Discussion for article #224691
It was thrilling as a tourist to see the Iwo Jima Memorial. Really just took my breath away to see the bravery of Marines embodied in this sculpture.
Thank you for the memorable photographs in honor July 4. Finally photographs that actually show up instead of blank spaces. Somehow after TPM switched over I can no longer see many photographs and absolutely no videos.
I saw Iwo and Mt. Surabchi from a crippled B-29 attempting to land on Iwo in early June, 1945. We barely made it–with two engines out. Twice in the next two weeks more landings, one of which required an overnight stay. Iwo’s black sand, coffee-like beaches and the rocky volcanic terrain gouged and stripped of vegetation, steel rods of gun emplacements bent like leaves of grass, and with soil covering the still warm volcanic strata beneath, so warm that 30 minutes or so in the ground would heat cold ration containers are still retained in my memory. The cost was huge, some 6000 Marines and Navy medics; but from March till the end of the war some 2,000 B-29s landed after bombing Japan, damaged or low in gas, saving countless lives…
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Thanks for putting those nice bits together, Josh. Great details. Fascinating.
As a former Marine, that picture never fails to move me,
Listen to the Johnny Cash song, “The Ballad of Ira Hayes,” it’s Johnny’s version of “Born in the USA.”
The irony is that the picture is of a second flag, the first was a lot smaller and it was decided to put up a larger flag which Joe Rosenthal snapped the picture of. I do believe that he also had a picture of the original flag.