Marines at Camp Pendleton Honor Those Lost on Iwo Jima

The clouds broke and showers stopped seemingly on cue Saturday for Marines at Camp Pendleton to memoralize those who lost their lives during the historic Battle of Iwo Jima  nearly 66 years ago. 

Out of respect for the fallen, in typical Marine grandeur, the ceremony featured the playing of taps and a 21-gun salute. The bleachers where filled with the families of those who lost loved ones during the conflict, as well as veterans and  junior Marines. About 300 people attended the event.

“As the terrorists do today, the kamikazes tested our metal, but we were not to be deterred,” said Bob Mueller, vice chairman of the Iwo Jima Memorial Committee. U.S. forces lost nearly 7,000 men in the 1945 battle with Japan.

The Camp Pendleton ceremony is traditionally held at sunset, but this year's weather put the timing in jeopardy.  The rain returned shortly after the public portion of the event concluded—just as the veterans and their families  moved inside for a private ceremony.

Eighty-five-year-old Robert L. Bergen, a former Navy corpsman and Iwo Jima veteran, says the heat of the battle is still on his mind

“I watched the entire invasion unfold,” Bergen was quoted on the Marine website.  “I don’t think a day has gone by that I haven’t thought of that place.”

The U.S. invasion, charged with the mission of capturing the three airfields on Iwo Jima, resulted in some of the fiercest fighting in the Pacific Campaign of World War II. The battle was immortalized by Joe Rosenthal's photograph of the raising of the U.S. flag atop Mount Suribachi.

“No other island received as much preliminary pounding as did Iwo Jima,” Navy Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet during World War II, was quoted on the Marines' website.  “Among the Americans who served on Iwo Island, uncommon valor was a common virtue.”