Iwo Jima Battle Quotes

The battle of Iwo Jima would quickly turn into a primitive contest of gladiators: Japanese gladiators fighting from caves and tunnels like the catacombs of the Colosseum, and American gladiators aboveground, exposed on all sides, using liquid gasoline to burn their opponents out of their lethal hiding places. All of this on an island five and a half miles long and two miles wide. An area smaller than Doc Bradley's hometown of Antigo, but bearing ten times the humanity. A car driving sixty miles an hour could cover its length in five and a half minutes. For the slogging, dying Marines, it would take more than a month.

Iwo Jima had become the number-one front-page story in newspapers across the country. And it had become the most heavily covered, written-about battle in World War II.

In 1855, at the height of the Crimean War, Roger Fenton’s photograph, ‘The Valley of the Shadow of Death’, published in The Times, poignantly captured the aftermath of British retreat in the face of the Russian army with a single image of an empty battlefield. There was only one problem. Fenton had constructed the entire scene, moving cannon balls artfully until he had the perfect image. In 1945, on the beach of Iwo Jima, legendary war photographer Joe Rosenthal captured the most famous image of battle ever taken: the raising of the Stars and Stripes as American soldiers took the summit from the Japanese. It won him the Pulitzer Prize. Both are a lie.

Eric Steele was strapped in and rubbing a rag over his father’s 1911. Demo had brought the pistol with the rest of Steele’s gear on board the C-17. In the cockpit, the pilot pushed the throttle forward, shoving Steele back in his seat. He barely noticed because he was thinking about the first time his father let him hold the pistol. It had felt so heavy in his hands back then. So much I never got to ask him. He ran his thumb over the spot where the serial number should have been. It was silver and all traces of the file marks were smoothed out by years of use. The pistol was one of John Moses Browning’s masterpieces, the same design that the American infantryman had carried in the Battle of Belleau Wood, Iwo Jima, Korea, and Vietnam. It was the only thing he had to remind him of the father he never really knew. Steele had made the pistol his own by modifying it to shoot 9mm, adding a threaded barrel, and installing suppressor sights, which were taller than the factory ones. It was his gun now, and he slipped it away before taking an amphetamine tablet out of his pocket and downing it with a sip of water.

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget Falls drop by drop upon the heart, Until, in our own despair, against our will, Comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.

The Marines were fearful of “banzai” attacks at night, a tactic frequently used by the Japanese that simply attempted to overwhelm Allied positions with massive numbers of men, so they were alert at all hours. To help prevent such attacks, the American navy would shell the island throughout the night in an effort to actually brighten the night sky and prevent Japanese soldiers from sneaking up on the American lines.

Midway was merely a convenient target chosen by Yamamoto to draw the Americans out, and both sides’ objectives were attritional attempts to degrade their opponents’ carrier units. Nevertheless, the result created space for the Americans to begin their cautious advance back across the Pacific. This started with Guadalcanal and proceeded along two axes. Nimitz would command the larger and predominantly naval effort across the central Pacific, and island fortresses such as Saipan and Iwo Jima would soon go down in military legend. To the south, General Douglas MacArthur led a campaign across New Guinea and the Philippines, with a more land-based focus. Notwithstanding that, it was off Leyte Gulf in the Philippines in October 1944 that the Imperial Japanese Navy suffered a fatal blow in the largest naval battle in history, during which four carriers and three battleships were lost.

The island would be bombarded for over 70 days ahead of the actual amphibious invasion of Iwo Jima, which would not occur until over half a year after the first bombardment.

Another problem hampering the Marines was that the use of tanks in this theater of operations had a major disadvantage; a Sherman tank was difficult to disable, often requiring that Japanese attackers come out in the open, but the terrain throughout most of the island was not suited for armored movement.

On February 23, 1945, one of the most famous photographs in American history was taken atop Mount Suribachi, as five American soldiers began to raise an American flag. The picture, which most Americans are instantly familiar with, has come to symbolize the strength and sacrifice of America’s armed forces,

Operation Detachment,” is more of a misnomer than anything. It was fought as part of a large American invasion directed by steps toward the Japanese mainland, and it was more like a siege that lasted 36 days from February-March 1945, with non-stop fighting every minute. In fact, the iconic flag-raising photo was taken just four days into the battle,

America experienced its first victory against the Empire’s expansion at the Battle of Coral Sea on May 7, 1942. In early June 1942, the American navy won a smashing victory at the Battle of Midway that sunk several Japanese carriers and ensured the action in the Pacific would subsequently move south.

