Dear Mother,
It is March 23rd, 1945. Three days ago I landed on the small Japanese island of Iwo Jima. I was the last of 70,000 Marines in 880 ships to land on Iwo Jima, it took us about 40 days to get here from the shore of Hawaii. Rumors are circulating that we are part of the biggest armada invasion ever in the Pacific War. I feel as we are, we have men everywhere. It should seem like this is an unfair fight because we have so many more men, but its not.
The gunfire never stops here. It goes on for hours on end and when it finally lets up, the whole battlefield is covered in smoke and looks as if it is on fire.
Of course sometimes it is on fire. Some men have flamethrowers that they use to burn men in trenches. Others drive M4A3 flamethrower tanks. These spray down men quicker than everything I have ever seen. I don't understand how they made something so deadly, and who the type of person that drives one is.
We can’t stop firing though, the Japanese are all underground, and we rarely see them. They can see us however, that is why it is so dangerous here. They were prepared, we are constantly under gunfire, however we are so many men strong it is looking good for us.
Every day I get up ready to fight. I go outside and the gunfire is still on. Men die to my left, and men die to my right. I have my gun loaded, and have my hand grenades on my side. These have been proven more helpful to kill the Japanese in there underground fortresses.
On a normal day I am sitting behind a 37mm trench gun trying to fire into Japanese caves to blow out all of there soldiers. The high class marines come by every day telling us about how important this battle is. They say that if Japan has this base we will have to fly our bombers twice the distance to the mainland and they would be able to pick them off when we flew over Iwo Jima. However if we take this base then we could easily fly our B-29's to the mainland with no interruption. We would also have a great base for our P-51 Mustang fighter planes on the island.
Speaking of planes, soon as I landed there were tons of planes above trying to drop missiles on all of the Japanese’s underground fortresses. The air raid was the most explosions I have ever seen. It was sure a sight to see.
Although I have only been here for 3 days, some have been year for about a month. We are close to victory. Although near 6,000 of our men have died i hear nearly 3 times that amount of theres have died.
I hope that this battle is done soon. Although im sure it will just lead to more. I want to get off this island and back home. There are too many casualties and I know that soon I will be gone if we don't finish quickly. Although I fear if we go to fast we will end up losing, and if we lose I know I will die. So i guess I just have to wait to win. It will happen, I know it will.
Resources:
http://www.iwojima.com/battle/battlec.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Iwo_Jima
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