The banzai charge was a common tactic and was used extensively throughout the Pacific War. There were cases where hundreds of Japanese would be slaughtered with only a few marines becoming casualties. as the war went on, the charges fell out of common practice as the Japanese realized they were not accomplishing anything and were only used as a last resort. The engagements on Peleliu and Iwo Jima did not feature grandiose charges, but most of the other battles did. The pacific did a great job of portraying combat in the pacific. Very primal, very brutal, and very mind numbing for both sides.

It was, at least early in the war.

During the Guadalcanal Campaign (1942-3), at least parts of the Japanese army believed that Japanese soldiers were physically and mentally superior to the Americans they were fighting, and thought that Americans could be cowed or thrown back by old-fashioned charges with sword and bayonet. This did not generally go well for them, as in the Battle of the Tenaru River, where a vastly outnumbered Japanese detachment attacked a defensive American line and was repelled with extremely heavy losses. Essentially the same thing happened three weeks later in the Battle of Edson's Ridge, and then again a few weeks after that in the Battle for Henderson Field. I am not personally familiar with the tactic's use during the American land invasions that took place in 1943, but by the time of the Iwo Jima invasion in early 1944 (as /u/OhGodMoreRoadRash mentioned), the commanding general specifically forbade the so-called banzai charges as a waste of manpower. Despite this, when it became clear that the Japanese were losing that particular battle, nighttime banzai charges happened anyway.

Source: Frank, Richard B., Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle.