[1]: 370 Located south and west of the midpoint between Tokyo and Saipan, the island of Iwo Jima was needed by the United States Army Air Forces as an emergency landing site for its B-29 Superfortress strategic bombing campaign against the Empire of Japan.

The purpose of the assault was to take the island for the three Japanese airfields so that the U.S. Navy Seabees could turn them in to United States facilities.

However, the Seabees and elements of the 2nd Separate Engineer Battalion worked together until the Marine ground forces had taken possession of their respective airfield construction assignments.

[citation needed] Central Field was headquarters for VII Fighter Command of the Twentieth Air Force from March 1 – December 1, 1945,[5]: 445  along with the intelligence-gathering 41st Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron from August though mid-September 1945.

Operational fighter squadrons which performed B-29 escort missions from Central Field were: After the war, the 20th Air Force fighter squadrons moved out to Japan, Okinawa or the Philippines and Central Field came under the Jurisdiction of Military Air Transport Service (MATS), becoming a refueling stop for MATS aircraft in the Western Pacific.

[6] It then became a navigation and weather station of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (Nihon Kaijo Jieitai), and is still used by the U.S. military as an aircraft refueling depot and as a U.S. Navy special pilot training facility.

[citation needed] At any given time about 350 JSDF personnel are posted to Iwo Jima and though the airfield is strictly for military use, commercial flights carrying veterans are frequent visitors.