Iwo Jima sixty years later.

Bonnie

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Iwo Jima
The famous battle offers lessons for us 60 years later.

BY ARTHUR HERMAN
Saturday, February 19, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST

Sixty years ago today, more than 110,000 Americans and 880 ships began their assault on a small volcanic island in the Pacific, in the climactic battle of the last year of World War II. For the next 36 days Iwo Jima would become the most populous 7 1/2 square miles on the planet, as U.S. Marines and Japanese soldiers fought a battle that would test American resolve even more than D-Day or the Battle of the Bulge had, and that still symbolizes a free society's willingness to make the sacrifice necessary to prevail over evil--a sacrifice as relevant today as it was 60 years ago.

The attack on Iwo Jima capped a two-year island-hopping campaign that was as controversial with politicians and the press as any Rumsfeld strategy. Each amphibious assault had been bloodier than the last: at Tarawa, where 3,000 ill-prepared Marines fell taking an island of just three square miles; at Saipan, where Army troops performed so poorly two of their generals had to be fired; and Peleliu, where it took 10 weeks of fighting in 115-degree heat to root out the last Japanese defenders, at the cost of 6,000 soldiers and Marines.

Iwo Jima would be the first island of the Japanese homeland to be attacked. The Japanese had put in miles of tunnels and bunkers, with 361 artillery pieces, 65 heavy mortars, 33 large naval guns, and 21,000 defenders determined to fight to the death. Their motto was, "kill 10 of the enemy before dying." American commanders expected 40% casualties on the first assault. "We have taken such losses before," remarked the Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Holland M. Smith, "and if we have to, we can do it again."




Even before the attack, the Navy's bombardment of Iwo Jima cost more ships and men than it lost on D-Day, without making a significant dent in the Japanese defenses. Then, beginning at 9 a.m. on the 19th, Marines loaded down with 70 to 100 pounds of equipment each hit the beach, and immediately sank into the thick volcanic ash. They found themselves on a barren moonscape stripped of any cover or vegetation, where Japanese artillery could pound them with unrelenting fury. Scores of wounded Marines helplessly waiting to be evacuated off the beach were killed "with the greatest possible violence," as veteran war reporter Robert Sherrod put it. Shells tore bodies in half and scattered arms and legs in all directions, while so much underground steam rose from the churned up soil the survivors broke up C-ration crates to sit on in order to keep from being scalded. Some 2,300 Marines were killed or wounded in the first 18 hours. It was, Sherrod said, "a nightmare in hell."
And overlooking it all, rising 556 feet above the carnage, stood Mount Suribachi, where the Japanese could direct their fire along the entire beach. Taking Suribachi became the key to victory. It took four days of bloody fighting to reach the summit, and when Marines did, they planted an American flag. When it was replaced with a larger one, photographer Joe Rosenthal recorded the scene--the most famous photograph of World War II and the most enduring symbol of a modern democracy at war.

Yet, in the end, a symbol of what? Certainly not victory. The capture of Suribachi only marked the beginning of the battle for Iwo Jima, which dragged on for another month and cost nearly 26,000 men--all for an island whose future as a major air base never materialized. Forty men were in the platoon which raised the flag on Suribachi. Only four would survive the battle unhurt. Their company, E Company, Second Battalion, 28th Regiment, Fifth Marine Division, would suffer 75% casualties. Of the seven officers who led it into battle, only one was left when it was over.

But the Marines pushed on. Over the next agonizing weeks, they took the rest of the island yard by yard, bunker by bunker, cave by cave. They fought through places with names like "Bloody Gorge" and "The Meat Grinder." They learned to take no prisoners in fighting a skilled and fanatical enemy who gave no quarter and expected none. Twenty out of every 21 Japanese defenders would die where they stood. One in three Marines on Iwo Jima would either be killed or wounded, including 19 of 24 battalion commanders. Twenty-seven Marines and naval medical corpsmen would win Medals of Honor--more than in any other battle in history--and 13 of them posthumously. As Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, said, "Among the Americans who served on Iwo Island, uncommon valor was a common virtue."





