On D-day plus four, a group of U.S. Marines raised the Stars and Stripes in this place, and the photograph of the event became famous as the “most beautiful picture of the war.” Just in front of where the base of the original flagpole stood, there now stands the American Armed Forces Victory Memorial, which was erected when the island was under American occupation.
A copperplate of the Stars and Stripes and a bas-relief of the marines raising the flag stand upon a white pedestal, and on either side are two V shapes, perhaps representing “victory.”
I noticed clusters of small pieces of metal clinging to the V-shaped parts of the memorial. I went up to have a closer look and they turned out to be chains with oval disks on them. Hundreds of them were hanging there.
They are identification tags stamped with tiny numbers and letters belonging to U.S. Marines. American soldiers wear these metal tags marked with their name and rank so as to identify them if they’re killed in action. These identification tags must be worn not just in combat, for training, or for maneuvers, but all the time.
Many of the marines who now come to Iwo Jima for training hang their identification tags on the memorial to honor the dead before they leave the island. The marines are proud to be a part of the same tradition as their predecessors who fought on the island some sixty years ago, and even now Iwo Jima remains holy ground for them.
The Medal of Honor is a decoration awarded in recognition of extraordinary acts of valor on the battlefield. During the four years of World War II, the marines earned a total of eighty-four Medals of Honor. Twenty-seven of these were awarded for the action on Iwo Jima—almost one third for a battle that lasted thirty-six days. This statistic alone shows why Iwo Jima is a battle that lives on in history.
Draped in hundreds of identification tags, the victory monument is inscribed with the words of Admiral Nimitz: “Among the Americans who served on IWO JIMA, uncommon valor was a common virtue.”
Of the six soldiers who raised the flag on Mount Suribachi, three were killed in the subsequent fighting. The remaining three returned in triumph to their homeland, where they were fêted as heroes and made to take part in a campaign to sell war bonds to help cover the cost of the war.
The American people gave them a wildly enthusiastic welcome at every stop of their national tour and purchased $26.3 billion worth of war bonds during that one summer. It was a sum equivalent to almost half the entire government budget for 1946.
A commemorative stamp with the photograph of the marines raising the flag was issued in July, less than four months after the battle itself ended. It was the first time in American history that living people had been featured on a stamp. One hundred and fifty million copies of the stamp were sold.
In 1954 the photograph was turned into the world’s tallest bronze statue, which went up in Arlington National Cemetery. The entire $850,000 cost was covered by donations from ordinary people.
The American people were first horrified at the casualties on Iwo Jima, then ecstatic at the hard-won victory, and the battle remains deeply engraved on the public consciousness even now. This explains why Kuri-bayashi, the man who was considered to have made America suffer more than anyone, may be better known in the United States than in Japan.
In May 2003, U.S. President George W. Bush made a speech declaring the end of major combat operations in Iraq. In it, he praised the military, saying: “The daring of Normandy, the fierce courage of Iwo Jima … is fully present in this generation.” Even after the passage of more than half a century, Iwo Jima remains a symbol of courage and victory for the United States.
A MEMORIAL ERECTED by the Japanese also stands on top of Mount Suribachi. The monument erected by the Americans commemorates their victory, but the Japanese monument is designed to commemorate and console their dead.
It is made of black granite, heavy and solid, and features a map of Japan made with stones from all the prefectures of the nation representing all the soldiers who fought at Iwo Jima, who came from almost every part of the country.
The greater part of the Japanese soldiers—officers and men—who fought on Iwo Jima were not career soldiers, but ordinary people: farmers, shopkeepers, businessmen, teachers, and student conscripts. They were people living normal lives who were drafted and dispatched to the island.
Carved on the top left of the map is the phrase Iô-Jima Senbotsusha Kenshôhi—“Monument to the Honor of the Fallen of Iwo Jima.” The stone itself was erected precisely one year after the island was restored to Japan.
As you stand there on the summit with the two memorials side by side—one commemorating victory, the other the ordinary lives that were lost—the south beach where the Americans landed looks so close you feel as though you could reach out and touch it.
It was in 1985, forty years after the war, that the south beach hosted the “Reunion of Honor.”
This was an event that brought together Japanese and American veterans, former friend and former foe alike. Its aim was twofold: to commemorate the fallen on both sides, and to swear peace to each other. Nowhere else have the participants in a battle that was so cruel, and that claimed so many lives, held a reunion ceremony on the very ground where they fought. But such an event took place on Iwo Jima. Including family members, a total of almost four hundred people— both Japanese and American—took part.
There is a striking scene in the video documentary made that day. The American and Japanese veterans and their families start out standing in separate groups, but as the ceremony ends, without either side seeming to take the initiative, they start drifting toward one another.
They shake one another’s hands, timidly at first, then more forcefully. Weeping, they hug one another and start to make conversation through sign language and gestures. “I still have a bullet in my leg,” says one. “I’ll betcha I’m the guy who fired it,” jokes another. “I had terrible burns on my face and you Americans saved me. My nose is ‘Made in the U.S.A,’ ” says a Japanese veteran with a grin. Now even the families of the dead have clasped one another’s hands.
