IWO JIMA driveby

Our captain arranges for us to sail very close to the historical site of Iwo Jima where the US Marines attacked the entrenched Japanese for a 2 month long battle before the US won on their way to liberate the Pacific. Mt Shurabashi, the high point of the island at 550 feet above sea level, was the site of the “raising of the flag by the marines” as memorialized in a statue in Arlington National Cemetery in Northern Virginia. Only official visits to this war monument are allowed by the Japanese because of all the dead warriors throughout the island, but we were allowed to get approximately 1 mile away to see and photograph the sites while getting history lessons in our theatre about the war for several days while enroute.Read more