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1945: US flag raised over Iwo Jima
BBC ^ | BBC

Posted on 02/23/2009 7:11:09 PM PST by Dubya

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Lt-General M "Howling Mad" Smith.

That would be LtGen Holland M. "Howlin' Mad Smith.

On 19 February, after four days of naval and air bombardment

Preceded by over 70 consecutive days of aerial bombardment.

41 posted on 02/24/2009 4:20:42 AM PST by A.A. Cunningham
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To: tubebender

Tell her thank you next time you talk to her.


42 posted on 02/24/2009 5:25:35 AM PST by SouthTexas (Can I have my house back that I lost in the 80s????)
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To: Dubya

http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb215/Edwin011/CHRISTIAN/praiseLord.jpg

And pass the ammo brother!


43 posted on 02/24/2009 6:22:31 AM PST by TMSuchman (I'll heat up & bring the tar, you bring the feathers & we'll meet in DC!)
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To: Dubya
Dubya, good on ya for posting this.

BBC writes...Reuters news agency also reports Marines have finally reached the Japanese fighter-plane base in the centre of the island, which lies just 700 yards (640m) from the bomber airfield taken by the Americans two days ago.

It's difficult to imagine the tough fighting for inches of ground, but 700 yds in 2 days puts it in a kind of context.

This Marine Dad (and USAF vet) salutes the Iwo Jima Marines with gratitude and respect.

.

44 posted on 02/24/2009 7:49:48 AM PST by Seaplaner (Never give in. Never give in. Never...except to convictions of honour and good sense. W. Churchill)
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To: 21twelve

Nope. The one they made the movie about was Cabanatuan. My grandpa was there. It was a camp for US military. Los Banos was a civilian internment camp. With 2,200 internees, many of whom were immobile, and with 30,000 Japanese troops within 90 minutes walk, paratroopers dropped, Filipino guerrillas sunk in, amphibious forces motored over a lake, and US Army forces made way over land. 3 soldiers were killed and 2 internees were slightly wounded in the rescue.


45 posted on 02/24/2009 7:59:00 AM PST by Andyman (The truth shall make you FReep.)
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To: freema
God Bless Your Uncle. A scared place was made in Heaven for him because he served his time in Hell.

In 1967 I served in a Marine rifle company in Vietnam. We had a gunnery seargent, a Greek immigrant, who joined the Marine Corps when he was 14 (He was a big guy) and fought on Iwo Jima when he was 16. One vivid picture he related to me was hugging the beach while being shelled. He said the Japanese were dropping huge 300-millimeter mortar rounds. He said because of the relative softness of the volcanic sand on the beach the fuzes on the ordnance didn't detonate until the shells had bored deep into the pumice. He was spared.

46 posted on 02/24/2009 8:31:13 AM PST by Brad from Tennessee ("A politician can't give you anything he hasn't first stolen from you.")
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To: Andyman

That is what I’m thinking of (motoring across that big lake). But it must have been a history channel thing - in fact now that I recall, I think it was just a bunch of old original film clips that they used to tell the story.

It seemed odd to me to have the women and children there - I didn’t know the Japs did that, but makes sense I guess. (Just like our camps with the Japanese in America).

My old man was in WWII (never captured, but I’m sure he had an idea of what it would be like). He would sit down for a bit while I was watching Hogan’s Heros after school and after awhile get up to leave, chuckle, and say something like “Oh those crazy guys!”. Little did I know....


47 posted on 02/24/2009 10:55:23 AM PST by 21twelve
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To: 21twelve

Darn, I’d have liked to have seen that.

The actions of the Japanese guards puzzled my mom. One they called “Screwy Louie” used to hand prisoners his rifle so he could help them collect things from the garden. Another time she saw a man get shot when he crossed a line to retrieve a soccer ball that had gone a couple of feet over it.