Yet even this valor and sacrifice is not the full story of what Iwo Jima means, or what Rosenthal's immortal photograph truly symbolizes. The lesson of Iwo Jima is in fact an ancient one, going back to Machiavelli: that sometimes free societies must be as tough and unrelenting as their enemies. Totalitarians test their opponents by generating extreme conditions of brutality and violence; in those conditions--in the streets and beheadings of Fallujah or on the beach and in the bunkers of Iwo Jima--they believe weak democratic nerves will crack. This in turn demonstrates their moral superiority: that by giving up their own decency and humanity they have become stronger than those who have not.
Free societies can afford only one response. There were no complicated legal issues or questions of "moral equivalence" on Iwo Jima: It was kill or be killed. That remains the nature of war even for democratic societies. The real question is, who outlasts whom. In 1945 on Iwo Jima, it was the Americans, as the monument at Arlington Cemetery, based on Rosenthal's photograph, proudly attests. In the jungles of Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1970s, it was the totalitarians--with terrible consequences.

Today, some in this country think the totalitarians may still win in Iraq and elsewhere. A few even hope so. Only one thing is certain: As long as Americans cherish the memory of those who served at Iwo Jima, and grasp the crucial lesson they offer all free societies, the totalitarians will never win.

Mr. Herman, a historian, is the author, most recently, of "To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World" (HarperCollins, 2004).

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110006317
 
Was John Bradley misidentified?...

Marines Investigating Claim about Men in Iwo Jima Photo
May 03, 2016 — The Marine Corps says it has begun investigating whether it mistakenly identified one of the men shown raising the U.S. flag at Iwo Jima in one of the iconic images of World War II after two amateur history buffs began raising questions about the picture.
The Marines announced its inquiry more than a year after Eric Krelle, of Omaha, Nebraska, and Stephen Foley, of Wexford, Ireland, began raising doubts about the identity of one man. In November 2014, the Omaha World-Herald published an extensive story about their claims and Saturday was the first to report the Marines were looking into the matter. Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal shot the photo on Feb. 23, 1945, on Mount Suribachi, amid an intense battle with the Japanese. Rosenthal didn't get the names of the men, but the photo immediately was celebrated in the U.S. and President Franklin Roosevelt told the military to identify the men. After some confusion, the Marines identified the men as John Bradley, Rene Gagnon, Ira Hayes, Harlon Block, Michael Strank and Franklin Sousley. All were Marines except Bradley, who was a Navy corpsman.

Block, Strank and Sousley were killed in fighting at Iwo Jima before the photo was distributed in the U.S. On Monday, the Marines issued a statement saying, "The Marine Corps is examining information provided by a private organization related (to) Joe Rosenthal's Associated Press photograph of the second flag raising on Iwo Jima. "Rosenthal's photo captured a single moment in the 36-day battle during which more than 6,500 US servicemen made the ultimate sacrifice for our Nation and it is representative of the more than 70,000 US Marines, Sailors, Soldiers and Coast Guardsmen that took part in the battle. We are humbled by the service and sacrifice of all who fought on Iwo Jima."

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Iwo Jima, a tiny island 660 miles south of Tokyo, was the site of an intense 36-day battle that began Feb. 19, 1945, between about 70,000 Marines and 18,000 Japanese soldiers. Capturing Iwo Jima was deemed essential to the U.S. war effort because Japanese fighter planes were taking off from the island and intercepting American bomber planes. Hal Buell, a retired AP executive news photo editor, had long discussions with Rosenthal about the flag-raising picture and in 2006 wrote a book about the famous image. It's hard to understand the photo's power in 1945 to Americans, who were weary of the war and horrified by the incredible number of deaths by servicemen, especially in locations of Asia most had never heard of, Buell said. "People were just tired of the war, and all of a sudden out of nowhere came this picture that encapsulated everything," Buell said. "It showed that victory was ultimately possible."

