In the 1930s, Rabbi Roland Gittelsohn was a distinguished scholar and vocal pacifist. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, he had a change of heart and volunteered to serve as a chaplain in the US Navy. The first rabbi ever deployed with the Marine Corps, he found himself in the bloody battle at Iwo Jima. At war's end at the dedication of the 5th Marine Division cemetery, he gave a renowned speech known as "the Gettysburg Address of World War II." This biography is based on multiple sources, including Gittelsohn's personal papers, beginning with his family's emigration from Russia to the United States. From the growing antiwar movement after World War I, to the training of military chaplains and the anti-Semitism among their ranks, important events further contextualize Gittelsohn's life, including his illustrious postwar career and service on President Harry S. Truman's Committee on Civil Rights.
In the 1930s, Rabbi Roland Gittelsohn was a distinguished scholar and vocal pacifist. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, he had a change of heart and volunteered to serve as a chaplain in the US Navy. The first rabbi ever deployed with the Marine Corps, he found himself in the bloody battle at Iwo Jima. At war's end at the dedication of the 5th Marine Division cemetery, he gave a renowned speech known as "the Gettysburg Address of World War II." This biography is based on multiple sources, including Gittelsohn's personal papers, beginning with his family's emigration from Russia to the United States. From the growing antiwar movement after World War I, to the training of military chaplains and the anti-Semitism among their ranks, important events further contextualize Gittelsohn's life, including his illustrious postwar career and service on President Harry S. Truman's Committee on Civil Rights.
Among these men there is no discrimination. No prejudices. No hatred. Theirs is the highest and purest democracy. -from The Purest Democracy Despite his passionate support of pacifism, Rabbi Roland Gittelsohn voluntarily joined the navy when the United States entered World War II, becoming the first Jewish chaplain assigned to the United States Marine Corps. His remarkable story chronicles the evolution of his crisis of conscience and gives an insider's view into the battle of Iwo Jima and one of the most famous military speeches ever made.
"In 1945 my father, John Bradley, and other members of Combat Team 28 raised a flag on Iwo Jima. Now with The Lions of Iwo Jima, [Haynes] helps America understand how it was done."—James Bradley, author of Flags of Our Fathers and Flyboys Combat Team 28, one of the greatest units fielded in the history of the U.S. Marines, landed on the black sands of Iwo Jima on February 19, 1945. The unit, 4,500 men strong, plunged immediately into ferocious combat, and by the time the battled ended, 70 percent of the men in the team's three assault battalions were killed or seriously wounded. The stories told here, many for the first time, will seem too cruel, too heartbreaking to be believed. As one veteran remarked, "Each day we learned a new way to die." Major General Fred Haynes, then a young captain, is the last surviving office in CT 28 who was intimately involved in planning and coordinating all phases of the team's fight on Iwo Jima. In this astonishing narrative, Haynes and James A. Warren recapture in riveting detail what the Marines experienced, drawing on a wealth of previously untapped documents, personal narratives, letters, and interviews with survivors to offer fresh interpretations of the fight for Suribachi, the iconic flag-raising photograph, and the nature of the campaign as a whole.
The epic Battle of Iwo Jima is recounted through the stories of twenty-eight American soldiers who showed uncommon valor during one of WWII’s most bitter conflicts. When the smoke cleared on Iwo Jima in March of 1945, nineteen-thousand American Marines had been wounded and seven-thousand were dead, a casualty rate of nearly thirty-nine percent. Lasting over a month, Iwo was the Marines’ bloodiest battle of the Second World War and the only Pacific battle in which a U.S. landing force suffered more casualties than it inflicted. It was also the most highly decorated single engagement in Marine Corps history. This volume captures the bravery of those who fought in that epic battle through the stories of twenty-two Marines and five Navy personnel who received the Medal of Honor in recognition of their gallantry under fire.
