For over a century, San Diego County has provided locations for hundreds of major motion picture films. Since the early 1940s a popular site has been the beaches and hills of Camp Pendleton, one hundred miles south of Hollywood. The sprawling, 125-thousand acre Marine Corps base would host the filming of several patriotic epics during World War II before scoring a huge hit at the decades end with “The Sands of Iwo Jima.”

Read the story of the filming of The Sands of Iwo Jima.