The lions of Iwo Jima

Lions of Iwo Jima

The Second World War has provided humanity with important information concerning human nature and how it can react in times of grief. While a large army of Allied troops had been struggling to push back the Nazi war machine in Europe, another party had been fighting the Japanese on the island of Iwo Jima. In an attempt to capture the airfields on the island, the Americans encountered heavy resistance from the Japanese imperial soldiers. Fred Haynes's book, THE LIONS OF IWO JIMA: The Story of Combat Team 28 and the Bloodiest Battle in Marine Corps History, goes at presenting the public with a more elaborate description of the battle's evolution.

In the present, when hearing of the battle of Iwo Jima, most people relate to five marines and one navy corpsman raising a flag on top of Mount Suribachi near the end of the Second World War. Fred Haynes does not want to claim that the battle had been simple and that people should have celebrated the victory. Considering the fact that Haynes took part in the fighting, his account can be deemed to be much more valuable than one written by an ordinary historian.

Haynes's book concentrates its action on the Regimental Combat Team 28, an army unit composed out of 4500 men which is considered to be one of the best units in the history of the Marine Corps. The author gives his readers a detailed account of the forty days of slaughter from the island of Iwo Jima in the year of 1945. The story is meant to show how marines behaved in such conditions, and, how the battle claimed the lives of a great number of young people.

Combat Team 28 is followed from the very moment when it is formed, to the sands of Iwo Jima, and, eventually, to the raising of the flag on Mount Suribachi. The chapters describe the episodes undergone by CT28 as approximately 70% of those that were initially part of the unit fall victims to the war.

Haynes does not attempt to sweeten to story in order to make an impression on his readers. Instead, he presents the battle exactly as it evolved, and, exactly as people died on an island that resembled a hell on earth.

In order to advance and to break through the Japanese defense lines, the marines had to make remarkable sacrifices. All across the book, one can understand life on the front in Iwo Jima, the place where approximately 22000 Japanese and 7000 Americans have lost their lives.