Iwo Jima Quotes

A story went the rounds about a San Franciscan white matron who refused to sit beside a Negro civilian on the streetcar, even after he made room for her on the seat. Her explanation was that she would not sit beside a draft dodger who was a Negro as well. She added that the least he could do was fight for his country the way her son was fighting on Iwo Jima. The story said that the man pulled his body away from the window to show an armless sleeve. He said quietly and with great dignity, "Then ask your son to look around for my arm, which I left over there.

Some read to remember the home they had left behind, others to forget the hell that surrounded them. Books uplifted their weary souls and energized their minds…books had the power to sooth an aching heart, renew hope for the future, and provide a respite when there was no other escape.

Whenever a soldier needed an escape, the antidote to anxiety, relief from boredom, a bit of laughter, inspiration, or hope, he cracked open a book and drank in the words that would transport him elsewhere.

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.

We had rarely seen our fathers in work boots before, toiling in the earth and wielding brand-new root clippers. They struggled with the fence, bent over like Marines hoisting the flag on Iwo Jima. It was the greatest show of common effort we could remember in our neighborhood, all those lawyers, doctors, and mortgage bankers locked arm in arm in the trench, with our mothers bringing out orange Kool-Aid, and for a moment our century was noble again.

San Franciscans would have sworn on the Golden Gate Bridge that racism was missing from the heart of their air-conditioned city. But they would have been sadly mistaken. A story went the rounds about a San Franciscan white matron who refused to sit beside a Negro civilian on the streetcar, even after he made room for her on the seat. Her explanation was that she would not sit beside a draft dodger who was a Negro as well. She added that the least he could do was fight for his country the way her son was fighting on Iwo Jima. The story said that the man pulled his body away from the window to show an armless sleeve. He said quietly and with great dignity, “Then ask your son to look around for my arm, which I left over there.

What would happen is that every idiot in this town who owns a gun, which is basically every idiot in this town, would grab his gun, jump into his car, or somebody else's car, and lay rubber for I-95. Inside of ten minutes the city is gridlocked, and what happens next makes IwoJima look like a maypole dance. This whole town turns into the end of a Stephen King novel.

Something that once had importance might be forgotten by most people but because millions of people once knew it, a force is present that can be harnessed. There might be so much significance attached to a song, for example, or a fact, that it can’t die but only lies dormant, like a vampire in his coffin, waiting to be called forth from the grave once again. There is more magic in the fact that the first mass worldwide photo of the Church of Satan was taken by Joe Rosenthal – the same man who took the most famous news photo in history – the flag-raising at Iwo Jima. There’s real occult significance to that – much more than in memorizing grimoires and witches’ alphabets. People ask me about what music to use in rituals – what is the best occult music. I’ve instructed people to go to the most uncrowded section of the music store and it’s a guarantee what you’ll find there will be occult music. That’s the power of long-lost trivia. I get irritated by people who turn up their noses and whine ‘Why would anyone want to know that?’ Because once upon a time, everyone in America knew it. Suppose there’s a repository of neglected energy, that’s been generated and forgotten. Maybe it’s like a pressure cooker all this time, just waiting for someone to trigger its release. ‘Here I am,’ it beckons, ‘I have all this energy stored up just waiting for you – all you have to do is unlock the door. Because of man’s stupidity, he’s neglected me to this state of somnambulism – dreaming the ancient dreams – even though I was once so important to him.’ Think about that. A song that was once on millions of lips now is only on your lips. Now what does that contain? Those vibrations of that particular tune, what do they evoke, call up? What do they unlock? The old gods lie dormant, waiting.

I had a cousin, Randall, killed on Iwo Jima. Have I told you? Have I told you his was a beautiful smile? Not the smile of a cynic, nor the easy, hungry smile of boys his age, whose smiles that aim to get them somewhere, are a commodity in exchange for God knows what. No. His was completely without intent; an accident of a smile. The kind of smile that would have surprised him if he could have seen it for himself. But he was too young to know his own extraordinariness.

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.

Her explanation was that she would not sit beside a draft dodger who was a Negro as well. She added that the least he could do was fight for his country the way her son was fighting on Iwo Jima. The story said that the man pulled his body away from the window to show an armless sleeve. He said quietly and with great dignity, ‘Then ask your son to look around for my arm, which I left over there.

