The Marines' Fiercest Fighting of World War II

After seventy-two days of nonstop bombing and three more days of the U.S. Navy's biggest pre-landing shelling by battleships and heavy cruisers, Marines landed on the small, treeless island of Iwo Jima and faced tens of thousands of Japanese troops still alive underground and deeply dug in. On nine square miles of scorched, churned-up rock, exposed Marines paid in blood for every inch of black sand in a battle veterans called unrelenting, ferocious, savage, and shocking, with few places to take cover and death coming from all directions. The fighting cost more American lives than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and twenty-two Marines received Medals of Honor, thirteen of them posthumously. Yet securing the island and its landing strip saved the lives of thousands of airmen attacking Japan, because from March to the end of the war the Marines' valor enabled more than 2,400 damaged B-29s to land safely on Iwo Jima. During fourteen months of bombing Japan's largest cities, many B-29s did not make it safely back to base, and each damaged bomber that crashed into the Pacific could take eleven Americans to a watery grave and cost taxpayers the equivalent of 8.5 million dollars today. In the battle, 70,000 Americans fought, with 7,000 dead and 19,000 wounded, while 21,000 Japanese fought, with 20,800 dead and 200 captured.

Washington, District of Columbia · United States