Posted on 02/19/2005 7:13:59 AM PST by 9999lakes
Yesterday was the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the Battle for Iwo Jima... Iwo Jima The famous battle offers lessons for us 60 years later. BY ARTHUR HERMAN Saturday, February 19, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST ....But the Marines pushed on. Over the next agonizing weeks, they took the rest of the island yard by yard, bunker by bunker, cave by cave. They fought through places with names like "Bloody Gorge" and "The Meat Grinder." They learned to take no prisoners in fighting a skilled and fanatical enemy who gave no quarter and expected none. Twenty out of every 21 Japanese defenders would die where they stood. One in three Marines on Iwo Jima would either be killed or wounded, including 19 of 24 battalion commanders. Twenty-seven Marines and naval medical corpsmen would win Medals of Honor--more than in any other battle in history--and 13 of them posthumously. As Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, said, "Among the Americans who served on Iwo Island, uncommon valor was a common virtue."
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
this piece wins my "Most Relevant Op Ed" award. I hope some high - and junior - high schoolers have a chance to read it.
Ping
The Tiggywinkles watched a documentary of Iwo Jima, last night on the History Channel. I had never before taken time to learn what Iwo Jima was all about..I came away humbled.
Here's a 2nd attempt to excerpt the more relevant material...
Yet even this valor and sacrifice is not the full story of what Iwo Jima means, or what Rosenthal's immortal photograph truly symbolizes. The lesson of Iwo Jima is in fact an ancient one, going back to Machiavelli: that sometimes free societies must be as tough and unrelenting as their enemies. Totalitarians test their opponents by generating extreme conditions of brutality and violence; in those conditions--in the streets and beheadings of Fallujah or on the beach and in the bunkers of Iwo Jima--they believe weak democratic nerves will crack. This in turn demonstrates their moral superiority: that by giving up their own decency and humanity they have become stronger than those who have not.
Free societies can afford only one response. There were no complicated legal issues or questions of "moral equivalence" on Iwo Jima: It was kill or be killed. That remains the nature of war even for democratic societies. The real question is, who outlasts whom. In 1945 on Iwo Jima, it was the Americans, as the monument at Arlington Cemetery, based on Rosenthal's photograph, proudly attests. In the jungles of Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1970s, it was the totalitarians--with terrible consequences.
Today, some in this country think the totalitarians may still win in Iraq and elsewhere. A few even hope so. Only one thing is certain: As long as Americans cherish the memory of those who served at Iwo Jima, and grasp the crucial lesson they offer all free societies, the totalitarians will never win.
I'm copying it for my daughter and others. :o)
Uh, let me guess.....
The New York Times
I watched it too. It's often forgotten that the Pacific theatre was truely the toughest fight in WWII. However my grandfather spent a winter in the Ardennes and had a very different viewpoint.
"The lesson of Iwo Jima is in fact an ancient one, going back to Machiavelli: that sometimes free societies must be as tough and unrelenting as their enemies."
By WWII standards, we fail miserably. Two-thirds of the Marines who fought at Iwo Jima would be charged with war crimes if the battle were fought today. The persecution of Marine Lt. Ilario Pantano says it all (www.defendthedefenders.org).
But for higher-ranking officers, I can't help but see Iwo Jima as a huge failure and black eye for them. I'll admit I'm no big-time expert so someone will correct me if I'm wrong. But there were ways that these heavily-defended islands could have been bypassed.
Iwo Jima was a stragegically valuable island.
If I remember correctly, in WWII a Republican newspaper in Chicago, was the most vocal critic of US Policy in WWII. After Midway, they even published that we had broken the Japanese codes. The President wanted them to be arrested for treason but Marshall talked him out of it.
ping
Iwo Jima was of necessity to our plans. The U.S. held no islands in the Pacific for our planes to land, refuel or repair for bombing raids on Japan. Plus, once the islands were taken, it was a foregone conclusion that we would be invading Japan. We wouldn't have been able to do it unless we had possessions of these islands as a stepping-stone. Granted, the A-bomb eliminated our need for these refueling stations, but at the time of these island battles, no one knew that the A-bomb would be used to help end the war.
But Iwo could not be by-passed. It was strategic in two ways.
[1] As the best and only place with-in 500 miles big enough for bombers to land, it provided the enemy with a base from which to lauch attacks.
[2] For the same reasons, it provided the Allied fighters with a base to attack Japan. Bombers could fly from longer distances, but the necessary fighter escorts could not. Furthermore, wounded bombers, on their return flight, could stop in Iwo, and it many crews and planes, were thus saved to fight another day.
I wonder how many officers and enlisted men were investigated for defending themselves by arm-chair attorneys because of political pressure or their own agendas and charged with crimes as we now see in Iraq? Who seem to check every bullet fired, every action, every command?
Some heavily-defended islands were bypassed.
Iwo, however, was taken because we needed Iwo Jima as an emergency airfield for B-29's that were damaged over the Empire and couldn't make it back to Saipan and Tinian.
Roughly 2000 B-29's (carrying 20,000 crewmen) landed at Iwo.
However, for a couple reasons I doubt the "The Colonel" would allow that to happen at "his" Tribune. One being is that he loved the military and the USA.
I'd more likely suspect a couple of the yellow sheet rags which existed then in Chicago as the culprits. But if you could provide a link to confirm your statement, I'd sure love to read it.
Yeah and that paper now owns the Cubs, guess that was FDR's revenge.
True, cripplecreek:
Iwo, like many islands before it needed to be taken to project force across the Pacific. In the overall plan of "Island Hopping", each taken island would bulwalk and assist in being a jumping-off point in taking the next.
Tarawa, the first major Marine Amphibian invasion was a disaster from the start. Using an untested system in which initial mistakes were made and important lessons learned.
There was no high or low tide around Tarawa on the day of the invasion. Thus, hundred of Higgins boats and other landing craft landed on the coral surrounding the island and Marines had to walk long distances onto the beach under murderous artillery, machine gun and rifle fire.
Iwo Jima was a mass of volcanic rock that held no real strategic importance. Other than the creation of a huge airstrip to launch heavy bomber attacks against the Japanese Mainland, and thus needed to be taken and held.
Jack.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.