Pacific War Fifth and Thirteenth Air Forces to attack targets throughout the Philippines and the South China Sea. The Battle of Iwo Jima ("Operation Detachment") in February 1945 was one of the bloodiest battles fought by the Americans in the Pacific War. Iwo Jima is an 8 sq mile (21 km) island situated halfway between Tokyo and the Mariana Islands. Holland Smith, the commander of the invasion force, aimed to capture the island and prevent its use as an early-warning station against air raids on the Japanese Home Islands, and to use it as an emergency landing field. Lt. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi,
Internment of Japanese Americans with Civilian Exclusion Order No. 1, which gave the 227 Japanese American residents of Bainbridge Island, Washington six days to prepare for their "evacuation" directly to Manzanar. Colorado governor Ralph Lawrence Carr was the only elected official to publicly denounce the internment of American citizens (an act that cost his reelection, but gained him the gratitude of the Japanese American community, such that a statue of him was erected in the Denver Japantown's Sakura Square). A total of 108 exclusion orders issued by the Western Defense Command over the next five months completed the removal of Japanese Americans from the