48 posted on 02/24/2009 11:41:14 AM PST by Andyman (The truth shall make you FReep.)
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To: All

THE REAL HEROES of IWO JIMA

With the increased media attention on the Marines’ history concerning the Chosin Reservoir Action in Korea 54 years ago, I thought this article was most appropriate. After all if we don’t teach children history of our nation, who will? It seems to me that most schools do not have that on their list of priorities. Also, anyone who has visited the Marine Memorial in Washington DC will have a greater appreciation for this story, by a Wisconsinite, which I relay unedited:

Each year I am hired to go to Washington DC with the eighth-grade class from Clinton, WI, where I grew up, to videotape their trip. I greatly enjoy visiting our nation’s capital, and each year I take some special memories back with me. This fall’s trip was especially memorable. On the last night of our trip we stopped at the Iwo Jima memorial. This memorial, which is the largest bronze statue in the world, depicts one of the most famous photographs in history - that of the six brave soldiers raising the American Flag at the top of a rocky hill on the island of Iwo Jima during WWII.

Over 100 students and chaperons piled off the buses and headed towards the memorial. I noticed a solitary figure at the base of the statue, and as I got closer he asked, “Where are you guys from?” I told him that we were from Wisconsin. “Hey, I’m a cheesehead too!” he said. “Come gather around, Cheeseheads, and I will tell you a story.” That figure turned out to be James Bradley, who just happened to be in Washington DC to speak at the memorial the following day. Bradley was there that night to say good night to his dad, who has since passed away. He was just about to leave when he saw the buses pull up. I videotaped him as he spoke to us, and received his permission to share what he said from my videotape. Now, it is one thing to tour the incredible monuments filled with history in Washington DC. But it is quite another to get the kind of insight we received that night.

When all had gathered around he reverently began to speak. Here are his words that night. My name is James Bradley and I’m from Antigo, Wisconsin. My dad is on that statue and I just wrote a book called “Flags of Our Fathers,” which is #5 on the New York Times Best seller list right now. It is the story of the six boys you see behind me. Six boys raised the flag. The first guy putting the pole in the ground is Harlon Block. Harlon was an allstate football player. He enlisted in the Marine Corps with all the senior members of his football team. They were off to play another type of game—a game called “War,” But, it didn’t turn out to be a game. Harlon, at the age of 21, died with his intestines in his hands. I don’t say that to gross you out; I say that because there are generals who stand in front of this statue and talk about the glory of war. You guys need to know that most of the boys in Iwo Jima were 17, 18, and 19 years old.

(He pointed to the statue.) You see this next guy? That’s Rene Gagnon, from New Hampshire. If you took Rene’s helmet off at the moment this photo was taken, and looked in the webbing of that helmet, you would find a photograph—a photograph of his girlfriend. Rene put that in there for protection, because he was scared. He was 18 years old. Boys won the battle of Iwo Jima. Boys. Not old men.

The next guy here, the third guy in this tableau, was Sergeant Mike Strank. Mike is my hero. He was the hero of all these guys. They called him the “old man” because he was “so old.” He was already 24. When Mike would motivate his boys in training camp, he didn’t say, “Let’s go kill some Japanese” or “Let’s die for our country.” He knew he was talking to little boys. Instead he would say, “You do what I say, and I’ll get you home to your mothers.

The last guy on this side of the statue is Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian from Arizona. Ira Hayes walked off Iwo Jima. He went into the White House with my dad. President Truman told him, “You’re a hero.” He told reporters, “How can I feel like a hero when 250 of my buddies hit the island with me and only 27 of us walked off alive?” So, you take your class at school, 250 of you spending a year together having fun, doing everything together. Then all 250 of you hit the beach, but only 27 of your classmates walk off alive. That was Ira Hayes. He had images of horror in his mind.

Ira Hayes died dead drunk, face down at the age of 32, ten years after this picture was taken. The next guy going around the statue is Franklin Sousley, from Hilltop, Kentucky. A fun-lovin’ hillbilly boy. His best friend, who is now 70, told me, “Yeah you know, we took two cows up on the porch of the Hilltop General Store. Then we strung wire across the stairs so the cows couldn’t get down. Then we fed them Epson salts. Those cows pooped all night.” Yes, he was a fun-lovin’ hillbilly boy. Franklin died on Iwo Jima at the age of 19. When the telegram came to tell his mother that he was dead, it went to the Hilltop General Store. A barefoot boy ran that telegram up to his mother’s farm. The neighbors could hear her scream all night and into the morning. The neighbors lived a quarter of a mile away.

