The Battle of Iwo Jima, a major event in the Pacific Theater of World War II-and one of the bloodiest in United States history-began on February 19, 1945. But what happened two days earlier has largely been a footnote, until now . . .
Mitch Weiss is a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist for the Associated Press and the coauthor of numerous books, most recently The Heart of Hell: The Untold Story of Courage and Sacrifice in the Shadow of Iwo Jima. He lives in South Carolina.