Kuribayashi had the benefit of having traveled in the United States, and he had even attended Harvard for a short time. In his travels, he learned that American industry could be militarized at the touch of a button, and that American popular opinion was sensitive to high casualties in conflicts. If anything, his openly stated view that the U.S. should not be engaged as a military enemy may have contributed to his being given the task of defending Iwo Jima by leadership who may have viewed the defense of the island as a suicide mission. Once assigned his post, however, he took on the matter of American sensitivity to casualties as a tangible strategy – “If American casualties are high enough, Washington will think twice before launching another invasion against Japanese territory.”[2] As for the Japanese view of casualties, a different mindset altogether was predominant: the strategy of sacrifice with no survivors. When

February 23rd would go down as perhaps the most auspicious day in the overall invasion of Iwo Jima, as it was on this day that Marines reached the top of Suribachi after non-stop heavy fighting. At 1020, a patrol under command of Lieutenant Harold Schreir of the 28th Marines reached the top and raised a small flag on the summit. That flag was raised by five Marines atop the same mountain as part of a 40 man patrol and was hoisted by Platoon Sergeant Ernest I. “Boots” Thomas of Tallahassee, Florida. A Marine Corps photographer captured the first raising on film, just as an enemy grenade caused him to fall over the crater edge and tumble 50 feet. The lens of his camera was shattered, but the film and soldier were safe.

Iwo Jima is more officially known as “Sulfur Island,” and it lies in a chain of volcanic islands south of the Ogasawara Islands. In total, the area is known as the Ogasawara Archipelago or the Bonin Islands, and it was critically important because Iwo Jima is situated approximately 650 nautical miles south of Tokyo. For U.S. naval and air forces, the island had tremendous strategic importance as an air base for fighter escorts in support of long-range bombers hitting the mainland,

Translated as “God Wind,” “Divine Wind” and “God Spirit,” kamikazes would sink 47 Allied vessels and damage over 300 by the end of the war, but the rise in the use of kamikaze attacks correlated the loss of the Empire’s air superiority and its waning industrial might. This method of fighting would become more common by the time Iwo Jima was fought over, and it was especially prevalent during the invasion of Okinawa. The “privilege” of being selected as a kamikaze pilot played directly into the deep-seated Japanese mindset of “death before defeat.” The pilot training manual assured each kamikaze candidate that when they eliminated all thoughts of life and death, fear of losing the earthly life can be easily overcome. Still,

Pilots who could not find their targets were told to turn around and spare their own lives for another day, but if a pilot returned nine times, he was to be shot. At the moment of collision, he was instructed to keep his eyes open at all times, and to shout “Hissatsu” (“clear kill”). In

they had to deal with heavy artillery being fired at them by well-hidden units. The Japanese would open the steel doors to let their artillery pieces fire, close the door while reloading, and fire again. Kuribayashi also wisely waited for as many Marines as possible to land on the beach, thus offering more targets for the Japanese artillery. Thanks

Several Marines of the 27th were stabbed in the night, and general rules of combat as a tactical code did not exist for either side. Japanese who spoke English continued to call for help, then shoot whichever American responded. The

In fact, the Japanese defending the island had no illusions about victory and did not even consider it a realistic option. They merely hoped to bloody the enemy so badly that the Allies would reconsider invading Japan.

As the U.S. Navy’s website put it, “Prior to the invasion, the 8-square mile island would suffer the longest, most intensive shelling of any Pacific island during the war.”[1]

By the beginning of March, enough of Iwo Jima was controlled that landings and take-offs could be maintained without fear of suicide attacks, and Enterprise remained off the island until March 9. “If the [USS Carrier] Enterprise and Task Group 58.5 had played a secondary role during the Tokyo raids, they made up for it at Iwo Jima.”[10]

The black ash that inundated the island was suitable for a superior quality of concrete, and the resulting caves, bunkers, pillboxes and large rooms were elaborate. Up to one quarter of the entire garrison was enlisted in the tunneling, and while some of the caves were suitable for two to three men with gear, others could hold up to 400, with multiple entrances and exits to prevent forces from becoming trapped. Ventilation systems were engineered to contend with the danger of sulfur fumes common to the island. On Mount Suribachi itself, the 60 foot-deep crater with a 20 foot ledge on which one could walk the entire circumference of the rim was particularly well-developed as a fortress. The Japanese had constructed elaborate caves all the way around the crater, and according to one of the 28th Marines who took the summit, “It was down in the crater that the Japanese were honey-combed.”[3]

In the afternoon, LaPorte felt something wet on his leg. The bandage that Deets had wrapped over his wound was still holding, but when he rolled up the leg of his pants, he saw blood coming from his kneecap where shrapnel had nicked a major blood vessel. He didn’t have bandages, but he did have a roll of clean toilet paper,

The reluctance of the Japanese to surrender is best exemplified by the two Japanese soldiers who remained hidden on the island until 1949 when they surrendered four years after the war had ended.

