On February 19, 1945, the United States and Japan fought fiercely around the Western Pacific Iwo Jima , which is the famous Iwo Jima Battle . The battle lasted for more than a month and did not end until March 26.
In this battle, 6,821 officers and soldiers were killed in the US, while almost all the Japanese defenders were wiped out, 1,083 were captured and 22,703 were killed. The Battle of Iwo Jima is also one of the most tragic island-taking battles on Pacific battlefield . The capture of Iwo Jima basically cleared the obstacles for the US military to attack Japan, laying the foundation for the US military to nuclear defence of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the future.
(This most famous photo in the history of the US military was taken from the Battle of Iwo Jima. It should be pointed out that this photo was a posed photo)
Iwo Jima is located in the Ogasawara Islands, about 1,000 kilometers south of Japan. It is now the southernmost territory of Japan and the only "overseas territory" in Japan.
Ogasawara Islands were first formed due to volcanic eruptions. Although this place is far away from the East Asian continent, Pacific islanders discovered the island as early as the prehistoric era.
Ogasawara Islands are composed of more than 30 small islands, among which the famous islands include Ogasawara Island, the father island, the mother island, the mother island and Iwo Jima, etc. The archipelago is 104 square kilometers. Although the area is not large, the coverage of the archipelago is extremely vast. The easternmost and westernmost islands are more than 2,500 kilometers apart.
(Geographical location of Ogasawara Islands)
1543, Spanish navigator Vera Ropos became the first person to discover the Ogasawara Islands with written records. Fifty years later, a Japanese named Sadashi Ogasawara successively discovered other islands of the Ogasawara Island, such as the father island and the mother island, and named the island "Ogasawara Island" after his surname.
1670, Nagaeemon and seven others from Kishu family encountered wind and waves while taking a boat and drifted to the islands of the Ogasawara Islands and Hachijo Island and other islands. After returning to Edo , they informed Edo shogunate of this experience.
1675, the Edo Shogunate officially incorporated the Ogasawara Archipelago into the Japanese territory and set up a monument to define the island boundaries. However, because most of the islands in the Ogasawara Archipelago are small in size and lack the necessary conditions for production, no one lives on this archipelago for a long time.
In modern times, as Western countries successively interfered in the Western Pacific, the United States and Britain both claimed that they first discovered the Ogasawara Islands and claimed sovereignty. In 1830, the Americans tried to take over the Ogasawara Islands, but they did not receive recognition from Britain, France and other countries.
From 1876, the United States and Britain recognized Japan's sovereignty over the Ogasawara Islands. Four years later, the Meiji government of Japan began to immigrate to the island, strengthening its control over the island.
During World War II, the Ogasawara Archipelago, as an important strategic anchor in the southern waters of Japan, was fiercely contested by the US and Japan armies. Finally, the archipelago was captured by the US military, and the US military forced to move away all the Japanese fishermen on the island.
By the way, in the battle for the Ogasawara Islands, the fighter plane flying by former US President Bush H.H. was shot down by the Japanese army here, and Bush H.H. himself almost died here.
In 1968, the United States returned the sovereignty of the Ogasawara Islands to Japan. Now the archipelago is under the jurisdiction of Tokyo and belongs to the Ogasawara branch office of Tokyo. Currently, the Ogasawara Islands are the southernmost and easternmost end of Japan's territory.
(Ogasawara Islands scenery, currently the fishing and tourism industry are the main economic sources of the Ogasawara Islands)
In fact, before World War II, the Northern Mariana Islands , which was further south than the Ogasawara Islands, was also a Japanese territory. The Northern Mariana Islands were stolen from Germany after World War I and occupied by the United States during World War II.
After the war, the Northern Mariana Islands was not returned to Japan, but was incorporated into the United States and became a non-merged established territory of the United States. Saipan, a tourist destination that is popular among Chinese people today, belongs to the Northern Mariana Islands. The bomber that had a nuclear draw in Japan in the late World War II also took off from the Tianning Island in the Mariana Islands.
