is a day the empire has to and prepare. Every marine killed is one less enemy in the final battle. Kurib Bayashi’s strategy reflected the evolution of Japanese defensive doctrine from confident aggression to desperate attrition. The Marines who landed on Ewima on February 19th faced defenses designed not to repel them, but to bleed them in ways that would destroy American resolve.
Every bunker was positioned to require direct assault. Every cave entrance was covered by multiple firing positions. Every meter of ground cost lives to take. The strategy failed because it misunderstood marine culture. High casualties did not break marine morale. They reinforced it. Every fallen marine demanded vengeance.
Every day of brutal combat strengthened survivors determination to win. The worse the fighting became, the harder Marines fought. This was incomprehensible to Japanese military thinking, which assumed that even fanatical troops had a breaking point. Private First Class Tadashi Yamamoto, who survived until March 10th before dying in his bunker, wrote his final diary entry the night before.
Tomorrow, the Marines will reach this position. We have killed hundreds of them in the past 3 weeks. More arrive every day. They do not weaken. They do not slow down. They do not stop. I thought our spirit was stronger than American materialism. I was wrong. The Marines have both spirit and material.
They have courage equal to ours combined with weapons and supplies we cannot match. They are what we claim to be. We are what we claimed they were. This is the truth we die knowing. His bunker was destroyed the next morning by a marine demolition team after a 6-hour battle that killed all 11 defenders and wounded three Marines.
The position delayed the marine advance by exactly 40 minutes before being bypassed by other units that continued advancing while combat engineers reduced the bunker. This pattern repeated across Eoima thousands of times. Japanese defenders fought with desperate courage, inflicting terrible casualties, achieving nothing except their own deaths. The campaign ended on March 26.
The final statistics told the story of what happened when Marines fought the best defenses Japan could create. 21,000 Japanese defenders died. 1,6 surrendered, most because they were unconscious or physically incapable of resistance. The Marines suffered 26,000 casualties from 70,000 men committed. Nearly 40% casualties.
Any other military force would have required months to recover. Third, fourth, and fifth marine divisions were back in action within 6 weeks. This ability to absorb casualties and continue fighting became the defining characteristic that most terrified Japanese defenders. Corporal Kenji Matsumoto, imprisoned in Hawaii after his capture, explained in a 1946 interview what Japanese soldiers felt facing Marines. The worst part was knowing they would never stop.
You could kill half a marine unit and the survivors would continue attacking. You could wound their leaders and sergeants would take command. You could fight them to exhaustion and they would attack again the next day. There was no way to win. You could only kill them until they killed you. That is not war.
That is mutual annihilation. And the Marines had more men than we did. The American industrial capacity that produced waves of replacement Marines astonished Japanese military planners. Intelligence reports from late 1944 noted that marine divisions suffered 75% casualties on Pleu in September 1944, then returned to full strength within 3 months.
Those replacements landed on Ewima in February and fought with the same effectiveness as veterans. This ability to regenerate defeated units was beyond Japanese capability. The Imperial Japanese Army had no comparable training system, no replacement pipeline that could maintain unit quality while absorbing catastrophic losses.
American efficiency extended to every aspect of marine operations. Wounded Marines received medical treatment within minutes of being hit. Casualty evacuation by air and sea moved wounded men from battlefield to hospital ship in hours. Blood plasma, antibiotics, surgical care that saved lives at rates unprecedented in military history.
Japanese wounded often died from lack of medical supplies, from infected wounds, from injuries that American medicine routinely treated. Captured Japanese soldiers watched Marines who should have died from wounds that would have killed Japanese soldiers instead survive to fight again. The final humiliation came after Japanese surrender in August 1945.
Marines occupied Japanese home islands expecting resistance from a population indoctrinated to die rather than submit. Instead, they found exhausted people grateful the war had ended. Private first class teeshi Yoshida repatriated in 19 slation safe 46 after recovering from wounds received on Saipan described his return home. Everything we were told was lies.
The Marines did not torture prisoners. They provided food, medical care, shelter. They treated us better than our own officers had. The Americans were not barbarians. We were the barbarians. This knowledge destroyed what remained of our faith in the empire. Thousands of former Japanese soldiers reached similar conclusions. The postwar interrogation reports revealed common themes. Respect for marine fighting qualities.
Bitterness toward Japanese leadership that had lied about American capabilities. recognition that the war had been hopeless from the start because Japan could not match American industrial capacity or the fighting quality of troops like the Marines.
The most comprehensive assessment came from General Tadamichi Kuribayashi’s final message from Ewoima delivered through desperate radio transmission on March 21st, 5 days before the island fell. He wrote, “I have fought the Marines for 31 days. They are the finest soldiers I have encountered. Their training is superior. Their equipment is overwhelming. Their courage equals ours. And their numbers are endless. Japan cannot defeat such an enemy.
