A woman in her thirties who had heard that I was researching the battle of Iwo Jima told me she “knew a woman who had lost her husband at Iwo Jima” and arranged for me to meet with Mitsue. They were both Christians and attended the same church, where they had become friends despite the gap in their ages.
When I actually met Mitsue I saw that she was very much the kind of person to strike up a friendship with someone young enough to be her granddaughter. Sharp and funny, she was so full of life that she didn’t seem like a nonagenarian. Her memory was excellent, and she told me everything about her husband—from his unexpected call-up to her getting news of his death—as if it had all happened yesterday.
I could hear the sound of the sea in the living room where I sat listening to Mitsue. It was only a two-minute walk from her house down to the beach where the waves of the Inland Sea lapped gently on the shore.
On May 21, 1946, Mitsue had flung an unvarnished box into this sea—a box of the kind designed to contain the ashes of the dead.
“When I got the announcement of his death, it said I should go and collect his remains. So I went to the government office, paid 100 yen, and was handed a plain wooden box in return. But when I looked inside, there were no remains at all, just a wooden Buddhist mortuary tablet with the words: ‘Army Lieutenant Egawa Masaharu. Died in battle on Iwo Jima.’ The cold-bloodedness of it made me so furious that on my way home I thought, ‘Damn this thing,’ and threw it into the sea.”
All Mitsue was carrying when she got back home was the Buddhist mortuary tablet. She could not bring herself to throw away something that had her husband’s name on it.
EGAWA MASAHARU WAS CALLED UP ON JUNE 26, 1944. The Americans had already invaded Saipan by this time.
Masaharu had spent eight years in the United States, at the American branch of the Japanese bank for which he worked, before getting married, and he had many American friends. He was immune to wartime hysteria. Mitsue remembers him saying under his breath, “I don’t want to fight a war that we’re sure to lose,” before adding, as if on second thought, “But I’m a smart fellow. I’m sure I’ll make it back alive.”
All the letters he sent from Iwo Jima were written on postcards— twenty-eight of them in total, of which thirteen were to his children.
Hello there, everybody. Are you all well? Daddy is working hard at being a soldier.
There are lots of little birds here called white-eyes. They’re little birds that look like bush warblers, but the edges of their eyes are white. That’s why they’re called white-eyes.
Quite a long time ago, one of the soldiers caught a newborn white-eye. He put it in a cage and hung the cage from a low branch on a tree.
Every day, morning, noon, and night, the mother bird brings tasty food to feed it. The baby got bigger very fast and is learning to sing like its mother.
I want all three of you to always do what your mother tells you, and, just like the little baby white-eye, grow up to be good little children.
Your soldier daddy
There were many white-eyes on the island and the soldiers found their singing comforting. The birds had no fear of humans and would come right up to them, an indication of just how peaceful a place Iwo Jima had been until then.
Egawa’s letter reminded me of some letters Kuribayashi had written to his youngest daughter, Takako. These also talked about young birds, though Kuribayashi was talking about chicks rather than white-eyes, as he was raising chickens for eggs as part of his effort to improve the food situation. On November 26, 1944, he wrote:
Tako-chan! One of Daddy’s mommy-hens hatched four chicks today. One of the soldiers on guard duty got her to sit on seven eggs about twenty days ago. Today four chicks popped out and are crying cheep-cheep-cheep. There are ten other chickens who spend all their time catching insects to eat so they’ve become very big.
And on December 23, 1944, he wrote:
Tako-chan … the four chicks are very well indeed and play every day as they follow their mother around. They’re always catching insects to eat. About three days after they were born, they started having fights.
Kuribayashi mentions these four chicks for the third time in the last letter he wrote to Takako—on January 28, 1945. Both he and Egawa must have transferred memories of their wives and children at home onto the heartwarming sight of mother birds with their young: “The four chicks that were born two months ago have become very big. Every day they are led around by their mother to find things to eat. I’m sorry to say they are wrecking the field I went to so much trouble to plant!”
Not wanting to worry their little children, neither Egawa nor Kuri-bayashi mentioned the grim state of things on the island, but looked instead for enjoyable or unusual things to write about. Other fathers probably did the same.
Censorship, which restricted the subjects that could be discussed, may have played a part, but by itself it is not an adequate explanation. Surely discovering and describing charming and beautiful things was something they needed to do to help them get through the days at the front.
In a letter to his wife, Egawa wrote:
When my unit has morning roll-call, I chant them the Imperial instructions one by one in the calm and clear morning breeze. Then I make them perform the ceremony of distant worship and greetings to the Imperial Palace.
Every evening, I assemble them for roll call with the beautiful southern sky and the palm trees in the background. After I have given them time to reflect carefully on the five clauses they swore to in the morning, as platoon commander I lead them in singing “Umi Yukaba” [“If I Go Away to Sea”]. The doctors tell me that the soldiers who are in the nearby sickroom can hear us faintly and it helps put them in a calm mood.
The forty-four-year-old Egawa was clearly performing the unfamiliar duties of a platoon leader with great diligence. Totally unlike his work as a banker, it was his first experience of military life in twenty years. It must have been tough, both physically and mentally.
The calm, clear morning breeze, the beautiful southern sky and the palms, the chorus of “Umi Yukaba” echoing faintly in the sickroom— we can see how Egawa was trying to clutch at any beauty he could find in the people or the nature around him out there on the brutal front.
