Jun 16, 2015

Sat, Jun 16, 1945: Iwo Jima

“Denver has had its share of war-hero visitors in the past week.  Gens. Patton and Doolittle paraded down the main stem of the city before giving an interview that was front page news in the city papers.  Then, yesterday, heros of the Iwo Jima flag-raising were in town. (Survivors was the word I meant to use.)”

--Letter from my father, Boulder, Colo., to his father, Bloomington, Kans., Saturday, June 16, 1945.  Iwo Jima is a small Japanese island, of about eight square miles, located in the Pacific 700 miles south of Tokyo.  The Battle of Iwo Jima lasted from February 16 to March 26, 1945, during which time 21,844 Japanese and 6,821 Americans were killed. U.S. forces raised two flags on Mount Suribachi, on the south end of the island, on February 23, 1945.  Both flag-raisings were photographed and the second flag-raising was captured in an iconic photograph, taken by Joe Rosenthal.  Only three of the six flag-raisers in the photo survived the battle.  The flag-raising and the subsequent participation of the surviving flag-raisers in a war bond drive were the subject of Clint Eastwood’s movie, Flags of Our Fathers.   My father’s choice of words ("survivors," perhaps not "heros") is very interesting.  He, like the flag-raisers themselves, seems not to have seen the flag-raising as especially heroic, given the context of the entire battle. 

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