Today is the 60th anniversary of the unimaginably courageous assault in 1945 by U.S. Marines against the Japanese fortress island of Iwo Jima. Survivors have gathered in Fredericksburg, Texas.
With memories of Iwo Jima fading and with the survivors' ranks thinning, those who fought in the decisive battle have gathered here for what could be their last big reunion.The anniversary observance, which has drawn nearly 300 Iwo Jima survivors, continues through Sunday. It was organized by the Texas Department of Parks & Wildlife and the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, hometown of Adm. Chester Nimitz, commander in chief of the Pacific fleet after Pearl Harbor.
The 36-day assault claimed the lives of more than 6,800 U.S. Marines and wounded about 20,000 others.
Fighting was often at close range — with small arms, machine guns, grenades, satchel charges, mortars and flamethrowers. The 8-square-mile island was heavily fortified and defended by at least 20,000 Japanese, only 1,100 of whom survived.
The U.S. victory became a turning point in the Pacific War and provided one of the most memorable photographic images of World War II — the planting of the U.S. flag atop Mount Suribachi five days after 61,000 Marines began invading Iwo Jima on Feb. 19, 1945.
After the flag-raising, it took a month for U.S. troops to traverse the land-mine-covered island, capture its airfields and wipe out resistance hidden in bunkers and caves and in an extensive network of tunnels that took decades to build.
So fierce was the fighting that 22 Marines and five sailors received the Medal of Honor for their heroic acts there, oftentimes for hurling their bodies onto armed grenades to protect fellow troops, and for braving torrential enemy fire to rescue wounded comrades.
Related:
• National Museum of the Pacific War
• U.S. Marine Corps. - Medal of Honor Recipients
• National Park Service - U.S.M.C. War Memorial
• PBS - American Valor
• Zell Miller - Iwo Jima, If Covered by Media Today
More: Historian Arthur Herman reviews what happened at Iwo Jima and draws a profound conclusion.
Sixty years ago today, more than 110,000 Americans and 880 ships began their assault on a small volcanic island in the Pacific, in the climactic battle of the last year of World War II. For the next 36 days Iwo Jima would become the most populous 7 1/2 square miles on the planet, as U.S. Marines and Japanese soldiers fought a battle that would test American resolve even more than D-Day or the Battle of the Bulge had, and that still symbolizes a free society's willingness to make the sacrifice necessary to prevail over evil--a sacrifice as relevant today as it was 60 years ago....Posted by Alan at February 19, 2005 08:03 AMThe 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.