I recently finished the best seller Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley. This book "which is a chronicle of perhaps the most famous moment in American military history," recounts the story of the six men who were photographed raising the American flag on Mount Surabachi on the island of Iwo Jima in February 1945.

Twenty-seven Medals of Honor, the most for any battle, were awarded during that bloody campaign, the invasion of Iwo Jima. On Sept. 18, I was saddened to read the obituary of Douglas Jacobsen who was one of the 27 Marines who were awarded the Medal of Honor. I recalled that Doug and I sat together in a class room while attending school at the junior high school in Port during the period 1939-41.

Doug liked to draw pictures of huge underground caves inhabited by soldiers marching, sleeping, and shooting out of openings in the roof. The Japanese had huge underground caverns on Iwo where 20,000 soldiers were quartered. Only 700 survived the battle.

How ironic that Doug was awarded the Medal of Honor for charging Japanese pill boxes and for killing more than 75 of the enemy single-handed.

Stephen A. Bomer