"I Am Going to Die Here"

Radio Tokyo last week described the defender of Iwo Jima, Lieut. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, as a commander whose "partly protruding belly is packed full of strong fighting spirit." It quoted him: "This island is the front line that defends our mainland, and I am going to die here."

If the General was still around on D-plus-twelve, he must have seen something to pack his belly with anguish: a huge cloud of yellow dust rising over Motoyama Airfield No. 1. The dust was lifted by big U.S. transport planes landing from Saipan. The Americans were putting to use what they had come to Iwo to get, and the incoming planes were tokens of the approaching end of the hardest amphibious campaign in the Pacific. Iwo Jima was not yet secure, but for practical purposes the ugly, sulfurous, mean little island was theirs.

The northern end of the island was within gun sight for Major General Graves B. Erskine's 3rd Division, which had driven a wedge that had almost split the Japs into two pockets. On the flanks the 4th and 5th Divisions were grinding the enemy down.

Tokyo's radio had said of General Kuribayashi that he knew every rat hole on Iwo. Extermination was proceeding normally, but cleaning out those holes, yard by yard, would add to the high cost of highly strategic Iwo. Navy Secretary James V. Forrestal reported this week that the cost so far had been the lives of 2,050 Marines.

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