On February 19, 1945, during the Battle of Iwo Jima in the Pacific War of World War II, two American marines who had fallen victim to Japanese fire became the first casualties when the American army began its assault on the Japanese volcanic island of Iwo Jima. remained dead on Iwo Jima. On March 30th 1945, American marines prepared a joint cemetery at the Third and Fourth Marine Divisions' cemetery for their fallen American comrades killed in the Battle of Iwo Jima. American marines dug graves at the 5th Marine Division Cemetery on Iwo Jima to bury the bodies of their fallen comrades.
The Japanese soldiers put up a fierce fight, but the American marines eventually secured the entire island on March 26, 1945, in one of the bloodiest battles of the Battle of Iwo Jima. Of the 74,000 US Marines who landed, more than a third were killed or wounded. From February 19 to March 26, in addition to the approximately 6,800 American soldiers who died in battle, nearly 20,000 Japanese soldiers also died in battle.
In the battle that lasted for over a month until the safety of Iwo Jima was declared on March 26, nearly 6,800 Americans died, and the Japanese soldiers fighting on Iwo Jima were virtually wiped out. The American dead were either temporarily buried on Iwo Jima or transferred to ships offshore. The American soldiers whose bodies were confirmed were eventually all repatriated to the United States.
Approximately 22,000 Japanese soldiers died in the horrific Battle of Iwo Jima, and of these, approximately 12,000 were not identified or recovered. Some of the Japanese soldiers were trapped in underground caves, and the American military engineers sealed the entrances with sandbag bombs, set fire to the caves with tanks and flamethrowers, and killed the occupants by burning them to death or depriving them of oxygen, so the caves became graveyards. After the Battle of Iwo Jima, the thousands of Japanese bodies were buried in a mass grave marked only on the map by the American military.
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