We can only die fighting them and hope that our sacrifice buys time for peace negotiations that preserve something of our nation. To my fellow officers preparing to defend the home islands, know this. The Marines will come. You cannot stop them. You can only make them pay in blood for every meter of ground.
Perhaps if the price is high enough, they will negotiate rather than destroy everything. That is our only hope. That hope died with the atomic bombs in August. But Kuribayashi’s assessment of Marines proved accurate. They were the tip of the spear that broke Japanese defensive lines across the Pacific. They paid a terrible price with casualty rates that would have destroyed lesser organizations.
But they never broke, never retreated, never surrendered an objective. They were exactly what Japanese propaganda had claimed the Imperial Japanese Army was. Invincible warriors who would fight to death before accepting defeat. The final irony was that Marines achieved this through systematic training and overwhelming material support, not through mystical warrior spirit or racial superiority.
They proved that modern warfare required both courage and industrial capacity, both training and technology, both individual sacrifice and national resources. Japan had courage and training. America had everything. The Marines embodied that totality in a way no other American unit matched. Japanese veterans recognized this distinction. Corporal Hideo Takahashi, interviewed in 1975 as an old man, summarized what his generation learned fighting Marines.
We were taught that spirit conquers material, that our will to die made us invincible. The Marines taught us that spirit plus material conquers, spirit alone. They were as willing to die as we were. But they had Sherman tanks and naval gunfire and unlimited ammunition and air supremacy and medical care and food and all the resources of America behind them.
We had our rifles and our courage and promises of victory. That was not enough. It was never going to be enough. The Marines proved that on every island they took. The statistical record supports this conclusion. Marines fought in every major Pacific campaign from Guadal Canal in August 1942 to Okinawa in June 1945.
They suffered 86,000 casualties, including 19,500 killed. But they never failed to take an objective, never abandoned a position once captured, never gave Japanese forces reason to believe Marines could be defeated through superior tactics or fighting spirit. The price was terrible. The results were absolute.
Japanese military analysts studying marine operations after the war reached unanimous conclusions. The Marines represented the ultimate expression of American military power. They combined warrior ethos matching Japanese bushido with industrial resources matching American production capacity.
They trained soldiers willing to die for victory while providing those soldiers with weapons and support that made victory possible. This combination was unbeatable. The lessons learned came too late for the 21,000 Japanese soldiers who faced Marines on Ewima or the 30,000 who fought them on Okinawa or the hundreds of thousands who prepared to fight them on the home islands before surrender ended the war.
Those men knew only that Marines were the enemy they feared most, the enemy their officers could not stop, the enemy who would keep coming regardless of casualties until every Japanese defender was dead. Private First Class Tadashi Yamamoto’s final diary entry written hours before his death in a bunker on Ewima captured this knowledge. He wrote, “The Marines will win not because they are braver than we are, not because they want victory more than we do.
They will win because their nation gives them everything they need to win. And they will use those resources without mercy until we are all dead.” This is the truth our leaders should have told us. We are samurai fighting with swords against men with machine guns who also have the spirit of samurai. There was never any hope. There was only death.
His bunker fell the next day. The marines who cleared it found his diary and forwarded it to intelligence officers who translated it and filed it among thousands of similar documents. The words captured a truth that Japanese soldiers across the Pacific had learned through brutal experience. Fighting the Marines was not like fighting other American forces.
It was not like fighting British or Chinese or any other enemy. It was fighting an opponent who combined everything Japan claimed to possess with everything Japan lacked. That combination made the Marines the most feared enemy Japanese soldiers would face. The statistics tell part of the story.
The battles tell more. But the words of Japanese soldiers who survived to tell of it reveal the complete picture. They fought men who would not stop, who would not surrender, who would die before accepting defeat, and who had the weapons and support to make that spirit devastating. Against such an enemy, courage was not enough.
Training was not enough. Determination was not enough. Nothing was enough except surrender or death. The Japanese military chose death. The Marines delivered it with systematic efficiency. That was why Japanese soldiers feared fighting the Marines more than any other unit.
The Marines said they would take the objective and they took it. They said they would accept any cost and they paid it. They never stopped. Japanese defenders discovered that courage meant nothing when facing an enemy who matched their determination and exceeded their firepower by factors that made resistance futile.
That was the lesson learned in blood from Guadal Canal to Okinawa. After the war ended and propaganda dissolved, Japanese veterans acknowledged the truth their leaders had hidden. The Marines were everything Japan claimed its soldiers were, backed by everything Japan could never provide. Against such an enemy, the war was lost before it began.
The Marines proved it completely, one island at a time, at a cost measured in thousands of lives on both sides.
