‘Uncommon Valor Was A Common Virtue’: The Battle Of Iwo Jima

The fall of the Marianas Islands in June 1944 was a devastating blow to the Japanese high command. Not only was it the first battle in which U.S. troops set foot on soil inhabited by Japanese civilians, it provided the U.S. Army Air Force with aerodromes from which they could launch devastating B-29 raids against the home islands. But there was one problem for the Americans. Halfway between the 1,200-mile flight from the Marianas to Japan sat a volcanic island called Iwo Jima. It was well-positioned to not only scramble fighter interceptors from its three airfields to attack the U.S. bombers on their ways to and from their targets, the Japanese could also radio ahead to warn the home islands of the imminent raids. For the USAAF, who also envisioned a forward base for fighter escorts to accompany the B-29s, it was imperative that Iwo Jima be taken. And so the Navy and Marines were called in to do the job.

Located 750 miles south of Japan, the five-mile-long Iwo Jima is an isolated porkchop-shaped volcanic island called Iō Tō by the Japanese which literally means “sulfur island.” By the time the U.S. armada of 450 vessels of all types dropped anchor off shore in February 1945, Iwo had been subjected to six months of aerial bombardment. Any vegetation was gone and it presented the Marines waiting to storm the island with a forbidding grayish yellow eight square mile piece of land in the middle of the Pacific. Its only prominent feature was an extinct volcano at its narrow southern tip called Mount Suribachi. It loomed 550 feet over the battlefield and presented an ideal position from which to sweep the entire landing zone with artillery and machine gun fire.