Posted on 03/21/2015 12:54:38 PM PDT by jessduntno
IOTO, Japan — Dozens of aging U.S. veterans, many in their early 90s and some in wheelchairs, gathered on the tiny, barren island of Iwo Jima on Saturday to mark the 70th anniversary of one of the bloodiest and most iconic battles of World War II.
More than 30 veterans flown in from the U.S. island territory of Guam toured the black sand beaches where they invaded the deeply dug-in forces of the island’s Japanese defenders in early 1945.
They were bused to the top of Mount Suribachi, an active volcano, where an Associated Press photo of the raising of the American flag while the battle was still raging became a potent symbol of hope and valor to a war-weary public back home that was growing increasingly disillusioned with the seemingly unending battle in the Pacific.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
now youve done it some “progressive” wag will read that and demand that the statue may OFFEND some group or another..
True Heroes
Yes they were; now we've gone from the Greatest Generation to the Gayest Generation.
My father was all over the Pacific during the war and he always said that anyone who was at Iwo was treated with the utmost respect and admiration. He always said that this should have been a National Holiday. He retired a master Chief after 27 years in the Navy, two wars and the start of the third, and to the best of my recollections always got seriously emotional when he spoke about Iwo. I never knew details about his war experiences, other than being the navigator off Chosin in Korea on a tin can. That came from an Uncle. Iwo was something that really got him emotional.
“now youve done it some “progressive” wag will read that and demand that the statue may OFFEND some group or another..”
I hope so, Mikey!
I’ve been reading Homer’s WWII New York Times threads, and find it interesting that back then it was simply called Iwo Island (Since “Jima” is Nipponese for “Island” anyhow....).
In recent years, some revisionist historians have questioned if the Iwo campaign was even necessary. Just blockade the island, and starve the Japanese out. No invasion needed.
Before the island was seven secure..a severely damaged B-29 ditched off shore. The next day, several more crash landed on the newly captured airstrip, even before the SeaBees could make it operational. Some 3,000 B-29's made emergency landings on Iwo before the war ended. As each plane had a crew of ten...do the math.
"wo" is an archaic way of Romanizing one form of the "o" in Japanese, like the "ye" in the archaic Romanization of Yedo was simplified to Edo.
Also, in Japanese the kanji or written characters from Chinese can be read at least two ways, with the meaning staying the same. In 硫黄島, the 硫黄or "Io" (pronounced EE-oh) means sulfur, and 島 means island, but can be read either as "to" or "shima," except that sometimes the "shima" is altered to "jima" when combined with other words. Here endeth the lesson :-)
Is this where I should jump in and say at the time the guys called it “Iwo Gina” ?
Ohio!
My Uncle (still alive) was a radioman for the Airwing at the time. He was setup on the runway something like 2-3 days after the original landing.
“Wow - that must have been hard.”
“Not really. The Marines had cleared the area. The Japs would take potshots at us, but they were in the jungle across the runway, so they wern’t very succesful.”
Amen to that.
God bless them all.
Interesting!
Uncommon valor was a common virtue.
Protesting..The Hand Of God....is not something that would gove over too well with most of us I dont think.
Michael Newdow...be careful!
I believe many of those historians (and several people in the military at the time) felt many of the other island campaigns were unnecessary. Other islands certainly could have been bypassed rather than attacked, and the Japanese would have eventually been starved out. I’ve never seen anyone suggest that for Iwo Jima.
When they finally surrendered, Japan still had over one million armed men in China; we didn’t have to go root every one of them out.
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