On Feb. 19, 1945, American Marines sloshed through bloody ocean water and screaming bullets onto Iwo Jima, an island in the Pacific Ocean held by the Imperial Japanese Army. The amphibious assault, designated Operation Detachment, followed a brutal 10-day shelling that set the tone for one of the bloodiest battles of the Asia-Pacific War.
The 8-square-mile island — which rises steeply from the ocean in a black mass — was highlighted by United States military leaders because of its strategic position. Located 750 miles off the coast of Japan, the island had three airfields that could serve as staging areas for a future attack against the mainland.
By that point in the Allies’ island-hopping campaign, Japan’s air force was crippled and American military leaders thought securing the island would only take a few days. In secret, however, Japanese troops had built an extensive bunker system and tunnel network beneath the volcanic terrain, mitigating the impact of the pre-invasion bombardment.
When the Marines made landfall, they encountered a hornets’ nest of resistance that lasted for five weeks and claimed the lives of more than 30,000 people, including about 7,000 Marines.
A few days into the battle, on Feb. 23, Associated Press Photographer Joe Rosenthal captured a photograph of six Marines raising an American flag atop Mount Suribachi, the island’s highest peak — as a replacement for a much smaller flag that was raised during combat. Notably, among the Marines was Ira Hamilton Hayes, a Pima Native American and enrolled member of the Gila River Pima Indian Reservation in Arizona who enlisted in 1942. That Sunday, the image, which later won a Pulitzer Prize, was published in thousands of newspapers across the United States and hailed as an iconic portrayal of America’s victory over Axis forces.
Strategically, however, the effort turned out to be moot.
Looking back, many historians agree that the Battle of Iwo Jima was unnecessary. Six months after Marines came ashore, the U.S. became the first and only nation to deploy an atomic bomb, killing about 150,000 people in Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing another 35,000 people instantly. Japan surrendered on Sept. 2, bringing World War II to a close and eliminating the possibility of a mainland invasion.
These 75 years later, the number of Iwo Jima veterans among us is dwindling. Diminishing, also, is our cultural respect for war on a global scale. The spilling of blood can only be truly understood by survivors, both civilians and warriors alike.
Politics aside, America’s youth — the nation’s future — have historically carried the brunt of war, as they did during the Battle of Iwo Jima. An 18-year-old deploying for the first time isn’t necessarily thinking about the moral implications of their actions. They’re thinking about keeping their battlefield buddies alive and making it through themselves. Yet, although the decision to fight often isn’t theirs in the first place, they’re the ones who must grapple with the aftermath.
Wartime trauma lingers long after the bullets have stopped flying.
More U.S. veterans committed suicide between 2008 and 2017 than the number of U.S. casualties during the entire Vietnam War, according to a 2019 report from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (about 60,000 from suicide as compared to 58,000 during Vietnam).
Thus, instead of directing our frustration over politics at soldiers and the military’s culture in general (which can, at times, be misconstrued as overly nationalistic by those who don’t understand it), we should be working together to hold decision-makers in Washington accountable for their actions, which can put our youth in the line of fire. More than that, as a society, it’s our moral responsibility to protect and care for those returning from war.
We must never become complacent in thinking that war lasts only as long as there is fighting.
Hayes, the Native American Marine who helped raise the flag over Iwo Jima, lost his personal war a decade after World War II had ended. On home soil, Hayes descended into alcoholism. He died of cold exposure and alcohol poisoning after a night of heavy drinking on Jan. 24, 1955.
We owe it to veterans like Hayes — of which there are a little more than 5,000 in Franklin County, according to the U.S. Census Bureau — and to our youth to make wise decisions in the pursuit of peace and to advocate for our neighbors who’ve been emotionally, mentally and spiritually scarred by the horrors of war.