life:

Seven decades have passed since World war II ended, but the power of these pictures (several of which were never published in LIFE) has barely faded.

In a picture that captures the violence and sheer destruction inherent in war perhaps more graphically than any other ever published in LIFE, Marines take cover on an Iwo Jima hillside amid the burned-out remains of banyan jungle, as a Japanese bunker is obliterated in March 1945.