John Smith s Life: War In Pacific WW2
Timeline U.S. Marines continued its At 2 A.M. the guns of advancement towards the battleship signaled the south and north part of the commencement of D-Day. island. Soon the island was attacked by 100 bombers Japanese started Kamikaze and bombs from carrier attacks over U.S. invading based planes. ships. After bitter fighting, first units of U.S. Marines were at the top of the mountain. This is where the marines raised the flag from the famous photo. Battle of Iwo Jima (1945) Final resistance of Japanese was secured at Kitano point. That night, under Japanese commander Gen. Kuribayashi, 200 Japanese infiltrated U.S. Lines 2/19 4/7 U.S. Marines started advancing south of Mt. Suribachi and north of airfield. Satchel charges and flame throwers took out the entrenched Japanese soldiers from the mountain. U.S. Marines surrounded Mt. Suribachi and started moving towards the face of the mountain. Japanese resistance continued in the island. Japanese started penetrating in the U.S. lines to attack headquarters and cut off communication. 250 Japanese men laid dead near the U.S. lines. At 8.00 A.M. the island was declared secure and capture part of the battle was declared complete.
Life Before The War Before the war started I had finished High School, and recently gotten married to my wife Catherine. This was the last time I saw her. She was left behind in tears.
My wife died on the day she gave birth to our baby, Josh. Till this day, I feel the guilt of not being there for her. I feel like she died alone, without me. This is Josh a few months after I had come back.
Going to War After leaving America, we were stationed In a carrier, which set sail to go in the direction of the island of Iwo Jima. This is a picture of our carrier. I was amazed at the thing when i first got in it.
Friendships While on the carrier I met many new people, from many different places. The people I really got to know were those who were in my group. This is a picture of my group on the carrier. The 8 of us were probably the best pilots on the carrier. You can see me on the far bottom left hand corner of the photo.
The fighting starts Before we knew it the fighting had already started before we even went out. Our carrier was hit by 2 japanese kamikaze pilots. We got relocated into another carrier that was nearby, and kept going forward, closer to the island.
This is the newspaper headline from the day after the Iwo Jima invasion. It talks about what exactly happened on the day that we went in. My father told me when I came back that he read this paper and he felt worried that I might have died.
We Arrive Close to the Islands and storm the beach My group took flight off of the carrier and went in to destroy any vehicles and enemy ground troops, meanwhile our troops were on the ground also fighting the enemy. This is my group after we took off of the carrier, proceeding to invade Iwo Jima.
I was able to take take down a few ground troops, but it became too dangerous after the first hours of fighting because they came with all their might to attack us. After, we retreated and landed back on the carrier. Even though we got some rest, there were still others fighting. Landing back on the carrier that day
The fighting went on.. The battle went on for about a month, and every once in a while we would get deployed into the air to fight. We got some rests, but it was still a very tiring thing to do. Every time took off, I didn t know if I d come back alive. This picture is me the day that we declared the battle complete
The war was over After a month of fighting, we were able to push and win the battle. We declared that the battle was complete. This was a very exhilarating moment in my life, and I will never forget the day that we won the battle of Iwo Jima. This picture is of the ground troops the day we won the battle
Documents/Propaganda This is a Post-War/Battle piece of propaganda made to celebrate the effort that the US had in Iwo Jima. This battle would never be forgotten because of the amount of work the US put into it to come out winning. This is a letter sent out to all the soldiers and officers from a colonel after the war, thanking them for the effort and work that they put in to succeed in this battle. He says that this small aspect of the war made a huge impact in the full outcome and he is very thankful for everything that was done to contribute to the battle effort.
Artifacts This first artifact is a bottle of sand from Iwo Jima that I saved from when the battle was over. Everyone got the chance to go there even if they were pilots. These are what is left of my flight suits from the battle. This is what I basically wore every day that I went out to fly and fight.