Remembering the Battle of Iwo Jima on 80th anniversary

FALL RIVER, Mass. (WLNE) — A statue stood tall and silent above the city of Fall River on the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima.

ABC6 stopped by Marine Corps League Detachment #1285 in Somerset on Wednesday to learn more about the monument, the battle, and the sacrifices made.

Chaplain John Carvalho served for 29 years across several military branches, including the Marine Corps and Air National Guard.

“They were doing things for people they didn’t even know,” he said. “We’re here today because of that.”

Carvalho explained that Iwo Jima, a small volcanic island about 750 miles off the coast of Japan, was viewed as a valuable landmark during World War II.

“When we were bombing Japan with the B-29s, when they were coming back, sometimes they wouldn’t make it,” he said. “They’d need somewhere to land.”

On Feb. 19, 1945, thousands of U.S. Marines and Navy men descended upon the island in an attempt to seize it from Japan.

“The island is about 11 square miles,” Carvalho said. “There was close to 7,000 men that were killed, they said it was about 1,000 men every mile.”

After five weeks of combat, the United States emerged victorious, resulting in one of the most iconic images in the nation’s history.

But the victory came at a great cost.

“Not only did the men sacrifice, but sometimes we forget that for every man that’s out there, there’s a family that’s back home,” Carvalho said. “If you read about it, you almost can’t comprehend the amount of sacrifice that was made.”

An iconic depiction of U.S. soldiers raising the American flag on Iwo Jima is now immortalized in Fall River.

Carvalho said the monument came about when a mold of the statue built for Washington D.C. was found in a basement in Newport.

“It’s the exact replica, fifth-scale model of the one down in Washington,” he said.

Carvalho’s detachment is in charge of taking care of the monument, rain or shine.

He said, when factoring in the sacrifices made in Iwo Jima, looking after the statue is a no brainer.

“When you see a monument, that’s people,” Carvalho said. “It’s not just stone and metal, those are people, those men that raised that flag, those were somebody’s sons.”