Discussion: Iwo Jima 1944

I was looking for a map of the Aleutian Islands the other day, and I was browsing my first choice for general maps of the world, the Perry-Castañeda Library
Map Collection at *The* University of Texas at Austin.

Anyway, I found this topo map, which is a poster released by NIMA in 2003 of a 1944 World War II map of Iwo Jima (1.8 MB).

Since it's a tropical island, I assume it has bugs and spiders and nasty vegetation, and since it's volcanic, I'm sure everything is rocky and sharp, but...The map looks pretty neat. It's 1:10,000, 20-foot (6m) contours. The numbered, large grids are 1000 yards (914m), and the lettered, small grids are 200 yards (183m).

Not to be flippant, with Memorial Day just over and considering all the men who died there, but it looks like pretty interesting terrain. Mostly not too steep, and even a bit intricate. And surprisingly small.

Photo of the mountain

Just under 20 sq km, i.e. comparable to a somewhat large orienteering map.

fantastic. drawn/printed on high wet strength paper too. looking at the satellit photo it appears a little out of date :(

good find!

Fascinating, particularly with military notes on it and the legend is quite a bit different than your typical O map. Never come across an anti-tank trench, but might be an interesting control location.

Here are some pictures that I tracked down after being sucked into this topic and looking at different things this morning.
http://www.iwojima.com/iwojimatoday.ppt#256,1,Slid... 1

I hear the only way you can get on the island these days is to sign up with a military historical tour company. bummer!

As an offhand guess, I'd suspect that Iwo Jima might be on the list of places that I have no interest in visiting, especially for orienteering purposes: places that have leftover land mines.

No, that would be adventure racing.