A story went the rounds about a San Franciscan white matron who refused to sit beside a Negro civilian on the streetcar, even after he made room for her on the seat. Her explanation was that she would not sit beside a draft dodger who was a Negro as well. She added that the least he could do was fight for his country the way her son was fighting on Iwo Jima. The story said that the man pulled his body away from the window to show an armless sleeve. He said quietly and with great dignity, “Then ask your son to look around for my arm, which I left over there.

give a New York friend a panic attack, turn up unannounced on a Wednesday and suggest going for a drink. It is easier to organize five guys to raise a flag on Iwo Jima than to get mates out for movie and dinner. Surprise parties are such fun, but require e-mail “save the date” warnings. And everyone needs to know how to dress.

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.

Forget bringing the troops home from Iraq. We need to get the troops home from World War II. Can anybody tell me why, in 2009, we still have more than sixty thousand troops in Germany and thirty thousand in Japan? At some point, these people are going to have to learn to rape themselves. Our soldiers have been in Germany so long they now wear shorts with black socks. You know that crazy soldier hiding in the cave on Iwo Jima who doesn’t know the war is over? That’s us. Bush and Cheney used to love to keep Americans all sphinctered-up on the notion that terrorists might follow us home. But actually, we’re the people who go to your home and then never leave. Here’s the facts: The Republic of America has more than five hundred thousand military personnel deployed on more than seven hundred bases, with troops in one hundred fifty countries—we’re like McDonald’s with tanks—including thirty-seven European countries—because you never know when Portugal might invade Euro Disney. And this doesn’t even count our secret torture prisons, which are all over the place, but you never really see them until someone brings you there—kinda like IHOP. Of course, Americans would never stand for this in reverse—we can barely stand letting Mexicans in to do the landscaping. Can you imagine if there were twenty thousand armed Guatemalans on a base in San Ber-nardino right now? Lou Dobbs would become a suicide bomber. And why? How did this country get stuck with an empire? I’m not saying we’re Rome. Rome had good infrastructure. But we are an empire, and the reason is because once America lands in a country, there is no exit strategy. We’re like cellulite, herpes, and Irish relatives: We are not going anywhere. We love you long time!

While at sea, a Marine officer displayed a giant map on a wall. It showed the volcanic island known as Iwo Jima. “We are only in reserve! The other divisions will be landing in the morning, and we will stand by in case they need us,” an officer shouted to the men. As Woody’s ship floated out, the men started to get worried. The other divisions had 80 percent casualties on the first day.

During one of his incoherent pre-game Pep talks he said he was preparing us in case we ever had to storm the beaches at Iwo Jima. Hey coach, we already won that war! He never mentioned trying to win a game, it was always about killing or hurting the other team. He did mention blood a lot. But if we ever lost, we were required to mope around like it was the worst thing to ever happen in history, and it was definitely our fault, and besides we hadn’t even killed anybody on the other team.

I visit the Swiss parliament building, a building that manages to be grand and ornate yet at the same time understated. Every nation has its iconic figures, statues that neatly sum up what the nation is all about: the Marines hoisting the flag at Iwo Jima; Lord Nelson, looking regal, in London’s Trafalgar Square. The Swiss have someone known as Nicholas the Reconciler. His statue is on display here. He has an arm outstretched, palm facing downward, as if to say, “Calm down, everyone; let’s talk about this rationally.” It’s very Swiss.

HOLY ST. JOSEPH, SPOUSE OF MARY, BE MINDFUL OF ME, PRAY FOR ME, WATCH OVER ME. GUARDIAN OF THE PARADISE OF THE NEW ADAM, PROVIDE FOR MY SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL WANTS. FAITHFUL GUARDIAN OF THE MOST PRECIOUS OF ALL TREASURERS, I BESEECH THEE TO BRING THIS MATTER TO A HAPPY END IF IT BE FOR THE GLORY OF GOD AND THE GOOD OF MY SOUL. AMEN.

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 Iwo Jima stamp shows us the many-sided truth of war: its teamwork and courage, its moments of glory, but behind that, its amoral destructiveness and its long, painful after-effects—something General William Tecumseh Sherman understood so well.

It was February 19, 1945. The amphibious assault on Iwo Jima was beginning and I was eighteen years old.

Survivors like me have a responsibility to pass on to the next generation an account of what is required to defeat our enemies until the days when war is no more.

