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War In Iraq: The press is salivating over the prospect of an Iraqi My Lai in the town of Haditha, with ABC trotting out Rep. John Murtha to brand U.S. troops war criminals just in time for Memorial Day. Appearing Sunday on ABC's "This Week," and with the matter still under investigation, Murtha, D-Pa., decided it would be sentence first and trial later when he proclaimed Marines responding to an attack in the town of Haditha on Nov. 19 guilty of murder of at least 15 Iraqi civilians. The incident began as a Marine convoy of Kilo Company, Third Battalion,...

The friendly crowd was fired up as the FOX Sports NFL crew arrive for their Sunday show in Afghanistan. VIDEO *** While in Afghanistan, Terry Bradshaw got to know some troops and find out what the main priorities are for the armed forces. VIDEO *** This is B-roll video footage of Fox NFL Sunday's pregame show participating in a combat airdrop of food, fuel and water to American service members on the ground in Afghanistan from a U.S. Air Force C-17. Tune in to FOX on Sunday, November, 8 to see the Fox team broadcasting from Afghanistan. Produced by...

OFFICIAL U.S.M.C. COMBAT PHOTOS OF CHINA, GUAM, OKINAWA & IWO JIMA Those that served in the Pacific will remember these 100 photos from the USMC's fight there. http://www.rhyner.com/photos/china.html My father passed away some time ago. He brought these home. He was in all 4 places. He was in the 1st. Division 1st. Regiment 3d Marine Amphibious Brigade pansgold Viet Nam Era vet

Sept 2007...4th Marine Division Association holds reunion Maj. Gen. James L. Williams, commanding general, 4th Marine Division, talks with 4th Marine Division Association President Clair Chaffin aboard the paddle wheeler “Belle of Louisville” during the association’s 60th reunion Sept. 8. (Official U. S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. G. S. Thomas) Source:http://mfr.usmc.mil/MFRNews/2007/2007.09/60th.asp_______________________________________ Dear Sgt. Grit, My husband and I attended the National Meeting of the Fourth Marine Division in Atlanta on August 25th and 26th. My father, Clair Chaffin was made the 60th president of the 4th Marine Division. He was a Navy Corpsman attached to the 4th Marine Division...

Florence County sheriff’s deputies have arrested two suspects, including a 16-year-old, they say were involved in a fatal shooting outside a Florence hotel room Monday morning. *snip* A native of Jackson, Mich., Chaffin landed at Iwo Jima on Feb. 19, 1945, according to a February 2008 report in The Gainesville (Fla.) Sun. He dropped out of high school in the 10th grade to join the Navy and “even the score” for the death of his two brothers, Elmer and Kenneth, in the war, according to the September newsletter of the Gator Detachment of the Marine Corps League Inc. in Gainesville,...

He enlisted in the Marines in 1942 and fought at Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal and Okinawa, earning a Bronze Star for bravery. While in uniform, he married Lorraine Paley, who survives him, as do their daughters, Mary Kaufman Carde of Los Angeles and Amy Kaufman Burk of Mill Valley, Calif.; their son, Frederick, of Manhattan; and seven grandchildren.

Military Milestones from a Kentucky Raider to 'a Bulldog of a Fighter' Mar. 15, 1781: British Army forces under the command of Lt. Gen. Charles Cornwallis march toward a pyrrhic victory over Continental Army and militia forces commanded by Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Greene at Guilford Courthouse (near present-day Greensboro), N.C. Once engaged, the two armies fight for less than two hours. Tactically, it ends in a victory for Cornwallis, who drives Greene’s forces from the field. But British losses are heavy. Cornwallis will purportedly say, “I never saw such fighting since God made me. The Americans fought like demons.” When...

ARLINGTON, Va. — Sixty-four years ago on Feb. 23, 1945, U.S. Marines stormed the sands of Iwo Jima and raised the American flag atop Mount Suribachi. In honor of the 64th anniversary of that historic event, dozens of spectators and Marines, including nine individuals who fought in the Battle of Iwo Jima, gathered at the Marine Corps War Memorial today for a flag-raising ceremony. One of the Iwo Jima veterans present at the event acted as a forward observer during the battle, calling for and guiding indirect artillery fire from the island. “The [flag-raising] brings back so many memories,” said...

