To the Shores of Iwo Jima depicts actual battle footage of fighting on the heavily-fortified, well-defended, Japanese-owned (Tokyo Imperial Prefecture) island during February and March of 1945.
This historic footage was captured by Navy and Marine camermen. Four of those men died in the process, and ten were wounded. One of the dead was William H. (Bill) Genaust who shot moving footage of the famous flag-raising ceremony on Mt. Suribachi.
Decades after the war was over, Major General Fred Haynes (a Captain during the battle) remembered what it was like to fight on an island where even the terrain was part of the Japanese defense system:
We were confronted with defenses being built for years. There were complex, subterranean levels, some two stories down. From these the defenders could approach the enemy on the surface virtually anywhere through warrens, spider holes, caves, and crevices.
At great cost, you'd take a hill to find then the same enemy suddenly on your flank or rear. The Japanese were not on Iwo Jima. They were in it!
The noise of battle was unbelievably intense. Edward Mortimer (Mort) Denell was a corporal who survived the fighting even though he lost his teeth:
A machine gunner with the 1st Bn, 26th Marines, Mort is still deaf from a shell blast that shattered every one of his teeth and cut in half six Marines opposite him. He can still grimace at the thought of mortar rounds, "faster'n you could count. I crawled -- scraping my belly -- to a hole, but a round followed. It cut in half the six Marines opposite me."
Total casualties were staggeringly high for both sides. At the end of the month-long battle, America had 26,000 casualties (including 6,800 killed in action) while Japan lost most of its 22,000 defenders.
To the Shores of Iwo Jima is a production of the United States government, assisted by an editing team from Warner Brothers. It was nominated as Best Documentary, Short Subject, for the 1945 Academy Awards.
To the Shores of Iwo Jima is a production of the United States government, assisted by an editing team from Warner Brothers. It was nominated as Best Documentary, Short Subject, for the 1945 Academy Awards.
See, also:
To the Shores of Iwo Jima, Part 2
Credits
To the Shores of Iwo Jima, Part 1
Producer: Milton Sperling
Production Company: U.S. Government Office of War Information
Editing: Warner Brothers
Video online, courtesy the U.S. National Archives and Archive.org.
