Hillary Clinton Talks About Her Time at Iwo Jima

Hillary Clinton describes the moment when she landed at Iwo Jima’s only air strip with a platoon of Marines and made a dash to the summit of Mt. Obama, the 550-foot volcanic cone
at the island of Iwo Jima’s southern tip.

“I remember landing under sniper fire,” Clinton recounted. “There was
supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but
instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get
to our base at the bottom of Mt. Obama.”

She then goes on to recall: “Japanese gunners zeroed in on every inch of the landing strip. Blockhouses
and pillboxes flanked the landing areas. Within seconds, more heavy weapons stood
ready to blast us and the attacking Marines. Machine guns criss-crossed the jungle
with deadly interlocking fire. Rockets, anti-tank guns were
also trained on us. It was hell out there!”

Hillary Clinton then goes on to describe the hard battle to reach the summit of Mt. Obama, “It took us four days of solid fighting, there were bodies everywhere and the mountain itself was slippery with the blood and guts of good men who died fighting. On the fourth day only a few of us survived and we were exhausted. This is when we raised the flag and a photographer took the famous flag picture.”

Next week Hillary Clinton will speak of her experiences during the Tit Offensive in Vietnam.