Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 414 - The Battle of Iwo Jima: Part 3

Episode Date: May 18, 2026

PREORDER JOE'S BOOK https://www.amazon.com/Highlands-Burn-Foundling-Brigade-Saga-ebook/dp/B0GSG5CNXX/ref=sr_1_1?crid=QWHSPAADI07D&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.uLEY0I7D6t0IC9GWsF7SH1FKEgKqsqTLmV4PQ_lLi-wVUCYgTqIv0BWd9_-x3VzP.xn7v2CqU5MjngXmmSbYvVGsY_fxkvgsz-LA2tkhHHTs&dib_tag=se&keywords=joseph+kassabian&qid=1774247705&s=digital-text&sprefix=%2Cdigital-text%2C176&sr=1-1 SEE US LIVE MAY 29TH IN LONDON: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lions-led-by-donkeys-podcast-live-in-london-29th-may-tickets-1985443952308 CANT MAKE THE SHOW? WE'RE STREAMING IT! GET YOUR LIVESTREAM TICKETS HERE: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/livestream-lions-led-by-donkeys-podcast-live-in-london-29th-may-2026-tickets-1985444086710 GET SECOND HOME'S DEBUT ALBUM https://secondhomes.bandcamp.com/album/find-a-way-to-hate-it The conclusion to our series on the Battle of Iwo Jima

Hey everyone, Joe here. Me, Tom, and Nate are all going to be live May 29th in London at the Rich Mix. So get your tickets and come down and see us. It's going to be a great show. We're going to have some new merch, some shirts, some pins, maybe some book stuff because it coincides the launch of my book, The Highlands Burn. And if you can't make it, that's okay. We're going to be live streaming it. Check out our show notes. Make sure you click on the right link for live show and live stream tickets, whichever one you need, and get your tickets now. The Highlands Burn. My debut fantasy novel releases May 29th and is now available for digital pre-order. You can find the link in the show notes wherever it is you're listening to this. Just like this show, this book is a

completely independent production. To the crack of rifles and the acrid stench of sports, we're sorcery, a sudden invasion sweeps through the highlands of the Confederation, and Syatt's peaceful village life breaks with the dawn. A sole survivor amid the smoking ruins of all that he held dear, Siyah must make a choice. Is pursuing revenge against the mercenaries that took everything from him worth becoming one himself? As escape pushes him to the gruff embrace of the foundling brigade, he must learn to tread a path between his need to understand why his people were targeted for destruction and the new responsibilities of his soldiers life. Even as each new encounter with the horrors of battle force him to confront the terrible

cost of his oath. Before long, the shifting fog of war casts old certainties into a haze of doubt, while the stuff of legend seems as clear as day. And Syatt finds himself drawn into a much larger conflict that he could possibly imagine. Hello and welcome to the Lions led by donkeys podcast. I'm Joe. and with me, trapped inside this cave of farts. Tom, Nate, fellas, how you doing?

How's the devil juice? I brewed it just for you. Speaking of being stuck in a cave, the other day I had more plasterboard delivered for the studio. And there's no like elevator. You have to bring, and these sheets weigh 30 kilos each. You have to bring them up like three flights of stairs. And I brought a couple of sheets up and was coming down and had someone help me.

And I just kind of looked over and there's this like, big gate that just like there's like a bit of wasteland behind it and I looked over and there's just a crackhead on the ground halfway out up to his waist and is like pushing himself through via the doors and just kind of whips his head and looks at me and I just kind of nod at him and he nods back and I'm like all right it's grand because earlier there was like a bike and like a primark bag and like half a duvet and it kind of smelled like ass and I was like okay there's probably someone around here they're definitely not going to steal these boards because they're way too much. So whatever, Grand brought the sheet up, came back down.

He'd gotten out from the wasteland. He'd like crawl, give him birth to himself. Another sheet up. And then we come back down. And I just kind of like, all right, chief, whatever. He's on his knees and he'd stolen his bike and is like spray painting a completely black in view of everyone. Was it like one of the ubiquitous London stolen lime bike that click because they broke

that thing off in them? No, it was like, obviously someone's mountain bike or something that he's after stealing. And I was like, I knew the bike was stolen because I just like spotted a bolt cutters in the bag. I was like, I'm not going to move this. Whoever stole this is nearby. Nice. I one time had a delivery that the delivery person just put it right outside of the trash future studio and it was a spool of like, like have cat 6A cable. And it was like the crack cats got into it and then realize you're like, this has no use to me. This is just really, really annoying cable and left alone. Thank God. You guys wanted to do Beth and start a podcast. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I did see this thing recently where someone's like,

people keep as there's like a series of photos of like fucked up old car park with the grass growing in between the segments and like row houses is all boarded up and just like fucked up like abandoned looking Tesco and all this shit. And people are just like, everyone's like, what is this vibe? Is this like, you know, rewilding apocalypse corps? And so it's like, no, it's just literally England. And if you want to experience vibes like that, come to our live show on May 29th in Rich Mix in London. Yeah, it's in shortage, but you never have to travel far to find that the vibe you're going for. Yeah, I mean, just go down to the new entrance to Old Street Station around like midnight and

you get to experience that. Hell yeah. I'm glad that the guy next to your studio was training to crawl through the tunnels of V. We were on part three. He was doing urban spulunking. Yeah. He was spulunking your studio to a permanent end.

Because we're on part three of our series here on the Battle of Yuwajima, the conclusion. We left you last time. Mount Sarabachi was conquered. February 23rd. A very confusing flag-raising situation happened. And even after talking about it for about 30 minutes, it still really doesn't make a ton of sense to anybody. But to continue our story here on part three, we have to go back in time a couple of days. I didn't want to get off the Sarabachi train once it left the station, because I know it was like the story everybody was looking forward to. but by February 21st, the beaches had all been cleared, mostly.

Tens of thousands of Marines were now ashore, and the naval logistical machine was really spinning into high gear. The beaches had been turned into a fully functioning port, and Mother Nature also happened to lend something of a hand by having the waves calmed down a bit to make the whole thing that much easier. That didn't stop them from occasionally getting plastered with artillery or mortars, though. But shit, exploding, rarely slowed down the logistical pipeline. But that was another fixture of the battle, and we talked about it for about a split second last time.

And that was, remember, this is a really small island, eight square miles. And it's now packed with around 100,000 people, making it one of the most densely populated killing fields humans have ever created. Both sides also happen to have weapons that could reach anywhere within that range. So nowhere was safe and nowhere was really the rear. Marines working on the beach or doing their jobs at rear command posts were just as likely to get smashed with artillery as some dude pressing the attack. There are also tons of landmines everywhere and nobody knew where they were. Men in areas they thought were secure found themselves losing legs or

getting destroyed and exploding trucks as they tried to go about doing their job. This added to just the general misery of the fighting on the island. The volcanic ash got in everything, from equipment to food to drinking water. Men's eyes crusted over with the stuff, and as the Marines tried to dig deeper, trying to find a more secure layer where they could have bunkers or fighting positions, they would accidentally breach sulfur vents, bathing them in horrible, hot geological fart gas. That smell mixed with the stench of thousands of rotting dead bodies. and if that wasn't bad enough,

it began to rain and turned everything into a black slurry. So we have yet a new kind of goo for the second episode in a row. You know, the fart joker's like it smells normal to me.

Why so gassy? So fucking stupid. Yeah. To the Joker, this is a normal island, basically. I've da fart Joker, baby. I fucking hate you. Damn it. You know, there's probably somebody who's like,

granddad fought in World War II on Ewo Jima, who's like, finally, they're going to give it the treatment it deserves and we even stuff. You know, thinking of Jared Lido on Ewojima being the fart Joker, like, great, good job, guys. Despite the immense amount of work, the U.S. is preparing for the incoming casualties of the battle, the meat grinder of Iwo Jima overwhelmed all of it immediately. From landing day and every day forward, they absorbed at minimum 1,000 casualties per day.

Unable to cope with the transportation of so many dead bodies, engineers with bulldozers were put to work digging mass graves and then dumping in piles of dead Marines, while a Navy chaplain watched and just kind of gave a blessing in mass. Meanwhile, every single one of the 500 or so ships off the coast were working around the clock, all supporting the invasion one way or another. The threat of Japanese air attack never really popped up.

That was mostly due to bad weather and the combined operations Task Force 58, which was busy bombing the living shit out of any supporting airfields and other islands, as well as just about everything else back on the home islands. But it was only a matter

of time before the most famous or infamous version of World War II Japanese air power made an appearance. The kamikazis. This sort of things get a little hazy. According to some reports, Koryabayashi had received a couple Kamakazi pilots as part of his reinforcements and deployed them.

