After the first flag raising of the day, Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal captured the famous moment of six Marines raising the flag, an image now ingrained in the mind of every American. The distinctive flag-raising atop Mount Suribachi took place on February 23, 1945, five days after the battle began. Although the Army Air Forces B-24 bombers had raided the island for 10 straight days and the Navy ships and carrier ships took over three days before the landing, the bombardment had little impact since most of the Japanese were underground. They had buried underground and riddled the landscape with pillboxes that blended into the ground. Iwo Jima had few beaches and was replete with cliffs and caves. The Japanese had the upper hand as the defenders. After the battle, Iwo Jima became the emergency landing site for over 2,200 B-29 bombers. It gave the Americans an advanced base, which would boost the strategic bombing campaign against mainland Japan, and it would assist in the eventual invasion of Japan. Due to the lethality of the campaign, junior Marines had to assume leadership roles in order to continue in the attack like Private first classes leading platoons because all the officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs) had been killed.Īlthough the campaign was extremely deadly, it was essential for the United States. The bloodiest battle in the history of the Marine Corps, Iwo Jima was the only major Pacific battle in which the Marines suffered greater casualties than they inflicted. Iwo Jima was the largest, yet costliest, Marine amphibious operation during World War II with a casualty rate of 35 % of Marines employed. In the first day alone, the Marines would experience 2,400 casualties, a number comparable with American losses at Omaha Beach on D-Day at Normandy in June 1944. The Marines suffered 6,800 deaths alone and a total of over 26,000 casualties. It is estimated that there were at least 17,000 Japanese casualties, including dead and missing, plus 216 taken prisoner. The Battle of Iwo Jima, which lasted from February 19 to Mafeatured around 70,000 Marines and somewhere between 18,000-20,000 Japanese on a volcanic island 660 miles south of Tokyo that was 2 miles wide by 4 miles long. Nothing any of us had ever known could compare with the utter anguish, frustration and constant inner battle to maintain some semblance of sanity.” Peter Zurlinden, a veteran Marine combat correspondent, noted that it was different: “ At Tarawa, Saipan and Tinian, I saw Marines killed and wounded in a shocking manner, but I saw nothing like the ghastliness that hung over the Iwo beachhead.
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