But it was a milestone of a kind, and also a foreshadowing of what was to come in the Pacific, especially in the later and better-known island battles on Iwo Jima and Okinawa. In proportional terms, from the American point of view, Peleliu was the costliest battle of the Pacific campaign. Of the 28,000 marines and soldiers who fought on the island, nearly 40 percent were casualties, including about 1,800 killed and 8,000 wounded. Nearly the entire Japanese garrison of 11,000 perished. Even accounting for the disparity in the numbers killed—inevitable given the customary Japanese refusal to
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