On Memorial Day we remember the people in our military who died while they were serving their country. These are the people from the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine. On Memorial Day, we honor those who died while they were defending our country.
The image you have in your yard is made from a picture that was taken 76 years ago. The picture was taken on top of a small mountain, an old volcano named Mount Suribachi, on a small island in the Pacific Ocean. The name of the island is Iwo Jima. In Japanese it means Sulphur Island (Io To). It is a small, ugly island, in the middle of the largest ocean in the world. Only a few people lived there, 1018, and the only things that grew were sugar cane. The people lived on fishing, and they dug up sulphur to sell.
So why are these Marines in the picture raising up an American flag on the top of an old volcano, on this ugly little island where almost nobody lived?
To understand why these men are doing this you have to know what happened before this picture was taken.
The United States was friends with the country of Japan, and also with the country of China. The United States had been friends with both of these two countries for a long time. In fact, the United States helped protect both Japan and China from being attacked by other countries in Europe who wanted to take over their land.
It was a sad time for the United States when the country of Japan attacked the country of China in 1937. The Japanese started going into China 8 years before the picture of Iwo Jima. They went into China and they took over their land, and they killed thousands of Chinese people, taking the things that belonged to the Chinese, and ruling them very harshly.
The United States wanted to protect China because they were our friends. But we also had been friends with Japan. The United States tried to get Japan to stop what she was doing but she would not. Eventually the President of the United States told Japan if you do not stop doing what you are doing to China, we will not be your friends. We will not sell you oil or other things. And when the Japanese did not stop attacking our friends in China, the United States did stop selling oil and other things to Japan.
This made Japan very angry. They were angry because they didn’t want anyone telling them what to do. And they were very angry because Japan has no oil of their own. Without oil everything in Japan would stop. When the United States stopped selling them oil, all that they had was what they had stored up in big storage tanks, and that would only last for a few months. They knew that they could not live without the oil from the United States. They would have to stop attacking China, or they would have to go somewhere and find more oil.
The Japanese decided they would not listen to the President of the United States. They decided they would destroy China, and they would find oil by attacking other countries near them, to take the oil and other things away that they needed. And Japan decided that they would have to destroy the Navy, the ships, of the United States because they knew the United States might attack them when they started attacking all of our friends.
To do these things Japan planned a surprise for the United States. They pretended they were still our friends. Then on a Sunday morning, very early, before people were even going to church, they sent hundreds of planes to attack the ships of the United States at a place called Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii. On 7 December 1941, 80 years ago, just before Christmas, 300 Japanese planes attacked the United States fleet; they destroyed 8 battleships, and killed over 2900 Americans. And they started attacking other countries to take away their oil and other things, killing thousands.
The United States could not fight the Japanese very well at first because we were not ready. Japan built up lots of ships, planes and soldiers in secret for years before they attacked us. The United States was trying to be friends and did not have a lot of ships or planes. We were not ready to fight a war. But the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor made the people in the United States very very angry. And they began building ships, airplanes, soldiers, tanks, guns, everything, to fight back, and to help all of our friends who were being attacked.
It took almost four years but the United States started winning. The Japanese were being beaten and pushed back. They started losing islands and places they had conquered. The United States started getting closer and closer to Japan with our ships and our Army and Marines. But we needed to have airports closer to Japan so that we could have airplanes that could drop bombs on Japan. Japan was not our friend anymore. We were killing Japanese and bombing the cities where they lived. We wanted to be able to drop more bombs faster, so we needed those airports for the airplanes to use. To build an airport we needed land. So the United States decided they needed the island of Iwo Jima which the Japanese owned.
Iwo Jima had many forts and tunnels with many guns. The Japanese had over 21,000 soldiers there to fight and defend it. On 19 February 1945, just a little more than 3 years after the Japanese started the war by attacking the United States, we attacked Iwo Jima with thousands of Marines, thousands of airplanes, and hundreds of ships. The United States fought with the Japanese for 35 days (26 March 1945) before we defeated them and captured Iwo Jima. During that time over 6800 Americans were killed.
On the fourth day of the battle, 23 February, the Marines fought the Japanese and captured the volcano called Mount Suribachi. When they got to the top of the mountain they raised up an American flag to encourage the Americans who were still fighting the Japanese, and to make the Japanese know they were going to lose, so they should stop fighting. But the Japanese would not stop fighting. By the end of the battle almost all of them were dead.
In the picture there are five Marines and one man from the Navy raising the flag. Fighting was still going on all around them. That is why they look like they were in a hurry, because they were trying to get the flag up quickly. Later on, after this picture was taken, three of those men died while fighting on Iwo Jima.
The picture reminds us of the very sad things that happen in this world. People are sinful, they don’t love God, and they hurt and kill each other. The United States was fighting on Iwo Jima because we were fighting the Japanese who attacked us, and who were destroying our friends. The men who fought and died on Iwo Jima, even in this picture, did it because they loved the United States, they loved their families and their friends, and they wanted to protect them. People who join the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force do it today because they are ready to fight to protect us.
This is why we remember people who have died defending our country. We remember them on Memorial Day. They are heroes. They sacrificed to protect us. We cannot forget them, just like policemen protect us every day and sometimes they are killed doing it too. This picture from Iwo Jima helps us remember these are real people, just like you and your family, and they had families, but they did hard and terrible things, and some of those people died soon after the picture was taken. They did it to protect us. We remember them and we are thankful for them.
