[snippy_about_it]

oops. My response to you was about Wake and you were talking about Iwo Jima being given back. My mistake. ;)

[Iris7]

No sweat, Snippy. You are very patient with my old fashioned writing style combined with my severely elliptical phrase construction. I guess I have read too much seventeenth and eighteenth century material!

Iwo was something else, though. Relatively untouched by time.

Okinawa was a more severe battle, but Okinawa is all built up, (been there too) and the echos of war are dim. Tokyo is the same way. Tokyo and Yokohama had rubble fields you could drive by for forty five minutes without a break when I was there in 1956 and '57. All gone.

Reminds me of my visit to Chattanooga, the turning point of that other war. Buildings cover everything. Lookout Mountain is the place to go if you want to view the battle scenes with the mind's eye.