Word: jima
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Motoyama Airfield No. 1. The dust was lifted by big U.S. transport planes landing from Saipan. The Americans were putting to use what they had come to Iwo to get, and the incoming planes were tokens of the approaching end of the hardest amphibious campaign in the Pacific. Iwo Jima was not yet secure, but for practical purposes the ugly, sulfurous, mean little island was theirs...
...From Iwo Jima this week TIME Correspondent Robert Sherrod radioed...
...Tarawa the 2nd Division marines paid the highest relative price: 1,000 killed and 2,000 wounded in exchange for one square mile of land. The 2nd and 4th Marine Divisions and the 27th Army Division suffered 16,500 casualties to win Saipan's 75 square miles. Iwo Jima is smaller (eight square miles) than Saipan, and its casualty ratio will hardly equal Tarawa's, but at the end of a fortnight's bloody fighting there is no longer any doubt that Iwo is the most difficult amphibious operation in U.S. history...
...this might not be so. At the end of the tenth day Major General Graves B. Erskine's hell-for-leather 3rd Division recovered from its long stymie around Motoyama Airfield No. 2, finally broke through for a 1,000-yd. gain straight up the middle of Iwo Jima. Here it seemed that the Japs might crack wide open. But the Jap flanks held and they tightened their grip on the craggy ravines. Instead of falling apart, the Japs fought more fanatically than ever and postponed their downfall...
There are four reasons why Iwo Jima is the toughest target in the Pacific war. First is the weather, which has been rough beyond anything encountered along the Central Pacific way. Only heroic work by LST and LSM men and shore parties has kept supplies moving through the fairly steady mortar fire on the beaches. One-third of our small boats have been knocked out by high surf or by enemy fire...