[Screamname]

Something that always bothered me about Iwo Jima is it was a tiny island the size of a zit with 20k something Japanese on it...So why didn`t we bomb the damn thing into oblivion? Was it because the Japs were buried like ticks on a dog and it would have done no good?

[LS]

Exactly. They had vast underground tunnels---Vietcong-like. That was another flaw in the movie, claiming that a difference of a few more days' bombardment would have saved a lot of lives. They let us walk onto the beach, and for the first time, had placed their defenses well back, inviting us to come in. Anything short of an a-bomb, which would have made the island un-usable for us, would not have helped much.