Posted on 02/19/2018 8:09:54 AM PST by Oldpuppymax
Seventy three years ago today the United States Marine Corps sent waves of teenaged men onto the black foreboding beaches on a Japanese held island called Iwo Jima. Capturing Iwo Jima was essential to the American war against Japan as it offered a place for battered bombers to safely land which would save the lives of hundreds of airmen returning from sorties over Japan in barely flyable planes.
The average age of these men was just under nineteen. They knew what was at stake and charged up Iwo’s beaches sometimes straight into enemy machine gun fire that would have stopped lesser soldiers. They kept pushing and killing and getting killed, but never stopped; never whined; never “protested” and never thought of disgracing themselves by demanding a “safe space.”
They were the finest America had and they did a job that simply had to be done. They fought to keep us from being the slaves of the Japanese. They made sure the Marine boast that “If it wasn’t for the United States Marines we’d be speaking Japanese,” was backed up not by words but by their blood.
Today the great grandsons of the Men of Iwo Jima are largely an embarrassment to themselves and their country. Their blue spiked hair gold ringing and proud ignorance of how and why America works make them pale shadows when juxtaposed with their hero great grandfathers.
Many of the Men of Iwo Jima had not finished high school when they stepped forward to fight for their country. Many of them had volunteered after the terrible beating the Marine Corps had sustained in battles like Gradual Canal and Peleliu.
Yet they still came. They didn’t have to be told what they had to do. They were men at the age of 16 and 17 and many were handling man size responsibilities before they were sweating it out in Marine Boot Camp.
Now there are only a few of these warriors left. Those who are still with us are frail and not what they once were physically but just as strong in their love of America as ever. Should you have the honor meeting one of these heroes thank him because God knows he deserves our tanks and recognition.
Fantastic post..!
some of the points you raised were things I had not considered.
I think the B-29’s still flew from Tinian, but Iwo was on a direct line to Tokyo. Its location allowed P-51’s to fly escort, so probably the lives saved were much greater than the hundreds that had a place to land.
The infantry always got chewed up in WW II and Iwo was an infantry battle. Omar Bradley said, “Previous combat had taught us that casualties are lumped primarily in the rifle platoons. For here are concentrated the handful of troops who must advance under enemy fire. It is upon them that the burden of war falls with greater risk and with less likelihood of survival than any other of the combat arms. An infantry division of WW II consisted of 81 rifle platoons, each with a combat strength of approximately 40 men. Altogether those 81 assault units comprised but 3,240 men in a division of 14,000…..Prior to invasion we had estimated that the infantry would incur 70 percent of the losses of our combat forces. By August we had boosted that figure to 83 percent on the basis of our experience in the Normandy hedgerows.”
For the 4th and 29th infantry, that meant 500% casualties in their rifle companies in less than one year after landing on D-Day.
My uncle once mentioned something in passing about being on Iwo Jima shortly after the landing (D-4 or something??). REALLY! You were on Iwo Jima!!??
“I was just setting up the communications for the airstrip - the Marines had already cleared the area. Well - sometimes a sniper would shoot from the jungle on the other side of the runway.”
Still got a Christmas card from him this year - but not sure how many more of those we will see.
The B-29’s flying from Tinian, put Iwo on a direct line to Tokyo. Its location allowed P-51’s to fly escort, so the lives saved were much greater than the hundreds that had a place to land. Maybe that is how the estimate of 29,000 arose?
There were two flag raisings on Mount Suribachi and even Joe Rosenthal, who took the iconic photo, wasn’t aware of the confusion it would later cause. My theory is that Bradley was in the first one and afterwards in the fog of war, merely assumed that he was being honored for that, rather than the second one which became so famous.
At the time the photo was taken, no one knew the names of the six men and in all probability they weren’t aware of who was where or doing what either. All six had been fighting and experiencing the horror of the battle; they were still under sporadic fire and what photography claimed as the prize of World War II was to them merely another mundane moment in the midst of the fear and carnage that would drag on for several more weeks.
As another poster noted, Bradley was a very honorable man. He was actually a Navy Corpsman who won the Navy Cross for his heroism while treating wounded Marines on the beach and was himself wounded so grievously that he wasn’t expected to survive. He never tried to capitalize on his role, avoided all reporters and historians and not even his family was aware of his Navy Cross until they found it after his death decades later.
People involved in incredibly stressful situations frequently can’t remember who is standing next to them, what they were doing or how they behaved. I can’t imagine that the stress of Iwo Jima was any different, especially considering the nature of what those men were involved in. So, John Bradley gets a pass in my book. Nothing in his personality or future years ever had the slightest hint of dishonesty or underhandedness. Just the fact that he downplayed his role in that moment if proof of his honor.
“IS proof of his honor.”
I give thanks for this nation regularly
including our combat forces
and top of that list is the USMC
old Breed and new.
Thank our God for the USMC.
