"The casualty rate was enormous. It was ghastly. Iwo [Jima] was a volcanic island with very little concealment ... Few trees. No grass. It was almost like a piece of the moon that had dropped down to earth. I don't think there's been any place with more dismemberment, more bodies cut to pieces."

— Ted Allenby

"We buried General Ushijima and his men inside a cave. This was the worst part of the war, which I didn't like about Okinawa. They were hiding in caves all the time, women, children, soldiers. We'd get up on the cliff and lower down barrels of gasoline and then shoot at it. It would explode and just bury them to death."

— John Garcia

"In the Pacific, there were none of the European diversions. What you tended to see were miserable piles of dead Japanese and dead Americans. I was not a virulent hater of the Japanese. I didn't collect ears, as I knew some others did. We had been fed tales of these yellow thugs, subhumans, with teeth that resembled fangs. If a hundred thousand Japs were killed, so much the better. Two hundred thousand, even better. I wasn't innocent, either. You couldn't escape it. When I heard about Hiroshima, I felt great: We won't have to invade Japan."

— Robert Lekachman