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I have a friend whose father was a company commander on Iwo Jima.

Based on his accounts, the carnage was mutual.

(By this time the Japanese had three years of experience in being attacked by the Americans and understood how to organize the ground and conduct the defense to inflict maximum casualties even while ultimately losing the battle. This experience is what made the casualties on Iwo Jima and Okinawa so heavy. They, in turn, impacted Allied planning and casualty estimates for Operation "Downfall" (the invasion of Japan) and probably played some role (although how much is disputed) in Truman's decision to use atomic weapons.)

Returning to the father, by Day 5, only a squad or so of the original members of his company remained. The father lasted until about Day 30, when he was seriously wounded in the chest during fighting around a very substantial (i.e., battleship shell fire resistant) bunker complex in the NE quadrant of this incredibly small island.

Although the father recovered and went on to retire as a colonel, he - typical of his generation - did not reveal any of his Iwo Jima experience to his son until the son, then serving as a Marine infantry officer himself, visited Iwo Jima in the mid 1980's.

As a final note on the measure of the ferocity of the fighting, the son noted on his Iwo Jima visit that, except for the beaches (where the sand remains black due to wave action), the "soil" covering most of Iwo Jima appears orange. When you pick up a handful, it turns out to consist largely of rusted steel shrapnel pulverized by repeated shelling and bombing during the battle. He said that there is also a lot of bone fragment lying on the ground. This probably goes a long way to explain why the Japanese government keeps the island closed to visitation by the general public. It is literally an open grave.

Thank you for that. I enjoyed reading it.

I always find the personal perspectives of people who were there fascinating. I am currently deeply engrossed in Churchill's account. The more I get perspectives contemporary with WWII and events leading to it the more I am convinced that we are, today, heading into some very hard times. History is a great tool if we aren't afraid to use it.

Take care.