So Sad to Fall in Battle

by Kumiko Kakehashi

  I am sure you gave Takako some pocket money. [Takako was evacuated to her mother’s village in the country.]

  Did you remember to give her envelopes, writing paper, and stamps so she can write to you? Not to mention toilet paper, toothpaste, and other everyday necessities….

  On November 17, 1944:

  Since we’re talking about baths, you really ought to heat one up about every five days or so. Since there are so few of you using it, you can reheat the same water two nights in a row.

  This is what you should do if you do use the same water two daysrunning. When you get out of the bath the first night, stick your arm right down into the water and swirl it round in one direction so that the water spins around like a top. Now throw the washbowl in. It will spin round and round in the water then sink to the bottom, but as it sinks it mysteriously picks up all the dirt and gunk. (Take the washbowl out of the water the morning after.) Give it a go.

  And on December 11, 1944:

  I really feel sorry for the way your hands get chapped and cracked when winter comes around and the water’s cold. Whenever you’ve been using water, make sure to dry your hands thoroughly then rub them until they get warm.

  It’s impossible not to admire the way he repeatedly sends advice and worries about their lives down to such minutiae. What’s special about Kuribayashi is that he doesn’t just say nice things; he always provides detailed advice on how to deal with problems. He seems to have spent a great deal of time thinking about home, trying to imagine the kind of inconveniences his family was having to put up with.

  The letters give one the sense that, though far away, he still thought like the head of the household who wants to make life that little bit easier for his family. It’s also possible that the time he spent conjuring up a vivid picture of everyday life in the home where he could no longer be made life at the front that much more livable for him, too.

  The American landing could have come at any time when Kuriba-yashi was writing these letters. The air raids were growing more intense by the day; his attempts to dig underground defenses for an all-out war of resistance were progressing slowly, impeded by the geo-thermal heat and sulfur vapor released by the digging. And every day, caked in dust and sweat, Kuribayashi was taking hands-on control and inspecting the construction of the installations.

  Iwo Jima does not have a single stream; when the Japanese troops dug wells, all they ended up with was saltwater with a high sulfur content. The twenty thousand plus soldiers, including Kuribayashi, had nothing to drink but the rainwater they could collect, and this water, of which there was barely enough to keep them alive, was polluted, and many of the Japanese soldiers fell sick with paratyphoid, diarrhea, and malnutrition.

  It was a bleak island where the only reality was war. Maybe the fact that Kuribayashi could turn his thoughts to the kitchen back at home gave him the opportunity to anchor himself to a more normal, more human way of life.

  I asked Tarô how his father had seemed before setting off for the front. “There was nothing special or different about him” was his initial answer. His father, he said, was just as relaxed and easygoing as ever.

  But later on, as I was asking him about the layout of the house they had lived in back then, he said, as if it had suddenly come back to him: “That business of how my father was behaving before he went off to the front. Now that I think about it, he was busy making some shelves.”

  “Shelves?”

  “Yes. Shelves for the kitchen and other parts of the house.”

  A lieutenant general of that time had a social position equivalent, or maybe even superior, to a member of the cabinet in our times, and this was the night before he was heading off to a battle where he ran every risk of being killed. Nonetheless, the thought of the inconveniences his family would face after he had gone inspired him to pick up a hammer and put up shelves.

  In a sense, the Kuribayashi household was not unusual. No doubt fathers all over Japan were doing work around the house for their families as they waited to be dispatched to the front. It was their last opportunity to do any do-it-yourself repairs. But Kuribayashi was different in one important respect.

  At the front, it is the judgment of the commanding officer and the orders he gives that decide if the soldiers in his charge live or die. When a soldier is ordered to charge, he has to do so even if he knows that certain death will be the result. Kuribayashi, as commander in chief of both the army and the navy forces, was the one who was going to be giving orders. It was Kuribayashi who would be ordering people to go out and die.

  Kuribayashi was also well aware that his task as commander in chief was not to achieve victory.

