Iwo Jima Turning Point

So I would guess that many of you have seen this picture before. Well this picture was taken on top of Mount Suribachi on the island of Iwo Jima. That island is also the place where an important battle took place called the Battle of Iwo Jima. The clash between the Americans and the Japanese was considered one of the turning points that helped put an end to the war for the Americans. To understand this we must look at the question of “Why was the Battle of Iwo Jima a turning point in World War II for the Americans?” and look at the geography of the island and what went down during those weeks of fighting. Iwo Jima is a small island of around 8 square miles located in the South Pacific below the Ogasawara Islands. The island is mostly flat except the extinct volcano in the southwest corner of the island termed Mount Suribachi. The volcano is around 550 feet high. These things are important, but weren’t the elements that made Iwo Jima so desirable to the Americans. Only 650 miles north was Tokyo and about 700 miles to the south was the Northern Marianas …show more content…
on February 19, 1945, one minute ahead of schedule, the first group of Marines out of the entire invading force of 110,000 arrived on the rocky beaches of Iwo Jima. Suspicion erupted quickly. The Marines were told that they were to find a large resistance force on the island, but when they landed they only were met with a few fires from Japanese guns. In hopes of drawing the Marines into a false sense of security, the Japanese waited for the Marines to start advancing. So when the Americans moved from the beach the Japanese unleashed everything they had onto the Americans, including machine guns, mortars, landmines, and grenades. As the Americans adjusted to what was expected, they began advancing by taking out Japanese pillboxes and bunkers with flamethrowers, flamethrowing tanks, grenades, bazookas, and machines guns of their own. At the end of day more than 30,000 Marines had set foot on Iwo