Reflections

A little over a week has passed since I experienced Iwo Jima. When you think that you are able to experience something only once in your life and that moment comes, it seems as if you are in a science fiction movie in which time speeds by you at a blur. It almost seems like I were never there. Now that my opportunity has come and gone, people ask me what it was like.

What was it like? How can you put in words what it is like to stand on one of the most isolated but sanctified places in the world? Somewhere around 100,000 young and mature men knew they would likely not return to their home, yet they embraced their duty without question. Books tell us the Japanese were defending their homeland and the Americans needed an airbase. Sitting on that blockhouse overlooking Green Beach 1, you didn't need a book to know why they were there. Each of those men were there for an intrinsic code - a sense of binding responsibility. All of them - defenders and invaders - faced impossible odds.

What was it like to stand on Suribachi? What was it like to walk on Green Beach? What was it like to look down inside a cave; stand inside a blockhouse; or stare up at Suribachi from the beach?

No mortal can put to words the feeling of treading on the hallowed ground that is Iwo Jima. That feeling deserves more than what words can give.