  It was Prime Minister Tôjô Hideki who appointed Kuribayashi to be overall commander in Iwo Jima, and he is reported to have urged him to “do something similar to what was done on Attu.” Attu is a small island in the Aleutian archipelago where, in May 1943, a year before Kuribayashi was sent to Iwo Jima, the Japanese had fought desperately in an effort to prevent the American forces from wresting the island back. They had been slaughtered down to the last man—a fate they called gyokusai, or “honorable death.”

  The Imperial General Headquarters ordered Kuribayashi to defend Iwo Jima stubbornly, but his being dispatched to a remote and solitary island in the Pacific was no longer about being victorious or driving back the enemy. Japan no longer had the power to do that. After the country’s defeat at the Battle of Midway, it became clearer by the day that Japan was destined to lose the war as the disparity in military strength grew ever wider. How long could the island hold out? That was the only thing that mattered.

  Retreat was not permitted, even if the Japanese were conclusively defeated. “Do something similar to what was done on Attu” meant they had to endure to the bitter end and fight until they had all been killed.

  What, then, were they fighting for? If victory was not even a possibility, what overarching goal could justify the deaths of his men as “worthwhile and meaningful”? Kuribayashi, who knew better than anyone the might of the United States and who had been consistently against the idea of attacking them, must have asked himself this same question.

  The day after he had bustled about the house making shelves in his role as father and husband, he arrived on the island where a battle he was doomed to lose would be fought—a battle he was doomed to lose, on an island where more than twenty thousand men would go to their deaths on his orders.

  CHAPTER TWO

  22KM2 OF WILDERNESS

  —

  SEEN FROM THE AIR, IWO JIMA LOOKS LIKE AN UGLY SCAB STUCK onto the broad expanse of the ocean. It seems so flat and so thin that you think you could pick it off with your fingernails, and no matter the weather it is always a drab brown in color.

  The island has an area of only twenty-two square kilometers—less than half of Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward. It is hard to believe that a combined total of more than eighty thousand Japanese and American troops fought a historic battle over this tiny isolated island. Iwo Jima lies on about the same latitude as Okinawa, but it has no white-sand beaches, no gorgeous tropical flowers in bloom.

  The island is somewhat long and narrow, and runs from northeast to southwest. Its shape is often compared to a rice scoop or spatula. Its highest point is the summit of Mount Suribachi on the southwestern tip, which stands 169 meters above sea level, while a plateau 100 meters above sea level extends over the northeast of the island.

  This flatness was the primary factor in the destiny of Iwo Jima. The topography was perfect for building runways.

  The other Ogasawara Islands were too mountainous for airfield construction. Chichi Jima had a base dating from prewar days and also an airfield, but the uneven topography made it difficult to expand the existing facility or build a new one.

  By contrast, Iwo Jima already had two airfields, Chidori and Mo-toyama, when Kuribayashi arrived to take up his post in June 1944, and a third was under construction in the northeast of the island.

  A
mere speck of an island it may have been, but it had three airfields. Iwo Jima could serve as an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” out at sea. In the Pacific War, it was the battle in the air that determined the outcome, making Iwo Jima an asset that both the Japanese and the Americans needed and coveted.

  The initial plan was to place the headquarters of the 109th Division, now under Kuribayashi’s command, on Chichi Jima because Chichi Jima served as the center of the Ogasawara Islands for command and control, communications, and supplies. Chichi Jima was also much more livable than Iwo Jima, where lack of water and the scorching heat made farming of any kind impossible.

  Kuribayashi, however, was convinced that the enemy would come to capture Iwo Jima because of its airfields. He also believed that “the commander should always be at the front line” and decided to establish his headquarters on the island. He then spent the nine-month period between assuming his post and death and defeat together with his men on the island, never leaving it even once.

  A second key factor in Iwo Jima’s fate was its position. It was situated 1,250 kilometers from Tokyo and 1,400 kilometers from Saipan. If you drew a straight line between the two places, the island was almost exactly halfway between the two. Iwo Jima would clearly be the ultimate foothold for the Americans, who were fighting their way up to the Japanese mainland one island at a time.

