The Capture of Iwo Jima
Copyright © 2006, Henry J. Sage

“Uncommon Valor was a Common Virtue.”

As of this writing a new movie, Flags of our Fathers, about the battle of Iwo Jima has just been released.  A Japanese film about the same battle is due out within a few months.  Because of the famous photograph by Joe Rosenthal of the flag raising on Mount Suribachi and the statue by Felix de Weldon which stands in Arlington, Virginia, overlooking Memorial Bridge and the District of Columbia, Iwo Jima is one of the most famous battles of World War II and probably the most famous battle in the Asian theater.

The fame is well deserved, for it is clear that Iwo Jima was one of the toughest battles fought by the Marines in World War II.  The small island of Iwo Jima lies about 600 miles south of Tokyo. The island is mostly flat, but at its southern tip Mount Suribachi, an extinct volcano, rises over 500 feet from which the entire island and its beaches can be observed. By February 1945, Iwo Jima was one of the chief Japanese defensive strongholds which had not yet been captured.  Its capture was designed to help bring the Pacific war to a successful conclusion.

The planned attack on Iwo Jima had four objectives:

• To provide fighter cover for bombing missions against Japan.
• To deny this strategic outpost to the enemy.
• To create defensive airbases to protect positions in the Marianas.
• To provide air fields for staging heavy bomber raids against Japan.

Before Marines landed on Iwo Jima, the Navy had conducted the longest and most intensive bombardment given any ground objective in the Pacific during the war. Starting with air strikes in 1944, which may have served in part to drive the Japanese defenders deeper under ground, the blasting of the island continued through the morning of 19 February 1945.

The Japanese commander on Iwo Jima recognized that the volcanic soil on the island could be mixed with cement to form a very strong form of concrete.  The Japanese had over 21,000 men on the island and about 500 heavy weapons, all of which were positioned in reinforced concrete bunkers and caves. Because Iwo Jima was actual Japanese territory, the American commanders knew that it would be defended as fiercely as anything they had previously encountered.

The Marine units in the invasion of Iwo Jima were the V Amphibious Corps which consisted of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Marine Divisions.  Although Navy ships, including five battleships, bombarded the island of Iwo Jima heavily for three days before the landings began, it became clear once the Marines were ashore that many of the defenses had been untouched.  Because the Japanese defenders had dug so deeply into the earth, the bombardments had not touched them.

On the morning of D-Day, February 19, 1945, an additional heavy bombardment commenced in advance of the landings, which began at around 8:30.  As the troops went ashore they immediately encountered soft volcanic ash, which made advancing very tedious.  But because the bombardments had neutralized the defenses close to the beaches the initial assault was not heavily attacked, but the farther the Marines got inland, the more deadly the defensive fires became.  Japanese mortar and artillery dropped shells on the beach, causing casualties even among men who were already wounded and who had been evacuated back to the beach. 

Despite those difficulties the Marines landed 30,000 men on the first day of the invasion.  Mount Suribachi, the lonely height on the southern end of the island of Iwo Jima, was the objective of the 28th Marine regiment. Japanese observers on the top of the mountain were using their advantageous position to direct artillery onto the Marine invaders. On the second day of the assault, the 28th Marines attacked the mountain, which was covered with defensive bunkers, machine gun pillbox positions and caves.  After three days of difficult fighting the Marines finally reached the top of the mountain and a small flag was raised.

The photographer who took the picture of the first flag raising and had his camera knocked out of his hand and destroyed by a grenade, but he saved the film. As he was heading down the mountain, looking for another camera, Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal arrived and discovered that the Marines were about to raise a larger flag which could be seen all over the island and by the ships still offshore.  Rosenthal snapped the picture of the second flag raising and it became one of the most famous photographs of war ever taken and the model for the bronze statue that stands near Arlington Cemetery just outside Washington. Stories that the second flag raising was staged were put to rest long ago.  Rosenthal was lucky to be in the right place at the right time.

Those unfamiliar with the history of Iwo Jima are inclined to believe that the flag raising was the culmination of a battle, but it was only the beginning.  In the three weeks of fighting to take the island the Marines lost almost 7,000 men killed and almost 20,000 wounded: the Japanese had inflicted more than one casualty for every soldier defending the island.  Almost all of the 21,000 Japanese defenders were killed in the battle. 

One of the main objectives of taking Iwo Jima had been to capture the airstrips and engineers in Navy Seabees began working on the airfields even before the island was fully captured.  But soon after the fighting ended the airfield on Iwo became operational as an emergency landing strip for B-29s that had been flying from Saipan to bomb the home islands of Japan.  By the time the war was over more than 2,400 emergency landings had taken place on Iwo Jima and many fliers’ lives had thus been saved. 

When the fighting on Iwo Jima was over, Admiral Nimitz wrote, “Among the Americans who served on Iwo island uncommon valor was a common virtue.”  When considering that the island of Iwo Jima is only 7-1/2 square miles in size, it is clear that a great deal of heroism occurred in  a very small place.

World War 2 Home | Updated October 27, 2006