As soon as the Marines pushed inland to a line of enemy bunkers, they came under devastating machine gun and artillery fire which cut down many of the men. By the end of the day, the Marines reached the west coast of the island, but their losses were appalling: almost 2, men killed or wounded.
For the rest of February, the Americans pushed north, and by March 1 had taken two-thirds of the island, but it was not until March 26 that the island was finally secured. The Japanese fought to the last man, killing 6, Marines and wounding nearly 20, more. The Japanese losses totaled well over 20, men killed, and only 1, prisoners were taken. Historians debate whether it was strategically worth the casualties sustained.
Iwo Jima: Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, by Joe Rosenthal, became the only photograph to win the Pulitzer Prize for Photography in the same year as its publication, and came to be regarded in the United States as one of the most significant and recognizable images of the war.
The day-long battle lasted from April 1 until June 22, After a long campaign of island hopping, the Allies were approaching Japan and planned to use Okinawa, a large island only miles away from mainland Japan, as a base for air operations for the planned invasion of Honshu, the Japanese mainland. Four divisions of the U. The nicknames refer to the ferocity of the fighting, the intensity of Japanese kamikaze attacks, and the sheer numbers of Allied ships and armored vehicles that assaulted the island.
The battle was one of the bloodiest in the Pacific, with more than 82, direct casualties on both sides: 14, Allied deaths over 12, Americans killed or missing and 77, Japanese soldiers, excluding those who died from their injuries later. Some islands that saw major battles, such as Iwo Jima, were uninhabited or previously evacuated. Okinawa, by contrast, had a large indigenous civilian population.
As part of the naval operations surrounding the battle, the Japanese super-battleship Yamato was sunk and both sides lost considerable numbers of ships and aircraft. Meanwhile, Iwo Jima was also an island that the Japanese military needed to defend at all costs. As the island was an integral part of Japan -- unlike the Philippines which Japan occupied before it was later taken back by the U. Q: If approximately 30, people perished on the island, what happened to the bodies and remains of the war dead?
A: The U. Although Iwo Jima is a remote island, it is still part of Tokyo. It is desirable for as many remains to be retrieved as possible while bereaved family members are alive.
Also in The Mainichi. Company B, 1st Battalion, 28th Marines, went through nine company commanders in the fighting; 12 different Marines served as platoon leader of the second platoon, including two buck privates. Each division, each regiment, reported similar conditions. As the extent of the losses became known in the press, the American public reacted with shock and dismay as they had 14 months earlier at Tarawa. This time, however, the debate about the high cost of forcibly seizing an enemy island raged in the press while the battle was still being fought.
The Marine Corps released only one official communique about specific battle losses during the battle, reporting casualties of nearly 5, men on 22 February. Five days later, at the insistence of press baron William Randolph Hearst, an early supporter of the MacArthur-for-President claque, the San Francisco Examiner ran a front page editorial bewailing the Marines' tactics and losses.
Unfortunately, the Hearst editorial received wide play; many families of Marines fighting at Iwo Jima forwarded the clippings. Marines received these in the mail while the fighting still continued, an unwelcome blow to morale. President Roosevelt, long a master of public opinion, managed to keep the lid on the outcry by emphasizing the sacrifice of the troops as epitomized by the Joe Rosenthal photograph of the second Suribachi flag-raising.
The photograph was already widely renowned. FDR made it the official logo of the Seventh War Bond Drive and demanded the six flag-raisers be reassigned home to enhance popular morale. Regrettably, three of the six men had already been killed in subsequent fighting in the drive north on Iwo Jima. No one questioned the objective; Iwo Jima was an island that categorically had to be seized if the strategic bombing campaign was ever going to be effective.
The island could therefore not be bypassed or "leap frogged. Neither Japan nor the United States had signed the international moratorium, there were no civilians on the island, the Americans had stockpiles of mustard gas shells in the Pacific theater. But President Roosevelt scotched these considerations quickly.
America, he declared, would never make first use of poison gas. In any case, the use of poison gas on an area as relatively small as Iwo Jima, whose prevailing winds would quickly dissipate the gas fumes, became moot. This left the landing force with no option but a frontal amphibious assault against the most heavily fortified island America ever faced in the war. On the other hand, seizure of Iwo Jima provided significant strategic benefits.
The parallel capture of the Philippines and Iwo Jima, followed immediately by the invasion of Okinawa, accelerated the pace of the war, bringing it at long last to Japan's doorstep. Kyushu and Honshu would be next. Iwo Jima in American hands produced immediate and highly visible benefits to the strategic bombing campaign. Marines fighting on the island were reminded of this mission time and again as crippled B Superforts flew in from Honshu. The capture of Iwo Jima served to increase the operating range, payload, and survival rate of the big bombers.
The monthly tonnage of high explosives dropped on Imperial Japan by Bs based in the Marianas increased eleven-fold in March alone. By war's end, a total of 2, Bs made forced landings on the island. This figure represented 24, flight crewmen, many of whom would have perished at sea without the availability of Iwo Jima as a safe haven.
Said one B pilot, "whenever I land on this island I thank God for the men who fought for it. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi proved to be one of the most competent field commanders the Marines ever faced.
He displayed a masterful grasp of the principles of simplicity and economy of force, made maximum use of Iwo's forbidding terrain, employed his artillery and mortars with great skill, and exercised command with an iron will virtually to the end. He was also a realist. Without hope of even temporary naval or air superiority he knew he was doomed from the start. In five weeks of unremitting pressure, the Americans breached every strongpoint, exterminated his forces, and seized the island.
Iwo Jima represented at once the supreme test and the pinnacle of American amphibious capabilities in the Pacific War.
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