  When Kuribayashi reached Iwo Jima, the Americans were just gearing up to take the Mariana Islands: Saipan, Guam, and Tinian. If they succeeded in capturing the Marianas, Iwo Jima would be next on their list, no matter what the cost.

  The Americans planned to station the newly produced B-29 bomber, the “Superfortress,” on Saipan. But they faced four serious problems before they could send these colossal bombers in air raids against the Japanese mainland.

  First of all, any B-29s that took off from Saipan would have to make the 2,600-kilometer-long trip to Tokyo without any protection from fighters.

  Second, since flying such a long distance would require large quantities of fuel, the planes would have to cut down on the payload of bombs they carried.

  Third, the planes had nowhere to make emergency landings in the event of mechanical failure or damage from enemy fire.

  Fourth, the radar station on Iwo Jima was able to detect incoming American bombers and give the mainland advance warning. There was also the further danger of Japanese fighter planes based on Iwo Jima intercepting the B-29s.

  If the Americans could get their hands on Iwo Jima, all these problems would be solved in one stroke.

  Of course, from the Japanese perspective, the fall of Iwo Jima would mean the loss of a key position for the defense of the mainland. Were the Americans to capture Iwo Jima, they would be free to carry out massive air raids on all the major cities in Japan, and the chaos of war would engulf ordinary citizens.

  Furthermore, unlike either the Philippines or the Mariana Islands, Iwo Jima was actually a part of Metropolitan Tokyo, and as such was a part of Japan itself. Losing the island, no matter how small it was, would mark the first time in history that the Japanese homeland had been invaded. This had to be avoided at all cost.

  The American forces launched their invasion of Saipan on June 15, about one week after Kuribayashi had reached Iwo Jima. In a letter Kuribayashi talked about experiencing three air raids in the month he took up his post; these air raids were not random events. The Americans wanted to facilitate their invasion of Saipan by suppressing activity on Iwo Jima’s runways.

  Once ashore, the American forces got the upper hand against the Japanese thanks to their overwhelming firepower. Then, on June 19, not that far from Saipan, the Japanese fleet and the American task force engaged each other just off the Mariana Islands in a major naval battle called the Mariana-oki Kaisen by the Japanese—the Battle of the Philippine Sea by the Americans.

  The Japanese navy, although vastly inferior in strength, launched an all-out counteroffensive dubbed Operation A-gô. They sent in the biggest formation they were able to put together: 9 aircraft carriers and 5 battleships (including Yamato and Musashi), 11 heavy cruisers, 29 destroyers, and 450 carrier-based aircraft.

  The American task force that the Japanese were up against consisted of 112 ships in total—7 heavy aircraft carriers, 8 light aircraft carriers, 7 battleships, 21 cruisers, and 69 destroyers—and an estimated 891 planes. The Americans had roughly twice as many ships and aircraft as the Japanese.

  The Japanese were crushingly defeated in the Battle of the Philippine Sea. The Yamato and the Musashi may have been undamaged, but more than half of all the Japanese planes were lost. The Battle of Midway two years before had brought Japan’s run of easy successes to a dramatic end and put the navy on the defensive. Ever since, the Japanese navy had rested its hopes for a reversal of its fortunes on its well-trained combined fleet. This battle effectively marked the demise of that force.

  The Battle of the Philippine Sea gave the Americans air and sea supremacy in the mid-Pacific, including the Mariana Islands and the Oga-sawara Islands. The fall of Saipan was now simply a matter of time.

  The Imperial General Headquarters made the decision to “abandon Saipan” on June 25, while Japanese forces were still desperately resisting the invaders. They dispatched the units they had planned to send to Saipan to the Philippines, Taiwan, Nanpo Shotô, and Iwo Jima instead.

  This is the historical background behind Kuribayashi writing a “final message” to his family so soon after arriving at his post. It was now certain that Iwo Jima would become the front line of the fight.

  On July 1, the Ogasawara Army Corps was established in Iwo Jima under direct control of Imperial General Headquarters, and Kuriba-yashi was appointed corps chief. He was also division commander of the 109th Division, but army corps chief was the higher rank.

