These are actual kodachrome color photos of the beginning of the assault on Iwo Jima, taken by a shipboard Naval officer that morning.
The battleship is the USS Tennessee bombarding Mt Suribachi. When I first saw these they really hit me in the gut. So vivid you can almost smell the salt air and smoke. Iwo was an unusually panoramic event, one of the few huge battles of WW2 where observers could see most of the battlefield. The scope is hard to imagine nowadays. Twenty-nine days fighting on a speck of land a few miles long; 19,000 Japanese and 6,800 US Marines, Sailors and Soldiers dead.
The battleship is the USS Tennessee bombarding Mt Suribachi. When I first saw these they really hit me in the gut. So vivid you can almost smell the salt air and smoke. Iwo was an unusually panoramic event, one of the few huge battles of WW2 where observers could see most of the battlefield. The scope is hard to imagine nowadays. Twenty-nine days fighting on a speck of land a few miles long; 19,000 Japanese and 6,800 US Marines, Sailors and Soldiers dead.