But Iwo Jima's airfields were pretty much unusable at this point. One had already been captured. Both have been bombed to piss. And the reports that he got kamikazis are probably true. He almost certainly. never launched one from Iwo themselves, though. Imagine being the Kamakazi crew sent to Iwojima but then being grounded and forced to live in the cave? And you're like, you know, maybe blowing up in my plane wasn't so bad after all. This sucks. On February 21st, a wave

of Kamikaze attackers appeared in the air above the American fleet, with most reports saying that they had come from the island of Honshu. As was always the case, the kamikaze pilots had been instructed to aim for aircraft carriers above all else. That was the most important thing that Japan wanted to destroy. And they had been trained to try to hit certain parts of the aircraft carrier. For example, the flight elevators. That way, you know, planes and supplies can be moved around or stacks or the flight deck if all else failed because it's important. Remember, American flight decks were made out of wood back then. So they would catch fire. And I don't know why. this is important to me, but the decks of the aircraft carriers

are mostly made out of teak, which sounds nice until they explode into flames anyway. Very nice wood. Yeah, very appropriate. Stains quite well as well. Tasteful. At around 5pm, that's what the kamikaze's tried to do. A cloud of them flying as fast as they could

to punch through the destroyer escorts that were parked around the aircraft carriers that were to act as their first line of defense, began shooting anti-aircraft fire at the, them. But the first way of the kamikazis veered towards the aircraft carrier the USS Saratoga. The first kamikaze hit several times by incoming fire, smashed into the carrier's hull, penetrating all the way to the hangar bay before exploding. A second kamikaze already on fire, crashed into the water, skipped across the top of it like a particularly smooth stone,

and then bounced off the armored belt of the carrier doing absolutely nothing. The third was shot down and a fourth skirt a direct hit on the carrier's deck. But for whatever reason, the suicide bomb it was carrying didn't explode and the wreckage cart wheeled off into the water. The fifth kamikaze, though, was the moneymaker. It slammed into the flight deck, cut straight through it, and blew up inside the ship, causing several other secondary explosions from its munitions hole. But that still wasn't the end of it.

As the men ran out to the flight deck to try to put the fire out and do damage control, a sixth kamikaze crashed into a group of anti-aircraft batteries on the side of the ship, but it slammed into it going so fast that the suicide bomb that was in the plane broke free from the wreckage, flew right into the flight deck and exploded amongst the work crew, vaporizing all the men that had just run there. And all of this happened in three minutes. Oh, wow. The Saratoga was on fire, and that is,

Normally how a ship dies. The deck was burning, the aircraft on the deck were burning, fuel was on fire, there was fires both on top of and inside the ship. Everybody on board was put to the task of putting it out. The ship had holes in it and was flooding. Then that water is being pumped out while still other water is being pumped across the burning wreckage on the deck. We're impossible to try to save from adding more water to the problem. crews pushed still burning wreckages of planes into the sea, but sometimes they couldn't because then they would themselves get burned. Within an hour though, the crew seemed to have saved the Saratoka,

and they began pulling away. That's when the second wave of kamikazes appeared. They knew to gun for the wounded ship, and not to mention, it was quite literally like a glowing red barrel at this point. It was spewing smoke from all the fires. But at this point, everybody's already on edge, and the attackers are largely torn apart by anti-aircraft fire, all but one, and then it blows through making another hole in its flight deck. The Saratoga did survive, but 123 men on board died, with another almost 200 wounded, and the ship was taken out of combat for a prolonged period of time. 20 minutes after this last attack on the Saratoga, another group of kamikaze's gunned it for the USS Bismarck Sea. This aircraft carrier had somewhat ironically been used as a landing spot,

for several of the planes the Saratoga had so they could be diverted in order to save the planes and the pilots. And now they're like, oh, fuck, it's happening again. Yeah, and the captain of the ship just goes, you, you got what I need. He did not finally have a friend, unfortunately. No. Instead, he got a plane right in the face.

Most of the kamikazis were smacked out of the air, but one pilot managed to fight through this, get his plane to the surface of the water, flying so low that guns couldn't depress low enough to hit them, which is the main difference between me and a U.S. naval ship is, my depression knows, no bounds. This is from the U.S. Naval Institute article Iwo Jima, a tale of two carriers. Quote, the kamikaze penetrated the hall and exploded in the hangar deck,

cutting the cables of the aft elevator, which was lowering an aircraft. The aft magazine caught fire and the aircraft elevator fell slamming into the hangar bay with such force that bombs and torpedoes broke loose and rolled into the fires. Damage control teams attempted to tackle the blaze. The Bismarck Sea lost steering. Her glowing fires attracted a second kamikaze that crashed into the stern, exploding in the hangar bay amid the four fighters left full of fuel and killing most of the damage control men. 20 minutes after this, the captain of the Bismarck Sea gave the order to abandon ship. 318 sailors died with another 608 having to be pulled from the sea over the course of the night. Fucking hell.

And again, this all happens within 20 minutes. You can kind of understand that while, yeah, Kamikaze attacks were strategically a failure, of course, but like how terrifying this must be to be on a boat, specifically in aircraft carrier, so that's almost always what they targeted and have these things rocketing towards you. Back on the island, at the line that cut through the battlefield roughly splitting everything in half,

the Marines had captured Airfield 1, and the engineers were busy trying to repair it into something that would be largely functional by the loose standards of the day when pilots mostly just didn't give a shit about safety and were more than comfortable landing and taking off from the middle of a burning landfill

if they had to. And all these pilots are operating on like a couple weeks of training a cigarette and a cup of coffee. They don't give a shit. I respect it. I respect it so much. The shit that these guys were able to pull off

is just insane. Meanwhile, other Marines were trying to push into airfield too. And an airfield by nature is just about the worst place to attack on the ground. By just its existence has to be open and flat. Yep. And thanks to the Japanese citadel at Motoyama,

which grew on the horizon behind the airfield, It meant that they could rain supporting fire down on the soldiers that were trying to attack it. And I mean, the bunkers at the airfield, we talked about this in episode one, but like the bunkers on the airfield are by far the weakest positions on the whole island. They're in the open. They're not dug into the mountains. They're mostly made up of concrete and the remains of wrecked planes. It's the worst place to be a Japanese soldier on the island as so far as to fight from. And this flat ground was one of the few advantages the Marines had in the entire.

battle. The Japanese couldn't hide from the punishing naval gunfire and land-based artillery that had been brought to shore, not to mention the constantly raining air strikes. Airfield 2 is hammered with strikes and then Marines with tanks, support were sent him to capture it. And this is the only time in our entire series, I'm going to say, this all went according to plan. Okay. This all worked. That's the only time I'm going to be saying that, though. That still left the mountainous citadel of Motoyama Plateau. And despite the Americans having advantages in everything, in some cases to absurd levels, like 10 to 1 artillery advantages in total air superiority, none of it mattered when it came to Motoyama.

Kuryabashi knew this, and he knew that it would all end this way. All of the bombardments, literally tons of explosives that had fired at his citadel, had effectively done nothing. The concept of like the bunker buster and shit like that doesn't exist. exist yet. Kind of. We are going to get to one accidentally being invented, though. We're working on orc logic now? Kind of. His tunnel network still stood. His artillery, still protected by dozens of feet of rock and steel blast oars, was still firing. His men, now they'd pretty much been dead on their feet from thirst, hunger, and explosively shooting themselves all over the caves and having their skeleton shaken constantly by bombings. But in his defense, they'd

mostly started off that way too. Like pretty much the only thing that the Americans had added to this mix was the explosions. But cracks were beginning to form within the ranks of the Japanese as well. Several of Kuryabashi's commanders were beginning to refuse to put their men back in the caves

demanding that they be allowed to fight and die out in the open. Because it's important to know that it's been like two weeks, three weeks at this point, four weeks. They have not left the caves. The only sunlight they had seen is the stuff that shines through gun ports.

Truly, truly molemaxing. No one has ever mulmaxed more. Fair enough. And I don't think that's a record that should be attempted to be defeated. Like, if I was the military Guinness Book of World Records, I would say that this record is no longer contestable. And when you remember just how a terrible life in those caves was becoming, you can hardly blame them.

Kuryabashi managed to keep them in line and was still holding back on frontal assaults and charges, but only barely. Even Baron Nishi, his kind of sort of friend, began to catch shit from him, in his case, for wasting supplies. Now, this has to be, in my opinion, one of the dumbest

things they do during the entire battle. While the Marines had water purification units on the beach that were shipping water inland in an endless stream of metal water cans, the Japanese were down to almost nothing. This went for everything else, too. Ammo included, but

specifically water water is the main problem here. A few days before, Nishi had gotten trouble for using their scarce supply of water to, I swear to God, wash one of his few remaining tanks. This honestly is the dumbest tanker shit I've ever heard, but is absolutely something I could see someone doing. Like, I could see one of my tank commanders back when I was enlisted. I mean, like, I know we're all down to, you know, a coffee cup full of water a day, but you really need to make that bitch spark.