Well, this will be easy. The Japanese will surrender Iwo Jima without a fight.” —Admiral Chester W. Nimitz

The experience of World War II, where Americans fought with valor from Iwo Jima to Normandy, taught us, President Truman said, that “recognition of our dependence upon one another is essential to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness of all mankind.

In his book Joker One, Campbell tells how after the platoon’s first prolonged engagement, one of his Marines came up to him and said, “Sir, do you think we fought well today, sir? I mean, that was our first big fight. Would the Marines who fought at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, you know, be proud of us?” Campbell had to turn away and compose himself before he answered that the Marines had indeed acquitted themselves well. And as time passes, the battle for Fallujah, some of the bloodiest door-to-door fighting in history, will rank among the great battles of the Marine Corps.

As the battle for Iwo Jima raged all around us, our voices held it together.

There was reason to believe the battle for Iwo Jima would be even more ferocious than the others, reason to expect the Japanese defender would fight even more tenaciously. In Japanese eyes the Sulfur Island was infinitely more precious than Tarawa, Guam, Tinian, Saipan, and the others. To the Japanese, Iwo Jima represented something more elemental: It was Japanese homeland. Sacred ground. In Shinto tradition, the island was part of the creation that burst forth from Mount Fuji at the dawn of history.... the island was part of a seamless sacred realm that had not been desecrated by an invader's foot for four thousand years. Easy Company and the other Marines would be attempting nothing less than the invasion of Japan.

Unlike all the other combatants in World War II, including the U.S. Army, Smith and his Marines never lost a battle.

A few days later, workmen standing 1,050 feet above the sidewalks of New York raised a large Stars and Stripes—the “flag of triumph,” said Times man Poore—to celebrate the topping out of the steelwork a few days before. The workers had placed steel at the record rate of twenty-four hundred tons a week, they had completed their end of the contract in six months—twenty-three days ahead of the appointed date—and raising the flag atop the eighty-fifth floor was as powerful a symbol to them as the raising of the flag over Iwo Jima’s Mount Surabachi would be to a later generation of marines. They had won a major battle, and a score of workers waved their hats from their slender perch on the roof beams to celebrate. As one newspaper said, “You should have heard those workmen cheer.

To know what has come before is to be armed against despair. If the men and women of the past, with all their flaws and limitations and ambitions and appetites, could press on through ignorance and superstition, racism and sexism, selfishness and greed, to create a freer, stronger nation, then perhaps we, too, can right wrongs and take another step toward that most enchanting and elusive of destinations: a more perfect Union. The experience of World War II, where Americans fought with valor from Iwo Jima to Normandy, taught us, President Truman said, that “recognition of our dependence upon one another is essential to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness of all mankind.” To do so requires innumerable acts of citizenship and of private grace. It will require, as it has in the past, the witness and the bravery of reformers who hold no office and who have no traditional power but who yearn for a better, fairer way of life. And it will also require, I believe, a president of the United States with a temperamental disposition to speak to the country’s hopes rather than to its fears.

It would be forty-four years before physicist Donald Olson would discover that D-Day at Tarawa occurred during one of only two days in 1943 when the moon's apogee coincided with a neap tide, resulting in a tidal range of only a few inches rather than several feet. The actions of these Marines trapped on the reef would determine the outcome of the battle for Tarawa. If they hesitated or turned back, their buddies ashore would be decimated. But they didn't hesitate. They were Marines. They jumped from their stranded landing crafts into chest-deep water holding their arms and ammunition above their heads. In one of the bravest scenes in the history of warfare, these Marines slogged through the deep water into sheets of machine-gun bullets. There was nowhere to hide, as Japanese gunners raked the Marines at will. And the Marines, almost wholly submerged and their hands full of equipment, could not defend themselves. But they kept coming. Bullets ripped through their ranks, sending flesh and blood flying as screams pierced the air. Japanese steel killed over 300 Marines in those long minutes as they struggled to the shore. As the survivors stumbled breathlessly onto shore their boots splashed in water that had turned bright red with blood. This type of determination and valor among individual Marines overcame seemingly hopeless odds, and in three days of hellish fighting Tarawa was captured. The Marines suffered a shocking 4,400 casualties in just seventy-two hours of fighting as they wiped out the entire Japanese garrison of 5,000.