Marines take a five-mile volcanic island in 36 days, at the cost of nearly 7,000 dead
What happened
US Marines landed on Iwo Jima on 19 February 1945 after months of prior naval and air bombardment, facing a Japanese garrison of roughly 18,000 to 22,000 men under General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, who had built an extensive network of underground tunnels, bunkers, and fortified gun positions into the island's volcanic rock. On 23 February, a Marine patrol reached the summit of Mount Suribachi and raised a small American flag; a second, larger flag was raised there later that same day, and the Associated Press photograph of that second raising became one of the most reproduced images of the war. Fighting continued for another month before the island was declared secure on 26 March. Nearly 7,000 Marines were killed and roughly 20,000 were wounded in the 36-day battle; nearly the entire Japanese garrison died, with only 216 taken prisoner.
Why it matters
The island's airfields let the US eliminate a Japanese base that had been giving early warning of B-29 raids heading to Japan, and provided an emergency landing site for damaged bombers returning from missions over the home islands, a role it filled almost immediately once secured. Twenty-seven Medal of Honor recipients came out of the battle, more than in any other campaign in Marine Corps history, a statistic historians point to as one measure of how costly and close-range the fighting was.
How we know
The battle is documented through Marine Corps and Navy official after-action reports, the contemporaneous photographs of the two flag raisings on Mount Suribachi, and the Medal of Honor citation records the Marine Corps maintains for the battle.
Sources
- The National WWII Museum. Battle of Iwo Jima · Reputable sourcenationalww2museum.org · The domain "nationalww2museum.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
See something wrong? . Corrections with a source get fixed fastest.
Part of a timelineWorld War II59 events · From a staged skirmish at a bridge outside Beijing to a charter signed in San Francisco, the deadliest conflict in history, every event sourced.View all →