Compass Points - Anniversary
Uncommon Marines
February 19, 2024
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Today the island is green and peaceful. Most of the land today has four-foot-high elephant grass growing wild. The island seems ready for a passing cruise ship to arrive and send out picture-taking tourists in loud print shirts. A small but solid extinct volcano sits implacably at one end of the island, sternly watching over everything. Atop the volcano rests a small memorial. If tourists were allowed to visit, few of them would make the trek up the rocky trail to the top. Even fewer, staying below, would venture down into the smoldering sulfur caves that hide off every trail. Across the island all is still. Just the wind blowing the tall grass and the waves dancing on the black sand beaches.
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The island was not green and peaceful 79 years ago today, February 19, 1945, when the 4th and 5th Marine Divisions landed side by side on the Iwo Jima beaches just below Mt. Suribachi. The Japanese were well dug in on Iwo Jima and the pre-landing naval bombardment had little effect. The island would need to be won inch by inch. It was the beginning of weeks of bloody fighting that were not completed until 26 March. The Marines suffered 26,000 casualties, including 6,000 KIA. The Japanese had an estimated 21,000 killed.
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How difficult was the fighting? After the battle, when he was dedicating a cemetery to the fallen Marines, Major General Graves Erskine said,
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Victory was never in doubt. Its cost was. What was in doubt was whether there would be any of us left to dedicate our cemetery at the end, or whether the last Marine would die knocking out the last Japanese gunner.
-- MajGen Erskine USMC, as quoted in "The Battle History of the U.S. Marines" by Colonel Joseph H. Alexander
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After the battle, Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz said, "Among the Americans serving on Iwo Island, uncommon valor was a common virtue." Twenty-two Marines were awarded the Medal of Honor for their actions on Iwo Jima. Gunnery Sergeant John Basilone who had been awarded the Medal of Honor after Guadalcanal was awarded the Navy Cross posthumously after he was killed single-handedly destroying a Japanese blockhouse.
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While Marines traditionally were prepared to seize advanced naval bases as part of a maritime campaign, at Iwo Jima the Marines were used to secure advanced air bases. The value of Iwo Jima was that it provided the allies in the Pacific with airfields for long range bombers. With the capture of Iwo Jima, the main islands of Japan were within range. It took a total combined arms operation to win the island. Marine infantry was supported by nearly 100 tanks, thousands of artillery rounds, countless aircraft sorties, and ever ready naval gunfire.
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Today, on the 79th anniversary of the Marines' World War II landing, Iwo Jima is green and peaceful. Eighty years ago no one predicted the terrible struggle that would take place on the tiny island. In a similar way, the battles that would come years later in places like Seoul, Khe Sanh, and Fallujah erupted like storms. Marines are sent to the fight when it is time to fight. Marines do not spend their time predicting where they will fight, Marines use their time preparing for whatever fight is ahead. And when the next fight comes, and the Marines again win the struggle, Americans will still say that among Marines, "uncommon valor was a common virtue."
I can't say enough about the two Marine divisions. If I use words like brilliant, it would really be an under-description of the absolutely superb job they did in breaching the so-called impenetrable barrier. . .Absolutely superb operation, a textbook, and I think it'll be studied for many, many years to come as the way to do it."
(General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, USA, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 27 February 1991.)
Reference Branch
Marine Corps History Division
Was no USMC ATTENTION ON the 79TH ANNIVERSARY OF D Day IWO JIMA AN ACCIDENT OR WAS IT INTENTIONAL….? FD unknown has stripped Our Marine Corps of all of the Offensive Means used to destroy the Japanese Forces in their DEFENSIVE “Force Design 1945” they were sitting ducks to either be destroyed or bypassed. Why would the fate of the “One Trick Pony Defensive Force Design Elements”of Today’s USMC and that of the Japanese on Iwo Jima be any different?