Seventy-five years ago, one of the most famous photos in American history was taken atop Mount Surabachi on the island of Iwo Jima, some 750 miles east of Japan. Few today understand the cost involved in gaining the top of that mountain. But try to imagine yourself a marine, fighting to take that island from the Japanese.
It is February 19, 1945. You are aboard a landing craft heading ashore for the volcanic island of Iwo Jima. The roar of the mighty naval guns blasting the island is deafening, but encouraging. Your craft pitches in the water, sending spray overhead, drenching you and the other 70 men with you in your craft. You’re starting to get seasick. Before you looms the island, four and one half miles long, south to north and two and one half miles wide. At the southern end Mount Surabachi rises 550 feet above the sea, shrouded in smoke.
You know that the Japanese are waiting, concealed within their vast underground cave system, ready to man their gun emplacements as soon as you and your fellow marines hit the shore. They have the high ground, entrenched in cleverly concealed concrete encasements. There is no cover at the beach where you will be landing. The lump in your throat and the knot in your stomach are real. You know that there is a good chance you won’t live to see the sunset. If you’re lucky, you may get the million-dollar wound—the wound that takes you out of the war, but from which you can recover and live out a long, normal civilian life.
Few around you speak. Many are deep in their contemplations of eternity. But one man keeps repeating “Hail Mary, full of grace. Hail Mary, full of grace.” Another can be heard saying, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. My M1 carbine, it comforts me.” You take scant comfort in the fact that you’re near the seaward end of the craft. The men who exit first will get it first, unless an artillery shell wipes you out before you can move. You glance again at the prayer card that was handed to you one hour before by a chaplain aboard your ship.
O Lord! Thou knowest how busy I must be this day:
If I forget Thee, do not Thou forget me.
As you near the beach you begin to hear the deadly clatter of Japanese machine gun fire, reigning down devastation on the landing craft that have already hit the beach. You dare not rise to look. “Dear Jesus, help me!”
Your craft lurches to a stop. This is it. Down goes the ramp. Out go the men before you. What is happening to them? You stay low until it’s your turn.
It doesn’t take long. You rise and begin to run in a slight forward crouch, as you have been trained in order to present the smallest possible target to the enemy. You bound from the craft into ankle deep water. Around you are men who have already been cut down, some screaming in agony with wounds too grotesque to describe. “Mother! Mother!” one man piteously moans. You find a shell crater where several other marines lie prone and join them. It seems certain death to move forward.
A blow violently strikes your left shoulder. It is your sergeant. “Do you want to live? Get off the beach!” It is the legendary Medal of Honor winner John Basilone, the hero of Guadalcanal. You and the others in the crater rise and move forward because you have been trained to obey.
The navy is helping. Once the Japanese opened fire, they exposed their positions. Shore spotters radio their coordinates to the battleships offshore, which then blast them with their main batteries. The 14-inch shells from the U.S.S. Nevada are especially telling. Destroyers closer in, their keels nearly dragging the bottom, pour their 5-inch shells into the encasements at nearly point-blank range, systematically reducing the murderous fire from above. You never much liked the sailors aboard your ship, but now they’re your favorite friends. “Thank God for the United States Navy!”
Darkness has fallen. Somehow you have survived that first day, but a lot of your buddies haven’t, including Sergeant Basilone. There is no sleep to be had. Though the fire on both sides has died down, you await the expected banzai charge, where hundreds of sakai-drunken Japanese soldiers will stage a crazed, savage head-on attack, hoping to overwhelm the marines ashore. At least they’ll be in the open.
But no attack comes. General Kuribayashi, the Japanese commander has no intention of selling the lives of his men so cheaply. They will remain in their high ground entrenchments, extracting the maximum price in American blood before their inevitable annihilation.
Finally, at 10am on the morning of February 23rd, after four days of savage, deadly fighting, you reach the summit of Mount Surabachi. There a desperate fight ensues until the last defenders are wiped out. Somehow you have made it unscathed, but nearly 4,000 of your fellow marines have paid the ultimate price. Another 15,000 are wounded, many of whom will never be the same.
A large flag is brought up the hill and lashed to a long iron pipe. Tears come to your eyes as you witness a group of your fellow marines raise our flag at the summit.
The battle isn’t over. Weeks of fighting remain to secure the northern end of the island. But for a moment you can rest. Maybe you’ll one day have a story to tell your children and grandchildren after all. You are a sadder and wiser man. You now know first-hand the meaning of the saying, “Freedom isn’t free.”
