So Sad to Fall in Battle

by Kumiko Kakehashi

  In the oral survey conducted by the War Department of the National Institute of Defense Studies after the war, Major Fujiwara Tamaki, a battalion chief of the 17th Independent Mixed Regiment who returned to the mainland at the end of January 1945 before the American assault, recalled: “Once it was possible to live in the bunkers, Kuri-bayashi would sit down on the tuff stone like everybody else and get on with his work.”

  Survivors often mention in their accounts how Kuribayashi would talk to them directly or give them the cigarettes that were a gift from the emperor. There are also anecdotes in which soldiers were startled to discover that the person who suddenly turned up unarmed and wearing common jikatabi was none other than their commander in chief, or ended up being escorted to their unit by Kuribayashi after getting lost on their way around the island.

  Ishii Shûji, who, as a newspaperman in Tokyo, had known Kuriba-yashi, wrote about his experience of meeting him again as a recruit on Iwo Jima in Iô-Tô ni Ikiru.

  That day I was walking along in front of the adjutants’ room pushing my bicycle, when a general holding a cane came up on my right. “Uh-oh,” I thought, and immediately stood stiffly to attention and saluted. The general in question was unarmed and quite old. It turned out that this old man was our direct commander in chief, Lieutenant General Kuribayashi.

  The lieutenant general walked past me and said “Keep up the good work.” When I heard that “Keep up the good work,” I thought “No, it can’t be” and took a careful look at his face; it was then that I realized it was Lieutenant General Kuribayashi whom I had met often in the course of my work when he commanded the Second Imperial Guards Home Division. So it was that Kuribayashi! [omission]

  When the lieutenant general heard my voice, he walked back two or three steps, and looked me in the face. “Ah, you work for that newspaper—Ish-, Ish- … Got it, it’s Mister Ishii.” And he smiled.

  “Yes, I’m Ishii. I used to work at the Mainichi Shimbun.” On my side I was thrilled that he had not forgotten who I was, and I spoke this unnecessarily loudly.

  “So, young Mister Ishii, is it? Funny place for us to meet, eh! When did you get here?—Oh, of course, of course, I suppose it was only about three months ago. When you’ve got time, drop in for a visit,” he said and then slowly went on his way.

  Tada Minoru, a graduate of the Naval Preparatory School and a survivor who was sent to Iwo Jima as a lieutenant, wrote about his memories of Kuribayashi in his book Nanimo Kataranakatta Seishun (Youth That Could Not Have Its Say).

  One day, out of the blue, there was an inspection of our emplacement by the commander in chief. Captain Wachi himself was driving the car. It was Lieutenant General Kuribayashi, commanding officer of the 109th Division, who had just taken up his post as leader of the Ogasawara Army Corps.

  “Southern coast machine-gun emplacement. Weapons and personnel all in order.”

  As Tada made his report, Captain Wachi, who was standing nearby, added, “Tada is the emplacement commander.”

  “This is a difficult place you’ve got here.”

  Lieutenant General Kuribayashi took a good look at the gun emplacement and at the beach directly below.

  “You were at the naval school, Lieutenant Tada?”

  “Yes, sir. I was.”

  “I’ll be asking a lot from you. I’m depending on you to stand firm.”

  As Lieutenant General Kuribayashi said this he moved on to the next gun emplacement. The expression in his eyes was kind and stern at the same time.

  In the documentation on the American side, there is an account that notes with surprise that the majority of the Japanese who became prisoners of war had seen Kuribayashi face-to-face. On a front where more than twenty thousand soldiers were stationed, it was hard to conceive that the greater part of them should have met their commander in chief.

  In a place where living conditions were as harsh as Iwo Jima, morale would quickly sink if there was insufficient contact between the officers and the men. Even if the ordinary soldiers never actually got to see his face, word getting around that the commander in chief—that lofty, superior being—was inspecting the defenses on a daily basis helped to boost their spirits.

