Raising The Flag On Iwo Jima

This is the video of the famous flag raising on Iwo Jima in 1945. I hope you like it.

The battle for Iwo Jima:

The invasion of Iwo Jima began at 02:00 on February 19, 1945, and continued to March 26, 1945. The battle was a major initiative of the Pacific Campaign of World War II. The U.S. invasion, known as Operation Detachment, was charged with the mission of capturing the airfields on the island which up until that time had harried U.S. bombing missions to Tokyo. Once the bases were secured, they could then be of use in the impending invasion of the Japanese mainland.

The battle was marked by some of the fiercest fighting of the War. The Imperial Japanese Army positions on the island were heavily fortified, with vast bunkers, hidden artillery, and 18 kilometers (11 mi) of tunnels.[4][5] The battle was the first American attack on the Japanese Home Islands and the Imperial soldiers defended their positions tenaciously. Of the 21,000 Japanese soldiers present at the beginning of the battle, over 20,000 were killed and only 216 taken prisoner.[6]

One of the first objectives after landing on the beachhead was the taking of Mount Suribachi. Joe Rosenthal photographed five Marines and a U.S. Navy corpsman raising the U.S. flag atop Mt. Suribachi on the fourth day of the battle (February 23). The photograph was extremely popular, being reprinted in thousands of publications. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Photography that same year, and ultimately came to be regarded as one of the most significant and recognizable images of the war, and possibly the most reproduced photograph of all time.[7]

After the fall of Mt. Suribachi in the south, the Japanese still held a strong position throughout the island. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi still had the equivalent of eight infantry battalions, a tank regiment, two artillery and three heavy mortar battalions, plus the 5,000 gunners and naval infantry. With the landing area secure, more troops and heavy equipment came ashore and the invasion proceeded north to capture the airfields and the remainder of the island. Most Japanese soldiers fought to the death. On the night of March 25, a 300-man Japanese force launched a final counterattack. The Marines suffered heavy casualties—more than 100 were killed and another 200 Americans were wounded. The island was officially declared "secured" the following day. The number of American casualties was greater than the total Allied casualties at Battle of Normandy on D-Day.

Even after Iwo Jima was declared secured, about three thousand Japanese soldiers were left alive in the island's warren of caves and tunnels. Those who could not bring themselves to commit suicide hid in the caves during the day and came out at night to prowl for provisions. Some did eventually surrender and were surprised that the Americans often received them with compassion, offering water, cigarettes, or coffee.[8] The last of these stragglers, two of Lieutenant Toshihiko Ohno's men, Yamakage Kufuku and Matsudo Linsoki, lasted six years, surrendering in 1951[9] (another source gives the date of surrender as January 6, 1949).[10]

The U.S. military occupied Iwo Jima until 1968, when it was returned to Japan.

The name"Iwo Jima":

Iwo Jima was traditionally called Iwōtō (Iōtō). Prior to Japan's 1946 orthography reform, a historical spelling resulted in (approximately) Iwōtō (modern Iōtō). An alternative, Iwōjima (modern Iōjima)—where jima is an alternative pronunciation of tō (島 "island"), also appeared in nautical atlases.[2] Japanese naval officers who arrived to fortify the island before the American invasion mistakenly called it Iwo Jima.[2] In this way, the "Iwo Jima" pronunciation became mainstream and was the one used by American forces who arrived during World War II. Former island residents protested against this rendering, and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport's Geographical Survey Institute debated the issue and formally announced on June 18, 2007, that the official Japanese pronunciation of the island's name would be reverted to the pre-war Iōtō.[1] Moves to revert the pronunciation were sparked by the high profile films Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima.[2] The change does not affect how the name is written in Japanese (硫黄島), only how it is pronounced.