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Iwo Jima

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Template:Short description Template:About Template:Distinguish Template:Pp-pc Template:Infobox island

Template:Nihongo is one of the Japanese Volcano Islands, which lie south of the Bonin Islands and together with them make up the Ogasawara Archipelago. Together with the Izu Islands, they make up Japan's Nanpō Islands. Although Template:Cvt south of Tokyo on Honshu, Iwo Jima is administered as part of the Ogasawara Subprefecture of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.

Only Template:Convert in size, the island is still volcanic and emits sulfurous gases. The highest point of Iwo Jima is Mount Suribachi at Template:Cvt high. Although likely passed by Micronesians who made their way to the Bonins to the north, Iwo Jima was largely ignored by the Spanish, Dutch, British, and Japanese until a relatively late date after its 1543 rediscovery. The Japanese eventually colonized the island, administering it as the Ioto or Iojima Village under Tokyo's jurisdiction until all civilians were forcibly evacuated to Honshu in July 1944 near the end of World War II.

Because it was able to provide secure airfields within easy range of the Japanese Home Islands, Iwo Jima was not passed by like other Pacific fortresses; instead, the Battle of Iwo Jima between February 1945 and March 1945 was some of the fiercest fighting of the Pacific War, with Imperial Japan and the United States both suffering over 20,000 casualties. Joe Rosenthal's photograph of the second flagraising on Mount Suribachi has become one of the most famous examples of wartime photojournalism and an iconic American image. Following the Japanese surrender, the US military occupied Iwo Jima along with the other Nanpo Islands and the Ryukyus; Iwo Jima was returned to Japan with the Bonins in 1968.

Now technically part of the territory and municipal jurisdiction of Ogasawara Village, the island still has no permanent inhabitants except a Self-Defense Force base on its Central Field. Its soldiers, sailors, and airmen receive their own services from Ayase or Sayama but provide emergency assistance to communities on the Bonins who are still connected with the mainland only by an infrequent day-long ferry. As of 1991, the land of Iwo Jima was owned by six individuals, the Village of Ogasawara, and the Government of Japan. Additionally, at least eight individuals held leasehold interests in certain parts of the land owned by the village. The North Kanto Defense Bureau of the Ministry of Defense pays rent on the land lease to the individual owners and leaseholders.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>According to the proceeding record of the Special Committee for the Investigation of Iwo Jima, Ogasawara Village Council in 2018, private land owners and leaseholders exist. Template:Cite web</ref>

The area of Iwo Jima continues to increase due to the uplift of the ground due to active volcanic activity; in 1911 it was Template:Convert, in 1945 it was Template:Convert, in 2014 it was Template:Convert and in 2023, it was Template:Convert.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

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Name

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File:Iwo Jima Airport Control Tower.jpg
The island's SDF airport control tower (2010)

The original records of De la Torre's 1543 expedition have been lost,Template:Sfnp but he does not appear to have separately named Iwo Jima,Template:Sfnp despite later sources sometimes miscrediting him with the name Sulfur or Sulphur Island (orig. Template:Lang or Template:Lang). Instead, he seems to have only named the Volcano Islands as a group (orig. Template:Lang)Template:Sfnp after an eruptionTemplate:Mdashprobably on South Iwo JimaTemplate:Mdashactive as his ship passed through the area.Template:Sfnp

Other Spanish explorers may have named or renamed the island in the years afterward.<ref>Cf., e.g., Template:Citation, which credits Ruy López de Villalobos with naming the island Template:Lang or Template:Lang in 1544.</ref> Certainly, John Gore was aware of Spanish accounts of the area with himTemplate:Sfnp when he visited in 1779 and recorded its English name as Sulphur Island.<ref name=borkborkbork/>

The name was subsequently calqued into Late Middle Japanese with the Sino-Japanese form and pronunciation Iwōtō or Iwō-tō (Template:Lang, Template:Lang, "Sulfur Island"), still used by the control tower for the remaining airport. In the past this was also sometimes romanized as Iwautau.<ref>Template:Citation.</ref> The native Japanese reading of the same character Template:Wikt-lang is shima (leading to the English misreading Iwo Shima), which typically shifts to jima when prefixed by another character. This version is the origin of the English names Iwojima, Iwo-jima,<ref name="Greimel">Template:Cite news</ref> and Iwo Jima, with many variant pronunciations including Template:IPAc-en and Template:IPAc-en.<ref>Template:Cite Merriam-Webster</ref><ref>Template:Cite American Heritage Dictionary</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>"Iwo Jima" Template:Webarchive (US) and Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref> This archaic or mistaken form of the Japanese name was particularly reinforced during the Second World War, when it was mistakenly used by Japanese naval officers who arrived to fortify the island ahead of US invasion.<ref name="Greimel"/>