  It is estimated that the underground defenses were seventy percent complete when the American landing operation got under way in February 1945. Kuribayashi was no doubt frustrated that he was not vouchsafed a little more time and a greater quantity of materials, but the work proceeded surprisingly smoothly in light of all the difficulties involved.

  “It’s a miracle that the soldiers could stand the stress of spending eight whole months on an island with no alcohol, no entertainment, and not a single woman,” James Bradley told me.

  Major Fujiwara Tamaki revealed what he felt about his time on the island.

  There was absolutely nothing on Iwo Jima and it was a dreary place. Even if we were given money there was nothing we could buy; there were only military personnel there; on a fine day you could more or less make out Kita Iwo Jima, but aside from that there was nothing but sea. After about six months, I thought I was going to go crazy.

  The sense of isolation on Iwo Jima only increased the stress the soldiers had to put up with as they waited for the American assault, grinding away at their exhausting tasks, short of water and food. Nonetheless, the military discipline of the Iwo Jima garrison was maintained over the eight months that they worked day and night training and constructing defenses, while avoiding air raids and naval bombardments.

  AS PROPOUNDED IN THE “courageous battle vows,” Kuribayashi’s strategy was to ask the soldiers to die for him after fighting an agonizing battle. In a sense, that battle actually started long before the American landing.

  A commander in chief sends the soldiers he commands off to their deaths based upon his personal judgment. It is an almost intolerably heavy responsibility for anyone to bear. High-ranking military men who find themselves in this position always try to find a way to live with the burden.

  There are some who see their own superior abilities as justification for sending soldiers to their deaths; other leaders, like Nogi Maresuke, cope by applying standards of superhuman stoicism to themselves; most common, perhaps, are those who seek support from religious belief.

  Kuribayashi fits none of the above categories: he was a realist and a rationalist. Letters like this one, which he sent his wife, Yoshii, on January 28, 1945, show that he was not interested in leaning on religious belief.

  It’s probably due to the strength of the faith of your grandmother in Higano [Higano, in Nagano Prefecture, was the hometown of Kuribayashi’s wife] that she managed to get through the air raid without being afraid by chanting “Dainichi Buddha.”

  But bombs and incendiaries fall quite randomly anywhere and everywhere, so faith is no use at all. Her faith may help keep her spirits up and that’s all well and good, but she should be very careful not to come to grief by neglecting the various mental and practical preparations that air raids demand.

  I know from our experience here that the people who get complacent and aren’t serious about taking shelter are the ones who end up getting killed or wounded.

  SO HOW DID KURIBAYASHI RECONCILE HIMSELF TO HIS ROLE?

  Kuribayashi knew that he would have to force his soldiers to die a cruel death—and that was the reason he made up his mind to stay with them on Iwo Jima. He refused to exercise his command from Chichi Jima, which was safe and had water and food in abundance. Instead, he went to Iwo Jima and did not leave the island again until he died there.

  The defense of the Ogasawara Islands, including Iwo Jima, had been in the hands of Major General Ôsuka Koto’o, the Ogasawara Region group commander, until Kuribayashi’s arrival. Ôsuka had exercised his command from Chichi Jima, and he naturally assumed that Kuribayashi would do the same. Indeed, it was not until the battle had progressed to a certain point that even the Americans realized that the commander in chief was in direct control on an island that their preliminary air raids and nava
l bombardments had transformed into so much scorched ground.

  According to Kuribayashi’s son, Tarô, the family discovered that Kuribayashi was in Iwo Jima in the fall of 1944, when one of his subordinates, who was briefly in Tokyo for business, dropped into the house in Higashi Matsubara. Kuribayashi’s wife would also have preferred him to be in Chichi, rather than Iwo Jima, and seems to have sent him a letter that said, “Adjutant Fujita’s father says Chichi Jima is safer, too.” Kuribayashi replied to her on November 2, 1945:

  You tell me that Fujita’s father said that Chichi Jima was likely to be safer than Iwo Jima. I think he’s right. But to protect Japan it’s much more important for me to be in Iwo Jima—and that’s why I’m here. I haven’t the time to think about whether I’m safe.

