In my opinion this is probably the most famous battle that the Marine Corps is known for. The two things that help to make it famous are the picture on the left of marines raising the American Flag on Mount Suribachi and the many movies that hollywood has made depicting this battle.
This battle was fought from the 19th through the 26th of March 1945. It was the first battle fought during WWII against the home Islands of Japan. Iwo Jima was very well defended by a force of 22,000 Japanese defenders. They were well dug in and even had dug in their artillery emplacements. The Japanese were desperately defending their homeland against the unavoidable defeat which was to come. Iwo Jima had many hidden bunkers and gun emplacements. It also had 11 miles of underground tunnels which had to be taken. You can see that this was an extremely tough nut to crack, but our marines were up to the task.
In the end the Japanese suffered 21,703 KIA and over 1,000 Japanese POW,s were taken even though arial bombing and naval gunfire had little to no effect on the defenders. Our marines had to gut it out and take the island foot by foot in extremely tough fighting conditions.
The battle was fought by the 3rd, 4th, and 5th marine divisions, those division logos are all available to anyone who would like to create a Marine Corps Commemorative Ring. The last 3 Japanese fighters hid out in the caves of the island and did not surrender until 1951.
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