The next guy, as we continue to go around the statue, is my dad, John Bradley from Antigo, Wisconsin, where I was raised. My dad lived until 1994, but he would never give interviews. When Walter Kronkite’s producers or the New York Times would call, we were trained as little kids to say, “No, I’m sorry sir, my dad’s not here. He is in Canada fishing. No, there is no phone there, sir. No, we don’t know when he is coming back.” My dad never fished or even went to Canada. Usually he was sitting there right at the table eating his Campbell’s soup. But we had to tell the press that he was out fishing. He didn’t want to talk to the press. You see, my dad didn’t see himself as a hero. Everyone thinks these guys are heroes, ‘cause they are in a photo and a monument. My dad knew better. He was a medic. John Bradley from Wisconsin was a caregiver. in Iwo Jima. He probably held over 200 boys as they died. And, when boys died in Iwo Jima, they writhed and screamed in pain.

When I was a little boy, my third grade teacher told me that my dad was a hero. When I went home and told my dad that, he looked at me and said, “I want you always to remember that the heroes of Iwo Jima are the guys who did not come back. DID NOT COME BACK.”
So that’s the story about six nice young boys. Three died on Iwo Jima, and three came back as national heroes. Overall, 7000 boys died on Iwo Jima in the worst battle in the history of the Marine Corps. My voice is giving out, so I will end here. Thank you for your time.

Suddenly the monument wasn’t just a big old piece of metal with a flag sticking out of the top. It came to life before our eyes with the heartfelt words of a son who did indeed have a father who was a hero. Maybe not a hero for the reasons most people would believe, but a hero nonetheless.


49 posted on 02/24/2009 2:47:52 PM PST by Dubya (Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father,but by me)
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To: libh8er

That’s disgusting.


50 posted on 02/24/2009 2:49:55 PM PST by reagan_fanatic (Let the 2nd American Revolution begin!)
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To: Brad from Tennessee

Indeed, and thank you.

My mother’s most precious memory of her childhood is when her big brother came home and carried her in his arms (of all the other little girls in the family), and in his uniform, to the dime store to buy her a little pocketbook.

When my brother joined the Marine Corps, my uncle gave him his dress blues. He had climbed into a bottle by that time and died there, later, an old man. The blues were ruined in a hurricane and my brother burned them, sobbing.

Months after my uncle died, my mom woke herself up beating on him in her dreams for leaving her.

Unbelievably, I never even knew he was at Iwo Jima until my son joined the Corps.


51 posted on 02/24/2009 5:10:07 PM PST by freema (MarineNiece,Daughter,Wife,Friend,Sister,Friend,Aunt,Friend,Mother,Friend,Cousin, FRiend)
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To: freema
Thank you for sharing these poignant memories.

When I was in boot camp back in the 1960’s we watched about 90 minutes of combat footage of the Iwo battle. My drill instructor spoke of it as an almost mythic event. Later I met a few people who were there, saw many more documentaries on TV, and read a few books on the subject.

About 10 years ago my sister sent me a copy of James Bradley's “Flags of Our Fathers’.” When I opened the front cover of the book the flyleaf was printed with an engineer's cutaway schematic of the entire underground defensive system the Japanese had built over a period of years. This included tunnels, storage dumps, staging areas, casements for artillery and machine guns, fighting positions and sniper's nests, all built of concrete and steel, interconnected and very sophisticated in design and construction. The brutal totality of Iwo Jima was diagrammed there on two pages and it was overwhelming.

God Bless You and Your Family.

52 posted on 02/25/2009 8:09:23 AM PST by Brad from Tennessee ("A politician can't give you anything he hasn't first stolen from you.")
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To: Brad from Tennessee

Thank you-and thank you for allowing me to share them.

No one even knows what he did there.


53 posted on 02/25/2009 3:49:04 PM PST by freema (MarineNiece,Daughter,Wife,Friend,Sister,Friend,Aunt,Friend,Mother,Friend,Cousin, FRiend)
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