3 Years ago today, the 70th Anniversary . . .
My wife (who lost a 17 yr old uncle on Mt Suribachi the day before The Flag raising) spoke with two Marines who knew her uncle.
WOW is all we can say afterwards. Stunned silence, chills, by the heroism the stories they told, their recollections, their professionalism, their kindness to share.
One of the greatest moments we’ve ever had. These men were ones we met online via a newsletter, they invited us to call, and we did. How they were so willing to talk to us and share their memories, just incredible.
I cannot say enough. I pray today, they are still with us and as alert and healthy as that memorable day
SEMPER FI
“the terrible beating the Marine Corps had sustained in battles like Gradual Canal and Peleliu. “
Huh ?
.
If war is Hell then Iwo Jima was their Hell. How will we ever fight and win battles and a war like that again? The idea that wars and battles won’t be fought like that in the future is only so much wishful thinking.
So Nimitz sacrificed 7,000 Marines to save the lives of hundreds of pilots? MacArthur would have found a way to bypass Iwo Jima.
As I recall reading history, the field at Iwo was a stepping stone for the attack on the Japanese.
Aircraft needed closer bases so they could carry less fuel and more munitions.
Being handy for emergency landings would have been icing on the cake.
Years ago, before the National Museum of the Marine Corps opened in Quantico, the Marine Corps museum was in a tiny two story building at the Washington Navy Yard, a couple of blocks away from 8th and I.
I visited that small museum once upon a time, and on the second floor were both flags flown over Suribachi. I remember thinking they both seemed kinda small.
BLOODY IWO!
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And I remember my friend Sgt Ray Jacobs who was (now deceased) the radioman (radio strapped to his back) in the pic of the first flag up on Iwo.
GunnyG@PlanetWTF!
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Will always be very proud of those boys.
My dad wasn’t involved in the Iwo Jima campaign.
However, he was a 17-year old PFC lugging a BAR in Uncle Sam’s Marine Corps. He was in the very first wave of Marines to hit the beaches of Okinawa.
He passed 2 years ago...with full military honors.
FWIW, take a good look around at 17 year-olds today, and most of em couldn’t even pick up a BAR, let alone carry or use one. Have doubts? Skip the ads at the beginning of this and check out what it’s like firing one: https://youtu.be/g2jRwp19csA
Yeah. I’m damn PROUD of those boys. God bless em and their families. Semper Fi.
FiL 28th Marines 5th Mardiv and he went thru the whole campaign without a scratch.
FIL was on the Saratoga during Iwo Jima. He’s gone now, but he lived a very good life after the war.
“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.”
Today’s young people look at photos taken during WWII and often marvel that the 18-19 year old men in uniform looked already thirty.
When “Memphis Belle” was filmed in 1990 the actors playing B-17 crews looked to me like boys dressing up in their fathers’ uniforms. No comparison to the originals.
Great post!
Staqrs and Stripes on Iwo Jima--The Sons of the Pioneers (1946)
Some years ago, FReeper Homer_J_Simpson ran daily posts of that days NYT news articles from WWII. The following excerpt is from a post of one article by correspondent HANSON W. BALDWIN. Baldwin was an Annapolis graduate who after serving became a writer. To me, his writing of Marines on Iwo put to words the essence of being a Marine. Though not the entire article, it is a lengthy post. Worth it though on this anniversary day.
I had a good friend who was an Iwo Marine and later walked out of Chosen with 3/5. An outstanding Marine and better husband and father.
February 22, 1945
New York Times
Marines’ Hardest Fight
They Enrich Traditions of Our Forces Despite Grievous Losses on Tiny Iwo!
By HANSON W. BALDWIN
Marines were dying yesterday in the toughest battle of the Corps’ long history of valor, but the flag was firmly planted on the volcanic sands of Iwo, gateway to Tokyo
The Marine Corps needs no accolade; its deeds speak in triumphant, rolling phrases - Belleau Wood and Tarawa, Saipan and Iwo. The Marine Corps needs no historian to write with blood-dipped pen of battles past and present and battles still to come; the battle ‘ streamers and the crosses - France and North Africa, China and Bataan. Kwajalein and Guam - tell its tale of courage. The flag flying over the islands of the Pacific is the Corps’ accomplishment and its accolade.
Now the Marines have come to their hardest battle - a battle still unwon. Our first waves on Iwo were almost wiped out: 3,650 Marines were dead, wounded or missing after only two days of fighting on the most heavily defended island in the world, more than the total casualties of Tarawa, about as many as all the Marine casualties on Guadalcanal in five months of jungle combat.
Our losses have been grievous and the greater toll is still ahead, yet the Marines are undaunted: still they come on. To the south, a living wave of men is lapping slowly up the ugly, pocked crater of Mount Suribachi, whose guns and mortars dominate the sand where our beaches lie.
Northward the rising tide of men creeps painfully up the tangled, jagged sulphurous plateau of Iwo. From the thick fastnesses of which more Japanese guns enfilade our lines. Not until these heights are won, Suribachi’s caves and craters are mopped up and our foothold on the northern plateau is firm and well planted will the crisis be past and the casualties drop.
They Expected It
The Marines know this; they expected Armageddon on Iwo. There was no other way. Iwo is an island honeycombed with caves and crevices. Its only landing beaches are dominated by cliffs and rearing craters, its gun position so protected that months of shelling and bombing could not knock them out. Iwo had to be ours, however, and the Marines will take it. They will pay the price, and it will be high. The tide of men will rise on and on, higher and higher. The ranks will be riddled and winnowed by enemy fire, but the Marines will go on to ultimate victory.
Some call this spark that drives men to victory or to death “tradition”, others “esprit de corps”; the Marines put it simply: “We are ‘United States Marines.”
When Amazon was very new I wrote book reviews for fun. After reading “Flags of Our Fathers” I wrote one and then read what others had written. One fellow wrote, “This is not the best book I have ever read...it is the best book I will ever read”. Somehow I think he may have been there.
Bttt.
5.56mm
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.