In general Japanese use, the /w/ has dropped out of the modern pronunciation to become Iōtō or Iō-tō (Template:Lang), a spelling formally adopted following Japan's 1946 orthography reform. This newer form is sometimes borrowed into English pronunciations of the island's name as Template:IPAc-en and Template:IPAc-en. The high-profile Clint Eastwood films Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima revived complaints from prewar residents about continued misreadings of the island's name,<ref name="Greimel"/> particularly within Japanese. After formal debate, the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism's Geographical Survey Institute formally announced on 18 June 2007 that the official pronunciation would return to Iōtō or Iō-tō.<ref name="GSI"/>

硫黄島, pronounced Iōjima, is currently the name of a different island in Kagoshima.

Geography

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File:Ioto Island Location Map Ueda et al 2018 R1.jpg
Location map of Iwo Jima
File:Iwo Jima Bathymetric Chart by Japan Coast Guard.jpg
Bathymetric chart around Iwo Jima (by the Japan Coast Guard)
File:Aerial view of Iwo Jima in September 2014.JPG
Aerial view of Iwo Jima in 2014
File:Iwo Jima Suribachi DN-SD-03-11845.JPEG
Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima
File:Io-to ISS049-E-1168.jpg
Iwo Jima from the International Space Station in 2016

Iwo Jima has an approximate area of Template:Cvt. The most prominent feature is Mount Suribachi on the southern tip, a vent that is thought to be dormant and is Template:Cvt high.<ref name="ap"/> Named after a Japanese grinding bowl, the summit of Mount Suribachi is the highest point on the island. Iwo Jima is unusually flat and featureless for a volcanic island. Suribachi is the only obvious volcanic feature, as the island is only the resurgent dome (raised centre) of a larger submerged volcanic caldera surrounding the island.<ref name=ap/> The island forms part of the Kazan-retto islands Important Bird Area (IBA), designated by BirdLife International.<ref name=bli>Template:Cite web</ref>

80 km (43 nautical miles, 50 mi) north of the island is Template:Nihongo and Template:Cvt south is Template:Nihongo; these three islands make up the Volcano Islands group of the Ogasawara Islands. Just south of Minami-Iō-jima are the Mariana Islands.

The visible island stands on a plateau (probably made by wave erosion) at depth about 15 m, which is the top of an underwater mountain 1.5 km to 2 km tall and 40 km diameter at base.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Eruption history

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Iwo Jima has a history of minor volcanic activity a few times per year (fumaroles, and their resultant discolored patches of seawater nearby).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In November 2015 Iwo Jima was placed first in a list of ten dangerous volcanoes, with volcanologists saying there was a one in three chance of a large eruption from one of the ten this century.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Prehistoric

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  • Earlier: An undersea volcano started, and built up into a volcanic island. It was truncated, either by caldera-forming eruption or by sea erosion.<ref name="oldiwojima"/>
  • About 760±20 BC: a large eruption with pyroclastic flows and lava destroyed a previous forested island<ref name="oldiwojima">Carbon14 dating of buried charcoal: see https://www.volcanocafe.org/iwo-jima-in-45-eruptions/ Template:Webarchive , which see for more information about old eruptions.</ref>
  • 131±20BC and 31±20 BC: carbon-14 date of seashells found buried in lava at Motoyama (see map)<ref name="oldiwojima"/>
  • Micronesian tools and carvings found in the Bonin Islands to the north suggest Iwo Jima may have been visited or inhabited as well. With limited archaeological access, however, no such remains have been found to date.

