Where is Suicide Cliff?
Well, it’s not where the guides say it is (above Wheeler Point,) that’s for sure. Whilst Japanese did jump from cliffs, bodies from the top of the cliffs at Wheeler Point would hardly have landed on the beach, which is where reliable reports place them. There isn’t one. On the morning of February 19, 1945 the D Company soldiers who survived the night at Wheeler Point removed nearly 300 bodies of Japanese soldiers they had killed during the terrible night battle. There was no way the company, probably then less than 70 able bodied men, could have shoveled in the hard ground to bury the corpses. Instead they simply carried the dead Japanese marines and dropped them over the cliff 10 meters south of Wheeler Point. I can see how there had come to be some explanation for the remains found on the sheer cliff but the reasoning is dead wrong. The name appears to have been attributable to the black hand of history, less than careful scholarship. Members of D Coy refer to the place as Banzai Cli
