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Prologue For as long as I can remember, I have associated the battle of Iwo Jima with my uncle Jim Craig, who served in the United States Marine Corps. It was common knowledge in our extended family that he never spoke about his experience on Iwo Jima; it apparently was an untouchable topic. I often wondered what that experience had been, but since he never seemed to talk about it, I assumed that the subject was, as it was for many veterans, too painful to discuss. So I kept my curiosity to myself. In February 1995, on the ftieth anniversary of the invasion of Iwo Jima, I wrote a letter to Jim thanking him for serving his country and for the sacri- ce he made on her behalf. I also sent him a little framed commemorative U.S. postage stamp of Joe Rosenthal’s picture of the raising of the ag over Mount Suribachi. I was pleased to get a reply from Jim a few weeks later. In it he described what it was like for him on Iwo Jima. He wrote that he survived because he ran fast, zigzagged a lot, and kept low. He added that he was proud to have served in the Marines. My early interest in World War II was more about “the big picture” battles and the pitting of one army against another. In 2000 I read two books that changed my perspective. The Greatest Generation by Tom Brokaw focuses on the common citizen soldier, his experience in the war, and how it affected him. It put a human touch to the war. For the rst time I began to think about the life of the individual American soldier, the unselsh sacrices he made, and his devotion to duty and service to his country. After I read Flags of Our Fathers, by James Bradley, son of John Bradley, the last surviving Iwo Jima ag raiser, I decided that I wanted to write an account based on Jim’s experiences. I invited Uncle Jim and Aunt Pat to dinner in Indianapolis in July 2000 to discuss my idea with them. I arrived at the restaurant feeling nervous; I had not revealed to them what it was that I wanted to discuss. I wanted to present my idea to Jim and give him a few weeks to think about it. To my delight he immediately consented and began telling me stories about Iwo 2 | The Last Lieutenant Jima. It seemed I had released in him a long pent-up desire to tell someone about his wartime experience. I asked him why he had been so reluctant to talk about Iwo Jima all these years. His answer surprised me, and it was embarrassingly simple. No one had ever asked him. No one had ever shown any interest in his Marine Corps experience and his involvement with the battle of Iwo Jima. He was too self-effacing to bring the subject up. He likely would have taken it to the grave and we would have been deprived of a stirring story that needed, I think, to be told. Not only is it a story about a young man going off to war on the other side of the world to ght a tenacious and resourceful enemy, but it is a story of devotion to duty, loyalty, and an uncompromising conviction. Jim and I went to the Marine Corps base at Quantico, Virginia, where we had access to the vast resources of the archives department of the Marine Corps University. I was able to obtain copies of declassied after-action reports written in 1945. These described the daily movement of Marine units down to the company level and occasionally to the platoon level. These proved to be an invaluable source of information not found in the many commercially available books about Iwo Jima and the war in the Pacic. I also obtained copies of declassied maps of the island, which included the locations of the three airelds, villages, prominent natural features, and the suspected locations of Japanese bunkers and gun emplacements. I had access to hundreds of photographs taken by ofcial combat photographers, including Joe Rosenthal. I scanned several of these and have included them as a supplement to the narrative because I want the reader to visualize what it was like on Iwo Jima during the battle. Many books about Iwo Jima describe the conduct of the entire battle involving the...

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