Like, how about we get to work? I must watch my big metal wife. And in another case, he was reprimanded for using some of their last medical supplies to treat a wounded U.S. Marine, which is interesting. There's only two cases that we know of, of alive U.S. Marines falling into the hands of the Japanese during the Battle of Iwo Jima, only two. This is only accounts for one of them. We legitimately have no idea how we don't know how the second one was killed because neither of them survive.

But in this case, Nishi refused to not treat him because he was captured wounded. I'm not saying this to Whitewash's personality or anything, but like that's something he did. It was not the only time he did this. And everybody was mad at him for it. I should say from everything that I've read, they weren't pissed at him for treating the Marine. They were pissed at him for using their almost non-existent meta. supplies on him. They're like, bro, we're going to need those things. Like, used to save them for us. We have nothing. We are piling goop into our wounds. Another thing that was pretty interesting about

Nishi and something we kind of talked about in episode one is an event happened that created some tension between him and other Japanese officers. And that is, Americans had targeted him specifically for psychological operations. Right. You never remember about this, yeah? They broadcasted in both English and Japanese for him addressed to him calling him Mr. Baron Nishi. They're just holding up a giant photo of a Portillo's hot dog. You want this, don't you? Now, they were calling for surrender. Americans, of course, knew who he was, thanks to his time in L.A.

when he was drinking and whipping shitties with Charlie Chaplin. And they knew that he was one of the commanders on Iwo. Several officers around Nishi thought this was suspicious. But Nishi laughed this off, saying that like, the Americans wouldn't be broadcasting and asking for my surrender if they knew I left my Olympic champion horse back in Tokyo. Like they only want me for my horse. We're creating the situation of an imperial Japanese shirgar. I also feel like the idea that he would bring his horse to Iwo Jima, which seems like a place one does not graze horses at. It just seems kind of ridiculous.

I mean, I'm kind of surprised he didn't just because the kind of guy he was. I have a feeling he was explicitly told. No horses allowed. Like at the rate we're running out of topics to make movies about World War II. Because obviously there is like essentially two categories. There is the overly saccharin British World War II nostalgia movie about like, oh well, what about the postmen of World War II? And then you have the American one as like, we are going to turn the entirety of the men aged 18 to 25 from the means.

Midwest into mulch and you're going to be sad and you're going to remember it. Let's try a different tact. Let's, you know, what if he did bring the horse, speculative fiction? Let's tell the story from the horse's perspective. Yeah. It's like a fucking Milosh-Forman movie. It's called Warhorse. I'm just imagining a Milosh foreman movie like you're just describing about this horse having

a completely normal life. It's like it's the one person who had a normal World War II and it just ends with a blank cut like the end of the Sopranos because that's when Bob kills the horse. He had no idea. So he had a normal time. Nishi sitting on Iwo Jima penning the most depressing love poems he can to his horse in Tokyo. What if the horse wrote a death poem too? And it's just like,

Yeah. We have to put peanut butter in the horse's mouth so he can compose his death poem. All the nays are just in perfect haiku meter. I'm trying to read it, but it looks like someone just dipped his hoof and ink and had him kick something. No, it's actually a beautiful haiku. It's like, you know, something about like the eternal hopefulness of a summer morning, children to stomp, an apple held in a closed hand, fingers bitten. No, it's just what they would do is dip its tail in ink and then like be perfect like sumay

strokes to create the kanji. These are all important tenets in the faith of Eastern Horstodoxy. Yeah, this is the Far East version of it. It's far Eastern horsetoxy. It was brought over by missionaries. There were secret practitioners amongst the Portuguese. They landed in 1500s and converted some of the Japanese. That's why they crucified. Drew Garfield in that movie? Do you see he secretly snook a horse into Japan? Hey, I've never seen the emperor ride a horse. That's all I'm saying.

The approaches to Motoyama were terrible and by far the worst terrain on the entire island of horrible terrain. Marines would almost be forced to leave their armored support behind, thanks to volcanic terrorist rock paths being too small. And where they weren't, they had been stacked full of landmines and tank traps. Instead of doing that and knowing how bad it would be with. them. Marine engineers would clear a lot of these obstacles, both built by the Japanese and just natural ones, with bulldozers and explosive charges. The whole place is a honeycomb

of defenses, with Marines themselves calling it a hornet's nest, with thousands of different tiny little holes sticking out of tunnel networks they did not know of and didn't see only big enough for a gun barrel to stick out of. Like, it literally looked like the island itself was shooting at them. It'd be like that video from a couple of years ago of the American guy in Vietnam and the guy just like pops up out of the hole and he starts shouting at him.

That must have been so good for that Vietnamese tour guy. The tour guide is just like pissed himself laugh and it's so funny. If you haven't seen it and you're listening to this, pause the episode go put it into YouTube or whatever. It is incredible. Every time you see it like an older white guy on vacation

Vietnam, there's a not zero chance. You scare the shit out of them like that. Worse still is there's no way to attack Motoyama other than straight through all this shit. With one Marine colonel giving their attack quite possibly the worst nickname I have ever heard of. He called it a quote grunt and crunch operation.

Yeah, I've been in a few of those situations. That doesn't sound good. Who up grunting the crunch? Go away. Grunt crunching. I am the crunchler. And here is my sidekick, grunt man. I hate it so much.

Grunt and crunch sounds like a very horrible mistake. You make after a long night of drinking and you don't fully remember it. That is the perfect form for the eccentric movement of a deadlift, grunt and crunch. That would be my first like bodybuilding program that I, publish is going to be called Grunt and Crunch Crunch with Choke Sabian Hell yeah

Knowing whatever happened during the attack was going to be bad The reserves were finally deployed under the command of And possibly biggest And name alert of the series In this one

General Graves Blanchard Erskine Graves Erskine Okay Yes I love that they had to give him the middle name Blanchard

And he made sure to go by it All the time Like you had to say The whole thing He was never Graves Erskine, who's Graves Blanchard Erskine. The only other person I've ever heard of with the surname Erskine Erskine was former president of the, of Ireland Erskine Childers. Well, that was the thing I said. Remember that the officer was going to be named Mercutio Vanderbilt and the soldier was, the chief petty officer was

Al-Fuck. But no, it's actually his real name is Mercutio Aristotle Vanderbilt because that was a normal name if you went to an Episcopal boarding school. Who looks at their young baby boy? I don't have kids. But like, imagine you're, you're looking down at your young baby boy in the hospital. You're like, oh, I have such a beautiful name for him. Let's call him Graves. There's a weird tradition with those things where they're like, oh, your first name is basically like your mom's maiden name or some family name or something. It's like a weird, fake American aristocracy thing. Yeah. And then the baby in the, the, the, the car next, who it is just called Joe Gunt. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. If you name your child Graves,

he only has like one career opportunity available to him, and that is becoming a Marine Corps general. And with his deployment, three entire divisions, at least on paper, because obviously those numbers are a bit fucky here, were set to advance up the plateau. But the plateau is made up of different parts, all of which would need to be conquered individually, but at the same time. Hill 382 and its offshoots. There's also turkey knob. Turkey knob? Turkey knob. Turkey knob sounds like a town in southern Indiana, to be completely honest with you.

These are names obviously given by the breed. Yeah. It's not like General Kerbayashi's like, ah, yes, we must defend turkey knob. Yeah. Like, we've heard of this mysterious new world bird. We're going to name this mountain after it on this. The island smells of farts. The third item sold by the guy from the Simpsons episode where Homer goes to New York,

Covecalache, Crabb juice, turkey nub. No state. No plate. On stick. On stick. And the main position nicknamed the Ampitheater. All of them together were collectively known as probably the most accurate nickname ever given to a military position, the meat grinder. Which I'm sure is something Marines loved to hear.

Before there was Hamburger Hill, there was turkey knob and the meat grinder. Okay. Nowadays, people are too lazy. They eat hamburger helper Hill. Hamburger Helper Hill defended by a giant hamburger helper hand. equipped with a John Basselone machine gun in each one of its fingers. Anti-woke lions led by donkeys only history podcast, but anti-woke is convinced that it actually wasn't,

it was called pork chop knob, but then because of creeping Islamization, they decided to call it turkey knob instead because that's the wall. Well, there was a different battle called pork chop hill in Korea. Yeah, I don't know that one. Yeah. No, see, once again, I just can't get a turkey knob and the meat grinder on the morning zoo crew.

I am resisting so much using the voice changer button on my mixer right now. Okay, Tom, go ahead. I could use the button. You can use the button. You can use it one time. You're welcome to Turkey dog and the meat grinder on morning zoo. You might want to pitch it maybe halfway down as much as that because now it sounds like literally the voice of sulfur itself is speaking from Ewo Jima. Yeah, that's the book.

I am the voice of Iwo Jima. I am filled with Japanese men in tunnels. You have to talk like Brian Mulco to sound normal with that filter. The term meat grinder was kind of indicative to the entire battle. There's no clever tactic that was going to win. No maneuver that was going to open the front up. It was just feeding men into hell until something broke. Fighting through these turned into exactly that.

