Veterans, their family members, and distinguished guests from the U.S. and Japan will gather on Iwo To March 23, 2019 to pay tribute to one another and those lost during the battle of Iwo Jima.
The Reunion of Honor ceremony is a testament to the strength of our alliance which has developed over 74 years. Marines and Sailors from the 3rd Marine Logistics Group, III Marine Expeditionary Force, in Okinawa, will stand side by side with officials from the Government of Japan as a symbol of unity and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific.
Photo, video package, and video B-Roll imagery from all of these events will be released by III Marine Expeditionary Force Communication Strategy and Operations and made available for media use. This imagery can be found on the Reunion of Honor feature page at www.dvidshub.net/feature/ROH.
For additional queries, please contact the III MEF Communication Strategy and Operations Office at IIIMEFMEDIA@usmc.mil after March 23, 2019.
2 comments
I would love to be able to visit Iwo Jima. My dad was with Foxtrot 2/27 5th Div. Landed at Red Beach and had the responsibility to secure Airfield #1. Dad never wanted to go back. He was thankful thought to my brother-in-law a now retired USMC Colonel. He was in charge of the ceremony there for a couple of years and managed to get pictures for my dad and sand along with a few rocks from Suribachi. I understand now why dad never wanted to return. I served with Mike 3/1 CUPP all of 1970 in RVN. I think for the guys that go back it may be a great and “healing” experience. As for me I can’t. Great article and nice that there is cooperation. As always Semper Fi.
My wife and I made the trip for the “73rd Reunion” with a small tour company called Valor Tours. I will always be glad that we elected the small group because the other tours had so many people that it was very impersonal. The Iwo Jima tour was the center piece of a larger Pacific War tour that included battlegrounds of Saipan, Tinain, Guam, and Peleliu (by far the most interesting). Anyone with Iwo on their bucket list might want to think about doing it pretty soon. Indications are that the Japanese are anxious to put an end to the tours, maybe as soon as the last Iwo Jima veterans are gone or incapable of making the trip. It was very obvious that they are re-militarizing the Island as a hedge against Chinese domination in the area. They were accommadating to the brass and helped the few Iwo vets. Other than that they catered mainly to Japanese visitors, although, if you were lucky you might catch a lift on one of the few buses they had available. The buses were probably ordinarily for the Japanese construction workers who were working on facilities. We landed at the airfield at around 10am and had to be back by 3pm – a very short time for what we wanted to see. We hiked over 10 miles from the airfield to Mt. Suribachi’s peak and back to the field, stopping long enough to walk the invasion beach and collect some sand. While it was very satisfying, as an old Marine and history buff, to be able to walk that haloed ground it would have been too expensive to just go to Iwo and back. The other islands made it well worth the trip for me. Our small group consisted of only 8 people plus our excellent and extremely knowledgeable guide (I saw one guide from a large group studying for what they were going to visit the next day). We traveled in a small van and were able to get to places the larger groups, in their tour buses, had to avoid. Our guide also had personal relationships with many of the islanders because he had been going to all 5 islands since the 1980’s. He had worked with U.S govt agencies to make documentaries of all the battles. If anyone has any questions I could help with feel free to contact me at bootcampstories2@gmail.com. Samper Fi