  —

  KURIBAYASHI WALKED EVERY inch of the island, inspecting the construction of the defensive positions; he took the lead in efforts to save water; he even cultivated a vegetable patch. He refused any gifts of food and ate the same thing as his men three times a day. He imposed a regime on himself that made sure he experienced all the discomforts of the ordinary soldiers.

  He made himself a part of the day-to-day life of his men, a comrade who shared their “life with no tomorrow.” In the run-up to the American assault, Kuribayashi’s resolve was to live the same life as his twenty thousand men.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  FAMILY

  —

  The evening sky is clear,

  And the autumn wind blows.

  The moon casts its shadows

  As the bell-ring crickets chirp.

  SHE STARTED SINGING THE SONG IN A THIN BUT BEAUTIFUL VOICE. The sweat stood on her delicately powdered forehead.

  “The young recruits used to sing this song as they walked back to base after they’d finished digging the underground bunkers. Did you know that there were sixteen-year-old soldiers on Iwo Jima?”

  She pressed a lace-bordered white handkerchief to the corners of her eyes and continued, her voice a little quieter now.

  When you think of it,

  It feels so far away:

  The sky of home.

  Ah, Father! Mother!

  Are you both well?

  “At sixteen, you’re no more than a child. Just think how badly they must have wanted to go home.”

  It was at the end of 2003 that I visited Shindô Takako in her house in Kawaguchi Saitama Prefecture. “Tako-chan,” the little girl who had cried and made such a scene when Kuribayashi set out for Iwo Jima, was now sixty-nine years old.

  The whole family agreed that she was “a chip off the old block,” as bighearted and intelligent as her father.

  Takako was calm as she talked to me about her memories of her father. Her voice faltered only once, when she started talking about her first visit to Iwo Jima after it had been returned to Japanese sovereignty.

  “I think the place was called Mount Tamana. Anyway, when we got there, our guide, who was a survivor of the battle, told us that the young recruits often used to sing together as they marched through this area. ‘Their voices were still the voices of children,’ he said, ‘and when Rear Admiral Ichimaru heard them singing he started to cry.’ ”

  The song they used to sing was “The Sky of Home.”

  The youngsters always ended up singing this song even when they had started out singing war songs. It was a soft, sentimental song, and as it was deemed likely to undermine the fighting spirit, you stood every chance of getting a beating if an officer caught you singing it in the army of those days. But Rear Admiral Ichimaru, who happened to be passing by, motioned to an officer who was about to berate them to back off, then closed his eyes and listened.

  One of those sunsets unique to the southern islands was splashed across the western sky, and the sound of the boys singing rose upward. Before the fighting started there were moments of beauty even on Iwo Jima—a place nicknamed “Black Death Island” by the battle-hardened marines, some of whom it drove to madness.

  The young soldiers went to their deaths, their voices still the voices of children. Takako had been serene and composed when she spoke about the last days of her father and about the letters that begin “To Tako-chan,” but she began to cry when she thought of those young boys. To me it seemed as though the grief of her father had traveled across a span of almost sixty years and was pouring forth through his daughter’s tears.

  FOR TAKAKO, HER FATHER was someone who was always kind and fun to be with, though he was often away from home. He was adroit—the sort of person who could turn his hand to anything—and would actively help with things around the house. He stood beside the maid when she was washing the plates and wiped them dry with a dishcloth.

  The household had their maid when Kuribayashi was in command of the Second Imperial Guards Home Division. One day, when Sadaoka Nobuyoshi, the civilian employee in the military, visited Kuri-bayashi’s house around dinnertime, he was astonished to see the maid seated at the table just like a regular member of the family. It was a highly unusual arrangement by the conventions of the time.

  According to Takako, Kuribayashi liked to say: “Meals taste better if you all have a good time while you’re eating. It’s not good to sit around all stiff and silent as if you were at a wake.” He often used to tell funny stories that made the whole family laugh.

