In 2004, I got to spend 2 weeks in Virginia for work.\u00a0 The hotel I stayed in was about a block and a half away from the Arlington National Cemetary, and specifically near the “Iwo Jima Memorial.”\u00a0 At the time, I was aware that it was a statue created from the famous Rosenthal photo, and I admired it for its size and composition.\u00a0 I was also aware that this statue was about the marines who fought in the Pacific theatre, as they hopped from Island to Island towards Japan.<\/p>\n
Naturally when the movie came out last year, I was very interested in seeing it.\u00a0 We haven’t been seeing a lot of movies lately,\u00a0so when I saw the novel,\u00a0I bought it to read on the airplane, at the beach, etc.<\/p>\n
I couldn’t put the book down.\u00a0 The author is\u00a0the son of ‘Doc Bradley’- the Corpsman who is just behind the Marine at the base of the flag.\u00a0 He writes from a son’s point of view- wondering about what his young father was like during WWII, and\u00a0this starts\u00a0an investigation into the conflict, the enemy, Iwo Jima,\u00a0and the lives and deaths of the 6\u00a0Marines\u00a0in the photo.<\/p>\n
Impressions<\/strong><\/p>\n History is one of my interests, and I thought I knew something about WWII.\u00a0 Most of us who have seen ‘Saving Private Ryan’ remember the shocking opening minutes.\u00a0 As brutal as the Normandy landing was, the Iwo Jima landing, if possible, was worse.\u00a0 The Island, seen as the gateway to Japan,\u00a0was defended by 200,000 soldiers who had months to dig in and prepare a devastating defense.\u00a0 The Normandy assault was over in a day; it took 800,000 troops over a month to “win” Iwo Jima.\u00a0 800,000 with a casualty rate of 60%.<\/p>\n To give some background perspective, it was\u00a0battles like Iwo Jima that hastened the use of the A-Bomb.\u00a0 I’m sure there were other factors involved in the decision, but\u00a0there was an estimate of 1 million\u00a0American casualties if they\u00a0wanted to invade and conquer Japan.\u00a0 Probably the most telling statistic was from Ira Hayes, where\u00a0a full company of 250 Marines, each\u00a0an expert marksman, highly trained, went in… and 26 walk out.\u00a0<\/p>\n What I liked the most about the book was how the author devoted a lot of time writing about each of the 6 soldiers pictured in the photo.\u00a0 Mike Strank, Harlon Block, Franklin Sousley, Ira Hayes, John Bradley, and Rene Gagnon.\u00a0 It tells the story of each man… where\u00a0they came from, what their family was like, how they grew up, why they joined their service, and if they survived Iwo Jima, what life was like afterwards.\u00a0\u00a0By the end, you feel as if you knew each man.<\/p>\n The book also tells the story behind the flag raising, and how the “photo” and the men pictured\u00a0in it were used by the Propaganda machine to\u00a0raise\u00a0funds for the war.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n I have since bought the movie… haven’t watched it yet, but look forward to.\u00a0 Plus I’m also eagerly awaiting ‘Letters from Iwo Jima’ just to see the story from the other side.\u00a0 The book details an enemy that was\u00a0utterly ruthless-\u00a0able to carry out the most barbaric acts and brutal tactics, but not all\u00a0of the Japanese soldiers were souless individuals that committed all the atrocities, and I think this movie will give balance to ‘Flags.’<\/p>\n I think the two movies show that the only tragedy was that there had to be a war in the first place.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In 2004, I got to spend 2 weeks in Virginia for work.\u00a0 The hotel I stayed in was about a block and a half away from the Arlington National Cemetary, and specifically near the “Iwo Jima Memorial.”\u00a0 At the time, I was aware that it was a statue created from the famous Rosenthal photo, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-observation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/derekandevonne.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/derekandevonne.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/derekandevonne.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/derekandevonne.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/derekandevonne.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/derekandevonne.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/derekandevonne.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/derekandevonne.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/derekandevonne.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}