Greetings again folks!

From the other thread, Wheels mentioned Iwo Jima, and it reminded me that I have some pics of that fabled place.

We routinely fly by the island on one of the three airways between Tokyo and Saipan/Guam. Of the three routes, the one I was on that day gets you the closest to Iwo Jima (it's now called "Iwoto" on our charts). Of the hundreds of times I've flown by, I've only seen it this clearly about 1/2 a dozen times. I learned years ago to always carry my trusty little camera for just such occasions.

Here are the four pictures I took back in July of 2010. We are headed northbound in the late afternoon on the 29th (my B-day btw), and are at FL400 headed from Guam to Nagoya.

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and finally...



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On one of my first trips back to the Orient about five years ago (I had flown over there in the 80s as a Flight Engineer on the B-747), I was with an F/O that was not "into" history at all. We were passing Iwo and I was "rubbernecking" out the window trying to catch a glimpse of the spot that was arguably the epicenter of the planet in February, 1945...

She said..."What are you looking for?"

Me..."Iwo Jima."

Her..."Why?"

Me..."Because it's Iwo Jima for Chirst's sake."

Her..."So..."

Between that position and the TD (top of descent) into Nagoya, she got about an hour "history lesson" about Iwo Jima, and how it changed history.

lol....not sure she enjoyed that....but a captive audience is a captive audience....



later all,

BBall

Nice pictures BBall. You can really pick out Mount Suribachi in those photos.
The father of my best friend in High School was in the Marine Corps in 1945 and was in the assualt on Iwo Jima. He also served with the occupation force in Japan after WW II.

True or not this story always made me laugh. He said he was on Suribachi close to the first flag raising and when my friend asked why he didn't get up to help them so he would have been famous his reply was classic.
"They were still being shot at !" I always thought that was a most practical reason not to get up.


Wheels

Amazing to think how much blood was spilled over this small island.

Yes, unfortunately, that's the feeling you get when you walk over most battlefields, years later. Some useless looking stretch of desert, a deserted , ugly island, a town with a few hundred residents, that no one even goes to visit.
Yet, it was important enough at one time for parents to lose their sons, wives to lose their husbands and children to lose their fathers.