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After months of fierce hand-to-hand combat, Banzai charges, and heavy casualties, on March 16, 1945 the U.S. Marines finally declared the island of Iwo Jima to be secure. Just weeks before, as invading U.S. troops stormed up Mount Suribachi and planted an American flag at the top, the Japanese were still confident of victory. Practically the entire Japanese garrison had to be killed before the fighting finally stopped.
Thanks for the post....a very important battle and win in WWII.
Also 73 yrs ago, my father, a paratrooper, jumped on Corregidor Island and helped retake the island from Japanese, after it was lost to Japanese earlier in the war.
My Dad lucked out and missed that battle. His buddy however volunteered for duty (which they never did and promised they would never do to their DI’s) and got scooped up in the beach assault force for Iwo Jima while my Dad was sent to Chichi Jima where there was little opposition.
His buddy lived but had a Purple Heart and a Silver Star when he was done.
My father was wounded as well....I still have a hard time thinking of all these very brave kids...my dad was 18...having to manage their emotions as well as perform their duties at Iwo Jima and elsewhere.
Here we are at the 75th anniversary of the battle for Iwo Jima .... so long ago .... so far away ....
Story in today's WaPo about one of the USMC men who fought there and won the Medal of Honor. At 96 Hershel "Woody" Williams from Quiet Dell, WV, is the only remaining MOH recipient of 27 Marines and Sailors who earned the MOH on Iwo Jima.
The WW-2 vets were of a special breed, hardened by the Great Depression and possessed with a love of this country, they took the war to the enemy and conquered all on a global battlefield, on the ground, in the air, on the sea and under it.
Some excerpts from the article:
"But 75 years ago this month, on a Godforsaken volcanic island in the Pacific called Iwo Jima, he was a terrifying destroyer of the Japanese, incinerating men in their hideouts with jets of blazing diesel fuel and high octane gasoline. They had to stop him. But he saw them coming, and pulled the two triggers on his fearsome weapon. He moved on to the next enemy fortification. By the end of the day he had destroyed seven pill boxes,...."
"War correspondent Robert Sherrod said he had never seen so many dismembered soldiers. “Nowhere in the Pacific war have I seen such mangled bodies,” he wrote in LIFE magazine. “Many were cut squarely in half. Legs and arms lay 50 feet away from any body.” In one case a Marine’s severed foot was recovered still in its boot. The serial number on the boot was noted and the foot was buried in a formal grave, according to author Richard F. Newcomb’s classic account of the battle. Later, the owner of the foot was found alive in a hospital in Saipan."
The WaPo is a pay site but does allow a few articles to be read each month without subscribing.
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I haven't seen any interviews of flame thrower operators I wonder what went though their heads burning someone alive as they did. I went to a demo of a ww2 and Vietnam Flame throwers there is no way they didn't have a up close view what they did with it.
I haven't seen any interviews of flame thrower operators I wonder what went though their heads burning someone alive as they did. I went to a demo of a ww2 and Vietnam Flame throwers there is no way they didn't have a up close view what they did with it.
This was all out war, and they knew what they Japanese did to them elsewhere. I doubt they thought about it much other than trying to not get killed by the Japanese on that island.
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