Iwo Jima

Today it's been 60 years since the battle of Iwo Jima started, February 19th 1945.

Now, I just read this and realized I don't have a clue what the battle of Iwo Jima was, I've heard about it, of course, but I don't know what it was. So I decided to do what I do the best, and love the most, - a little research.

First I wondered why I don't know anything about it. Do most people know what it was about? Apparantly, most young adults in Scandinavia know nothing about Iwo Jima - but we have seen the picture by Joe Rosenthal, said to be the most reproduced photograph in history. So what is it all about?

You may or you may not know that Iwo Jima is a tiny Japanese island south of the biggest islands that form Japan. During WWII, the Americans wanted to bomb Japan. I didn't know about that, all I'd ever heard about were the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Americans didn't have anywhere for their planes to land since Japan is in the ocean and their nearest bomber base was in the Mariana Islands (see link above) . The idea was that if they could get to the island of Iwo Jima, it would have the perfect location as a "fighter-escort station".

The US sent 110,000 marines in 880 ships sailing from Hawaii.

The Japanese, around 21,000 of them, were preparing to fight a war from beneath the ground, each soldier was expected to kill 10 enemy soldiers before he died and the strategy was "no Japanese survivors" - they didn't expect to survive.

February 19th, 1945. Between 2am and 8:30am the island of Iwo Jima was under heavy fire from ships and bombers. At 8:30 the Americans got the order to get on the island. Mt. Suribachi, a 550-foot volcanic cone on the southern tip of the island overlooked both landing zones. Here the Japanese were hiding as the Americans came. Unfamiliar with the terrain and not knowing what awaited them, they were easy targets for the Japanese soldiers, always under ground, watching every move the enemies made.

4 days into the battle, February 23rd, a flag was raised on Mt. Suribachi. Later, that flag was replaced by a bigger one, the one we've all seen in the photos. But the battle was far from over. It lasted 36 days. There were no foxholes, no frontlines, and, for the Americans; no enemy soldiers to be seen. They used liquid gas, napalm and hand grenades on the underground Japanese.

Basically it was deadly and the numbers show it. Easy Company, the company that raised the famous flag, started out with 310 men. Only 50 boarded the ship after the battle.

In 36 days, 6,825 American marines were killed. Practically all 21,000 Japanese soldiers disappeared.

All this so that 2,400 bombers could land on the island. That's 11 deaths for every plane that landed. Was it worth it?


So that's Iwo Jima, and that was 60 years ago.
Such bravery. Such courage.
Such a waste.


Check out IwoJima.com for more, that's where I learnt most of this.