The United States Marine Corps launched its Marines from U.S. Navy ships to attack beaches and take islands and was instrumental in defeating the forces of Imperial Japan in the Pacific during World War II. Marine Corps formations fighting in the Pacific had reporters attached to capture images of the war. These images would show Americans back home the nature of the war. Often, the reporters, such as Joe Rosenthal for the Associated Press, found themselves in the worst of the action. Their images captured the horror and the heroism of battle. Rosenthal’s photograph on Iwo Jima became the iconic representation of the struggle against Imperial Japan, the nation that attacked the United States in December 1941 at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.