Compass Points – Anniversary 79
Uncommon Marines
Compass Points – Anniversary 79
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."
The statement in the article that Iwo Jima was a bomber base is incorrect. The B-29's had the range to fly to Japan and back from the Marianas. Taking the airfields on Iwo Jima was to accommodate damaged B-29's which otherwise would have needed to ditch in the wide expanse of the Pacific Ocean due to damage/fuel loss. The first damaged bombers landed even as fighting to take the remainder of the island was still in progress. Iwo Jima later became a fighter base for P-51 Mustangs which escorted the B-29's on their bombing missions.
Rabbi Roland B. Gittelsohn at the Dedication of the 5th Marine Division Cemetery on Iwo Jima. 21 March 1945
This is perhaps the grimmest, and surely the holiest task we have faced since D-Day. Here, before us lie the bodies of comrades and friends. Men who until yesterday or last week laughed with us, joked with us, trained with us. Men who were on the same ships with us, and went over the sides with us as we prepared to hit the beaches of this island. Men who fought with us and feared with us. Somewhere in this plot of ground there may lie the man who could have discovered the cure for cancer. Under one of these Christian crosses, or beneath a Jewish Star of David, there may rest now a man who was destined to be a great prophet --- to find the way, perhaps, for all to live in plenty, with poverty and hardship for none. Now they lie here silently in this sacred soil, and we gather to consecrate this earth in their memory.
It is not easy to do so. Some of us have buried our closest friends here. We saw these men killed before our very eyes. Any one of us might have died in their places. Indeed, some of us are alive and breathing at this very moment only because men who lie here beneath us had the courage and strength to give their lives for ours. To speak in memory of such men as these is not easy. Of them too can it be said with utter truth: “The world will little note nor long remember what we say here." It can never forget what they did here.”
No, our poor power of speech can add nothing to what these men and the other dead who are not here have already done. All that we even hope to do is follow their example. To show the same selfless courage in peace that they did in war. To swear that by the grace of God and the stubborn strength and power of human will, their sons and ours shall never suffer these pains again. These men have done their job well. They have paid the ghastly price of freedom. If that freedom be once again lost, as it was after the last war, the unforgivable blame will be ours not theirs. So it is we the living who are here to be dedicated and consecrated.
Too much blood has gone into this soil for us to let it lie barren. Too much pain and heartache have fertilized the earth on which we stand. We here solemnly swear: This shall not be in vain! Out of this, and from the suffering and sorrow of those who mourn this, will come --- we promise --- the birth of a new freedom for the sons of men everywhere.