<P> Though ultimately victorious, the American victory at Iwo Jima had come at a terrible price . According to the official Navy Department Library website, "The 36 - day (Iwo Jima) assault resulted in more than 26,000 American casualties, including 6,800 dead ." By comparison, the much larger scale 82 - day Battle of Okinawa lasting from early April until mid-June 1945 (involving five U.S. Army and two Marine Corps divisions) resulted in of over 62,000 U.S. casualties, of whom over 12,000 were killed or missing . Iwo Jima was also the only U.S. Marine battle where the American casualties exceeded the Japanese, although Japanese combat deaths numbered three times as many as American deaths . Two US Marines were captured during the battle, neither of whom survived their captivity . USS Bismarck Sea was also lost, the last U.S. aircraft carrier sunk in World War II . Because all civilians had been evacuated, there were no civilian casualties at Iwo Jima, unlike at Saipan and Okinawa . </P> <P> In hindsight, given the number of casualties, the necessity and long - term significance of the island's capture to the outcome of the war became a contentious issue and remains disputed . The Marines, who suffered the actual casualties, were not consulted in the planning of the operation . As early as April 1945, retired Chief of Naval Operations William V. Pratt stated in Newsweek magazine that considering the "expenditure of manpower to acquire a small, God - forsaken island, useless to the Army as a staging base and useless to the Navy as a fleet base...(one) wonders if the same sort of airbase could not have been reached by acquiring other strategic localities at lower cost ." </P> <P> The lessons learned on Iwo Jima served as guidelines for the following Battle of Okinawa and the planned invasion of the Japanese homeland . For example, "because of the casualties taken at Iwo Jima on the first day, it was decided to make the preparatory bombardment the heaviest yet delivered on to a Pacific island". Also, in the planning for a potential attack on the Japanese home islands, it was taken into account that around a third of the troops committed to Iwo Jima and again at Okinawa had been killed or wounded . </P> <P> The justification for Iwo Jima's strategic importance to the United States' war effort has been that it provided a landing and refueling site for long - range fighter escorts . These escorts proved both impractical and unnecessary, and only ten such missions were ever flown from Iwo Jima . </P>

As a result of the battles of iwo jima and okinawa the united states
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