  In a letter from Iwo Jima dated October 10, 1944, he tells Tarô, his son, how he wants him to behave after he is dead: “When you’re at home, always make pleasant conversation with your mother and your younger sisters; make the odd joke from time to time. It’s important to make the whole house cheerful.”

  Kuribayashi had a sense of humor, something that was hardly typical of a military man of the time.

  In his letters from Iwo Jima, he describes the stream of ants crawling relentlessly toward the soldiers’ quarters as “pilgrims all moving en masse to the Zenkôji Temple.” (Kuribayashi and his wife, Yoshii, were both from Nagano City, where Zenkôji Temple stands.) This particular figure of speech seems to have been a favorite, and appears in several of his letters.

  Dumbfounded at the thunderous nightly snoring of his adjutant Fu-jita, whose bed was right beside his own, he writes, “When looking for a son-in-law, this is clearly the sort of thing one needs to check in advance—or else!” He continues, “Best not mention it to his [Adjutant Fujita’s] father or anybody else, all right?” As his wife read the letter, she must have seen her husband’s mischievous expression in her mind’s eye.

  Takako has fond memories of her father becoming “Mister Horsey” for her, and the fun she had riding around on his back.

  Kuribayashi had originally been in the cavalry, and his skill as a rider was well-known. The story goes that, during his time at the Army Cavalry School, there was an unbroken horse called Tento. Tento had been universally written off as unrideable, but Kuribayashi, despite being thrown repeatedly, persisted until finally he was the only person able to ride him. This was the same Kuribayashi who would keep scuttling around on all fours until Takako told him that she had had enough and got down off his back. In fact, when I visited Takako’s home, there were a couple of pictures of horses on the walls, one of which showed a military commander on horseback.

  Kuribayashi was most worried about Takako among his three children. How would the loss of her father at so early an age affect her? He wrote her on September 20, 1944:

  Every morning Granny is kind enough to pray to the gods on behalf of your Daddy. Thanks to Granny’s prayers, Daddy has become cheerful tough. This war is a really big war now, so I really don’t know whether I’ll be able to make it home safely or not.

  If I can’t make it back, I’ll be most sorry for you, Tako-chan. But you make sure and do what Mommy tells you, and grow up fast to be a big, strong girl. If you do that, it will make Daddy feel a whole lot better, too.

  He mentioned Takako repeatedly in the letters he sent to his wife, as this example shows from a letter dated August 2, 1945:

  Recently
I had a dream. In it, I went back home where you and Tako-chan were thrilled to see me; but when I said, “I’ve only come back to make my will and I’ll be going right back to the front,” Takako was so miserable. In another one, I went on horseback to a temple. You and Takako had got there before me and were waiting for me. You were very surprised to see me—it was all so vivid in my dream.

  In a letter to Yoshii dated August 25, 1944, he wrote:

  These days, I am enjoying every day I am alive, one day at a time. I have made up my mind to think of my life as something I have today, but will not have tomorrow. I want so badly for all of you to be able to live long and happy lives. I feel sorriest for Takako because she’s the youngest.

  And on December 8, 1945: “I’ve been having lots of dreams lately, and you and Takako often appear in them. You both seem so real. It must be because you’re the ones I’m most worried about.”

  “He was thinking about you right up to the end,” I said to Takako. “Yes,” she replied. “He was. And thanks to him I have had a happy life.”

  At the time the war ended, Takako had been evacuated to the country, but she soon returned to Tokyo with her mother. Her elder sister, Yôko, passed away immediately after the war due to typhoid fever.

  Takako had good grades at school, and her mother, by working as an insurance saleswoman and a dormitory matron, was able to send her to university. Takako was studying French literature at Waseda University when she was selected as the “new face” of Daiei Studios. She told me that she applied not because she was keen to become an actress, but because she wanted to study traditional Japanese dancing and etiquette. Having lost their father, the Kuribayashis did not then have the resources to take extra courses outside school.