  The 145th Infantry Regiment and the 26th Tank Regiment, both of which had been scheduled to go to Saipan, were diverted to Iwo Jima and placed under Kuribayashi’s command. These were both elite regiments and played a key role in the defense of the island. Imperial General Headquarters had written Saipan off after the failure of Operation A-gô, but it was now getting serious about the defense of Iwo Jima.

  Prime Minister Tôjô had bombastically described Saipan as “impregnable,” but that did not keep him from abandoning it only ten days after the Americans had landed. The policy of Imperial General Headquarters toward Iwo Jima was to chop and change in similar fashion. They had decided that Iwo Jima would be lost even before the American invasion began.

  THE FIRST THING KURIBAYASHI did after arriving at his post was to inspect every inch of the island so he could get a firm grip on the topography and the natural conditions.

  He needed to know the island inside out in order to decide what kind of defensive positions to build, where to build them, and how to confront the Americans. Making the circuit of Iwo Jima on foot only takes half a day. So Kuribayashi walked. With him was his adjutant, First Lieutenant Fujita Masayoshi, who had accompanied him from To kyo.

  First Lieutenant Fujita had been Kuribayashi’s adjutant since his appointment as commander of the Second Imperial Guards Home Division in Tokyo, and had volunteered to go with him to Iwo Jima. A family friend, Fujita knew Yoshii and the children. He was the scion of a wealthy family and engaged to be married, so his parents had no wish to see him go. But Fujita’s affection and respect for Kuribayashi were such that he overrode their objections, wanting to be with him right up to the end. Kuribayashi had forbidden Sadaoka, a civilian employee of the military, to accompany him, telling him to “value his life more;” Fujita, however, was a military man, so he was happy to bring him along. Kuribayashi loved Fujita like his own son, but he must have seen him as a man, like himself, who had chosen the “way of the soldier” and for whom risking his life at the front lines was merely routine.

  The first place Kuribayashi went was Mount Suribachi, the highest point on the island.

  Suribachi was a dormant volcano with an enormous yawning crater. True to
its name—suribachi means “mortar” in Japanese—it was mortar-shaped. The south side was a precipitous cliff that faced out to sea, while the northeastern slope went down to the plain of Chidoriga-hara. This flat stretch of land where Chidori Airfield stood was covered in volcanic ash and looked like a nightmarish desert.

  Beaches ran along both sides of Chidorigahara. Looking down from Mount Suribachi, the south beach is on the right hand, and the west beach on the left. As the coastline in the northern and eastern parts of the islands had cliffs, reefs, and high surf, the Americans were going to have to land on one of these two beaches. Mount Suribachi, with its unbroken view over the beaches, would clearly be a major strategic point for both the attacking and the defending forces.

  The Motoyama plateau in the northeast accounted for most of the island’s area.

  This region was rocky, with terraces and hillocks. The ground underfoot was tuff, a stone soft enough to dig with picks and shovels. Tuff could also be used for building blocks, so it looked likely to be helpful for constructing defensive positions.

  The geothermal heat that reached up to 140 degrees Fahrenheit and the sulfur vapor that wafted up from within the earth were problems. Building fortifications was definitely not going to be easy, but the only way to hold the island as long as possible was to construct strong defensive positions before the American landing. Kuribayashi started to devise a strategy to repulse the Americans, whom he expected to come ashore with overwhelming firepower.

  Kuribayashi also had to think about the needs of the men who had to live packed together on the island. It was his responsibility to maintain the discipline and health of his men as they toiled away, performing maneuvers and building defenses under the harshest conditions. What, then, was Iwo Jima like as a place to live? As he explained to his wife, Yoshii, on August 2, 1944:

  There are so many flies that they get into your eyes and your mouth. There are ants everywhere—like the pilgrims all moving en masse to Zenkôji Temple—and they come crawling up all over your body, lots of them at once. There are cockroaches, too—filthy, grotesque insects—all over the place. The only good news is that there aren’t any poisonous insects or snakes.