US troops have raised the Stars and Stripes over Iwo Jima four days after landing on the Japanese-held volcanic island. The 28th Regiment of the 5th Marine Division took Mount Suribachi at 1030 local time. The extinct volcano offers a strategic vantage point for the ongoing battle for control of the island. Lying in the north-west Pacific Ocean 650 miles (1,045 kms) from Tokyo, Iwo Jima would serve as a useful base for long-range fighters to cover B-29 Superfortresses in a bombing campaign against the Japan's capital. Although the Stars and Stripes are flying over the island the battle is...

He survived the battle, three months of hiding and a prison camp. After 63 years, former Japanese sailor Tsuruji Akikusa has come back to Iwo Jima to deliver a message to his friend. Tsuruji Akikusa had always kept a journal. So at 18, when he returned from war to Japan in 1946, he wrote it all down. The young seaman apprentice wrote about joining the Imperial Navy at 15, sailing from Yokosuka to the Bonin Islands, then arriving on Iwo Jima in the summer of 1944. His tale, like the war itself, grew more harrowing. It expanded from his time...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- One of the Marines shown in a famous World War II photograph raising the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima was posthumously awarded a certificate of U.S. citizenship on Tuesday. Sgt. Michael Strank, who was born in Czechoslovakia and came to the United States when he was 3, derived U.S. citizenship when his father was naturalized in 1935. However, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services recently discovered that Strank never was given citizenship papers. At a ceremony Tuesday at the Marine Corps Memorial -- which depicts the flag-raising -- in Arlington, Virginia, a certificate of citizenship was presented to...

"A guy like him should shut his face" ----- Clint Eastwood responding to Spike Lee's criticism of Eastwood's Iwo Jima movie "Flags of Our Fathers". Lee noted the lack of African-Americans in Eastwood's movie. Eastwood said, "there was a small detachment of black troops on Iwo Jima as a part of a munitions company, but they didn't raise the flag".

It’s wasn’t the first Time and it won’t be the last Time. Showing an utter disregard for ethical journalism, the editors at Time twisted American patriotism into an ad for the green movement to promote “winning the war on global warming.” Green is the new red, white and blue we are told by editors who never liked the old red, white and blue. The magazine used the historic Iwo Jima flag raising photo as a global warming marketing gimmick for its April 28 issue. The flag the Marines were raising was replaced with a tree to equate the evils our...

Time magazine continued to defend its manipulation of the classic Iwo Jima flag-raising photo – calling it a “point of view.” Managing Editor Richard Stengel said the cover art was part of the publication’s global warming advocacy and a way of forcing readers to “pay attention.” Stengel defied the traditional notion that journalists should be unbiased. “I didn’t go to journalism school,” Stengel said. “But this notion that journalism is objective, or must be objective is something that has always bothered me – because the notion about objectivity is in some ways a fantasy. I don’t know that there is...

Despite outcry from veterans and supporters of the military over the cover of Time’s April 21 issue, a spokesman for the magazine insists editors did nothing wrong. The Business & Media Institute (BMI) posted a story on April 17 about Iwo Jima veterans outraged by Time’s decision to alter the iconic image of Marines raising an American flag at Iwo Jima and replace the flag with a tree. The altered image was used to illustrate a new war on global warming. “TIME has the utmost respect for our nation's veterans and we well understand the power of the iconic image...

The Daily Mail in the U.K. is reporting that WWII veterans are furious over next week’s cover of TIME and the manipulation of the famous photo of marines raising the United States flag during the battle at Iwo Jima after TIME replaced the flag with a tree for the article, “How to Win The War on Global Warming”. One Imo Jima veteran, 81-year-old Donald Mates, felt the Times’ cover was “an absolute disgrace” and that “Whoever did this is going to hell.” He went to say it was a “mortal sin”. Why would veterans be upset about TIME magazine essentially...

For only the second time in 85 years, Time magazine abandoned the traditional red border it uses on its cover. The occasion – to push more global warming alarmism. The cover of the April 21 issue of Time took the famous Iwo Jima photograph by Joe Rosenthal of the Marines raising the American flag and replaced the flag with a tree. The cover story by Bryan Walsh calls green “the new red, white and blue.” Donald Mates, an Iwo Jima veteran, told the Business & Media Institute April 17 that using that photograph for that cause was a “disgrace.” “It’s...

