Iwo Jima

Welcome to Japanese waters – no internet service and all who enter here must have a “thermal scanning”. Every passenger was photographed then checked to make sure they weren’t running a fever. If your temperature was above normal you were quarantined to your cabin and a masked steward served you meals in your room until we were out of Japanese waters!  Now I have had times in my life when “taking to my bed” and having someone bring me three hot meals a day would have been a welcomed event, however I want to see Tokyo – it’s been about 38 years since my last visit. So,  I dutifully went down for my screening. You hold up a big placard with your name and room number on it, about chest high, as they snap a photo (think prison mug shot). Then you are sent over for your temperature reading. Even more amazing is, once you get this landing pass, they take your picture again on arrival and compare it with your passport photo then fingerprint you – thus continuing the feel of entering prisoner territory. And we thought the US had a security system! Anyway, we passed so it was on to Iwo Jima. Like most of you, probably my only real vision of Iwo Jima was the “Flag Raising” photo and statue where the marines are raising the flag on top of “Mount” Surbachi . I put “mount” in quotes as look at the picture above. Mount Surbachi is about a 500 or 600 foot bump on one end of the Island. Not what I had envisioned at all. The Island is fairly flat with the black volcanic “sands of Iwo Jima”. Even more surprising was all the wreckage of US troop and supply ships still visible rusting on the beaches and in the shallow waters surrounding the Island. (picture above). After seeing the Island, this battle is difficult to imagine. There were 20,000 Japanese troops dug in Mount Surbachi. The US landed 60,000 soldiers. I cannot imagine 80,000 people on this tiny island, much less 80,000 people on this little island shooting at each other! The Japanese soldiers riddled the mount with hundreds of tunnels thus were in a good position to just pick off US soldier as they attempted to land on the Island. Like Guam, there was a group of Japanese soldiers that didn’t come out of the tunnels until 1951. Today Iwo Jima is a green, treeless island with quiet, sandy (if somewhat cluttered with wreckage)  beaches. There is a Japanese Military Base there that houses 1,000 soldiers (guarding what I don’t know). No civilians live on the island. If it were not for the myriad of rusting ship carcasses rotting away on the perimeter of the island, Iwo Jima would look like many other small islands we have pasted. Our ship held a memorial service while we were there with the WWII veterans participating. Then we sailed on - the weather is getting cooler day by day as we head northwest to Tokyo. So, if I don’t develop a  fever, my fingerprints don’t pull up a criminal record and my picture doesn’t cause them to ban me from Tokyo, I will report on sushi county, Mt. Fuji and Hakone National Park tomorrow.