Marines fighting over inches, finding Japanese soldiers popping out of holes or fighting out of reinforced bunkers, and then trying to burn them out. Unless they were caught out in the open, Japanese soldiers could generally retreat back into the tunnel system for safety. That was until Marines figured out the idea of like, well,

we see the opening here. We'll go a couple feet off to the side and put a big old bomb there and blow a hole into the tunnels. Then, they pump them full of white phosphorus. Okay. Yeah.

I remember spec ups the line. This would burn them in inside or flush their to the surface where they could be killed. This is where the Army Air Corps kind of sort of on purpose but accidentally discovered the concept of the Bunker Buster. They were coming up with their own terrifying way to murder people. So they were mostly flying the P-51 Mustang and they could be equipped with a thousand pound bomb on a 10-second delay. They came up with the idea of dive-bombing low and then dropping the big fuckers within crags or valleys on the plateau. The weight of the thing

would sometimes just rip through stone walls where it had been dug out by the Japanese. On one occasion I could find, the bomb smashed into the side of a mountain just perfectly that when it exploded, it sheared the wall off of a cliff and exposed the whole tunnel network to open air. Oh, God.

Kind of like looking in through the glass of like an ant colony. No, it is the scene from the Simpsons where the front of Lenny's house falls over. Yes. Don't tell anybody I live like this. It's soldiers who have at this point discarded pants because they are just shitting everywhere. Like, oh God, don't tell anybody we fight a war like this. Obviously, close air support at this time is let's call it an art form more than a science.

Jazz air strikes, if you will. Many of the pilots flying overhead had no formal training in it at all and just kind of learned on the job. Bro science with bombs, if you will. And, you know, add in the don't give a shit attitude of 1940s pilots. But they had become pretty good at landing bombs only a few hundred feet of men on the ground when they were called in. But these bombs were much smaller than these thousand pounders. These fuckers are no joke. And when struggling up the meat grinder, called for the thing to be dropped just as short ways away,

the air ground liaison warned them that like, hey, this could kill us too. The Marines who were taking so much incoming fire they could hardly move and were burning through thousands of gallons of napalm out of flamethrows just to take over a hole in the ground didn't really care. One battalion commander told the liaison, well, you can't hurt us any worse than we're already being hurt. The bunker buster at the meek grinder sounds like a menu item at those restaurants that they have the weighing scales outside. Oh, like that one in Vegas. Yeah. Heart attack grill, I think it was called. Yeah.

Yeah. Yep. Yep. We need to, this new business idea, Iwo Jima themed restaurant and... Yeah, to run uphill to the buffet. No, you actually have to dig a tunnel and go underground and come up through the floor. No, no, that's what the employees do. You have to get around them. Yes, true.

By now it's March. The Allies had projected 10 days to not defeat the Japanese, but secure the entire island. It had now been two weeks and they'd suffered 13,000 casualty. Some units were hit much harder than others, as these things tend to go, with several losing all of their officers and NCOs, only for them to be replaced and then lose all those too. The Marines have been struggling through the meat grinder. Krayibayashi's line was bending, and tens of thousands of men were now fighting and dying

within a one square mile combat zone, pockmarked by thousands of caves in fighting positions. Jesus. Yeah, this all sounds just, it just, it keeps like multiplying on itself, getting exponentially more horrible and grim. They're just like crawling over each other. Like that's, that's the thing that like all of the firsthand accounts I'm reading is like, no, this is this fight isn't forward.

It's up and down. And like we're on top of each other. Yeah, this is orcs versus tyrannids type shit. Marines are kind of doing like painting it red makes it go faster type shit. The Marines are just screaming gorkomorka as they're like climbing up the walls. I mean, that is just, have you met a Marine? Yeah. Marines listening. Are we wrong? I love you.

guys, but come on. The meat grinder had earned its name and victory was measured in grim statistics. Like one Marine Division fighting for nine days to simply advance about a mile and a half. By March 4th, the entire advance into the meat grinder had been bogged down to a stalemate. General Schmidt called his leaders together on the island to come up with a way to break out of this. It was a novel solution that boiled down to, what if we dropped God themselves down on the fucking plateau? Enough explosives that you would have to give God two for flinching, right? Every single piece of fire support would be brought to bear for tens of thousands of rounds. The Navy, including a battleship, two cruisers, three destroyers, and

various gunboats would fire tens of thousands of their own shells, tens of thousands from land-based artillery. And then when they were done and the airspace was clear, it'd be bombed to shit with as many planes as they had. And remember, they had over a thousand planes. All this came raining down on March 6th. But soon, Marines, who were hunkering down into the sand, learned that when you fire that much shit in one direction, it's more of a to whom it may concern situation.

The shells came crashing down only a few 100 feet in front of them. The power of the blasts collapsed the few holes they'd been able to dig, and other shells fell directly. into Marine lines. We don't know exactly how many Marines were killed by friendly fire, but it's not to be dozens and wounded hundreds.

But this is also a pre-assault bombardment. Nothing could really be done. Marines were waiting for it to be over so then they could just launch their attack and could do nothing other than close their eyes and hope the next one didn't come down on them. Or maybe they were like, well, at least I won't have to be on Iwojima

anymore if it does. Ford observers did try to do their best to direct the strikes accurately, but with all of the delays and so many moving parts, the thousands of men and the tiny space we're talking about here. Most of the time, it was just too late before a group of Marines vanished in a puff of black sand and blood. Once again, creating a new kind of goop. Yeah, Jesus, this is, just keeps getting, I like making jokes as much as the rest of us,

but my God, it just keeps getting more and more, like, sort of like reverse or like alternate universe, Katamari Damashi sort of thing, like you're taking pain and misery and destruction and making it into a smaller and smaller and smaller space until you eventually just have like the Hell cube. Like it's just, it's really, really grim. It's less than ideal. And just imagine this amount of explosives being fired into such a small area. And then a couple dozen meters down, there is dudes.

Yeah. Just getting absolutely fucking rocked. The concussive blast from these shells going through the tunnels, from like letters that I read to like men were, vomiting and having diarrhea worse than usual, I should say, like going mad. Because this goes on for hours. Like, they're constantly being bombed. There's not a single time where these mountains aren't shaking. Also, as well, like the sheer amount of air displacement through the tunnels, like likely would burst your eardrums as well. Oh, yeah. I can only imagine.

And if you were in one part of the tunnel and not the other, the blast pressure would also just liquefy your insides. That's the thing that some people don't understand. It's like when a bomb goes off near you. If it's close enough, the blast wave will just rupture your organs and you die even worse than if it landed on you. And also, all of these tunnels are interconnected as well. So, like, the only displacement

of any air or pressure is going outwards. So, like, if you survive at best, you're probably deaf and, like, completely discombobulated and then you'll die. Yep. It all ends with you dying. Yeah. Watching all of this happen,

the Americans thought there was no way, anyone could survive what they had just witnessed. Of course, they would be wrong. As Marines advance using tanks the short amount of time that they could, their flamethrowers clearing out caves and dugouts, thousands of Japanese positions once again opened fire on them. They struggled deeper and deeper into the meat grinder, and they came to a horrible realization.

The positions that the Japanese had captured the entire Marine advance, three divisions in infallating fire. This means for people who don't know that they could fire down the entire length of the Marine advance, and advance that once again quickly ground to a halt as Marines had to leave behind their tanks and begin fighting up the rocks. To put it in perspective, so imagine if people were all lined up in a row for a machine gun to fire and hit all of them, they would have to traverse it left and right. If, say, for example, you know, it was like one big line but caught from the side. That's bad, but even worse is if you're one big line or one.

one big column caught from the front with nowhere to go because then they can not only shoot right into you, straight into a smaller group, but the bullets are going down your axis of advance, which is to say that every single person is basically like caught in that zone. Enflating fire is extremely you don't want to be in that. I mean, if you're bending or if you're... No, it's magnificent. It's wonderful. The best thing that can happen to you is that with the element that you're trying to engage

is in a position where you have them in an infillating fire and they can't really take cover. If it's you, you're kind of fucked. And think of it this way. Being caught inflating fire as like a squad and one guy is firing it. We're talking about three divisions. Yeah. This is a three division long inflate.

Very, very bad. This is basically the best way I could describe is this is sort of like enough people have played video games and seen pop culture stuff to understand about the sort of fatal funnel getting shot in the doorway. It's like the fatal funnel times 30,000 people, basically. 30,000 people jammed in this one door shot. 30,000 crazy white boys shock doormaker by being able to jam into one fatal funnel. And by speaking perfect death throws. Yeah, by speaking perfect Midwest English.