Witnessed

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File:Volcanic island on the rise ESA25348654.jpg
Aerial view showing the location of 'Niijima' off of Iwoto from the ESA Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite

On 11 July 2022, the first magmatic eruption in over 1000 years began just offshore. The article was cited as saying "Officials of the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience (NIED) visited the site between July 12 and July 15 and observed volcanic eruptions every five minutes, which created water columns tens of meters high and spewed black smoke. The officials also observed many rocks that had washed ashore on the coast of Iwoto island. There were small cavities inside the rocks. The officials believe they are cooled lava, formed after magma has erupted, quickly cooled and solidified. The temperature on the inside of some of the rocks was as high as 120 degrees, according to the officials."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

At the beginning of November 2023, a series of continuous eruptions of material resulted in a new islet breaking the surface and beginning to grow.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Following continuous volcanic activity since the initial eruption the island now dubbed Niijima, Japanese for 'new island', has continued to grow and is now visible from space.<ref name="ESA">Template:Cite web</ref>

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Climate

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Iwo Jima has a tropical savanna climate (Aw) with long, hot summers and warm winters with mild nights.

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History

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Pre-1945

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The island was first visited by a Westerner in October 1543, by Spanish sailor Bernardo de la Torre on board the carrack San Juan de Letrán when trying to return from Sarangani to New Spain.<ref>Brand, Donald D. (1967). The Pacific Basin: A History of its Geographical Explorations. New York: The American Geographical Society. p. 123.</ref>

In the late 16th century, the island was discovered by the Japanese.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Before World War II Iwo Jima was administered as Iōjima village and was (and is today) part of Tokyo. A census in June 1943 reported an island civilian population of 1,018 (533 males, 485 females) in 192 households in six settlements. The island had a primary school, a Shinto shrine, and one police officer; it was serviced by a mail ship from Haha-jima once a month, and by Nippon Yusen ship once every two months. The island's economy relied upon sulfur mining, sugarcane farming, and fishing; an isolated island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with poor economic prospects, Iwo Jima had to import all rice and consumer goods from the Home Islands.Template:Citation needed

Even before the beginning of World War II, there was a garrison of the Imperial Japanese Navy at the southern part of Iwo Jima. It was off-limits to the island's civilian population, who already had little contact with the naval personnel, except for trading.

File:B-24 Liberators after attacking Iwo Jima 15 December 1944.jpg
B-24 Liberators after attacking Iwo Jima on December 15, 1944

Throughout 1944, Japan conducted a massive military buildup on Iwo Jima in anticipation of a U.S. invasion. In July 1944, the island's civilian population was forcibly evacuated, and no civilians have permanently settled on the island since.

War-displaced islanders who are now in their 80s and older longed to return to the island, which they considered "a special place associated with memories both happy and sad". Their repeated requests to return to the island have not been realized given the reason that the area has a dynamic volcanic activity. Former islanders and their family members, however, are occasionally granted permission to visit the graves of their ancestors. Islanders and their descendants are trying to write down their memories, interview other former islanders, and create "a digital archive of photos to preserve memories of life on the now-forbidden island to pass them down to posterity" for younger generations who may not appreciate that Iwo Jima was once a place many had called home.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Battle of Iwo Jima

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File:392d Bombardment Squadron - B-24 Liberator.jpg
B-24 Liberator flies over Iwo Jima in March 1945

The American invasion of Iwo Jima began on February 19, 1945, and continued to March 26, 1945. The battle was a major initiative of the Pacific Campaign of World War II. The Marine invasion, known as "Operation Detachment", was charged with the mission of capturing the airfields on the island for use by P-51 fighters, and the emergency landings of damaged heavy bombers that were not able to reach their main bases in the Marianas (Guam, Saipan and Tinian). Prior to the seizure, Japanese fighters had harried U.S. bombing missions to Japan.

The battle was marked by some of the fiercest fighting of the war. The Imperial Japanese Army positions on the island were heavily fortified, with vast bunkers, hidden artillery, and 18 kilometers (11 mi) of tunnels.<ref>Letters From Iwo Jima Template:Webarchive World War II Multimedia Database</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The battle was the first U.S. attack on the Japanese Home Islands and the Imperial soldiers defended their positions tenaciously. Of the 21,000 Japanese soldiers present at the beginning of the battle, over 19,000 were killed and only 1,083 taken prisoner.<ref name="morison">Template:Cite book</ref>

One of the first objectives after landing on the beachhead was the taking of Mount Suribachi. At the second raising of a flag on the peak, Joe Rosenthal photographed six Marines raising the United States flag on the fourth day of the battle (February 23).