In February 1945, some 80,000 U.S. Marines attacked the heavily defended fortress that the Japanese had constructed on the tiny Pacific island of Iwo Jima. Leaders of the Army Air Forces said they needed the airfields there to provide fighter escort for their B-29 bombers. At the cost of 28,000 American casualties, the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Marine Divisions dutifully conquered this desolate piece of hell with a determination and sacrifice that have become legendary in the annals of war, immortalized in the photograph of six Marines raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi. But the Army Air Forces’ fighter operations on Iwo Jima subsequently proved both unproductive and unnecessary. After the fact, a number of other justifications were generated to rationalize this tragically expensive battle. Ultimately, misleading statistics were presented to contend that the number of lives saved by B-29 emergency landings on Iwo Jima outweighed the cost of its capture. In The Ghosts of Iwo Jima, Captain Robert S. Burrell masterfully reconsiders the costs of taking Iwo Jima and its role in the war effort. His thought-provoking analysis also highlights the greater contribution of Iwo Jima’s valiant dead: They inspired a reverence for the Marine Corps that proved critical to its institutional survival and its embodiment of American national spirit. From the 7th War Loan Campaign of 1945 through the flag-raising at Ground Zero in 2001, the immortal image of Iwo Jima has become a symbol of American patriotism itself. Burrell’s searching account of this fabled island conflict will advance our understanding of World War II and its continuing legacy for the twenty-first century. At last, the battle’s ghosts may unveil its ultimate, and most crucial, lessons.
“A vivid and compelling account by a true master of oral history.” —General James L. Jones, USMC (Ret.), Supreme Allied Commander, Europe On February 19, 1945, nearly 70,000 American soldiers invaded a tiny volcanic island in the Pacific. Over the next thirty-five days, approximately 28,000 soldiers died, including nearly 22,000 Japanese and 6,821 Americans, making Iwo Jima one of the costliest battles of World War II. In his most important work to date, best-selling author Larry Smith lets twenty-two veterans of the conflict tell the story of this epic clash in their own words. Many of these soldiers were no more than teenagers when they answered their country’s call, and yet the men relate the momentous events of this terrible conflict as if they occurred just last year, instead of more than half a century ago. Describing the initial charge across the treacherous black ash of the landing beach under heavy fire is Chuck Lindberg, the last survivor of the two teams that planted the flags on Mount Suribachi—a moment captured forever in Joe Rosenthal’s iconic photograph for the Associated Press. General Fred Haynes recounts his heroic attempts to keep order amid tremendous casualties on the battlefield. Woody Williams and George Wahlen, two of the battle’s twenty-six Medal of Honor recipients, tell their unbelievable stories, and Samuel Tso relates his role as one of the famous Navajo code talkers. Though the flags went up just days after the invasion, the fighting wasn’t over: through nearly eight miles of tunnels, thousands of Japanese troops defended the island despite hundred-degree heat, famine rations, and the overpowering stench of sulfur. To get both sides of the story, Smith interviewed the daughter of Captain Tsunezo Wachi, one of the most prominent Japanese survivors, and presents new evidence about the disappearance of the famed Japanese commander Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, who waged a brilliant defense of the island only to allegedly commit suicide rather than submit to the Americans. Smith also investigates the controversy surrounding Rosenthal’s famous photograph of the flag raising, and he interviews bomber and fighter crewmen to hear firsthand whether they believed the terrible cost of capturing the island was truly justified by its strategic use as an emergency stop for B-29 Superfortress bombers. Through the story of Navy Cross recipient John Ripley, Smith brings the history of the island up-to-date—from its return to Japan in 1968 to the dramatic discoveries made in the caves of Iwo in the 1980s and the Japanese-American Reunion of Honor now held annually on the island. With dozens of photographs and maps, Iwo Jima is a stunning history of this emblematic battle, but it is also a personal history of the generation of soldiers, many now in their final years, who waged one of the most important wars in American history.
Vivid storytelling brings World War II history to life and place readers in the shoes of the people who experienced one of the most pivotal battles in the Pacific War. On February 19, 1945, U.S. Marines landed on the island of tiny Iwo Jima. Facing rugged terrain and a deeply entrenched enemy, they embarked on a fierce, five-week battle to take the island and its airfields from the Imperial Japanese Army. Suspenseful, dramatic events unfold in chronological, interwoven stories from the different perspectives of people who experienced the battle while it was happening. Narratives intertwine to create a breathless, "What's Next?" kind of read. Students gain a new perspective on historical figures as they learn about real people struggling to decide how best to act in a given moment.
