Iwo Jima

A new movie about a old story is out.

Battle takes 36 days.

General Kuribayashi in charge of Japanese forces on the island
has this as one of his goals: To make the American death toll so
high, they won't even think of invading Japan.

More than 6,000 American die. (Buried on the island.)

20,000 Japanese die.

After the island was taken (and its airfields) and until
the end of the war, 2,200 American aircraft land safely in
emergency landings.
If the island had not been captured more than 22,000 pilots
and crewmen would have perished at sea. (No place to land out there.)
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"Among the men who fought on Iwo Jima, uncommon valor was a common
virtue" --Admiral Chester W. Nimitz
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Historians described U.S. forces' attack against the Japanese defense
as "throwing human flesh against reinforced concrete."

http://www.iwojima.com/battle/battlec.htm
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Part of the Japanese strategy was to stay below ground, and
shoot us from there. They dug about 11 miles of tunnels.
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For the American public, the flag raising and the capture of the
island served as a psychological tipping point. For the U.S. military,
however, the horrendous cost of victory was one of the factors that
led to the use of the atomic bomb seven months later.

http://jscms.jrn.columbia.edu/cns/2005-02-15/lemer-iwojima/

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Haven't seen the movie. Hope they did a half decent job.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0418689/

Flags of Our Fathers

-Stephen

We have made men proud of most vices, but not of cowardice. Whenever
we have almost succeeded in doing so, the Enemy permits a war or an
earthquake or some other calamity, and at once courage becomes so
obviously lovely and important even in human eyes that all our work
is undone, and there is still at least one vice of which they feel
genuine shame. The danger of inducing cowardice in our patients,
therefore, is lest we produce real self-knowledge and self-loathing
with consequent repentance and humility. And in fact, in the last
war, thousands of humans, by discovering their own cowardice,
discovered the whole moral world for the first time. In peace we can
make many of them ignore good and evil entirely; in danger, the
issue is forced upon them in a guise to which even we cannot blind
them. There is here a cruel dilemma before us. If we promoted
justice and charity among men, we should be playing directly into
the Enemy's hands; but if we guide them to the opposite behaviour,
this sooner or later produces (for He permits it to produce) a war
or a revolution, and the undisguisable issue of cowardice or courage
awakes thousands of men from moral stupor.

-Screwtape

http://members.fortunecity.com/phantom1/books2/c._s._lewis_-
_the_screwtape_letters.htm