U.S. MARINES YESTERDAY AND TODAY BY J.R. WILSON
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t dawn on Feb. 19, 1945, some 70,000 U.S. Marines – the largest Marine deployment in history – began landing on the powdery volcanic ash shore of Iwo Jima, a tiny 8-square-mile island 760 miles south of Tokyo, at the end of the Japanese island chain. Its capture was considered vital because Japanese aircraft using the 5-mile-long island’s two airfields were successfully intercepting U.S. B-29 Superfortress bombers attacking the main islands. Before the invasion, the U.S. 20th Air Force lost more B-29s to interceptors flying from Iwo Jima that it did in attacks over the Japanese homeland. Despite months of preinvasion shelling by U.S. ships and bombers, the estimated 21,000 Japanese soldiers were well protected by hundreds of caves and man-made tunnels. Those ran from near the shore to the island’s highest mountain, the 554-foot-tall Mount Suribachi, home to a seven-story fortress equipped with weapons, communications, and supplies. By sunset on the first day, 2,400 Marines had been killed or wounded. Four days of bloody fighting later, Mt. Suribachi was captured and the most iconic photo of Marine warfighters was taken: the raising of the American flag at its peak. That was just the opening engagement in what was to be five bloody, hard-fought weeks for Operation Detachment, which U.S. military planners had expected to last only a few days with little Japanese opposition after nearly a year of air and naval bombing of the island. Those assessments had led Pacific Fleet Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, who was in charge of the operation, to comment: “Well, this will be easy. The Japanese will surrender Iwo Jima without a fight.” By the end, more than 26,000 Marines were dead or wounded and all but 216 Japanese had been killed, making it the first time total U.S. casualties exceeded those of the enemy. The Marines who ran from their landing craft onto the black sands of Iwo Jima’s shore to begin what Lt. Gen. Holland M. “Howlin’ Mad” Smith called “the most savage and the most costly battle in the history of the Marine Corps,” were equipped with little more than basic armament of the day – sidearms, rifles, machine guns, grenades, flamethrowers, knives, and dogs. Their combat boots, thin metal helmets, and camouflage uniforms offered no real protection against a rain of Japanese bullets, grenades, and mortar shells. “You could’ve held up a cigarette and lit it on the stuff going by,” Lt. Col. Justice M. “Jumpin’ Joe” Chambers, who led the landing of
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U.S. MARINE CORPS PHOTO
U.S. MARINES YESTERDAY AND TODAY