While so much of what we portrayed in The Pacific reflects everything that young men stand to lose in times of war, Red Blood, Black Sand shows us what it is possible for them to retain. The boy who pestered his mother to join the Marines is still with us, and we are better for it. Chuck: For your heroism, your service to your country, and for your personal friendship, I will always be grateful. Semper Fi Semper, Your friend, Ben

As anyone who has ever walked the red carpet will tell you, it is a crowded and chaotic affair, the most important rule of which is to keep things moving. In spite of this, for a few minutes, as Chuck recounted his story of heroism and loss, reliving every moment, the red carpet at the Chinese Theatre ground to a halt. Nobody asked us to move. Nobody interrupted. Everybody waited. Even the Hollywood PR machine knew to pay the moment and the man the proper respect.

The average life of a machine gunner in action was in the six- to twenty-minute range. Open fire with a machine gun and the entire Japanese defenses in that area would focus their attention on shortening your life span.

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]

The promotional material for Fourth Island is far more lavish and not at all defensive. From the Permanent Living Reenactment of the Flag Raising on Iwo Jima to the Rockets’ Red Glare Four-Hour Fireworks Display every night, from the United We Stand Steak House by way of the statue-lined Avenue of the Presidents to the Under God Indivisible Prayer Chapel, it is all on a grand scale, and every last piece of it is red, white, blue, striped, and starred. The Great Joy Corporation is evidently expecting or receiving patriotic visitors in great numbers. Interactive displays of the Museum of Our Heroes, the Gun Show, and the All-American Victory Gardens (salvia, lobelia, candytuft) feature large on the Web site, where one can also at all times recite the Pledge of Allegiance interactively with a chorus

We passed a gun shop advertising a "Blowout Sale. While listening to a country music station,we heard a talk/song narrated by our flag. "I flew proudly at Iwo Jima and the blustering deserts of Kuwait, anywhere freedom is threatened, you will find me.

Reaching California, many of the Pacific-bound servicemen were caught in limbo, waiting for a ship and that suited them fine. No one doubted that the route to Tokyo would be long and bloody, and they were in no hurry to travel it. The sweating malarial jungles of the South Pacific, the infinitesimal atolls of the Central Pacific, all those obscure islands with their alien names - Efate, Espiritu Santo, Malaita, Gaudalcanal, Emirau, Tarawa, Majuro, Kwajalein, Eniwetok, Ulithi, Palau, Saipan, Morotai, Mindinao, Iwo Jima, Okinawa - they would see them soon enough.

The Capehart housing of Freedom Bay, Ben thought, as he curved down Iwo Jima Boulevard, had all the architectural complexity and stylistic flamboyance of an oyster bed.

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

Ohio,

The enormous heat of re-entry ionized the air around the capsule causing a total communications blackout. For four and a half minutes the world held its breath. Were the men all right? Had the heat shield been damaged in the explosion? Was the craft now disintegrating in the upper atmosphere? There must have been a few whoops of joy in Mission Control when the radio finally sparked back into life. Odyssey splashed down in the Pacific Ocean southeast of American Samoa and just 6.5 km (4 miles) from the recovery ship, USS Iwo Jima. The crew were generally in good shape. And they were home.

Nevada won seven stars in World War II as follows: one star for Pearl Harbor-Midway, one star for the Aleutian operations, one for the Invasion of Normandy (including bombardment of Cherbourg), one star for the Invasion of Southern France, one star for the Iwo Jima Operation, one star for the Okinawa Gunto Operation, and one star for the Third Fleet Operations against Japan. She also received the Navy Occupation Service Medal (Asia clasp). While Nevada was noted for the accuracy of her main battery of 14-inch guns. These were used in bombardment in France and in the island campaigns against Japan. 6.

A Febuary 19 mission to Tokyo was purposely flown the day Iwo Jima was invaded, It was the largest raid to date, with 150 B-29s airborne. The flak was effective and enemy fighters mounted 570 attacks against the bombers. Six B-29s were lost. We got a huge flak hole (about 5 by 5 feet) in our right wing; it missed a wing spar and a gas tank by six inches.

I ordered a ginger ale and then promptly began stewing. I was watching the ranks of protesters file past. But I was also thinking of all I’d seen the past few days—of Hebron, Susya, and the Old City—and how distant it felt from these protests. Back in America these protests enjoyed positive coverage and were taken as evidence of the vitality and mettle of “the only democracy in the Middle East.” But by then I knew that “the only democracy in the Middle East” was essentially a tagline which, like “the Breakfast of Champions” or “Just do it,” depended less on logic or observed reality than a form of word association. The “Middle East” is the insanity of suicide bombings, the backwardness of a woman peeking out from her niqab. “Democracy” is a flag over Iwo Jima, Washington crossing the Delaware, a working man rising in a town meeting. Overlay the two phrases and a collage emerges—a visual representation of Herzl’s dream of “an outpost of civilization against barbarism.” And this collage is a technology, as functional as any other: Who can judge democratic Israel, which must exist in “that part of the world” where child brides, chemical weapons, and bin Laden reign?

