That was a striking picture on Page 6 of Sunday's paper. It showed a scene surely unimaginable some 70 years ago on the black-sand beaches of Iwo Jima as American forces somehow slugged their way on to the atoll to begin one of the bloodier battles of the Second World War, though bloodier ones were yet to come, like Okinawa.
But last weekend, gray-haired American veterans stood with heads bowed in respect to the Japanese fallen who had put up such a fearful resistance, fighting until death if not beyond into the next room of the dream. Some 20,000 Japanese troops held off about 70,000 Americans for more than a month before only 216 surrendered and the rest were killed--or took their own lives.
This is the way it should be when hostilities finally, blessedly end, and the smoke and hatred of battle clears. As a Union general named Grant proposed after our greatest and most tragic war was finally over, "Let us have peace."
Editorial on 03/25/2015