24.8°N 141.3°E Pacific Battle of Iwo Jima
Briefing
Thirty-six days of fighting for eight square miles of volcanic rock, beginning 19 February 1945. The flag-raising on Mount Suribachi on day five became the most famous photograph of the war, but the battle ground on for five more weeks — nearly 7,000 Marines died, and of roughly 21,000 Japanese defenders, almost none surrendered.
Books Covering This Event (6)
Popular History
The United States Marines against Japan, island by island, by a man who fought as one.
The six men who raised the flag on Iwo Jima, and the propaganda machine that consumed them.
The true story of American airmen shot down over Chichi Jima and the atrocities they suffered.
The brutal final year of the Pacific War, from the Philippines to the atomic bombings.
The official companion to the HBO series, following five men through the island campaigns.
The final volume of the Pacific War Trilogy: Leyte Gulf, the kamikazes, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and the bomb.
This Event on Screen
Screen adaptations of books on this page, each linked to the book it came from: Flags of Our Fathers (2006).
The War in Books: Iwo Jima
One photograph, and all that it hid.
Iwo Jima is the rare battle overshadowed by its own image. James Bradley’s Flags of Our Fathers, written with Ron Powers by the son of a Navy corpsman long identified as one of the flag-raisers, tells the story of the six men in the famous photograph and of how the publicity machine used the survivors. It should be read with one later fact in mind: Marine Corps investigations in 2016 and 2019 revised who was in the picture, and Bradley’s father was among those found not to be. That does not undo the book, but it adds a fitting irony to a story about how memory and image part company.
Bradley’s Flyboys looks at nearby Chichi Jima and the fate of American airmen shot down there. Robert Leckie’s Strong Men Armed, the work of a former Marine, takes in the whole Marine war against Japan, and Hugh Ambrose’s The Pacific follows five men through the island campaigns. Ian Toll’s Twilight of the Gods and Max Hastings’s Retribution set Iwo Jima within the final year of the war. Hastings, in particular, is worth reading on the question of what the island was worth, since the fighting there was so costly for both sides. Start with Toll or Hastings for the battle, and Bradley for what came after it.