And it's bad, man. You said those words and you said the three divisions. I was like, oh, that fucking sucks, dude. And there is conservatively about 10,000 Japanese soldiers station at the Citadel. Most of them are firing at this enfilade. Wow. Yeah. you're, um, it's, it's about as bad as it could possibly be. Yeah. Like, if the Japanese were able to be

supplied and they had air cover. Like, it's hard to see how they lose this. The military basically doesn't have a like fake acronym or turn of phrase or neologialism homophobic enough to represent this situation in the way that people would deploy it because your garden variety bohika or barrel of dicks or anything along those lines like doesn't really, doesn't do it justice. Like, military minds haven't given enough thought to describe like what the, what the superlative homophobic slur about a situation would be to describe this because it doesn't happen very often. And every military superlative is homophobic. Homophobic or sexist or just vaguely sexual.

Or both. Yeah. Both. Yeah. It's always bare, but a mess do with dicks. It's got to be sexual and it's probably homophobic, if not misogynist and creepy too. I mean, we're not going to pretend that we were above laughing at them or saying them when we were in our, but also Joe and I, like I said before, we only.

much like the people described in episode one. We only really feel at home in a minefield. So that's just more to do with our personalities. But we've tried to grow as people. I'm just saying, I read a lot of military history, not as much as you, but I have read a bit. This sucks. This is awful. This is just one of those things you're like, oh, and you're on a flat fucking island with no cover.

Yeah. And going up a mountain. Yeah. Or a plateau. And like a good way of just like describing how the Marines felt here is like what that battalion commander said. It was just like, well, if you drop a thousand pound bomber on top of my head. you're not hurting me any worse than we're already being hurt.

Yep. Like, that's a perfect way of accepting this where the battalion commander's like, no, we're dying either way. You might as well drop a bomb on us too. Yeah, yeah, he's sort of like calling for aerial bombardment on your own position is at least there is at least a chance that'll go right. Whereas like carrying on with the current situation, yeah, not. It's not good.

Like I said, this fighting wasn't front against front. Like if you're picturing a battle on your head, it turned into thousands of small tooth and nail struggles as Marines and Japanese murdered one another over the mouths of caves and bunkers. This was close work, grenades, charges, flamethrowers, knives, bayonets, swords. These men were so close to one another, they could, and often did scream insults at one another while trying to kill each other. Like, the Marines had learned a couple of swear words in Japanese or just screamed at them in English. They could clearly hear and see one another. But that didn't mean the Japanese reduced

to being entirely reactive either. They could still maneuver. They could still maneuver. They could still fight, and they could still direct their artillery with relative ease, considering everything that was happening. For example, when one company of Marines prepared to move up into the rocks to start their movement, they immediately got plastered with a hailstorm of screaming Jesus mortars. This killed and wounded half of the company before they can even begin. And this happened all across the line. This time when the assault ground down, though, the Marine withdrawal was not ordered. Instead, Marine commanders just kept throwing in artillery and airstrikes directly in front of their men, including a fuckload of white phosphorus. After a whole day of fighting, most of the

line had only moved forward by 50 yards. Jesus Christ. This is like bad days in 1915, 16, 17 level. Right. Yeah. This is not what you expect when you think of like island hopping. Yeah. But the fighting continued anyway. Marines kept trying to blow and burn their way forward. Bulldozers are sent forward again, trying to dig a path up the rocks for tanks. In most cases, bulldozer crews had to do this while under constant fire, but their only protection being the bulldozer they were driving in. This slowly, horrifically began to work. Each time a path was broken, Sherman takes and 75-millimeter gun carriers were rushed in. Occasionally they'd get blown to pieces by mines, a bulldozer then would once again move forward and push them out of the way,

and then more armor was moved in. And I got to say, as a tank crewman, I cannot imagine the worst place to be than like, oh yeah, assault up this plateau. Oh, don't mind that burning Hulk in front of you. We'll just push it down the mountain with the bulldozer. What's the odds? There's another landmine right in front of that one. That being said, the Marines finally dropped so many explosives on the Japanese that Schmidt had to order his artillery to stop. The Marines had fired so much artillery at Morayama Plateau. They broke their logistic system. They ran out of artillery shells, and they had to wait for more ammo to be transferred off the fleet onto the beach and to the front line. And then if that wasn't bad enough, Marines had been

struggling up the rocks found that even when they moved forward, nothing was ever really secure. Like before, Japanese soldiers just kept emerging from caves and holes behind them, because they would blow over like a bunker or a little firing port and like, ah, position handled. They didn't know that there was a network of tunnels behind it all. They knew there was some tunnels, but not like this. So they'd have to circle back around and fight over the same fucking position all over again, sometimes, again, resorting to flamethrowers and explosives. Sometimes the Japanese wouldn't wait for the Americans to find them and instead,

waited for the Marines to advance over their position and then blow themselves up with hundreds of pounds of explosives, collapsing the mountain face and sending Marines sometimes flying 45 feet into the air. Jesus Christ. Yeah. What of these attacks wiped out half of a company? That's like 50, 60 dudes in one go.

Yeah. And most of the time how this happened was it that like the Japanese weren't fighting from their position and then would wait for the Marines to come over. What would happen is they'd fight from their position until they ran out of bullets or like everybody was killed or wounded inside, they realized they couldn't fight anymore, and then would wait for the Marines advance over them and then detonate their part of the cliff. But the tactics were working. Kind of. The Marines were absolutely cooked. Some divisions had been reduced to 40% strength. Their leadership had been killed and then replaced by reinforcements, and then those replacements

were killed again and then replaced again. One battalion had a casualty rate of 115% for officers. Sounds about right, yeah. They're chewing through the replacements as soon as they got them. Young lieutenants, with no experience whatsoever, were left in command of companies. Though generally, not very long because they got killed too. Company B of the 2nd Battalion 26th Marines lost nine company commanders in three weeks. Holy shit.

Yeah. Yeah. In a lot of cases, there just weren't enough officers to act as replacements anymore, leaving the job to the most senior non-commissioned officers around who were probably, statistically, already replacements for the original sergeants and staff sergeants and whatever. As you can tell, command is breaking down.

The men were breaking down. Everybody is tired. Nobody is sleeping. Nobody is in command of anything that's in full strength anymore. And the people in command shouldn't be in command. Look, I was an NCO. Nate, you're an officer.

If any point, I have to take your job, something terrible is hell. happened. You know what I mean? I mean, that's the thing, right? Is that nine company commanders in three weeks is, I mean, at that point, it's like, I know the system was just very different back then, but like, you are just not combat effective. Like, that's insane. It just doesn't work. Like, imagine how enlisted men feel. Like, no enlist the man likes their officer at a personal level. Very, very few times. Is that not the case? And also, like, when you're in combat, like, it kind of doesn't fucking matter. It really is like, are they going to their job? Yeah.

But after going through nine of them, like, you don't have to worry about morale and even. more. It doesn't exist. You're in a definite, like, you've lost 115% of that too. That's insane. Graves Blancharderskin, gotta say the whole thing, was pissed at how this fighting was going. Everything was being ground down to nothing, so he demanded

permission to conduct a night attack, which weirdly was just not something the U.S. military did. There had not been a coordinated large-scale night attack throughout the entire Pacific War so far. So he wanted to launch one up through Hill 362C, arguing

that it would catch the Japanese by surprise and open the whole thing up. His boss, probably exhausted by everything that was going on and his critical supply of lieutenants running low, gave it the green light. So on March 6th, the attack began. Marines chucked smoke grenades right before dawn

and then advanced behind a line of flamethrowermen, which just sounds horrifying for everybody involved. And everything went perfectly. They advanced up to Hill, they took the position, and then their company commander, who was a young lieutenant, realized we're on the wrong hill.

They advanced in the wrong direction. Yeah, look, a night attack is hard for everybody. Yeah, I mean, to be honest, they didn't have night vision back then, like, you're doing the best you can to stay oriented. Like, it's, yeah, fuck.

Like, you know, the incident is like, oh, goddamn fuck a lieutenant. It's like, no, everyone's fucked, man. It's just like, I don't know, everybody's fucked. And no, and that lieutenant would never have been in that position. Everything was right. Correct, yeah.

So they captured Hill 331, not 362C. Their actual objective was actually 250 yards away. So their surprise night attack once again turned into a bloody broad daylight fight back up the original hill. At this point, Marine commanders knew this is just what the fighting was going to look like. So they refused to call off the attack. The fighting went on all day and throughout the night. And finally, they got to the top of the hill they originally supposed to get to.

12 hours later. Once at the top, worried about a counterattack, they dug in, strung up barbed wire, planted anti-personnel mines, and for a few hours, stopped charging up hills. And this fear of a counterattack ended up being a pretty valid one. Commander of the Japanese forces in the amphitheater area, Sada Suu A Senda, had nothing left to fight with. Like, he knew it was over.

