In 1945 the United States attacked the island of Iwo Jima. Iwo Jima was part of a string of islands that the U.S. had taken off the coast of Japan during the Second World War. Iwo Jima occupied a particularly strategic location just off the coast of Japan.
      Iwo Jima contained little more than a well-foritfied landing strip, but the United States needed it in order to bomb the mainland of Japan. Since the U.S. needed the landing strip intact, an aerial assault was out of the question so the United States needed to mount an amphibious assault on the well-defended shores of the small island.
      The United States had a series of battles over Iwo Jima between February 1st and March 20th and when the smoke cleared, the United States took control of Iwo Jima with 20,000 casualties and 6,000 dead. The Japanese defenders of the island had mounted weapons turrets on tops of dunes and were able to launch shells and rain down machine gun fire upon the attacking Marines. Meanwhile, the United States Marines needed to run up an essentially barren beach in plain view of the Japanese armed with nothing more than hand-held weapons.

Sources Used

Iwo Jima Links!

• An involved and tactical overview of the battle at Iwo Jima
• One person's firsthand experiences in the Pacific theater
• A site dedicated to Iwo Jima

Iwo Jima Pictures!

• General Kuribayashi
• U.S. Marines en route to Iwo Jima
• A famous picture taking at Iwo Jima