STRUGGLE FOR IWO

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 49, 27 February 1945, Page 5

STRUGGLE FOR IWO

JAPS' CHANGED TACTICS

NEW YORK, February 25,

With an abrupt change of tactics the Japanese are now fighting a Crermanstyle war pn Iwo Jima, according to a high ranking Marine Corps officer. High velocity artillery, heavy mortars, and five-foot rockets are now replacing suicide snipers and immobile machineguns. The Japanese are defending high ground with the same skill as Rommel showed on the Mareth Line.

"Enemy rocket platforms in the north and central portion of the island are under intense air attack," says the "New York Times" correspondent on the island. "Our air forces are augmented by artillery which we are now able to bring to bear in great force. The marines are now penetrating into a more thickly settled area with a network of roads which were mined as the Japanese fell back. "Mines and a heavy concentration of ack-ack guns have taken an appreciable toll of American tanks moving forward as infantry spearheads. The advance has also been slowed*by intensive mortar and artillery barrages.

"Meanwhile Mount Suribachi is being. cleaned out by marine patrols operating among pill-boxes and in caves. It will never be known how many Japanese died here, because hundreds are sealed in the caves.

"The Japanese are using every weapon and trick at their command. One Japanese crawled in among the enemy dead on the beach and fired mortar shells for several hours until he was discovered and killed. The enemy is using a variety of mines and anti-tank mines ranging from the regular to the big anti-ship type. He also uses a Tojo cocktail, the Japanese version of the Molotov cocktail."

Broadcasting from Guam, Mr. J. V. Forrestal, Secretary of the U.S. Navy, said the marines so far had killed four Japanese for every American lost.