The Battle of Iwo Jima was one of the most iconic and bloody battles of the Pacific War. The U.S. Marines invaded the volcanic island to capture its airfields, which were needed as emergency landing strips for B-29 bombers. The Japanese defenders, led by General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, abandoned traditional beach defense and instead fought from an elaborate network of caves, tunnels, and pillboxes. The battle is immortalized by Joe Rosenthal's photograph of five Marines and a Navy corpsman raising the American flag atop Mount Suribachi. Of the roughly 21,000 Japanese soldiers, only 216 were taken prisoner; the rest died in the fighting. The high casualty rate on Iwo Jima influenced American thinking regarding the potential cost of an invasion of the Japanese mainland.