Posted on 02/21/2014 3:11:14 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
This Wednesday, February 19, marked the 69th anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima. One of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific War and all of World War II, the month-long slug-fest between American and Japanese forces in many ways set the stage for the firebombing of Japan and the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In the final stages of the fighting, an iconic picture was taken of U.S. Marines and a Navy corpsman raising an American flag atop Mount Surabachi, an image that perfectly captured American resolve and military strength.
The men that raised the flag were Cpl. Harlon Block, Navy Pharmacist’s Mate John Bradley, Cpl. Rene Gagnon, PFC Franklin Sousley, Sgt. Michael Strank, and Cpl. Ira Hayes. Strank, Sousley, and Block were killed before the fighting ended. Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal won a Pulitzer Prize for the photograph, and it became the inspiration for the Iwo Jima memorial in Washington, D.C....
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
My uncle, my mom’s baby brother, was 17 years old.
He was the second wave to hit the beach on that first day. After surviving, one of his jobs was to guard the bodies of the dead, so their belongings would not be stolen.
He committed suicide in his mid thirties, leaving behind his young wife and two small children. He never recovered from the horrors of that day.
Yes, most on FR truly love our military.
One of my father’s close high school friends was in the Airborne. He jumped behind the lines in Normandy, into Holland and was trucked into the Bulge. Wife and I became very close friends with he and his wife when he was doing his Doctorate work. Wife and I were just finishing college.
He was one tough little guy. They lived in AK for many years, then retired back in Texas.
When his widow needed to move into a care home, we bought their house. Still live in it.
My grandmother’s only brother died at the Battle of the Bulge, age 19. So incomprehensible to think of those kinds of casualties now.... hundreds or thousands of men every battle.
That’s the way it should be.
Thanks for your service, FRiend.
I've always wondered if that was true or another one of the rationalizations someone came up with after the fact. I do realize, however, that since very few people knew about the bomb the island was taken with a much longer and more costly air campaign in mind. The aircrew casualties they were expecting are another group of lives the bomb spared.
I figured it out once, a man was killed every 7.4 minutes on Iwo Jima for 35 days, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Staggering.
Yeah, my dad also. He was Infantry on a troop ship, surrounded by cruisers and carriers to the horizon, sailing around in circles ready to invade Japan when the atomic bombings were announced.
In August 2002 I was able to thank Paul Tibbets, Pilot of Enola Gay, for what he did. He replied: “Glad your father was able to come home! I appreciate your contacting me!” I still have the printout of the email.
Ah, feel weird again.
Good story for you. I am in the DC area and ride a motorcycle. When I rode in Rolling Thunder the year before last, I got off of the track at the end and ended up on surface streets, feeling my way back toward the Thunder Alley area. At one point I had to park, cool off and water down. I bumped into some Aussies (God bless ‘em) who were here on their first visit to the US. The husband was very frank. “I never wanted to come to the US. I got talked into it. But I have to admit, I wish that Oz held their veterans in the same regard that Americans do”.
I was moved by that.
When I ride Rolling Thunder, I’m on the road early-early. Even when it’s chilly and barely light, riding I-395 up towards the Pentagon, there’ll be civilians on the overpasses, up out of their warm beds, with American flags, out there with their whole families, waving to me.
My goggles have some kind of issue, they get blurry. I remember thinking, these are my people. This is my tribe.
I couldn’t be more proud of them.
There were 21,000+/- Japanese when the US Marines went ashore, When the island was declared secure there were less than 1000 Japanese that had surrendered or were taken prisoner left alive. “History of United States Naval Operations in WWII by ADM Samuel Eliot Morison volume XIV”. First chapter of a thick analog book.
Honor, Duty, Country.
I would add Family.
These are concepts that are being undermined by the left.
They attack our military and gun owners as if those are the people that bring death.
They don’t understand.
They embrace the death cult of abortion and communism as if their version of killing is more honorable than the altruism of those that fight and die for Liberty.
Honor.
They don’t understand this concept.
Same with my father. I am certain your father, mine and countless thousands of other American servicemen would not have survived. Nuking Japan saved millions of lives on both sides.
Another error in the Brietbart piece...they use an early photo that identified Henry Hansen as one of the flag-raisers, not Harlan Block. It actually took more than a year to correct that mistake. Hansen actually took part in the first flag-raising, and that ensign was replaced a short time later by larger flag, raised by Strank, Sousley, Gagnon, Hayes, Bradley and Block.
Admiral Nimitz said it best: Iwo was a place where “uncommon valor was a common virtue.”
Along with being a staging base for P-51s escorting B-29s over Japan, Iwo was also an emergency field for Superforts that were damaged and unable to make it back to their bases on Guam and neighboring islands.
The first battle-damaged B-29 landed on Iwo while the battle was still raging. The aircrew jumped out of the plane, and kissed the ground, happy to be on land and not in the Pacific. A group of Marines that witnessed the celebration shook their heads in disbelief
The US gave Iwo back to the Japanese years ago. I was against this as the price we paid for it was too dear.
The Japanese considered Saipan to be their own, and had a decent sized Japanese civilian pop there, iirc.
It is staggering. The casualties of past wars boggle the imagination.
I had an uncle die at Anzio.
I had an uncle that survived Iwo Jima. He never talked about the war...but for some reason a couple of months before he died...he wanted to talk. He talked about how hard the landing was and how almost impossible the invasion was. But they won.
I hung up the phone and cried.
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