Buell said after Rosenthal shot the photo, the flag-raisers quickly moved onto other tasks, and it was impossible for him to get their names. That task was left to the Marines after the picture prompted an overwhelming response and the government decided to use the image in an upcoming sale of war bonds to finance the continued fighting. Rosenthal died in 2006. The identification of the six servicemen has been accepted for decades, but the World-Herald reported that while recovering from an operation Foley had lots of time on his hands and began noticing possible discrepancies in the picture. He enlisted the help of Krelle, who maintains a website dedicated to the Marines' 5th Division. After examining the famous photo along with other pictures taken that day of the men, they concluded that the man identified as Bradley was actually Harold Henry Schultz, a private first class from Detroit. Schultz died in 1995.

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There were two photographs taken, possibly they were mixed-up...
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The Incredible Story Behind the Iwo Jima Photo Discovery
Jun 25, 2016 | What does it take to set straight an iconic piece of American history? For retired Marine Lt. Col. Matt Morgan, it was years of research and dogged forensic analysis.
The Marine Corps made national headlines this week when officials announced that one of the men in perhaps the most iconic photograph of Marines in World War II had been misidentified for decades. A 1945 photograph by Associated Press journalist Joe Rosenthal of six Marines raising a flag on Mt. Suribachi -- an image that Navy Secretary James Forrestal famously said would ensure the Corps’ survival for another 500 years -- did not include Navy corpsman John Bradley, officials concluded. Instead, it pictured Pfc. Harold Schultz, a quiet mortarman who died in 1995 without ever setting the record straight. Morgan, who served in the infantry and as a public affairs officer during his career, told Military.com in a June 23 interview that his journey to find answers about the famous photograph began in 2005, when he was a student at the Marine Corps’ Command and Staff College at Quantico., Va.

Morgan said he received a call from a friend, retired Marine Sgt. Maj. James Dever, who had been working as a military adviser on Clint Eastwood’s film, Flags of Our Fathers, based on the bestselling book of the same name by Bradley’s son, James. “He said, ‘I’ve got something interesting here. I don’t think John Bradley is in this photo,’” Morgan said. “I looked at it independently and very quickly came to the same conclusion.” But who the misidentified Marine was remained unclear. Morgan knew that historians had placed Bradley at three different positions in the image through the decades, and had done the same with Cpl. Ira Hayes, another flag raiser. “It turned out that many of the guys had been misidentified at different times,” Morgan said.

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Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal preserved this moment on Feb. 23, 1945, when six Marines raised the U.S. Flag on Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima. The battle on the Japanese-held island claimed the lives of nearly 7,000 Marines.​

Without a firm lead, Morgan let the issue rest for nearly a decade. “As Marines, both Dever and I knew what we were suggesting was rather serious,” he said. “To bring everything forward, we needed to have our facts firm.” In 2014, the two Marines found themselves working together as advisers on another Eastwood film, the Chris Kyle biopic American Sniper. Morgan said Eastwood tended to use the same crew members on his projects, and the topic of the controversial photo again came up among those who had worked on Flags of Our Fathers. Dever and Morgan agreed the subject would make an intriguing future documentary project. And then, in the fall of that year, their idea got a shot in the arm: two amateur historians, Eric Krelle and Stephen Foley, went public with a theory that the service member formerly identified as Bradley was, in fact, Schultz.

The conclusion was the result of hours of poring over grainy images from Feb. 23, 1945, the day of the famous flag-raising. Rosenthal’s photographs were augmented by those of combat photographer Louis Lowery, then a staff sergeant. One of the photos taken by Lowery of the raising of a smaller flag earlier in the day show’s Schultz in the very corner of the shot, a strap hanging off the brim of his helmet. Other photos by Rosenthal taken after the famous flag-raising show a Marine with a mysterious shadow in front of his face and a rifle slung lower than the rest. That shadow was Schultz’s hanging helmet strap, the historians concluded. Video evidence and that low-hanging rifle made them confident: the mystery man was Schultz.

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