Penny was a very pretty, witty and brave girl, as bold as a Marine platoon storming Iwo Jima.

To this day, I can still recall seeing our flag with Mt. Suribachi in the background. When I hear our national anthem, I always think about the flag over the cemetery on Iwo Jima. The two things I remember most are the first five minutes on the beach with hundreds of dead Marines and visiting the cemetery where Captain Steve and the other dead from the 3rd Battalion were buried.

The 5th Marine Division had suffered such severs casualties, they were able to bring our entire Division back to Hawaii in only 5 or 6 ships. We docked in Hilo and boarded a single train normally used to haul sugar cane to mill. These were open flat cars, the weather was beautiful, the scenery fantastic. As our train gets underway the Marines break out their Jap flags captured on Iwo Jima. There were hundreds of Jap flags flying from on end of the train to the other. This was a beautiful sight. The victors had returned home. I've never felt so proud to be a part of anything like this before in my life. There were no spectators, no one watching us, no crowd, no cheering, no band, only the remainder of a proud 5th Marine Division returning home. For some reason I preferred it this way, no one could understand our feelings at this time.

So finally Jimmy stopped me and said to me, he says, Sarge, they wouldn't sell us any Coke. And I said, what do you mean they wouldn't sell you any Coke? He said no, there was a sign on the door and the sign said no Indians, Mexicans, niggers, or dogs allowed. And if you seen the hurt in the boy's eyes, and he just shook his head and never said anything and just walked on. The other two men never said anything to me. They just walked past with their heads down. And I remember when, well because Jimmy was killed on Iwo Jima.

Although once the center of activity for tens of thousands of men, the island is quiet except for JMSDF supply flights and visits by US Navy fighters from Atsugi that use the runway for landing practice. In addition to several hundred JMSDF personnel, the island is home to friendly feral cats, turkeys of unknown origin, songbirds, East African land snails, scorpions and centipedes.

Major General Howard Conner, “without the Navajos, the marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.

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.

Reaching California, many of the Pacific-bound servicemen were caught in limbo, waiting for a ship, and that suited them fine. No one doubted that the route to Tokyo would be long and bloody, and they were in no hurry to travel it. The sweating malarial jungles of the South Pacific, the infinitesimal atolls of the central Pacific, all those obscure islands with their alien names—Efate, Espiritu Santo, Malaita, Guadalcanal, Emirau, Tarawa, Majuro, Kwajalein, Eniwetok, Ulithi, Palau, Saipan, Morotai, Mindanao, Iwo Jima, Okinawa—they would see them soon enough. “Golden Gate in ’48, bread line in ’49.” That pessimistic slogan, which began circulating in 1942, revealed a great deal about the attitudes of the American servicemen who fought in the Pacific. They fully expected that the war would last twice as long as it eventually did, and they assumed, as a matter of course, that the long effort would exhaust and bankrupt the nation. But the words also indicated a gritty, persevering determination. The Japanese had fatally misjudged them. They were not cowed by the prospect of a long war and a destitute homecoming. They would go on fighting, killing, and dying, overcoming fear, fatigue, and sorrow, until they reached the beaches of the detested empire itself. There, in 1945, the irresistible force of the Yankee war machine would meet the immovable object of the “Yamato spirit,” until two mushroom clouds and an emperor’s decision brought the whole execrable business to an end.

The disasters at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were our handiwork,” the Times editorial stated. “They were defended then, and are defended now, by the argument that they saved more lives than they took – more lives of Japanese as well as more lives of Americans. The argument may be sound or it may be unsound. One may think it sound when he recalls Tarawa, Iwo Jima, or Okinawa. One may think it unsound when he reads Mr. Hersey.

To its acolytes, the Marine Corps was no less than a secular religion-Jesuits with guns-grounded in a training regimen and an ethos that relied on a historical narrative of comradeship and brotherhood in arms stretching over 150 years. In short, if a man wanted to be part of America's toughest lineup, he had best join the institution that had fought at the Halls of Montezuma and Tripoli, Belleau Wood and Guadalcanal, Tarawa and Iwo Jima.

