On this day in 1945, United States Marines declare the island of Iwo Jima secure. “[W]ithout responsibility and discipline,” Lt. Gen. H.M. “Howlin’ Mad” Smith subsequently wrote, “we would not have won the Battle of Iwo Jima.”
The victory had come at a steep price.
“Nearly seven hundred Americans gave their lives for every square mile,” military historian Dr. Normal Cooper describes. “For every plot of ground the size of a football field, an average of more than one American and five Japanese were killed and five Americans wounded.”
The bloody, 36-day battle had been unexpected. Military planners anticipated a tough battle, of course, but they also knew that they’d learned a lot by this point in the war: They planned to overwhelm the enemy at Iwo Jima with attacks from land, sea, and air. They thought they’d win within a week.
It wasn’t to be. To the contrary, our Marines went ashore to discover an entrenched enemy that had unexpectedly changed its tactics.
General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, the Japanese commander on Iwo Jima, had decided to ditch the suicide banzai attacks that had characterized so much of the Japanese effort until that point. Instead, his soldiers were hunkered down in a series of intricate tunnels and caves.
“Natural caves were improved,” It. Col. Whitman S. Bartley explains, “their entrances camouflaged and so planned that shelling could not hit them directly. . . . Most of them were provided with multiple entrances to permit escape. The man-made caves were 30 to 40 feet deep and complete with stairways, interlacing corridors, and passageways.”
Kuribayashi hoped a battle of attrition would wear us down mentally. He planned to make Americans fight for every inch of land. He’d win, simply by outlasting us.
The carnage that followed was indescribable, and it offered a horrifying glimpse into what an invasion of mainland Japan might look like.
Naturally, our Marines persevered, as did the naval and air forces supporting them. “Among the Americans who served on Iwo Jima,” Navy Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz famously observed, “uncommon valor was a common virtue.” The Japanese simply could not outlast us.
The victory at Iwo Jima provided the American war effort with a few important benefits: First, possession of the airfields at Iwo Jima helped with long range missions, and it also gave the Allies an option for emergency landings. Second, it had been hard for American bombers to get past Iwo Jima without being seen by the Japanese stationed there. Capture of the island put an end to that. Third, possession of Iwo Jima offered some protection for the flank of the Okinawa invasion.
A final benefit was more intangible, but perhaps just as important: Joe Rosenthal’s photograph of Marines raising a flag on Iwo Jima’s Mount Suribachi provided a stunning morale boost.
Our determination to win the war was captured in a single moment, and the photograph served as an inspiration to Americans everywhere. As you know, the Marines’ effort that day has become an iconic depiction of American resolve and determination.
It is preserved most famously in the United States Marine Corps War Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Today is the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima. Perhaps it’s also a good day to remember the perseverance, determination, and hard work that have always made America great.
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Primary Sources:
75th Anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima (National Museum of the Marine Corps)
Battle of Iwo Jima (National WWII Museum New Orleans)
Battle of Iwo Jima: 19 February–26 March 1945 (Naval History and Heritage Command)
Chris K. Hemler, A Victory of Cooperation (February 2025; Naval History Mag.) (reprinted HERE)
Colonel Joseph H. Alexander, CLOSING IN: Marines in the Seizure of Iwo Jima (National Park Service; Marines in World War II Commemorative Series)
David Vergun, Battle of Iwo Jima: 80 Years Later, Lessons Learned (Dept. of Defense; Feb. 18, 2025)
Dick Camp, Leatherneck Legends (2006)
Iwo Jima and Okinawa: Death at Japan’s Doorstep (National WWII Museum New Orleans)
Joseph Alexander, The Battle of Iwo Jima: A 36-day bloody slog on a sulfuric island (Army Times; Feb. 17, 2018)
Lt. Col. Whitman S. Bartley, Iwo Jima: Amphibious Epic (1954)
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