US Strategy and Pre-Battle Advances
Unlike the Japanese, the United States had a very different approach at the battle of Iwo Jima. While the Japanese completely fought from underground, Americans fought by land, sea, and air. One advantage that Americans had over Japan was the amount of soilders America had recruited compared to Japan. The US had nearly 4 times the amount of soilders than the Japanese had. The US had prepared marine forces, air forces, and land forces. But before the actual battle, the US had already started bombing surrounding areas of Iwo Jima and Japanese Forces. The reason was because the US wanted to soften Japanese defenses and to prepare for the actual battle nine months later. In contrast to the US, the Japanese spent the time prior to the battle preparing and building up their defenses rather than trying to tone down their enemy forces.
Air/Marine Strategy:
The main ground and land forces for the United States was the marine and naval forces. At the beginning of the battle the US navy forces had pounded the Japanese soilders for 3 whole days. The US had a total of 6 submarines during that time and had activated all 6 at the Japanese the first few days of the battle. The United States had predicted that the battle at Iwo Jima would not take more than a couple of days. but in fact the whole battle took almost more than a month to completely stop. Ground Strategy: Although ground strategy was fought mostly with navy submarines, the US also implemented ground strategies. The main goal of the US was to focus on landing their assualt force and securing Mt. Suribachi, which was located on the high ground of the island. "No other island received as much preliminary pounding as did Iwo Jima" -- Admiral Chester Nimitz
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