Why did the US win the Battle of Iwo Jima?

Answer 1

There was never any real question about the eventual outcome of the War in the Pacific. Initially the Japanese military had destroyed pretty much the entire U.S. Pacific Fleet through their suprise attack, so it took some work to get a Navy back together. Most of our military was busy in Europe, but as soon as Germany fell, Japan was through. At that point, most of the military resources were redirected to the Pacific. By the end, Japan was without fuel, food or other resources. People were dying at an alarming rate, from starvation, disease and the bombing that was intended to force the Emperor and his Generals to surrender. Japan wanted to try to take over the Pacific again. They had learned from the war and didn't want to be occupied because they still had plans to occupy their neighboring islands. The Allied forces did not want to allow that so they required an unconditional surrender. The end of the war was about Japan trying to get the best possible terms of surrender. They knew that they were defeated, but they hoped that the far more sentimental Americans and Europeans would not be able to tolerate killing the women and children as would be necessary in an invasion of Mainland Japan. All of the Japanese citizens had been instructed to fight, using swords, pitchforks or kitchen knives. The idea was that when the sentimental Europeans and Americans tried to go easy on the Japanese women and children, they would get a knife in the back. Estimates are that between 750,000 and 1,000,000 Allied soldiers would have died in an all-out invasion of Japan, and probably that many or more Japanese would have been killed. Looking back, use of the bomb was frightful, but if we are logical about it, NOT using the bomb would have been worse. Can you imagine the outcry of the American people if they found out that the U.S. had developed a weapon that would have ended the war without a single U.S. soldier dying. What would you say to congress if YOU found out that your father, uncle or grandfather had died in a conventional invasion when we had a weapon sitting, gathering dust, that would have ended the war without loosing a single soldier? It was the right decision, it was just a terrible war.

Answer 2

Numerical Superiority; every time Japan sank one of our warships, we replaced it with TEN MORE! We had more battleships at the end of WWII, than we did in the beginning of the war. We had more aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers, airplanes, tanks, and fighting men, at the END OF WWII, than we did before WWII even started. Unlike Japan & Germany, they were scrapping the bottom of the barrel for men & war machines.

This is why the AXIS feared the US, they knew our INDUSTRIAL MIGHT. Hitler & Tojo went against the advice of those who knew the United State's production capacity. For every aircraft the enemy destroyed, the US replaced it with TEN MORE! For every tank destroyed, we replaced it, along with 10 MORE! Germany & Japan could never win against such as industrial giant as the United States.

The same condition existed with fighter pilots. Germany & Japan had to fly their "Ace" pilots until they nearly all died. The US had so many "Ace" pilots that we rotated them home on "war bond" drives.

When WWII ended in 1945, factories had lined up in their parking lots, thousands upon thousands of brand new airplanes, tanks, artillery, etc. these were awaiting shipment overseas to the front lines. When the war ended, these brand new factory made planes and tanks(We had so many!), WENT DIRECTLY TO THE SMELTER (Re-cycled metal) by the thousands.

WWII was WON by US Production.

Ultimately, the above is true. World War Two was an industrial war, where the side with the better organized and efficient industry would eventually overwhelm the other side. However, the key word there is eventually. The Japanese started the war with a significant advantage in both quality and quantity of its navy. In such a situation, a potentially war-winning strategy is to destroy enough of your enemies' forces to force them into a negotiated peace, before their industrial advantage can overwhelm the opponent.

US Military planners recognized this risk - that if the IJN was able to destroy a sufficient amount of the US Navy, and take several key locations (the Hawaiian Islands and New Guinea being the most critical), the US could be effectively prevented from countering them and forced to either negotiate a peace, or fight a very much longer and costlier war.

Good estimates are that if the Japanese had been able to successfully capture Hawaii (which is by no means as far-fetched as it might sound today) and New Guinea, they would have been able to knock Australia out of the war, and probably lengthen the path to final US victory by as much as 5 years.

So, how did the US Navy manage to avoid this nightmare scenario and play for enough time to assemble the overwhelming force that eventually would defeat Japan? Four things contributed to that goal, all of which happened in 1942-43:

1. Careful husbanding of existing US forces - recognizing the vulnerable position the US was in, post-Pearl Harbor, the US Navy embarks on a radical change in strategy from pre-war planning. Deprived of its battleships, the USN changes to a carrier-specific strategy, something that even the Japanese never really embrace. The USN recognizes that the aircraft carrier is now completely dominant, and that surface vessels exist mostly just to protect the carriers. As such, the USN is extremely careful about under what conditions it will risk its few carriers, and avoids as much as possible getting into any large-scale battle where the possibility of losing most remaining navy is a possibility. That is, the USN strenuously avoids the "decisive battle" concept of Alfred Thayer Mahan's theories, theories which had dominated worldwide naval thinking for 40 years (and still ultimately dominated Japanese thinking).
2. Extensive code-breaking - the level to which US codebreaking of Japanese messaging is now well-known. Less well-appreciated is the amazing advantage that essentially being able to look at your opponent's cards gives one side. The very, very careful risk-taking and husbanding of US forces exemplified by Nimitz and King's deployment is made possible by understanding which points of Japanese interest were really critical, and being able to deploy significant US forces only where the risks were acceptable for the reward.
3. Lots of Luck - while many recognize the former two as the prime reasons for US victories in '42 and '43, a large amount of the decisive nature of those victories goes down to luck. While, in the words of Louis Pasteur "Fortune Favors the Prepared Mind" and the US was certainly well-prepared (due mostly to #2) to take advantage of any break that comes its way, the fact remains that the "balance of luck" goes decisively to the Americans. Time and time again bold chances taken by the US turn out favorably, when rational predictions would state that any success would have been much more modest. Similarly, the Japanese seem generally unable to catch a good break after Pearl Harbor; when presented with two reasonable options, the Japanese seem doomed to pick the one that turns out worse for them.
4. The outstanding success of the US Submarine Force's strategy - another less-heralded portion of the US naval victory is the complete annihilation of the Japanese Merchant Marine by US submarines. The US manages to successfully accomplish the mission that the German U-Boats fail at: the complete strangulation of an island-nation's commerce, and the corresponding collapse of that island-nation's industry. One of the reasons that the US out-produces the Japanese by 10:1 over the course of the war is that Japan is unable to effectively produce very many replacement arms, due to a chronic shortage of critical war material. This is due to the almost unopposed slaughter of Japanese merchant vessels. Due to institutional factors, the IJN assigned virtually all destroyers to fleet protection duties, and never made merchant vessel protection a priority. Indeed, the IJN never even instituted the convoy system, and lagged significantly behind in the development of anti-submarine technology. Another large reason for the dominance what the recognition by USN leadership that the Submarine Force should act (mostly) independently from the surface navy - that is, submarines had their own strategy and goals, and were seldom tied to surface navy fleet. The IJN on the other hand, usually used submarines as advanced scouts and screening for their surface fleets, and didn't generally engage in the independent "hunting" of surface vessels that was typical for most US submarine missions.

Answer 3

Monday, August 6, 1945 the United States dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, Thursday, August 9th, we dropped another bomb on Nagasaki. We made it clear we could continue to obliterate Japanese cities until none were left. On August 15th Japan surrendered. Intermittent fighting continued for some time after that, but essentially that action is what brought the war in the Pacific theatre to an end.

Answer 4

100,000 U.S. Soldiers...

110 fully loaded U.S. Bombers with napalm and heavy bombs...

Tons of artillery from the Navy ships off the coast...

36 Days of non-stop us moving forward and attacking them on an island the size of Manhattan...

You tell me why we won... Can you say, "Overwhelming forces"?