Yep. Mine had a couple of Purple Hearts. Back then, they just kept fighting regardless of being wounded. These boys were no little pussy-whipped whimps for sure....some tough SOBs actually. He was in the 1st Marine Division, G27.
After Okinawa, he was assigned to China. He was there when the commie revolution just started. They could have easily stopped it but were told “NO” and couldn’t even give the Nationalists a single bullet.
After that, he went at Great Lakes as a “hand-to-hand” combat instructor until he finally got out. They tried to get him to stay in, but he’d had more than enough and had met my mother. Those in his unit that stayed in were all killed in Korea.
By the time I was age 6, he had me shooting a little single-shot .22. By age 8, he had me “throwing just the right punches”. Not many messed with me all thru school after a few good scraps. He taught me how to hunt, fish and to respect my elders and my country. To say I miss him badly is an understatement.
“And why did Stalin not want to give us bases? Because he was paranoid, and also he was secretly laughing, every day, at how gullible the westerners were.”
Another possible reason. It would have meant war with Japan. To allow the Americans to use Soviet Far East territory for air bases to attack Japan would have violated the 1941 Soviet Japanese non aggression pact. The Soviet strength in the Far East had been greatly reduced because the Soviets needed the troops to save Moscow in the winter of 41. The Soviets did not return those divisions or their equipment to the Far East until late March 1945. This was in preparation for their attack on the Japanese in August. War in 1944 with the Japanese would have been a two front affair. Something that the Soviet High Command advised Stalin to avoid at all cost.
A True American Hero, one of hundreds of thousands
Today’s youth ought to have to watch documentaries and film clips over and over, as I have done, to appreciate heroism beyond description
And alot of “adults” should have to also. Let’s start with Pelosi and the Obamas
“Over 29 thousand B-29 air crewmen saved because they could land on Iwo. Some 7000 lost taking Iwo. So I guess the answer is yes it was worth it.”
Well, of course it was worth it except to the families of the Marines who perished.
But it still would have been better to build fixed bases in Siberia and defend them, rather than fight for islands. Stalin’s excuse was that he had a fragile neutrality treaty with Japan that he didn’t want to violate. He was concerned that Japanese troops would invade from Manchuria.
But Japan was already over-extended once the Americans entered the war. By 1943 Japan could not have sustained an effective invasion of Siberia; besides, it’s not like Siberia is easy territory to conquer anyway. All we had to do was put the air bases a few hundred miles from the border and dare the Japanese to try to invade from Manchuria.
As for “29,000 B-29 crewmen” I think you need to check your facts and your math. A total of 3,000 B-29s were built over the lifetime of the aircraft but only 165 were operational by April 1944 and probably less than 1500 by August 1945 when the bomb was dropped on Japan. I can’t easily find month by month statistics but we can make an assumption that 1000 were deployed to the Pacific by the end of the war. This is supported by the fact that the largest B-29 bombing run during the war was only 334 aircraft.
Assuming the loss rate was 25% for these 1,000, and that half of those landed on Iwo instead of putting down in the water, than means 125 aircraft were saved. That’s 1250 men, not 29,000.
Even History.net says that there were only “hundreds of emergency landings on Iwo.” Let’s assume 500. Let’s also assume that only half really required the Iwo landing, and half could have made it further to another base. 250 aircraft x 10 men equals 2,500. Certainly not 29,000. And that’s not necessarily “lives saved” but merely lives that didn’t have to be pulled out of the water.
Bravo to you for trying, but your math really needs some work. And when you make a claim you ought to give it a sanity check.
Informative post..thanks. I think your numbers are closer to being accurate.
My father was a B-29 pilot flying from Saipan. Flew the low level Tokyo fire raids in March of ‘45. Shot up over the target, and landed on Iwo on D+20 with two engines out on one side. As I remember, he mentioned that there were approximately 270 emergency landings on Iwo..2700 men.
I’m eternally grateful to the Marines for saving his life.
“By age 8, he had me “throwing just the right punches”. Not many messed with me all thru school after a few good scraps. He taught me how to hunt, fish and to respect my elders and my country. To say I miss him badly is an understatement.”
As the oldest son of a combat tested Marine, my youth had a special ingredient. That meant scouting, every sport, church fellowship, etc. And it meant Devil Pups, a USMC program for teen aged boys.
It also meant Sunday family time, was wrestling for the males in the living room. My youngest brother was Southern California Champion, BTW. He had been at the bottom of a 4 person pecking order since he could crawls into the center of the room. We had the benefit of years of “matches” at home before we got to the school team.
And shooting, fishing, camping, etc.
Our father grew up in Wyoming, where males in those days had real cowboys for fathers, as ours did.
“When the Army and the Navy/ shall gaze upon Heavens scenes/they will find the streets are guarded by United States Marines’.
Don’t know how !
Go to History Net, maybe there is an explanation there.
I believe that’s a reference to the terrible toll they paid for those victories.
G.I. Joe was just a toy, wasn’t he?
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