Product Description

Iwo Jima is perhaps the hardest won and most famous battle in the Pacific theater during World War II. The award-winning, iconic photo of Marines raising the American flag during the battle is remembered by millions as the symbol of how hard fought the victory was in the war.

Iwo Jima: Portrait of a Battle: United States Marines in the Pacific takes this iconic flag-raising image one step further. In incredible duotone reproduction, over 500 photos taken by Marine Corps combat photographers during the battle are featured, including over 300 never-before-published that were discovered in Marine Corps archives by author and military historian Eric Hammel. The photos vividly recreate the battle, as it happened: the pummeling of inland targets, the strafing, and the rocket fire that accompanied the landing; the eerie silence that greeted the Marines as they set foot on the island; and then, as the newly-landed Marines regrouped on the shoreline, the horrors of all hell breaking loose. The book also includes detailed maps as well as profiles of each Medal of Honor winner from the battle - including the citation from the President to each honoree reproduced in its entirety that includes detailed descriptions of courage and valor under fire.

The fighting on Iwo Jima--thirty-four of the bloodiest days of the Pacific War--comes to harrowing life in this volume, and this book is an instant classic in the genre and a necessary addition to any serious collection of World War II literature.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #95538 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780760325209
• Condition: USED - VERY GOOD
• Notes:
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review

From the Inside Flap
A book worthy of any Marine's coffee table, or that of fanatics of things that are simply Marine. . . . One viewing of Hammel's book is worth a thousand of anyone's tellings.--Leatherneck Magazine

Even in as bloody and bluntly violent a war as Americans encountered in the Pacific, Iwo Jima was in a class by itself, the ultimate expression of death and mayhem. Relying upon a purely attritional strategy of "defend-and-die," Iwo's Japanese commander oversaw the construction of thousands of concrete bunkers, pillboxes, blockhouses, and other fighting positions as well as multistory underground command centers and barracks, some as deep at seventy-five feet. By D-day, February 19, 1945, most of these formidable defenses had been interconnected by eleven miles of underground passageways. Manning these positions were twenty-three thousand Japanese army and navy troops, many of them elite veterans of combat in the Pacific and China. Hundreds of mortars, artillery pieces, and rocket tubes had been painstakingly preregistered, allowing them to hit virtually any spot on the island with their first shot.

Hammel has done his homework. His text, enhanced by several pages of maps, sets the stage for the battle and records its progress in considerable detail ... Iwo Jima provides a single source for much detail--text and pictures--of that faraway conflict and should be included in the library of anyone interested in what has become a memorable time in the American experience.--Naval History

Following a seventy-four-day air and naval bombardment that the American high command believed had put the bulk of the Japanese defenders at least temporarily out of action, two veteran regiments of the 4th Marine Division alongside two regiments of the newly formed 5th Marine Division--eight battalion landing teams in all--led the way toward the island. Aircraft, battleships, cruisers, and destroyers pummeled ground targets near and far from the landing beaches. As the first wave of Marine-laden amphibian tractors climbed ashore, nearby gunboats fired hundreds of rockets to suppress enemy fire. Then Marine Corsairs strafed the ground just behind the beaches.

This book is as close to the battle as you can get without being on the island.--Marines Magazine

Nothing happened. There was no return fire. No Japanese fired at the ships offshore, nor at the oncoming waves of amphibian tractors, nor at the Marines. Shortly, when the nearly eight thousand newly landed Marines had stopped along the shoreline to regroup, every Japanese gun and mortar within range opened fire on the exposed invaders. The gunfire did not die for thirty-four of the bloodiest days of the Pacific War.

The shots of Marines under fire, wounded and dead are particularly evocative, especially following the sobering pictures of hardened Japanese defensive positions. Just as important: Hammel's straightforward essay and his revealing captions, which filigree detail around the pictures, deepening their visceral resonance yet anchoring them in research. . . . [T]he book is beautiful, powerful and stuffed with information.--World War II Magazine

Eric Hammel is a critically acclaimed military historian and author of more than thirty combat histories, including several on the U.S. Marines in World War II. He lives in Northern California.

About the Author

Customer Reviews

A New Photographic Insight into Iwo Jima
I have read several books on the Battle of Iwo Jima, but most texts have very few photos of this monumental event in World War II, and the same ones are often seen from book to book. This book brings many, many images to light that have been gathering dust in governmental and military archives for six decades. In the first 10 pages alone, I had only seen maybe one of the images before. This type of photographic record should be published for every major American campaign of the Second World War. Now, I just wonder how many Iwo Jima photos that were not used in the book will sit unseen for another 60 years.

A Sense Of Brotherhood
In reading this book and examining the photographs, I couldn't help but develop an eternal feeling for all those Marines who fought and died on that stinking piece of real estate. The photographs are awe inspiring by showing everyone the hell all those young Marines went through. I can't invision the kind of torture they suffered, not only from the terrain, but from the enemy entrenched in their caves, bunkers, and pillboxes. To be sujected to this kind of murderous ordeal truly shows the bravery and heroic actions by these Marines, and every American today should be damn thankful for the sacrifices people like they and others made for them. Everytime I saw the photos of dead Marines in this book I just literally cried. I have never seen some of these photos, and seeing these young Marines laying in the waste of black lava as their final resting spots really got to me. Some never had a chance, others died weeks later after hard fought combat, and some like three of the flag raisers on Suribachi, never got to enjoy the fame and glory of their action. This is a great book, a sad book, but a book every American should read and look at. Eric Hammel did a masterful job of writing and organizing this book, and he did proud justice to all those brave Marines who fought and died on Iwo Jima. I highly recommend this book.

Stark, spare, haunting, beautiful
Hammel's text is spare but precise, and tightly interwoven with the photographs. It is difficult to exaggerate the quality of the photographs in this volume, which is beautifully produced and bound. The large format and glossy paper do justice to the photos. The extreme resolution and fine detail of the black & white photographs are breathtaking and haunting; use of a magnifying glass reveals the faces and expressions of men wholly consumed in, and being consumed by, their fearsome tasks. This is a work of beauty and awesome respect.