During the Battle of Iwo Jima in the Pacific War, the bodies of slain Japanese soldiers lay in a machine gun position on a sandy plain. There were no shields around them to hide themselves.

　　The Battle of Iwo Jima in the Pacific War broke out on February 19, 1945, with the landing of American troops. Most of the plains of Iwo Jima were soft sandy soil, not suitable for building positions or bunkers. The bodies of slain Japanese soldiers lay in a machine gun position on the plain. There was no shelter around them.

　The Japanese did not have enough materials to build their positions. The soil was not suitable for building caves and tunnels. There were air raids every day, and it was uncertain when they would be completed. Even the Japanese military forces were reinforced only gradually, so their deployment had to be ad hoc. The entire island of Iwo Jima was almost completely flat, making it impossible to establish a base of operations on the terrain. Just before the Americans landed on Iwo Jima, the Japanese Navy's central command ordered the use of Japanese troops to expand the airfield, even though there were no planes to be used, thereby weakening the position even further.

　The Imperial Japanese Navy headquarters questioned the command of Corps Commander Kuribayashi, who was constantly hiding underground, and suggested that an offensive should be launched. However, the reality was that an offensive was impossible without risking self-destruction under the bombardment of the U.S. forces from the sea and the air. What was even more fatal to their defenses was the sheer quantity difference between the U.S. forces and those of the Americans. In the end, there was no room for tactics or countermeasures. In particular, the constant bombardment by dozens of US Navy ships and the bombardment by up to 1,600 US planes a day caused continuous losses to the Japanese. Japanese losses continued to mount.

　On March 17, 1945, Captain Kuribayashi sent a farewell telegram to the Imperial Japanese Army headquarters, and from midnight on March 25 to early morning on March 26, the Ogasawara Corps headquarters launched a suicide assault against the U.S. forces with a banzai attack. At about 5:15 a.m., about 200 to 300 Japanese soldiers invaded from the north. They attacked Hiraiwa Beach and the Marine and Army camps. The U.S. forces suffered 53 killed in action and 119 wounded in action. The Japanese forces lost 96 men killed in action. Japanese casualties in the Battle of Iwo Jima were three times the number of American casualties, but the total number of American casualties in the Pacific War exceeded that of the Japanese. Of the approximately 20,933 Japanese soldiers, about 95%, or 19,900, were killed or missing in action. The U.S. forces suffered a total of 28,686 casualties, including 6,821 killed in action and 21,865 wounded in battle.