Thursday, March 20th Today we awoke to be able to see land, not that impressive unless you have previously sailed for three days and not seen any land. And this was not just any land but Iwo Jima! Yes we got to see this small, but incredible island, only 5 miles long and 2 and one half miles wide. Statistics from that battle show there were: 800 ships, 74 days of bombing, 36 days of hand-to-hand combat, 11 miles of fortified tunnels, 10,000 soldiers per square mile, 12,600 pints of plasma, 27 Medals of Honor, over 25,000 Americans wounded, over 20,000 Japanese died,and over 6,000 Americans died. The ship was able to get fairly close, about where the ships putting shells on it were positioned during then invasion 63 years ago. We could still see the
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