With the Marines
on Iwo Jima

Penned by war correspondent Walter Davenport some thirteen months prior to taking the helm as editor-in-chief at Collier’s Magazine, this article gives the reader a sense as to what D-plus-one looked like from the fifty yard line at the Battle of Iwo Jima (Operation Detachment: February 19 – March 26, 1945):

“Beyond the beaches, men are fighting one another with gun and fire. On the beaches in ever-lengthening rows, food and ammunition are piled up. Already a platoon of hungry bulldozers are chewing great hunks out of the wilderness, places for more and more supplies. The Japs are much too busy holding back the armed Yanks to give these supplies, these emergency dumps, the attention they merit. The Jap is fighting for his life, but our life is pouring onto his island in endless streams, and the Jap can do nothing about it. It doesn’t matter what the Jap’s philosophy is, or what his religion may exact of him, he can’t look down from Suribachi, he can’t look up from that limestone and coral quarry to the north and see this torrent of men and material land, and still be the same Jap… There is no Jap navy here to stop us; no Jap air force, either… So you see Jap?”

To read other articles about the Battle of Iwo Jima, click here.

Click here to read the story of the flag raising on Iwo Jima, as remembered by the photographer Joe Rosenthal.