In our nation's history, there are few images more heroic, more sacred in a civil sense, than that of the Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima. Time has now twisted, and enlisted, that image for its "war against global warming." Time editor Rick Stengel, making his regular Thursday appearance on Morning Joe to tout the week's cover story, naturally thought it was a wonderful idea. He also explained why Time decided to editorialize in favor of a "massive" effort to combat global warming. View video here.

REDDING, California -- Raymond Jacobs, believed to be the last surviving member of the group of Marines photographed during the original U.S. flag-raising on Iwo Jima during World War II, has died at age 82. The iconic image of U.S. Marines raising the flag on Mount Suribachi in February 1945. Jacobs died January 29 of natural causes at a Redding hospital, his daughter, Nancy Jacobs, told The Assoc Press. Jacobs had spent his later years working to prove that he was the radio operator photographed looking up at an American flag as it was being raised by other Marines on...

REDDING, Calif. - Raymond Jacobs, believed to be the last surviving member of the group of Marines photographed during the original U.S. flag-raising on Iwo Jima during World War II, has died at age 82. Jacobs died Jan. 29 of natural causes at a Redding hospital, his daughter, Nancy Jacobs, told The Associated Press. Jacobs had spent his later years working to prove that he was the radio operator photographed looking up at an American flag as it was being raised by other Marines on Mount Suribachi on Feb. 23, 1945. Newspaper accounts from the time show he was on...

Let us celebrate,briefly, the life of a WWII US Navy veteran-who was transferred Thursday to the Good Ship Eternal Rest.

Michael Yon emails: "I photographed men and women, both Christians and Muslims, placing a cross atop the St. John's Church in Baghdad. They had taken the cross from storage and a man washed it before carrying it up to the dome. A Muslim man had invited the American soldiers from 'Chosen' Company 2-12 Cavalry to the church, where I videotaped as Muslims and Christians worked and rejoiced at the reopening of St John's, an occasion all viewed as a sign of hope. The Iraqis asked me to convey a message of thanks to the American people. 'Thank you, thank...

Former President Harry Truman has received much opprobrium from left-wing circles in the U.S. and elsewhere for his decision to substitute two atomic bombs in place of a D-Day type invasion of Japan in 1945. It was interesting to me to observe during Ken Burn’s current documentary, “War”, that Burns reported that credible estimates of the human cost of such an invasion were in the neighborhood of 500,000 dead Americans and 6,000,000 dead Japanese.

At Fort Snelling Friday, the nation bid farewell to a true World War II hero. Marine Chuck Lindberg was laid to rest at Fort Snelling National Cemetery. The thundering jet fighters and some vintage WWII planes flew overhead to pay tribute. And it was well deserved. Lindberg was the last survivor of the first flag-raising on Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi. But his moment was overshadowed by a second flag-raising. He spent a lifetime correcting the record. Still, on this Friday at Fort Snelling, there was no doubt about history's record. During the ceremony one of Lindberg's daughters, Diane Steiger said...

Edina, Minn. - Charles W. Lindberg, one of the U.S. Marines who raised the first American flag over Iwo Jima during World War II, died Sunday. He was 86. Lindberg spent decades explaining that it was his patrol, not the one captured in the famous Associated Press photograph by Joe Rosenthal, that raised the first flag as U.S. forces fought to take the Japanese island

RICHFIELD, Minn. - Charles W. Lindberg, one of the U.S. Marines who raised the first American flag over Iwo Jima during World War II, has died. He was 86.

RICHFIELD, Minn. (AP) The last survivor of the first American flag-raising over Iwo Jima during World War Two has died. Charles Lindberg of Richfield, Minnesota, was 86. He grew up in Grand Forks. Lindberg died yesterday at Fairview Southdale Hospital in Edina (ee-DYE'-nuh), according to the director of the funeral home that's handling arrangements. Lindberg spent decades explaining that it was his patrol, not the one captured in the famous photograph by Abe Rosenthal of The Associated Press, that raised the first flag over the island. In the late morning of February 23rd, 1945, Lindberg fired his flame-thrower into enemy...

Charles "Chuck" Lindberg, the last surviving flagraiser at Iwo Jima, passed away Sunday morning at Fairview Southdale Hospital. Lindberg helped raise the first American flag during the Battle of Iwo Jima. His accomplishment was later overshadowed when a replacement flag was raised a few hours later. He was honored in February 2006 at a military ceremony marking the anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima. He also recently attended a groundbreaking ceremony on Memorial Day at the site of a new veterans memorial in Richfield, Minn. Lindberg's service and legacy as the last living flagraiser was the subject of an...