They were mulching Marines, but like, it's done. Like, this is decided. However, he had nothing to break out towards, either. Instead, he decided he would launch a night raid to cause as much damage as he could. This is often called a bonsai attack, but again, it wasn't. It was a traditional, by the books, night attack. The Marine line was hit with artillery, and then the Japanese attempted to penetrate the line at multiple points, trying to get back to hit their logistics. Unfortunately, for them, like I pointed out, when they got to the top of that hill, they dug the fuck in,

and then they ran directly into that. Landmine shredded them. The area which was pre-bracketed with artillery, immediately blew them the pieces. And while some elements of the attack managed to get through all of this and actually fight all of the way to the command position of the second battalion where people had to lean out of foxholes after holding radios that'd like shoot at them with their handguns, they were all killed. One of the few Japanese survivors of the Battle of Iwojima witnessed the attack and said,

quote, I saw torsosos with no limbs, dismembered legs, arms and hands and internal organs splashed onto the rocks. And it soon became clear to everyone that the Japanese could not keep up with the grinding pressure of the marine attack. And it makes sense. At this point, this kind of battle is a logistics battle. Who can keep feeding what into the meat grinder? And the marine logistics system, the Navy logistic system, the United States military's logistic system, is just dumping everything constantly onto Iwojima.

The Japanese do not have one. They are not being resupplied. They have not been resupplied since the battle began. Everything is running low. There's almost no ammo left for anything. The artillery was beginning to run out of ammo. Their counter bombardments are becoming less and less intense with each passing hour and even the Marines were noticing.

The only thing that was slowing the Marines down at this point was the island itself. And as they continued to fight up the plateau, Iwojima acted as a kind of equalizer. Its horrible broken terrain made any large-scale traditional attacks impossible. Armored support attacks were also rendered to almost uselessness. Fighting was not back and forth, it was up and down, and each and every crack in the rocks became a fight to the death at a face-to-face range. And to add to the ambiance of the entire thing,

huge sulfur vents kept blowing fart-smelling steam all around them, blanketing the area into a cloud. Finally, by March 9th, the Marines had fought all the way to the northern shore of the island, straight through the middle of it, getting to the north coast. There's a story that someone had

dipped like a canteen cup with water from the ocean from the north coast and brought it back to their commander, showing that they'd made it there. And this split the remaining Japanese garrison into two parts, separating them in the northwest

and the northeast. The northwest, at Kitano Point is where Kherbaashi in his command bunker were. The northwest is also virtually unapproachable over land, and Kuriabashi assumed that this would be his final stand. The depth of his cave meant that none of this consub bombardment was ever going to hurt him. His firing ports, bunkers, and fighting positions replaced hundreds of feet up onto a sheer cliff face, and he was dozens of meters underground.

That being said, everyone inside was in a horrible state. According to his diaries and letters, the constant unrelenting shelling had reduced the men under his command into it like what he called a catatonic state. As for the state of the caves themselves, they became a pit of disease and squalor. There was nowhere to put the men who died. So they were just kind of piling up. They tucked them into corners or just left them where they fell and had to step over them. Adding to that, it was about 120 degrees Fahrenheit inside, incredibly humid. The smell was indescribes.

Their only supply of fresh water at this point came from rainwater, which now men were reduced to fighting each other over. At this point, the battle Kuriabashi's command was reduced to demanding men stay in place and fight rather than launch bonsai attacks. Or as he put it, quote, everyone would always like an easy way to die early. Marine commanders rounded up a few Japanese POWs and sent them towards the Japanese lines with letters to Kuriabashi, asking him to surrender, saying like, this is pointless, the battle's over, what are are you doing? Marines assumed that the answer would be no. No Japanese garrison commander had ever surrendered to them yet. They also sued that POWs wouldn't be coming back, either killed by their own comrades for surrendering, or they would simply rejoin the army. Instead, they all returned with a politely written letter in English from Kuriabashi thanking the Marines for their letter,

but saying he would not be surrendering. New Plateau, who dis? Jesus. He knew that the end was near, and he sent his final messages to Tokyo. They were so damning to the Japanese government and military they had to be edited before they were published in Japanese media because at this point, the Battle of Iwo Jima had turned him into something of a celebrity in Japan as he continued to hold out. His original letters had, quote, The gallant fighting of the men under my command has been such that even the gods would weep,

utterly empty-handed and ill-equipped against a land-seeing air attack of a material superiority that surpasses the imagination. When it was published, the line about being utterly empty-handed and all that was completely cut out. And instead, it was replaced with, quote, with all of my officers and men, reverently chanting bonsai's for the emperor's long life.

He never wrote that. He didn't say a fucking word about the emperor in his final letter. Fucking hell, lads. From here, the tunnel network was increasingly collapsing, captured, set on fire through one mean or another. his communications with Tokyo began to fail and from mid-March on

they could only communicate with the nearby island of Chi-Chiima with communications mostly boiling down to just how bad everything was getting. By March 21st, he reported that he and his men had no food or water for a week at that point. Two days later, the Japanese forces at Chi-Chiima got the last radio message from the Iwo Jima garrison

that said simply, quote, to all men of Chi-Chi-Gima. Goodbye. Shit's book, bro. Yeah, Jesus Christ. You're not in space. homie just surrender. Like, it doesn't got to go this way. Still, the garrison did not launch a bonsai charge, even if again it is written that way. Small groups of Japanese soldiers did launch counterattacks, normally at night, but the goal wasn't a meaningless suicide charge. In one case,

a group of Japanese soldiers snuck all the way to the second airfield and attacked them in there, trying to take out pilots and C-Bs and Marines. They caused hundreds of casualties before they were wiped out. This is something of a middle ground. These could be considered bonsai charges. They could also not be considered bonsai charges. You could consider these suicide attacks because they didn't expect to go back to their caves. They expected to die. But since they had a very tactical idea in mind, rather than just killing themselves, like they were trying to take out the airfield. They didn't run out screaming armed with bayonets and swords. They snuck out in the night. They broke through the lines and kept going. At some point here, both Nishi and Kuriabashi are killed. But we have no idea

how, where, or when. And there are multiple stories of how that finally all went down. For Nishi, he was either burned to death by a flamethrower in a cave, killed himself, or died fighting sometime around March 21st. We have no idea. Kuryabashi is a more complicated death to figure out. Stories range from dying in that final attack on the airfield, though nobody knows for sure. His body was never identified. And all of the ranks of their uniforms had been cut off before they left the caves. So even if he was there, you wouldn't be able to tell from looking at his uniform. Also, per Japanese military custom at the time when it came to bonsai charges, the commanders almost never took part in them.

They would order the bonsai charge, see all the men off, and then go back and kill themselves. There's another story that he killed himself in his bunker. and rather than the normal sort of shooting himself in the head or blowing himself up with a grenade, he committed ritual Sepaku. Yep. With an aide acting as his second to cut his head off so it could be carried away and hidden.

But it's just another thing we'll never know. Yeah. It's a shame though. I think it would be interesting to know which way he died. I wouldn't be surprised if he killed himself in his cave in one way or another because he did say in one of his letters that he's like, from this point forward,

I'll not be leaving the caves. again. Yeah. Stuff like that. So it makes sense that he would kill himself to me, I suppose. Iwojima was officially declared secure March 26, 1945. The Marines had suffered horrendously. 24,000 35 casualties, or one out of every three who landed there.

Jesus Christ. 6,140 of those casualties were deaths. Two Marines were known to be taken prisoner. Like I said, one was treated by Inishi, but neither of them survived. and we really don't know what happened to them. For the Japanese, about 200 men were taken prisoner, most of them taken while wounded, but the garrison was completely annihilated and 22,000 died.

But just because the island was declared secure didn't actually mean it was secure. The Marines were quickly replaced by the U.S. Army's 147th Infantry Regiment, which is the Ohio National Guard, and they soon found themselves fighting a guerrilla war for months because it turned out that there was thousands of Japanese soldiers still in the mountains. Jesus Christ. I mean, which

makes sense, right? Like as this situation rapidly falls apart for the Japanese, like there's going to be bunkers and tunnels and stuff with dudes inside who just don't know what happened. They've lost communications with everybody. And not to mention, when the battle started, Kuriabashi's orders were,

hey, if we lose, we'll continue a guerrilla war. This went on for months. The Ohio National Guard lost another 15 men killed and another 100 wounded before the final bastions of Japanese soldiers were wiped out. Kind of, because they weren't wiped out. Two Japanese machine gunners

not only withstood all of this, but remained hidden in the caves of Evajima until they finally surrendered in 1949. Okay. So I guess that was when it was finally secured. Wow. And that brings us to the point of all of this, right?

The point of all this misery, this blood, and this death. I mean, I suppose the point was the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and started the fucking war. But the tactical purpose of the battle was Iwo Jima eventually is a launching point for escorts to support the bombing campaign of the home islands. Nope. Yeah. Not even a little bit. Because its air strip wasn't really suited for what they needed, right?

It wasn't that. I mean, it was perfectly suited for fighter aircraft, but they just weren't needed. That's all boiled down to. By the time the island was taken, they just weren't necessary. Between the terminal decline of Japanese air power and just critical fuel shortages in Japan, their fighter interceptors just weren't a threat to the bombing campaigns anymore. Some people say that taking out Iwojima lessen Japan's early warning radar system, but didn't do that either.

