It’s February 20, 1945 and the United States Marine Corps has bisected the neck of the island of Iwo Jima. In this show, the Japanese will unleash the fearsome kamikaze and we’ll hear from a kamikaze who miraculously survived to tell the tale. Thousands of Navy personnel and hundreds of Japanese pilots won’t be so lucky. Meanwhile, Japanese commander Tadamichi Kuribayashi is decimating the Marines in the beachhead, slamming shell after shell into their positions from heavily fortified strong points, many of them imperceptible to the human eye. The shelling, flamethrowers, and constant bombing reduced the island to a hell-like pit of destruction. The marines are going to have to storm through this hell to attack the Japanese strong points. They said it was like storming hell.  And this is their story.

The drink this show is Sake, 3 bullets out of 5.

http://media.blubrry.com/429895/archive.org/download/BCfinal9/BCfinal9.mp3

Download link: download

Map of Battlefield

References:

Iwo Jima by Bill Ross

Into the Rising Sun edited by Patrick K. O’Donnell

Mishima by John Nathan

I was a Kamikaze by Ryuji Nagatsuka

Reaping the Whirlwind by Nigel Cawthorne

War without Mercy by John W. Dower

Hell in the Pacific by Jim McHenry and Bill Sloan

Sun and Steel by Yukio Mishima

War at Sea by Marcus Faulkner

The West Point Military Atlas of Modern War edited by Thomas E. Griess

The West Point Military History of The Second World War Asia and Pacific edited by Thomas E. Griess

Hagakure by Yamamoto Tsunetomo and William Scott Wilson (trans.)

A History of Japan by R. H. P. Mason and J. G. Caiger

The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 by John Toland

The Second World War by John Keegan

Contemporary Japan: History, Politics, and Social Change by Jeff Kingston

Music References:

Powerglove

“Warzone”

http://powergloveaudio.com/