File:3c-Iwo Jima.jpg
U.S. postage stamp, 1945 issue, commemorating the Battle of Iwo Jima.

The photograph was extremely popular, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Photography that same year. It is regarded as one of the most significant and recognizable images of the war.<ref name="ap"/><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

After the fall of Mount Suribachi in the south, the Japanese still held a strong position throughout the island. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi still had the equivalent of eight infantry battalions, a tank regiment, two artillery, and three heavy mortar battalions, plus the 5,000 gunners and naval infantry. With the landing area secure, more troops and heavy equipment came ashore and the invasion proceeded north to capture the airfields and the remainder of the island. Most Japanese soldiers fought to the death. On the night of March 25, a 300-man Japanese force launched a final counterattack led by Kuribayashi. The island was officially declared "secured" the following morning.

According to the U.S. Navy, "The 36-day (Iwo Jima) assault resulted in more than 26,000 American casualties, including 6,800 dead."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Comparatively, the 82-day Battle of Okinawa lasted from early April until mid-June 1945 and U.S. (five Army, two Marine Corps Divisions and Navy personnel on ships) casualties were over 62,000 of whom over 12,000 were killed or missing, while the Battle of the Bulge lasted 40 days (16 December 1944 – 25 January 1945) with almost 90,000 U.S. casualties comprising 19,000 killed, 47,500 wounded and 23,000 captured or missing.

After Iwo Jima was declared secured, about 3,000 Japanese soldiers were left alive in the island's warren of caves and tunnels. Those who could not bring themselves to commit suicide hid in the caves during the day and came out at night to prowl for provisions. Some did eventually surrender and were surprised that the Americans often received them with compassion – offering them water, cigarettes, or coffee.<ref name=Toland>Template:Cite book</ref> The last of these stragglers, two of Lieutenant Toshihiko Ohno's men (Ohno's body was never found), Kōfuku Yamakage and Rikio Matsudo, lasted three and a half years, surrendering on January 6, 1949.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In memory of the battle, three ships of the U.S. Navy have been named Template:USS:

U.S. Naval Base Iwo Jima

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Template:Main

File:CASU52Camp AdministrationIwoJimabase1945.jpg
Navy Carrier Aircraft Service Unit (CASU 52) camp and Administration Area, constructed by the 90th Seabees in 1945

The U.S. military occupied Iwo Jima until June 26, 1968, when it was returned to Japan.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The United States Navy built and operated a naval base on the island.

U.S. nuclear arms base

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Between 1956 and 1959, it is claimed that US Military forces stored at least one nuclear weapon at Iwo Jima, with some nuclear components being stored on the island until 1966.<ref name="Eldridge">Template:Cite book</ref> This made Iwo Jima one of several islands hosting nuclear weapons during the US Military Occupation of Japan. The claim was initially made by authors at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, parsing heavily redacted declassified documents.<ref name="Norris-know">Template:Cite journalTemplate:Dead linkTemplate:Cbignore</ref><ref name="Norris-deploy">Template:Cite journalTemplate:Dead linkTemplate:Cbignore</ref>

On December 12, 1999, U.S. Under Secretary for Defense Policy Walter Slocombe told The New York Times, "Our position is that there have been no violations of our obligations under the security treaty and related arrangements."<ref name="Acronym">Template:Cite journal</ref>

Norris, Arkin and Burr, authors at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, however concluded:

There were nuclear weapons on Chichi Jima and Iwo Jima (Iwo To)... Chichi Jima, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa were under U.S. occupation, that the bombs stored on the mainland lacked their plutonium and/ or uranium cores... This elaborate stratagem maintained the technicality that the United States had no nuclear weapons "in Japan."<ref name="Acronym"/>

Japanese military base

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File:548th Night Fighter Squadron P-61 Black Widows Central Field Iwo Jima.jpg
P-61 Black Widows line Central Field, 1945
File:Iwo-Jima-Suribachi.jpg
Coast of the island with Suribachi in the distance, 2007

