by Ted Sherman

Created on: November 07, 2008

You tell me. We lost more than 7,000 Marines in the first two days of the invasion of Iwo Jima, mostly teenage kids just a month or two out of boot camp. Of course, the primary reason for such heavy losses was not only the deeply dug-in Japanese defenders. As usual, it was the mindlessly poor planning and bad intelligence of Navy and Marine brass back in the safe officers clubs in Honolulu.

As we stood offshore for three days before the landings, we could see the big Navy battlewagons and cruisers pummel every inch of the landing area, while carrier fighters and bombers dropped megatons of ordinance on every suspected defensive area on the beach and beyond. Impressive as hell, but when the Marines came ashore, before they died by the hundreds, all they saw were fake trenches and guns.

The Japanese engineers had more than six months to fortify the hills and mountain areas beyond the beaches with intricate series of interconnecting tunnels and hidden pillbox and artillery positions, all zeroed in to the beach areas where they knew the Marines had to land. What's all this got to do with interrogation involving torture? Maybe this will clear it up a bit.

As the Marines finally worked their way through the soft volcanic sand, they began making progress. In World War II, the story always was that Japanese troops never surrendered, preferring to die in battle. Maybe this was true early in the war, when their veteran military were the best trained in the world. But this was 1945, and in the past three years, the Japanese losses had been enormous in men, ships and aircraft. Most of the Japanese troops on Iwo were recent conscripts, and like the Marines, teenagers.

The war would be over in less than six months. Therefore, despite their reputation, many poorly-trained Japanese soldiers were captured alive, some very willingly. Because the enemy artillery was still taking a terrible toll on the Marines, the word went out to capture Japanese officers for interrogation. The infantry officer prisoners would never give out information under any circumstances. Not one of the combat officers ever admitted he understood English. However, many other Japanese officer captives were engineers who had been responsible for the massive fortifications.

They were the ones taken to a cave for Marine interrogation. While shells exploded outside, continuing to kill and maim Marines, there wasn't much time for polite conversation. I never saw it personally, but I was told each Marine questioner calmly lit blow torches as he began asking questions of the enemy engineers. I was also told the captives, all apparent grads of MIT or Cal Tech, immediately disclosed in perfect English the full details of all the Japanese defenses. Their information save many American lives.

No WWII Marine intelligence report ever mentioned the use of blow torches. Here's my question. If you were in the same situation, and your buddies were dying all around you, would you ever justify the use of torture as an interrogation technique?

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