Clint Eastwood's pair of films about the famous battle on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima have spurred former residents to campaign for the island's name to be officially changed. The site of the battle was a barren volcanic outpost that was home to only around 1,000 people before the war. Before 1944 it was always known as Iwo To. It only became known as Iwo Jima because Japanese officers who arrived to fortify the island after its residents were evacuated got the name wrong. That's perhaps not quite so surprising when you consider that Iwo To and Iwo Jima...

TOKYO (AP) - A U.S. search team on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima is zeroing in on a cave where a Marine combat photographer who filmed the iconic flag-raising 62 years ago is believed to have been killed in battle nine days later, officials told The Associated Press Friday. The seven-member search team is looking for the remains of Sgt. William H. Genaust, who was killed in action after filming the flag-raising atop Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi. The team is also searching for other U.S. troops killed in the battle - one of the fiercest and most symbolic of...

There will be a reenlistment ceremony this evening at 6pm at the Iwo Jima Memorial Arlington? Washington DC? I heard this from a person who called in to a radio talk show this morning. Any Freepers in the area who can attend should to show that average Americans appreciate the efforts of those in uniform. Rmember those who served this Memorial Day Sincerely, Mike Tremoglie

Mr. Nick Naccarado speaks brielfy about his time spent on the island of Iwo Jima during WWII.

"What about the war?" was a question Raymond Beadle was often asked by his children. The answer was always the same, "War is hell." For 40 years, Beadle refused to comment otherwise. Then, he said, someone convinced him to talk about it, and he began to share details of his World War II service. From his home in Morgan City, La., Beadle, 81, recounted in a telephone interview what he experienced 62 years ago when American and Japanese forces clashed on Iwo Jima. The Battle of Iwo Jima ("Sulfur Island" in English) was expected to be a quick victory, but,...

Clint Eastwood's, "Letters From Iwo Jima," is a brilliantly made film that is up for Best Picture at the Academy Awards this Sunday. It has already won the Golden Globe for Best Picture. Nonetheless, it is a terribly misleading film.

"On the morning of February 23, he saw the first U.S. flag go up on Suribachi's peak, followed shortly thereafter by the second, larger flag, the raising of which was immortalized at 1/400th second in Rosenthal's famous photograph. Akikusa's descriptions up to this point correspond completely to American accounts of the event. But what followed afterward appears to contradict the official U.S. Naval version of the battle. The following morning, as Akikusa relates in his book, "It was not the Stars & Stripes, but the Nissho-ki (Japanese Sun flag) that was waving. Even though the peak was the target of...

IF GUTS were traded on Wall Street, these guys would be richer than Donald Trump. Angelo Ciotta, 81, of East Meadow, L.I., who joined the Marines when he was 17, tells you just how close he got to the enemy 62 years ago on Iwo Jima. "I mean, sometimes you could touch with your fingers the pillboxes where the Japanese were holed up inside," he was saying. Angelo, head of Iwo Jima Survivors of New York, spoke to me yesterday at the American Air Power Museum at Republic Airport, where veterans, their wives and kids observed Presidents Day. To say...

35 Days Of Hell On Earth. Click on link to see footage

Over and above his cinematic achievements however, he was being recognised for the anti-war stance typified (Advertisement) in his latest film, "Letters from Iwo Jima", said the president. "From this side of the Atlantic, dear Clint Eastwood, you embody the best of Hollywood," Chirac added. Told almost entirely in Japanese, "Letters from Iwo Jima" depicts the pivotal World War II battle through the eyes of Japanese soldiers fighting American GIs. It is considered a leading contender for this year's best director and best film Oscars. Chirac saluted the film as "a beautiful lesson in humanism". It was not about being...

For those Forum Members who have expressed an opinion on the movie Letters from Iwo Jima, please allow me to share how I re-acted to this film. For lack of a better way to begin, let me say, What “Nice Guys” the Japanese Soldiers Were. It was obvious to me that the Japanese soldiers who fought the Americans on Iwo Jima were not the same soldiers who fought the Americans on Bataan, or were they? As a survivor of the Bataan Death March, I can tell you for certainty, the Japanese depicted in “Letters From Iwo Jima” were in no...

