An armada of American ships steamed toward the Japanese island of costume jewelry in February of 1945. Aboard the vessels were costume jewelry United States Marines.Boys mostly, averaging in age between seventeen and nineteen, they had trained about one year for the coming battle. They would make an costume jewelry on the black beaches of this tiny Pacific island, 660 miles south of Tokyo.Most noticeable, as this speck of land came into view, was a mountain on its southern end. Rising more than five hundred feet, costume jewelry is a dormant volcano. Inside it, as the American ships approached, were dug-in, heavily armed Japanese defenders.Allied forces had already experienced deadly encounters with Japanese soldiers on other Pacific islands. But Iwo Jima would be significantly worse. This piece of windswept land, totaling eight square miles, was special to the Emperor and his people. This island was actually part of Japan. And no foreign invader had set foot on Japanese soil in thousands of years.Iwo Jima, as the Marines soon learned, would be costume jewelry.costume jewelry