On March 12, 1999 Stephen Ambrose wrote:

Iwo Jima was a ferocious battle that would better have been fought in hell.
All 22,000 Japanese defenders died, while of the 80,000 U.S. Marines who
went ashore, almost 26,000 were killed or wounded.  No other battle of
World War II produced such percentages of casualties.  The Marines won 84
Medals of Honor in the war; they won one-third of them--27--in the one
month battle to take this tiny island.

Iwo Jima produced the most famous photograph of the war, perhaps the most
famous ever taken.  James Bradley's father, a young Marine Corpsman, was
one of those helping raise the flag over Mt. Suribachi.  James was one of
his sons, born after the war.  He could never get his Dad to talk about
Iwo.  After his Dad died, James set off on a search, which led him to read
everything he could on the battle and to interview all the survivors plus
the families of those who had died.  Then he put together this book,
telling of his own search and of the battle.

He produced the best battle book I've ever read.  His stories from the time
the six men who raised the flag enlisted, their training, and the landing
and subsequent struggle, fill me with awe.  Such men they were--except that
they were not men, but teen-age boys.  Bradley tells how they won, and how
the Japanese defended from their caves and tunnels; how the flag was
raised; how Joe Rosenthal happened to be there to take the picture; how it
came to be a camera image known world wide; how his father reacted (he
always said, "the real heroes of Iwo Jima were killed there.")

In Citizen Soldiers I tried to describe how it was for the junior officers
and enlisted men in the European Theater of Operations.  Since then I've
received hundreds--thousands--of letters asking me when I'm going to do the
Pacific.  Now I can tell them that I don't need to--they should read this
book.

(Signed)
Stephen E. Ambrose