3/18/2021 0 Comments Iwo Jima Casualty List
They were so well-camouflaged that the Marines could not see them.Part of the Japanese island chain, it was the site of one of the bloodiest battles oin the Pacific Theater.Jones, a writer for The Atlantic Monthly and an eyewitness to the battle, had this to say just after it ended: No one who was at Iwo Jima can analyze the battle objectively.
The carnage was so horrifying that the blood and agony of the struggle saturated ones mind... Iwo was unlike any war I had ever seen. It was a fight to the finish, with no man asking for quarter until he was dead... Japanese died where they fell. Since the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7th, 1941, US armed forces, and its allies, had been making steady progress towards the Japanese home islands due to a strategy known as, Island Hopping. It was a tactical decision involving the re-taking of Japanese-held islands one-by-one until Japan itself was reached. ![]() American control of these airstrips would put B-29s in range of the Japanese home islands. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi took command of the 23,000 men of the 109th Division of the Imperial Japanese Army (with some smaller units mixed in). The overall Commander-in-Chief of the entire US Navy Marine force, including the 3rd, 4th, 5th Marine Divisions the US Navy 5th Fleet was Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, regarded as one of Americas finest military leaders. US naval forces consisted of 500 ships and the total strength of the Marine contingent was about 70,000 men. However, being an excellent commander, he could not allow his troops to accept defeat. He departed from conventional defensive tactics, which normally would have advocated a concentration of forces on the beach. Instead he chose the high ground and based his operations to a large extent on the highest point on the island, Mt. Suribachi. He had miles of tunnels dug inside the mountain, which included large guns that would fire down on the beach. So ingenious were his preparations that he had large steel doors close each time the gun fired so Marines could not fire on the position. His counterpart, Fleet Admiral (the highest grade in the US Navy) Chester W. Nimitz was a master of logistics, getting supplies and men exactly where they had to be. In addition, he was a dogged strategist, who once engaged in battle rarely backed down. Iwo Jima Casualty List Full Divisions OfHis problem was transporting three full divisions of US Marines to the beaches of Iwo Jima. This he accomplished as the time for the amphibious landing drew near. Hitting the Beach--February 19, 1945 From June to February, the US Navy unleashed bombardments on the island to soften up Japanese defenses. When the Marines hit the black-sand beaches there was a kind of eerie silence. They thought that the constant bombardments had perhaps decimated the Japanese.
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