Since returning the island from the U.S. to Japan on June 26, 1968, the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) maintain a station on Iwo Jima. The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) operates a naval air base on the island at Central Field.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The airstrip is 2,650 meters (8,700 ft) long and 60 meters (200 ft) wide. The JMSDF is in charge of support, air traffic control, fueling, and rescue. The airstrip is rarely used for emergency landings by commercial airplanes flying transpacific routes (between the Northeast Asia and Saipan, Guam). The IATA airport code of IWO and the ICAO airport code of RJAW are assigned to the airfield. The JMSDF Air Wing 21 Detachment Iōtō provides support for emergency medical air transportation from the Bonin Islands (Chichijima and Hahajima) to Honshu.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The base is occasionally used as a relay point for the medical transport. The Japan Air Self-Defense Force also uses the base. The Japan Ground Self-Defense Force is in charge of explosive ordnance disposal, and maintains a garrison of 400 troops on the island.<ref name="Greimel"/> Two abandoned airfields from World War II are nearby, North Field to the north of the current air base, and an unfinished Japanese airfield to the south of the base, which was improved after the U.S. invasion of the island.Template:Citation needed

The U.S. Navy's Carrier Air Wing Five, based at the United States Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni when not deployed aboard Template:USS,<ref name="DVIDS_20241122">Template:Cite web</ref> also uses the base for field carrier landing practice (FCLP). To justify the U.S. Navy's use of the airfield, the U.S. Navy still nominally has a 1,639-acre (663-ha) disused communication facility (Iwo-Jima Communication Site, FAC3181) on the island under the U.S.–Japan Status of Forces Agreement. The U.S. Coast Guard's Iwo Jima LORAN-C transmitter facility was transferred to Japan in 1993 and demolished in 1994.

Civilian access to the island is restricted to those visiting graves of former residents and attending memorial services for U.S. and Japanese fallen soldiers, construction workers and cafeteria staff for the naval air base, and meteorological, geological and environmental agency officials. The Japanese troops stationed on the island register their residential addresses in Ayase, Kanagawa or Sayama, Saitama for voting, tax, and social security purposes. Officially, there is no population on the island.

While large areas of the Bonin Islands are designated as a national park (Ogasawara National Park) as well as inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, Iwo Jima is included neither in the National Park nor the World Heritage natural site because of the military installations.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Reunion of Honor

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The first large scale reunion on the island was held in 1970 on the 25th anniversary of the battle. The event was sponsored by the Fifth Marine Division Association and included both American and Japanese veterans of the battle. Other notable attendees included then Brigadier General William K. Jones commander of the 3rd Marine Division, NBC’s senior correspondent in Asia John Rich, and Yoshitaka Shindō grandson of General Tadamichi Kuribayashi. The widows of General Kuribayashi and Colonel Takeichi Nishi also attended events with American veterans held in Tokyo.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

On February 19, 1985, the 40th anniversary of the day that U.S. forces began the assault on the island, veterans from both forces gathered for the Reunion of Honor just a few meters/yards away from the spot where U.S. Marines had landed on the island.<ref name="Boardman">Template:Cite web</ref> During the memorial service a granite plaque was unveiled with the message:

On the 40th anniversary of the battle of Iwo Jima, American and Japanese veterans met again on these same sands, this time in peace and friendship. We commemorate our comrades, living and dead, who fought here with bravery and honor, and we pray together that our sacrifices on Iwo Jima will always be remembered and never be repeated.

It is inscribed on both sides of the plaque, with the English translation facing the beaches where U.S. forces landed and the Japanese translation facing inland, where Japanese troops defended their position.

After that, the Japan–U.S. combination memorial service of the 50th anniversary was held in front of this monument in March 1995. The 55th anniversary was held in 2000, followed by a 60th reunion in March 2005 (see U.S. National Park Service photo below), and a 70th anniversary ceremony on March 21, 2015.<ref name="Chacon">Template:Cite web</ref>

A memorial service held on the island in 2007 got particular attention because it coincided with the release of the movie Letters from Iwo Jima. The joint U.S.–Japanese ceremony was attended by Yoshitaka Shindo, a Japanese lawmaker who is the grandson of the Japanese commander during the battle, Lt. Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi, and Yasunori Nishi, the son of Colonel Baron Takeichi Nishi, the Olympic gold medalist equestrian who died commanding a tank unit on the island.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Active Marines have also visited the island on occasion for Professional Military Education (PME).<ref>Iwo Jima: Marines visit historical landmark Template:Webarchive Marine Corps Installations Pacific on YouTube</ref>

See also

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Notes

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References

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