History for the day: 1945: US flag raised on Iwo Jima

History.com has this for 23 February:

In early 1945, the US military sought to gain control of the island of Iwo Jima in advance of the aerial campaign against the Japanese home islands. Iwo Jima, a tiny volcanic island in the Pacific about seven hundred miles southeast of Japan, was to be a base for fighter aircraft and an emergency-landing site for bombers. On 19 February 1945, after three days of heavy naval and aerial bombardment, the first wave of Marines stormed onto Iwo Jima’s inhospitable shores.
The Japanese garrison on the island numbered twenty-two thousand heavily entrenched men. Their commander, General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, had been expecting an Allied invasion for months, and had his men use the time to construct an intricate and deadly system of underground tunnels, fortifications, and artillery that withstood the initial Allied bombardment. By the evening of the first day, despite incessant mortar fire, thirty thousand Marines, commanded by General Holland 'Howlin' Mad' Smith, managed to establish a solid beachhead.
During the next few days, the Marines advanced inch by inch, under heavy fire from Japanese artillery and suicidal charges by the Japanese infantry. Many of the Japanese defenders were never seen, remaining underground until they were blown apart by a grenade or rocket or incinerated by a flame thrower.
While Japanese kamikaze slammed into the Allied fleet around Iwo Jima, the
Marines on the island continued their bloody advance across the island, responding to Kuribayashi’s lethal defenses with remarkable endurance. On 23 February 1945, the crest of Mount Suribachi was taken, and the next day the slopes of the extinct volcano were secured.During the bloody Battle for Iwo Jima, Marines from the 3rd Platoon, E Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Regiment of the 5th Division took the crest of Mount Suribachi, the island’s highest peak and most strategic position, and raised the American flag. Marine photographer Louis Lowery was with them and recorded the event. American soldiers fighting for control of Suribachi’s slopes cheered the raising of the flag and, several hours later, more Marines headed up to the crest with a larger flag. Joe Rosenthal, a photographer with The Associated Press, met them along the way and recorded the raising of the second flag, along with a Marine still photographer and a motion-picture cameraman.

Rosenthal took three photographs atop Suribachi. The first, showing five Marines and one Navy corpsman struggling to hoist the heavy flag pole, became the most reproduced photograph in history, and won him a Pulitzer Prize. The accompanying motion-picture footage attests to the fact that the picture was not posed. Of the other two photos, the second was similar to the first, but less affecting, and the third was a group picture of eighteen soldiers smiling and waving for the camera. Many of these men, including three of the six depicted in the photograph, Harlon Block, Franklin Sousley, and Michael Strank, were killed in action over the next few days. The three surviving flag-raisers were Rene Gagnon, Ira Hayes, a Native American of the Pima tribe, and sailor John Bradley. The latter three became celebrities after their identifications in the photograph.
By 3 March, American forces controlled all three airfields on the island and, on 26 March, the last Japanese defenders on Iwo Jima were wiped out. Only two hundred of the original twenty-two thousand Japanese defenders were captured alive; many committed seppuku, or, like the civilians on the island, threw themselves into the sea:

 

More than six thousand Americans died taking Iwo Jima, and some seventeen thousand were wounded.

Rico says yet another war he's glad he missed, but that Rosenthal didn't, thus giving us the memorial (photo, top) that ensured the Marines will last forever...