Yes, there was a station in Iwojima, but there's another station on the island of Rhoda, which was never taken. It was like right next door. But it did end up accidentally having a huge role in the air war. But let me explain this first before we get that. Okay. Okay. An emergency landing spot for damaged or malfunctioning aircraft on their way back for missions

over Japan. Even before the battle was over, bombers were making emergency landers on Iwojima's airfields. Before the invasion of Iwo, a bomber crew would have to ditch into the ocean, which would statistically kill half of all of the crews who were forced to do it. After Iwo was captured, however, 2,000 B-29 bombers would eventually land there. It's often said that the Ewo airbases saved the lives of 25,000 aviators. But what if I told you that all of that was fucking bullshit? I would not be surprised.

There's no method or reason behind these numbers and they don't make any sense at all, but it is what you often see brought out when people try to rationalize the carnage of the battle of Iwojima. Of the 2,000 bombers that would land at Iwojima, almost none of them were emergencies. 80% was normal refueling. Also, the number of lives saved is just comically inflated to make this battle seem like it was worth a shit. Right. Not even 3,000 B-29 crewmen died during the entire war. So the idea that this number would have been inflated multiple times over without Iwo Jima is just kind of absurd.

It's without a doubt that the Iwojima airfield saved some bomber crews, but it wasn't even close to the number of Marines that died taking them. So what was the point? There wasn't one. No good answer. None. Just another step towards the home islands. 26,000 people on the Allied side, 20 odd thousand of the Japanese for what? I don't know.

You know, that's the problem when it comes to describing the purpose of how these island hopping campaigns tend to work. Every island's supposed to have a purpose, right? But that's not always the case. And I'm not saying this to rationalize this at all. It's just the nature of the horrible Pacific theater, which was like, yeah, in Europe, you might hemorrhage thousands of lives over a road or a town or a fucking, a field, whatever it might be. But the Pacific campaign didn't have those things. it was individual tiny little specks of nothing that the whole battle had to be fought in

that you still had to take because everybody believed this war at this point was only going to end when the Allies invaded the home islands. You can't necessarily leave these islands left taken but by nature of how brutal this battle was and Okinawa is coming immediately afterwards

people tend to retroactively make them of individual importance rather than taking them as a larger hole, if you will. That's all it is. It was a horrible bloody battle that had no immediate tactical purpose other than the greater campaign. It was just a thing that had to be taken. For Japan, Iwo Jima was just another crushing defeat.

But it did do a lot to dispel the notion that some Japanese leaders had that Americans wouldn't be willing to pay any price to invade and capture any island. Like some of these guys were like, sure, we lost this place or that place, but they don't have the balls to come here. And through Iwo Jima and then immediately afterwards, Okinawa, quite a few Japanese military leaders are like, oh, these dudes don't give a fuck about how many dudes they lose. They'll just keep throwing them in there. And they got the supply train to use.

This, again, would only be underlined a few days after Iwojima was declared when the invasion of Okinawa began. Yeah. And in closing, obviously, the Battle of Iwojima has become glorified in American military history. And I'm not saying it's wrong to do that, especially amongst Marines, and you can see why. As the story goes, the battle made sure that the body and the concept of the United States Marine Corps would not only survive the war, but whatever it came afterwards. And that's not just me making that up. A secretary of the Navy Forest all said that when he went to Iwo Jima, because there was a time in American history where they thought that maybe we don't need the Marines. Or maybe, like everything else to do with World War II, the reason why it owns so much of the American historical mind, despite the fact that it's almost out of living memory at this point,

is because with everything that the United States has done, has become, and continues to do, people are desperate to remember a time when wars had an end, and the powers of empire were directed at someone who might actually fucking deserve it for once. The end. And then we got to, in 2006, witness Clint Eastwood's biggest nightmare, a mountain full of Asian people. Well, he did make the movies, so maybe he was just trying to scare himself.

And, like, you know, what's really funny about those movies is, like, obviously, it's a partner, sister, brother, film, whatever we want to call it, to flags of our fathers, which is about the flag raising on Mount Surabachi. But the full details of that flag raising and who those dudes actually were didn't come out until after that movie was filmed and the book that was based on

all that. So, like, it's also not correct. obviously letters from Yuajima is you know well executed and very well thought out and like you know it's based on the Japanese perspective it's all it's shocking that Kleeney's would made that film what I find very funny about this I guess in a dark way is is like you know obviously this is Japanese military history too right and they use Japanese actors the film is almost entirely in Japanese it was saved from being complete box office bomb by its popularity in Japan that's not surprising made like one third one actually I think like one eighth of its budget back in American screenings. But the Japanese movie market, you know, box office made it, made it successful.

It's not easy now and it was certainly harder than to pitch a film to American audiences that you have to read. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's changing. But yeah, I mean, when you think about parasite doing as well as it did, but like, yeah, for a very long time, it was just dead in the water with American moviegoers to watch a film with subtitles. Not me. I saw that shit on the day it came out, which I know nobody is. surprised that I say that. But that movie rules. And obviously, a lot of that's carried by Ken Wantanabe being an absolute fucking powerhouse. It also wasn't filmed on Iwo Jima because you can't. The island of Iwojima is effectively a memorial. Yeah. Nobody lives there. You're not allowed to just go there. You only can go on very, very special tours. I would love to go there someday, but it'll probably never happen. And there's something to be said about the flaws in letters from Uuajima being

that glazes Kuryabashi to an extent that is connected to his letters, completely disconnected from the greater Imperial Japanese project itself. Those things are completely valid? 100%. I think we've made our opinions on that very clear.

But as a film, and especially from a perspective of a kind of film that you just don't see, it's 100% worth watching. Also, the book, Twilight of the Gods that I used as a source for this is one of the best books I've ever read about the Pacific campaign. It's a few volumes long, but I think if you're

interested in the greater Pacific campaign, it's hard to beat. But as always, check out our show notes. I use a lot of shit for these three episodes. Everything in there is worth reading. But when it comes to pure digestibility of the narrative in history, it's hard to beat Twilight of the Gods. Normally I pointed out in episode one but I wanted to make sure you made it all the way here but fellas that's the series but we do a thing on the show called Questions from the Legion

if you like to ask us a question support the show on Patreon you can send us a message on Patreon or in the Discord which you'll also have access to you can find instructions on how to do that on our Patreon as well or you can attach it to an artillery shell and fire it into the tunnel that we're all hiding in

and we'll answer it on air today's question is military related tell us a stupid barracks story. For people who don't know, barracks for the military is as best just understood as a dorm room full of idiots. It's a dorm. It's zero difference,

except arguably they're worse most of the time. Stupid barrack story for me. I was lazy. I didn't want to clean my room. So I got a Roomba. I pooled in with my roommate and got a Roomba. It sucked. Roomba's fucking blow.

It's just a waste of money. But we did think it was very funny to attach a knife to it. When people were in the room. And Roomba's back then didn't have the best sense. in the world. So we routinely, uh, it wouldn't like stab people. Like it didn't have enough juice. Yeah, it was more of like a, uh, a scary poke. Mm-hmm. On the ankle. Uh, and we got a lot of people with that.

We got so much trouble because we forgot to take the knife off, uh, one Monday before barracks inspections. And, uh, my platoon sergeant came in and he was like, specialist Casabian. Did you arm your fucking Roomba? And I couldn't think of what to say at that moment because, yes, that is a knife. duct tape to my vacuum cleaner. There's no denying that. But the only thing I could say is like, I'm sorry, Sergeant, I wasn't aware that arming my Rumba was against Barrick's policy. I got to tell you, uh, young enlisted guys out there, that was not the excuse he was looking for. I was in a lot of trouble. Typically, you don't get punched in the throat for stuff like that. It's more like they catch you a, you know, a barrack inspection. You have like K2 in your in the room or something. But like,

I can imagine you getting the living daylight smoked out of you for that one. Yeah, he was, he was, he was, did think it was funny because at that point I had already achieved like senior specialist status so like when you're when your senior specialist does some shit like that you don't even really get punished for it anymore because you're just like of course you would fucking do that

though I'm surprised it's not a gun I have there was the time when kind of like a barracks I went over to visit Joe and I was staying in a hostel in the Hague and like people who stay in hostels quite regularly are just like, you kind of know this happens, but, uh, heard a dude having a wang.

