 A time is set to be the great healer, and time of course has allowed physical wounds to heal. But healing has left deep scars for many of the survivors. Everybody thought it was a cakewalk. They let the first wave come in and go like about 50 yards up on the beach. Second wave come in. The third wave, they opened up, they got them in a cross slide. They could shoot, they had more depth, and that's when the slaughter started. It was a slaughter. They had us all spotted like sitting ducks down in the flat area. And this is one of the smart things that Lieutenant General Kurogayashi did was he didn't try to fight us at the waterline because he knew that hadn't worked in other places. So he let us get up to a killing zone where every square meter of the area was targeted by heavy weapons or machine guns or mortars or whatever. So he got 2,000 casualties on the first day. The first 48 hours at Iwo Jima Land, over 800 messages were sent through Navajo Network. Every second, every minute, there was a Navajo code going through the air from the frontline beach command post out to the command ship where the generals and the admirals if it wasn't for Navajo Marine co-talkers, Marines would never have taken the island of Iwo Jima. I'm quite often asked, what was your most effective weapon on Iwo Jima? Flamethrower, flametanks, mortars, machine guns, individual rifle? My answer is none of the above. My most effective weapon was the individual Marine, brave that he was, willing to take risks, knew what he was up against, and charged the head anyway. And when you've got that kind of performance out of your Marines, you're gonna win.