Not everyone who took part in the reunion did so willingly. The video introduces us to Ed Moranick, who participated in the landing operation as a marine in the 4th Division. There’s a scene on the plane heading for Iwo Jima where he says, “This is no pleasure trip for me. When I think how much my wife has suffered…. To be honest, the thought of having a reunion with Japanese veterans really depresses me.”
On Iwo Jima, Moranick was struck in the face by a shell, and his appearance was completely transformed. In a portrait photograph taken just after the war, his nose is almost completely gone, while his eyes and mouth are significantly deformed. After the war, he needed twenty-two reconstructive surgeries before he could return to normal life.
On the return flight from Iwo Jima, the expression on Moranick’s face is different. “Forty years ago I came to this island to kill ‘Japs’; I didn’t even think of them as ‘people,’ ” he says. “But now I’m sorry that we slaughtered each other like that. Really and truly sorry.”
In 1984, a ceremony was also held to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the Normandy landings, but only the victorious nations— the United States, Great Britain, France, and so on—took part, and the purpose of the ceremony was to commemorate their victory. In this respect, the scenes played out on Iwo Jima were highly unusual.
A joint Japanese-American commemoration ceremony is now held every year. Why is it only at Iwo Jima that men who previously devoted themselves to killing one another have managed to meet and achieve reconciliation like this? Is it because they fought such a savage, all-out battle at such close quarters that now, with the passage of time, they are able to forgive and accept one another? This, I suspect, is something only the people who fought there can really understand.
A memorial was erected on the south beach where the 1985 ceremony was held. It bears the following inscription in both English and Japanese.
ON THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BATTLE O
F IWO JIMA,
AMERICAN AND JAPANESE VETERANS MET AGAIN ON THESE
SAME SANDS, THIS TIME IN PEACE AND FRIENDSHIP.
WE COMMEMORATE OUR COMRADES, LIVING AND DEAD, WHO
FOUGHT HERE WITH BRAVERY AND HONOR, AND WE PRAY
TOGETHER THAT OUR SACRIFICES ON IWO JIMA WILL
ALWAYS BE REMEMBERED AND NEVER BE REPEATED.
FEBRUARY 19, 1985
3RD, 4TH, 5TH DIVISION ASSOCIATIONS: USMC
AND
THE ASSOCIATION OF IWO JIMA
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE SOLDIERS’ LETTERS
—
KURIBAYASHI ENCOURAGED HIS MEN TO WRITE LETTERS AND SEND money home to their families, so in the months leading up to the American invasion, they diligently wrote home during breaks in their maneuvers and the building of their defensive installations. Many of the families carefully preserve these letters as substitutes for the relics of the dead, as the bones and personal effects of few of the fallen were sent back from Iwo Jima.
The soldiers, for their part, eagerly looked forward to letters from their families. It was the Kisarazu 1023 Flying Corps that exploited the intervals between air raids to bring the letters that served as a link between the hearts of the soldiers and their families. There was always a bundle of letters on these planes, crammed with crew, spare parts, medical supplies and drinking water. The journey was dangerous for transport planes as they were not armed, but the letters and photographs that their families sent were a major source of spiritual strength for the soldiers.
I received the long-awaited photograph of Masayuki safely. I got the letter in a bundle of two or three, but opened this one the minute I saw that the sender’s name was Masayuki. He’s grown so much. You’ve done a great job to raise him so plump and healthy.
Thank you. Thank you so much. Keep good care of him from now on, too.
I was so pleased at how cute and clever he looks that I took the photo round to my comrades at the HQ and told them: “Hey, take a look at this picture of my kid.” Perhaps they were just being nice, but they said he looked just like me. I quickly tracked down some cardboard and rigged a handy little photo stand, and then I put the picture on the shelf where I look at it every day. I’ll probably bore a hole through poor Masayuki any minute!
This is a letter that Kobayashi Issaku of the Second Independent Machine Gun Battalion wrote to his wife. The tenth letter he had sent from the front, it reached her on November 5, 1944.
Masayuki was Kobayashi’s first son, who had been born after he had already gone to the front. Ultimately, Kobayashi was to die without ever seeing his son’s face outside this photograph. Of the 228 men in his battalion, only one—a medical worker whose movements were different from the rest of the group—survived.
I got the picture with Masayuki and Kuniko snuggling up to each other on the sixteenth. He’s grown so big! I literally gasped when I opened the letter and saw the picture. He’s so cute it’s wicked. The NCOs and my friends tell me that if a father and his child resemble one another, then they’ll never have a falling out. I like the last photo you sent me when he’s smiling—it was sweet—but he looks rather clever in this one with his mouth clamped shut, too.
If you’re not going to make a fuss about children as perfect and as cute as these, then there are no children on this earth who deserve to be spoiled! And you can tell everyone I said that. I made a bag from a scrap of tent material and carry the picture around with me all the time in my pocket. From time to time I take it out and talk to Masayuki.
It was February 18, 1945, when the family received this final postcard. The next day, the Americans landed.
