![]() Then, with a sense of heavy-handed irony, they would resume shooting after the short respite.īut there were no rules of warfare in the Pacific. On Christmas, both sides would quit warring and mark the season of “peace and goodwill” with a brief interruption of hostilities. ![]() They took time out for each side to collect their dead and wounded and observed cease-fires for “reasonable” causes. The two sides fought intensely but simultaneously observed polite protocols. The European front in World War II was governed by a set of traditional rules. Despite its relatively short duration, Iwo Jima would truly be the bloodiest battle in the Pacific. If the battle had lasted nine months, it would have equaled all those killed in ten years of war in Vietnam. To put that in perspective, almost 7,000 Americans were killed in action at Iwo Jima. Most were older and more experienced than the Americans, but nearly all of them were killed as well. Twenty-two thousand Japanese soldiers defended Iwo Jima. Two out of three of the boys (most of them were just seventeen, eighteen, or nineteen) who landed on the island were killed or wounded. The battle for Iwo Jima would turn out to be perhaps the bloodiest combat in American history. This tiny spit of land, called “sulfur island” in Japanese, was eight square miles of volcanic rock. CHAPTER 16 Iwo Jima: The Bloodiest Battle of World War IIĪfter the Battle of Leyte, the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington began to plan for the invasion of Iwo Jima.
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