Dirty Harry has finally succumbed to the endemic moral pathology of Hollywood. The best evidence of this is the New York Times’ A.O. Scott’s rating of “almost perfect” for Clint Eastwood’s new film “Letters from Iwo Jima.” Following suit, most of the major media reviews acknowledged it as a masterpiece and contender for many Academy Awards...

Michael Medved, on his radio show just now, gave Clint Eastwood's "Letters From Iwo Jima" 4 stars - the highest rating.

At the link

TOKYO - Hiromasa Murakami went to see Clint Eastwood's "Letters from Iwo Jima" to find out if an American could tell the Japanese side of a battle that became a symbol of U.S. patriotism, but for Japan was a bitter memory of defeat. After viewing the film on Saturday when it opened it Tokyo, Murakami thinks Eastwood got it right. "It was marvelous," the 50-year-old carpenter said as he emerged from the theater. "How should I express it? It was the same for both sides, for them and us. Everyone was a victim." [Snip] For many Japanese, the battle that...

I SAW THE PROMO ON TV for the new movie about the battle over Iwo Jima, way back in World War II. Clint Eastwood directed the film, and he was quoted as saying that the film depicts some of the sacrifices our fighting men made for their country during that battle. For those of you who aren't students of that war, Iwo Jima is pretty much the hands-down winner when the old men gather to argue over which was the toughest battle in that conflict. When planning that invasion, the military brass figured they could capture the island in just...

A new movie about the bloody but heroic World War II battle of Iwo Jima, brought back 61-year-old memories for Manuel Rodríguez. Seeing ads for Clint Eastwood's "Flags of Our Fathers" brought into focus the sight of thousands of Marines disgorging from the flat-bellied landing craft, some falling the moment they stepped out on the dark sand. In an interview at his Sahuarita home Friday, Rodríguez, 81, shared some memories. Others he left dormant. The one memory that bolsters his spirit, invigorates his patriotic pride, is the movie's centerpiece: the Stars and Stripes being raised on Mount Suribachi, an enduring...

As a memorial to the astonishing war slaughter of the modern age, I propose the island of Iwo Jima—for its ugliness, its uselessness, and its remoteness from all things of concern to the postmodern era. Iwo Jima can be visited only with military permission and, usually, only by military transport. A comfortless C-130 Hercules propeller craft flies from Okinawa over more than 700 miles of blank Pacific, moving as slowly as the planes of Iwo's battle days. The island is five miles long, running northeast from a neck of sand at the base of the Mount Suribachi volcanic cone and...

On February 19 1945 Thomas McPhatter found himself on a landing craft heading toward the beach on Iwo Jima... Sadly, Sgt McPhatter's experience is not mirrored in Flags of Our Fathers, Clint Eastwood's big-budget, Oscar-tipped film of the battle for the Japanese island that opened on Friday in the US. While the film's battle scenes show scores of young soldiers in combat, none of them are African-American. Yet almost 900 African-American troops took part in the battle of Iwo Jima, including Sgt McPhatter...

This is not intended as a full-scale review, just some impressions from seeing the movie tonight. First, as you likely know, it deals with the three men (a Navy corpsman and two Marines) of the six flag raisers who survived Iwo Jima. Clint Eastwood directed this pic, which traces the first flag-raising---which, of course, was thought to be "the" flag-raising---then the second, captured for all time in Joe Rosenthal's photo. The main plot line is that the nation was broke, and would have to sue for peace with the Japanese (right) if we didn't generate more money, quickly, through war...

Flags of Our Fathers Print the Legend Clint Eastwood strips away the myths surrounding the Greatest Generation A single photograph, we're told early on in Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers, can win or lose a war. But sometimes that photo shows us only part of the story, whether it's the part we don't want to see -- slaughtered villagers at My Lai, tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib -- or the part we do, with heroes front and center and the carnage out of view. In Flags, the image under scrutiny is one of the most iconic in American photojournalism:...

Legendary actor and director Clint Eastwood was greeted by a packed room of journalists, applauding him as he entered the ball room at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles to talk about his latest film, Flags of our Fathers. Wearing a pressed powered blue suit, Eastwood stood at the front of the room and allowed reporters to take pictures. After a few photos he laughed and said, "Okay, that's enough of that. Well, thank you for coming here at this ridiculous hour. At least it was for me." And after surveying all the mics and recorders, "I keep feeling...