Completely exposed to enemy fire, a Marine dashes across a field on Okinawa. May 1945.

Source: National Archives (127-N-120562)

Hospital corpsmen identify and fingerprint fallen Marines on Okinawa. 1945

Source: National Archives (127-N-140833)

Ernest Taylor Pyle, best known as "Ernie," covered the Second World War for the Scripps Howard newspaper chain. Pyle was born to farmers in Dana, Indiana on August 3, 1900. He joined the US Navy in 1918 hoping to see action in World War One, but the . . .

Ernie Pyle at Anzio, Italy. March 18, 1944

Source: National Archives (111-SC-191703)

Ernie Pyle at his typewriter, Anzio, Italy, March 18, 1944.

Source: National Archives (111-SC-191705)

A favorite of the GIs, journalist Ernie Pyle offers a cigarette to an infantryman. He later would be killed by a sniper's bullet.

Source: National Archives (127-N-116840)

Portrait of P.f.c. E.B.. Sledge, K Co. 5 Marine Regiment, in Marine dress blues. 1946. Sledge served at Peleliu and Okinawa.

Source: The Sledge Family

Eugene B. Sledge was born in Mobile November 4, 1923, the grandson of Confederate officers. Bookish and frail as a child, he had been taught to hunt and fish by his physician father and spent much of his free time roaming the woods on the outskirts of town with his . . .

E.B. Sledge of Mobile after the fighting ended in Okinawa.

Source: The Sledge Family

Eugene Sledge, left, and his brother, Lt. E.S. Sledge, in downtown Mobile on Christmas eve. 1942. Sledge would follow friend Sidney Phillips into the Marines and survive Peleliu and Okinawa.

Source: The Sledge Family

Eugene Sledge's military issue Bible. While in the Pacific, he kept a journal on tiny sheets of paper that he stored in the Bible.

Source: The Sledge Family

Selections from Eugene Sledge's "With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa." The acclaimed first-person account was named one of the top five books in epic 20th-century battles.

Source: Random House

Eugene Sledge in camp at Okinawa.

Source: The Sledge Family

Joe Vaghi at Okinawa. 1945. Vaghi participated in the D-Day landings at Normandy.

Source: Joe Vaghi

Joseph Vaghi was born in Bethel, Connecticut on June 27, 1920, one of nine children born to Italian immigrants. His father owned and operated a successful cabinetry business and during the war received a contract to make rings for the Norden bombsite. All six boys in the family would eventually . . .

Marines move through a ravaged Okinawa village, examining the body of a dead Japanese as they go. April 1945.

Source: National Archives (127-N-119485)

Low tide off Okinawa; three Marines examine the partially submerged body of a Japanese soldier. May 1945.

Source: National Archives (127-N-120052)

Maurice Bell was born in Mississippi on February 17, 1925, and grew up in the northeast corner of the state. Throughout 1942, he traveled around the country with his father on a construction crew that was building army camps. While in Indiana in early 1942, he met and started dating . . .

A kamikaze pilot dove straight where Maurice Bell stood aboard the USS Indianapolis.

He still thinks about the war quite often and it seems like a dream.