There were many other soldiers like Kobayashi who went into battle carrying a treasured family photograph. Andô Tomiji of the Takano Kensetsu construction company collected the bones and personal effects of the dead on Iwo Jima in 1951 and 1952. In his book Aa Iô-Jima (Ah, Iwo Jima), Andô described his experiences discovering bodies that had rotted away with letters and photographs on them.
In a cave near Tenzan in the north, I found a body. He was just a skeleton with a photograph of his family and a letter pushed into his breast pocket. There were three photographs inside the letter. The blood had soaked into them, but I could still make out a faint image of his mother and brothers.
The corpse was that of a special officer cadet who had graduated from the Utsunomiya Flight School, and the letter was from his mother. Andô continues: “It was a sweet letter full of concern for her son. I am sure the cadet cried out for the mother he saw in his dreams when he dozed off in his dismal defense post.”
At the time, special officer cadets could volunteer from the age of fifteen and would be sent off to the front after a brief period of training. This particular cadet was either sixteen or seventeen.
The Japanese soldiers who fought on Iwo Jima came from a broad age range. As the war approached its end, it was getting difficult to find young and healthy men to conscript. As a result, many of the soldiers were middle-aged and had wives and children. Andô also found bodies that were clutching photographs of children.
In the depths of a cave near “Lieutenant General Kuriba-yashi’s Headquarters,” there was a father who had died a sad death with a photograph of his beloved child in his chest pocket.
A letter had also survived underneath the pitiful corpse on which scraps of rotting clothing still hung. The faded image of his child was visible in the photograph in the threadbare pocket; the letter itself was clumsily written with Japanese characters as big as your thumb in places.
Near another body Andô found a letter that a second-year elementary school student had written to his father.
Father, are you well so far away at the front? Even with you away, I’m not the tiniest bit lonely. I am studying very hard and mean to grow up into a good person. I heard from Mother that the place you are is a really nice warm place. She said you even have lots of those “banana” things! Lucky you, able to eat papayas and pineapples and other strange fruits. Mother also said that there is not enough water there, which is bad. Please take care of your health and I wish you good luck. I hope you can do your public duty cheerfully. This is what Mother and I ask God for every day.
The transport flights that brought the letters were like a narrow thread connecting the front line to home. It was on February 11, Empire Day, that the thread was cut, ratcheting up the tension and indicating that the American landing was imminent.
“From today there will be no more post.” How must the soldiers have felt when they heard that announcement?
IN FEBRUARY 2005, I was lent a scrapbook by the widow of a noncommissioned officer who had died on Iwo Jima.
The owner of the scrapbook was ninety-two-year-old Egawa Mit-sue. “You can borrow this if you think it might be helpful,” she had said when she handed it to me as I was leaving her home in Iwakuni, Ya-maguchi Prefecture.
Her husband, Egawa Masaharu, was drafted at the age of forty-four when he was working as deputy director of the Matsuyamachi branch of Sumitomo Bank in Osaka. He had briefly served in the army in his twenties and was sent to the front as a second lieutenant based on this experience, making him a Shôshû Shôkô, or “draftee officer.” The fact that a man in his forties should be conscripted shows just how desperate things were at this time.
The words “From the Front” were written on the scrapbook’s cover. Mitsue told me that after the war she had pasted into it every postcard her husband had sent her from the front, but when I opened it to look, the first page contained something different.
“These four letters are the last letters my eldest son and I wrote to my husband. They were returned to us undelivered.”
The letters were dated February 11 and February 12, 1945, while the postmarks from the Kisarazu Post Office were the thirteenth and fourteenth. The postal service to Iwo Jima had already been canceled by this time, but the families had no way of knowing that.
The last undelivered letter that Mitsue wro
te to her husband talked about their three children, aged eight, six, and four, before ending like this:
Looking at their sleeping faces, I thought to myself, “Ah, how lucky I am.” Who wouldn’t be grateful to be blessed with three such beautiful beings? I will do my very best to bring them up to be good little children who will make you happy. I wish you could see what their life is like day to day. Let’s write as much as we can.
I turned the letter over. A label was stuck over the name of the addressee. “Not known at this address,” it said.
The three other letters were the same. “Not known at this address”: For the families back at home, this cold phrase must have been devastating.
In the margin of the page, Mitsue had written: “The letters I sent to the front started being returned to me undelivered. I grew more and more worried.” When the letters were returned to her, Mitsue did not even know where her husband was fighting.
In those days, the soldiers’ families never knew where they had been sent. When family members sent letters to Iwo Jima, they addressed them “Care of Kisarazu Post Office, Chiba Prefecture,” followed by the Japanese character for “Courage,” which was a sort of code sign indicating the 109th Division, and the name of the unit. From the letters they received, they could guess that their menfolk were somewhere in the South Seas, but they had no way of knowing precisely where.
Mitsue only discovered that her husband had been on Iwo Jima when she received the official report of his death—two years after he had gone to the front, and nine months after the war had ended. Up until then she had gone through the chaos of the immediate postwar period with the burden of three children while not even knowing if her husband was dead or alive.
So Sad to Fall in Battle Page 14
