Casualties and personnel
The Battle of Iwo Jima was lopsided from the beginning, the American forces that attacked the island that day totaled about 70,000 men while the Japanese defense only had a little over 22,000 soldiers defending Iwo Jima. It was a long and grueling battle lasting for over a month, the Americans were able to win by simply outnumbering the Japanese 3 to 1. The United states army had a total of about 26,000 casualties in the battle with almost 7,000 dead and a little more than 19,000 wounded. The Japanese however had devastating loses with all 22,060 soldiers being casualties they had over 21,500 dead and another 216 were captured and taken prisoner. The main cause for so many Japanese casualties was the new weapon, the flamethrower which would shoot out 15 to 20 foot flames and was used to torch the island which killed many Japanese soldiers and also took away any cover that they had. The main advantage that the Japanese had in killing so many Americans was the fact that it was their island, they knew the territory best and they had time to set up a good defensive strategy to beat the allies, in the end the U.S. Suffered more casualties than the Japanese but was lucky that they had over 3 times the amount of soldiers as the Japanese did.
There are many memorials for WW2 all around America, this one in Arlington is a special statue of the United States soldiers raising our flag after capturing Iwo Jima. That battle alone produced 27 Medals of honor which there were only 82 given in all of World War 2. This 36 day long battle produced many casualties but also produced a lot of heroes and brave men.