Refusing to stand during the national anthem or to salute the Stars and Stripes is not illegal, but it is not sustainable for the nation’s privileged to sit in disgust for a flag that their betters raised under fire on Iwo Jima for others not yet born. Sometimes citizens can do as much harm to their commonwealth by violating custom and tradition as by breaking laws.

A courageous man goes on fulfilling his duty despite the fear gnawing away inside. Many men are fearless, for many different reasons, but fewer are courageous.” 

When the band played “The Star-Spangled Banner,” I had to fight back tears of pride. I have never been so proud of myself and my country, before or since. We were no longer boots; we were authentic United States Marines.

Planting the US flag at the site of the Twin Towers did presage a war. Tom Franklin said that when he took his shot he had been aware of the similarities between it and another famous image from a previous conflict –the Second World War, when US Marines planted the American flag atop Iwo Jima. Many Americans will have recognized the symmetry immediately and appreciated that both moments captured a stirring mix of powerful emotions: sadness, courage, heroism, defiance, collective perseverance and endeavour. Both images, but perhaps more so the 9/ 11 photograph, also evoke the opening stanza of the American national anthem, ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’, particularly its final lines: O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave? At a moment of profound shock for the American people, the sight of their flag yet waving was, for many, reassuring. That the stars of the fifty states were held aloft by men in uniform may have spoken to the streak of militarism that tinges American culture, but to see the red, white and blue amid the awful grey devastation of Ground Zero will also have helped many ordinary citizens to cope with the other deeply disturbing images emerging from New York City that autumn day.

Some people wonder all their lives if they’ve made a difference. The Marines don’t have that problem. —Ronald Reagan

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.

The Army Air Force concluded after the war that Iwo Jima-based planes destroyed more B-29's on the ground, in raids on Tinian and Saipan, than were lost on all the bombing runs over Tokyo.

... the island had to be taken at almost any cost.

The Army Air Force was doing its part to soften up Iwo Jima for the Marines. Beginning December 8, B-29 Superforts and B-24 Liberators had been pummeling the island mercilessly. Iwo Jima would be bombed for seventy-two consecutive days, setting the record as the most heavily bombed target and the longest sustained bombardment in the Pacific War. One flyboy on Saipan confidently told Easy Company's Chuck Lindberg, "All you guys will have to do is clean up. No one could survive what we've been dropping.

... [Howlin' Mad] Smith was the "Patton of the Pacific.

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

Some optimistically hoped the unprecedented bombing of the tiny island would make the conquest of Iwo Jima a two- to three-day job. But on the command ship USS Eldorado, Howlin' Mad shared none of this optimism. The general was studying reconnaissance photographs that showed every square inch of the island had been bombed. "The Seventh Air Force dropped 5,800 tons in 2,700 sorties. In one square mile of Iwo Jima, a photograph showed 5,000 bomb craters." Admiral Nimitz thought he was dropping bombs "sufficient to pulverize everything on the island." But incredibly, the enemy defenses were growing. There were 450 major defensive installations when the bombing began. Now there were over 750. Howlin' Mad observed: "We thought it would blast any island off the military map, level every defense, no matter how strong, and wipe out the garrison. But nothing of the kind happened. Like the worm, which becomes stronger the more you cut it up, Iwo Jima thrived on our bombardment.

Kenneth Milstead, a 2nd Platoon buddy of Mike, Ira, Franklin, and Harlon, had just dropped into a shallow foxhole he'd dug when a shell landed beside him and blew him out again. Blood streamed from the embedded fragments in his face. "I could have been evacuated," Milstead recalled, "but the Japanese had pissed me off. I went from being scared to being angry. That was the day I became a Marine.

For most of the young boys, it had not fully sunk in yet that the defenders were not on Iwo, they were in Iwo, prowling the sixteen miles of catacombs.

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.

Prime Health, they called the new system. The new logo was the iconic image of U.S. Marines raising a flag over Iwo Jima, and the new motto, below the logo, was: So exclusive you fought to get in.

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.

December 1944. The last Christmas for too many young boys. Then off for the forty-day sail to Iwo Jima. The boys of Spearhead had been expertly trained for ten months. They were proficient in the techniques of war. But more important, they were a team, ready to fight for one another. These boys were bonded by feelings stronger than they would have for any other humans in their life. The vast, specialized city of men — boys, really, but a functioning society of experts now, trained and coordinated and interdependent and ready for its mission — will move out upon the Pacific. Behind them, in safe America, Bing Crosby sang of a white Christmas, just like the ones he used to know. Ahead lay a hot island of black sand, where many of them would ensure a long future of Christmases in America by laying down their lives.

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.