And then just like, well, sure he busted because he just let out the most exasperated sigh. The only, and I was just like, what the fuck. I just like, it was a lot tension built up. It was at a point when I was trying to go to sleep. So I was like, I'm just going to put my headphones back on. The only other one that I can tell, um, is I remember when I was in university and my friends had this an alcoholic trampolines with a slip disc living on their couch

who would self-medicate with drinking bottles of wine and taking Neurafm plus every day. Tom, that's only a sentence I would ever imagine coming out of your mouth. These are things that I learn when I hang out with you, Tom. Yeah, this is either you're talking to me

or you've time traveled and you're talking to someone who works in like the Regal French court. I don't really have any because I was the person that you keep fun away from except when I was in like airborne barracks as a cadet or, you know, Ranger School and stuff like that where everyone

was equally shit. I mean, I do remember getting my brief that I was going to be platoon sergeant for the next day's mission when they had actually brought us back in because of emergency weather stuff during Ranger School because the first two faces of Ranger School, they don't really, they're just like, yeah, go ahead and die. Whereas the third phase of Ranger School, they famously have killed enough people that, like, the safety standards were pretty, pretty rigorous. And we had gotten all of our clothes wet on the water crossing day. And then we got like freezing rain, rainstorm and so they're like, this is, this is dangerous. We have to bring them back into the barracks, which was sick because we got to take showers and do laundry and stuff before going back out.

But I got my briefing and I had to come out and get briefed by the ranger instructor, but I was in a shower naked, so standing at parade rest completely naked. And I have never made such perfect unbroken eye contact with another person. Anyway, oh, oh God, I have a story. It's exactly like that. But I was thinking about this, that one time when we were in infantry school, like I went to infantry school in 2007 and the army was fucking hurting back then. And so like there were days at a time where our structures just like weren't there. Like they'd show up like the NCOs would show up once a day to like, you know, do any admin stuff and give out MREs. But like there were days at a time when we just didn't do training because there was, I don't know what the fuck was going on. The army was hurting.

And we were basically camping out in the Mout site, Fort Benning. I don't know if you've ever been there, Joe. I can't remember what it's called anymore. But there's a military, basically basically an urban, military operations and urban terrain is what Mouth stands for. Basically like practicing doing room clearing and like attacking of. It's a fake city. A fake city. And it was all like cinder block village in kind of looked vaguely Eastern European because it was built before the global war on terror.

And we basically had a competition because we were bored of like, what if let's dress this place up? Because we have all of our weapons. We have blank firing adapters. It's like take the BFAs off and dress this up. And let's all see if we can take convincing photos like we're deployed so we can share them with girls we know from home on Facebook and see if we get like sympathy news or something like that.

I like the officers do that too. It was like a competition to like take the most like ridiculous fake war photos of yourself. And there's one because I have a really, really good one, but it was ruined by the fact that my buddy Jason, who's last name I won't, I won't give is on the background fucking like doing the like, you know, Timbaland horny calling face from the Nellie Furtado video permiscuous like to his girlfriend at the time. So it's very obviously we're not fucking deployed because he's like basically hollering at a girl in the back. But I'm standing there basically like with a cigarette in my mouth like just basically looking like. to practice a thousand-yard stare. I mean, boring, days at a time, boring. Competitions of, like, who can take the hardest fucking slap on a bare belly kind of thing.

Like, we all wound up with, like, we were in some kind of weird, like, Stone Age tribe because of big red hand slaps. We played baseball with pine cones and sticks. One time it rained and everybody just went outside and just, like, took showers naked in the rain with bars, which doesn't really get you clean, unfortunately. I mean, the Army was the biggest waste of my time. Collectively as a whole, yeah. Unfortunately, no cool barrack stories because I'm where fun goes to die.

This says, we haven't done a question from the Legion in the other two episodes because it was a series. I feel comfortable sharing another mount-related story. So I was stationed at Fort Knox. They have a mount site called the Zussman Training Center, quite famously from the rumors that I heard, Universal Studios helped build it. Because it's like a completely interactive city to train in. And I was made the opposition force. We're supposed to act as terrorists. were in civilian clothes, whatever,

and officers in training are training to take the city over from us. These are officers training to become cavalry scouts, so they haven't got their like job identifier yet. And it is the most boring fucking job on earth. Like Nate said, you just sit around doing nothing most of the time.

We got so fucking bored that one of the instructors told us like, hey, and you get really bored because maybe the class coming in is particularly like dumb or whatever. They can't figure out the plans that they're going to do. And the, the instructors told them where we were finally, because they, they legitimately could not scout us out in the city. And we weren't really trying that hard. But they told us like,

hey, they found where you guys are sleeping. Don't run away. Just like, sit here and wait for them. We got to give them something at this point. And we're like, all right, fine. So a buddy of mine, there's like four of us in here. There's, there's probably like 50 people playing terrorists, but there's like four of us in this terrorist cell, quote unquote. And we're like, I want to fuck with these guys so hard. What do we do? and my friend comes up with the idea of what if they capture us playing strip poker. Oh my God. And me being, I was 19 or something.

And again, I should point out here, this is a period of time in the military where only men could have these jobs. And this kind of thing was not considered. Like an EO violation or something. Terrible. Yeah. It was. It's fucking stupid. Yeah.

Don't be wrong. But yes. Joe tip here, don't do this. And I was like, well, they can't catch us playing strip poker. like they're going to kick open the door and then we're going to be in zip cuffs. They're not going to catch us doing anything. And then my friend who comes up

the idea of the original time is like, well, what if we just stripped naked and we're playing poker? And me, I was like, yeah, that makes sense. Good idea. So we strip butt naked and we're playing poker. They kick open the door and they freeze in the door. Oh, God.

They all have guns pointed at us. Obviously blanks and whatever. And this is where my friend decides to take it to the next level because this is the kind of guy who was. This is the same, I think the same year Borat came out. So we're all doing Borat accents.

You can open the door. There's just like dudes covered in dirt naked sitting on the floor just going my wife. And we all smelled terrible. It's been a month and we haven't showered. He stands up, puts his hands behind his back and starts back in his ass up towards up going, zip

coughs. You can put me in zip cuffs. You can put me in zip cuffs. Wow. Wee, we, woo. They run. They ran out of the room. We affected their tactical retreat with my friend's bare ass. Oh my fucking God. And mind you, before all this happens,

the guy in charge of the lane, who's a major, walks in, sees us all there and he's like, so this is how you're going to play this, huh? And we're like, yeah, sir. He's like, well, this should be interesting. So he's watching the whole thing. He records the whole thing on his shitty flip phone.

Oh, no. Oh, my God. So this is like a training thing we'd have to do like once a year. The next year I got Tadford again. We're sitting through the briefing of what to do is opposition force. They've added a new rule, which it says, at no point are you to fight naked? Please keep your clothes on.

Mind you, this is a military unit. So like, it's like a 100% turnover rate every three years. So no one knows the story at this point. Nobody knows the story. By the time we go back, all those officers have rotated away. Nobody is, but they tell this story like, well, what happened was, and I raised. my hand. I was like, hey, sir, Specialist Casabian, I was there.

And he had me come up in front of the room and tell the story to easily the biggest laugh I've ever gotten in my life. And this includes all of our live shows in a room full of senior non-commissioned officers and up to the rank of colonel, all laughing hysterically. And then when that all ends, like, okay, we will not be doing that. No more of that. Somewhere in a drawer in the Midwest, there's a flip phone with a video of Joe's dick and balls on a... Full nude. Like, I was dogs out, not a single thing on me other than a wristwatch. So... Unwiped ass. So, random major from Fort Knox in 2007 or eight, I would guess, if you have that video, please delete it. I would prefer if my unsanctioned army nudes got deleted. That would be great. That's actually going to be the background video for the next live show.

I have, I will find the guy before the show. And it's just going to be on loop while Bell and Sebastian is just playing. No, no, no, we're going to commission an artist to do it in the style of Jojo's bizarre adventure. I would do that. Um, speaking of things that shouldn't be deleted. Fellas, you host podcasts. Plug those podcasts. Yeah.

So I am the co-host and producer of Trash Future. And I'm also the producer of Kill James Bond and executive producer, uh, guy who fixes problems for no gods, no mayors. And I am in a band called Second Holmes, where our debut albums find a way to hate it is coming out on Bandcamp on May 5th. You can pre-order it now and preview some of the tracks and we'll put links in the show notes. Thank you. Beneath skin show about the history of everything told the history of tattooing and blood work, a show about the economy of violence, which Joe was on in April. And I also have a studio in London.

So if you want any video shoot content, want to make a podcast, just need a studio to rent for the day or your international and want to launch a podcast. Hit me up. on Blue Sky email, I don't know, get a naked soldier and march him through SE1 with a letter in his butt crack. I don't know. That's how I deliver all of my mail to Tom. This is the only show that I host.

Thank you so much for listening to it. I hope you enjoyed the series. If you like it, consider supporting us on Patreon. We're an independent podcast. And by supporting us in Patreon, you allow us to continue remaining that way. And, you know, we've been ad-free for almost a decade.

So support us on Patreon. tons of bonus stuff. And until next time, uh, don't do anything you heard on this show other than drink strange goop off of the ground. Yeah, it would be a bad idea. Drink the forbidden puddles. Drink the devil juice.