Ie Shima — 90th Bomb Group forward base, summer 1945; the surrender and the MGM camera

Ie Shima (伊江島, also Ie Jima) is a small coral island about 5 miles off the northwest coast of Okinawa in the Ryukyu Islands. It is about 8 square miles in area — mostly low and flat, with a distinctive limestone-tuff peak (Mount Gusuku) at its eastern end. The island was captured by U.S. forces during the Battle of Okinawa in April 1945, in fighting from 16–21 April.

Ernie Pyle’s death — 18 April 1945

The most prominent American to die on Ie Shima during the battle was Ernie Pyle — the Scripps-Howard war correspondent whose dispatches from the European and Pacific theaters had won the 1944 Pulitzer Prize and made him the war’s most-read American voice. Pyle was killed by Japanese sniper fire on a forward road on Ie Shima on 18 April 1945, four days into the battle. The Army erected a simple wooden marker at the site reading “At this spot the 77th Infantry Division lost a buddy / Ernie Pyle / 18 April 1945.” The marker became the Ernie Pyle Memorial — today maintained as a small permanent monument, one of only a few WWII American memorials on Japanese soil. Robert Earl Wildermuth notes in his memoir that the Ie Shima he flew from was “where Ernie Pyle was killed by a sniper.” The memory is a Pacific-tour landmark for the whole American war generation.

The 90th Bomb Group moves to Ie Shima — summer 1945

The 90th Bombardment Group moved forward from McGuire Field at Mindoro to Ie Shima during summer 1945 as the U.S. heavy-bomber order of battle pushed north toward the Japanese home islands. The Van Valen crew was on Ie Shima for the last months of the war.

What happened here for Robert Earl

The Big One Phase 4 sits on Ie Shima:

• Late July 1945 — the cancelled-then-Shanghai-redirected suicide mission. The Van Valen crew had finished their required missions and been assigned a brand-new airplane to fly home when their names went back up on the operations board for one more flight. At the briefing tent: only the oldest crews, the Group Chaplain (who had never attended a briefing before), and no target marked on the map. Sealed envelope, to be opened thirty minutes into the flight. Cancelled three days running. On the fourth day, in the air, aborted to Shanghai aerodrome — where the strike destroyed 54 enemy aircraft on the ground. Only after returning was the original target revealed: the camouflaged remains of the Japanese fleet in the Inland Sea of Japan, just discovered by reconnaissance. The flight up the inlet would have been a suicide mission. “Hurray for the Navy!!!”
• c. mid-September 1945 — the MGM newsreel cameraman over Nagasaki flight launched from Ie Shima.
• The Japanese surrender delegation — landed at Ie Shima in three Betty bombers painted with green crosses; “the first thing we saw was a hand with a bottle of champagne sticking out.”
• The peace celebration — drunken friendly-fire firing of rifles into the air; one officer killed and another wounded. Robert Earl took his radio and hid in a foxhole. “All in jest I hope but never the less intimidating.” The closest he came to being killed in the whole war.
• The 185-knot typhoon — “the biggest typhoon on record” — flew the mess hall Quonset hut as one piece across a baseball field. The weather station blew away.
• The trip home — three days of post-storm aircraft repairs, then the long flight back via Hawaii to McClellan Field, California.

After the war

Ie Shima reverted to Japanese civilian administration after the war. The U.S. military maintained a small presence at the wartime airfield through the postwar Okinawa-administration period; today Ie Jima Auxiliary Airfield is a small U.S. Marine Corps training facility on the island under the Status of Forces Agreement. The Ernie Pyle memorial remains.

Sources: The Big One, Phase 4 (Ie Shima postscript); Robert Earl Wildermuth’s 1989 memoir; Ernie Pyle on Wikipedia.