Iwo Jima

Mt Suribachi

There is a connection between this post and the previous one.  Can you guess what it is?

 “The ultimate factor in the fall of Iwo Jima can be attributed only to the character and courage of the United States marines. In war there comes a time when power alone has reached its limits, when planes no longer can be called upon to deliver bombs effectively, when ships have no more shells to fire, when defenses will no longer yield before fire power, however heavy. That is the time when men on foot must pay for yardage with their lives. That is when they call on the marines."
~ Robert Sherrod, who was there.

Have you ever even set foot on Iwo Jima? I have as part of FCLP (Fleet Carrier Landing Practice) exercises. My grandfather was an aviator aboard Lexington (CV-16) when she was part of TG58.2 providing close air support for the 1945 landings. My grandmother was a Navy nurse aboard Solace (AH-5) evacuating and treating wounded at Iwo. She actually went ashore during the fighting, along with other nurses, to carry out triage.   

What a god-forsaken place to have war, a barren volcanic island, the beaches composed of and hemmed in by steep terraces of constantly shifting black sand, volcanic cinders, and ash some 15 feet high, impossible to properly dig in to for protection from the Japanese fires.

Wounded placed on deck waiting for treatment.

 Some 25,000 Americans and Japanese were killed in the space of five weeks on that  island.  That works out to about one human being every two minutes, hour after hour, day after day, week after week.  Plus some 20,000 wounded, so call it an individual person brutally killed or maimed every minute.

Iwo Jima.  No place in the middle of no where.

 

 

 

Then and now merged.