February 17, 2020
Iwo Jima Was Hell: 36 days of Combat, 25,851 American Casualties
Look back as we commemorate the start of a battle like no other.
by Warfare History Network
Key Point:
No foreign army in the 5,000-year history of Japan had ever successfully conquered Japanese territory. In late 1944, American war planners were about to challenge that statistic on the tiny Pacific island of Iwo Jima. Coveted by both sides for its strategic airfields, the eight-square-mile chunk of volcanic ash, stone, and sand was inarguably Japanese soil, only 650 miles from Tokyo. Moreover, the island served as a vital early warning station against American bombing missions against the home islands.
Beginning in the summer of 1944, new, long-range American Boeing B-29 Superfortresses based on the Mariana Islands of Saipan, Tinian, and Guam had pounded the Japanese homeland. Iwo Jima lay midway between Japan and the Marianas, and the American Air Force hoped to use the tiny island as a forward base for fighter aircraft that could accompany the big B-29s on their long bombing runs of the Japanese mainland. In addition, the U.S. Navy wanted to use the island as a staging area for the inexorable Allied advance on Japan.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/iwo-jima-was-hell-36-days-combat-25851-american-casualties-124206