There wasn’t much to delight the eye or soothe the heart. Conscious of the situation her husband was in, Mitsue sent Egawa not only photographs of the children, but frequently sent pictures they had drawn and compositions they had written. Egawa would send back his opinions on a daily basis.
Your letters were all very well written. I think I understand your drawing, Nobuko [his four-year-old second daughter]. Hiroko [his six-year-old eldest daughter], your pictures of a battledore and shuttlecock and the Japanese lantern are very well done. And I see you’ve not forgotten how to draw rabbits either.
Jun [his eight-year-old son], that steam train of yours is really something. It gave me a surprise. It’s definitely the best train you’ve ever drawn.
It was memories of his life as a father and husband back in Osaka that gave Egawa the strength he needed for life on the front. As he wrote to his wife:
When evening comes and I can relax, I always enjoy myself imagining the children, who’d be starving by this time, eating away with great energy. I imagine myself sitting opposite from Nobuko and even get the urge to speak to her.
The Japanese characters look better drawn every time you send me something written by Jun and Hiroko. I supposed I’m a besotted dad, but I feel happier somehow just holding them in my hand.
There was not much time left for Egawa to console himself by looking at his children’s pictures and handwriting. Eight days after the mail service was canceled, the Americans invaded and the brutal battle began.
Mitsue will never know when, where, or how her husband died. The battalion to which Egawa belonged was completely wiped out.
HE WAS THIRTY-SIX and she twenty-five when they got married.
Egawa had just returned to Japan from hi
s eight-year stint in America. A fan of Hani Motoko, who founded the liberal Jiyû Gakuen private school and set up the pioneering women’s magazine Fujin no Tomo (Woman’s Friend), Mitsue was working as a leader in Tomo no Kai, an organization Hani had established to improve the quality of everyday life.
They married late, according to the standards of the time. “We used to laugh about my being ‘a late goer’ and him being ‘a late receiver,’ ” recalled Mitsue fondly.
They never once argued. When I asked her what sort of man her husband was, she replied: “He was a good person. Everybody spoke well of him. He was special: clever, kind, wasted on someone like me! And he was tall and handsome, too.”
On the day Egawa left for the front, Mitsue could not bear to listen to the members of the neighborhood association cheering “banzai.” She thanked them and, slamming the door behind her, rushed back into the house and burst into tears.
Her husband no longer belonged to the family; he was a soldier working for the good of his country. She felt empty inside as she heard the footsteps of the crowd going to see him off at the station and the whistle of the train that was taking him away.
There was a notebook squeezed in between the pages of the scrap-book Mitsue had lent me. I looked inside. It contained line after line of neat writing in fountain pen. After the war, Mitsue had copied all the letters she had been sent by her husband.
“I thought I’d get the children to read them when they were a little bit older. See, the characters on the postcards are so small they’re difficult to read.”
It was true. Every square centimeter of the postcards was covered in little ideograms, and Egawa also had the kind of flowing, elegant hand that is difficult for children to read.
It turned out that there were actually two notebooks in the scrap-book, and the postcards had been faithfully copied into the second one, too. Mitsue had performed the same task twice.
Why two notebooks? I wanted to ask her, but I restrained myself. After the war, Mitsue had worked her fingers to the bone while also looking after her three children, an aging father-in-law, and a handicapped brother-in-law.
In my mind’s eye I could picture her concentrating on copying her husband’s letters long after the rest of the family had gone to bed. Meditating on the words her husband left behind and storing them in her heart must have somehow made the days easier to bear.
I am a commonplace, difficult husband, but as a wife you have really helped and supported me. As for the children, you are a good and diligent mother, and at this late stage I cannot properly express the gratitude I owe you.
He thanks his wife formally like this and then continues:
There were many occasions when I should have expressed my gratitude to you—I had the means to do so after all—but I thought that the feeling of gratitude within me was enough by itself, so I did not make the effort to say “Thank you.” It is something I regret deeply. Do not think badly of me. I hope you will forgive me.
When he left for the front, Egawa told Mitsue he was sure he’d “make it back alive,” but it is clear that he meant this letter to be his final message.
Fully aware that he was going to die, he ends his letter with the words: “Fight the good fight!” And Mitsue proved herself worthy of the trust her husband had placed in her. For sixty years after the war ended, she lived on, “fighting the good fight,” just like all the other women who lost their husbands in that war.
A FEW DAYS AFTER meeting Egawa Mitsue, I came across the final message of a young soldier who had been on Iwo Jima; it had been published in the bulletin of the Association of Iwo Jima.
Egawa and Kuribayashi both wrote letters that were implicit “final messages” to their families, but this one actually bore the title “Final Message” at the head of the page. Written on unlined white paper, the characters neatly aligned and the brushwork perfect, it looked the way one feels a final message ought to look. I felt myself drawn to it—the stylized characters like those in a calligraphy textbook, and the youthful determination it exuded, so different from anything Kuribayashi or Egawa wrote.
The Association of Iwo Jima receives numerous inquiries about the personal effects of dead Japanese soldiers that American soldiers took back home with them from Iwo Jima. These might be army-issued notebooks, diaries, Rising Sun flags with good-luck messages written on them, or family photographs. Many such personal effects have been returned to the families of the dead.
This final message appeared in March 2004 in the “Does Anybody Know Anything About This?” section of the association’s bulletin. A photocopy of the final message had been sent to the association in September of the year before.
Final Message
As one who was given life in order to serve the emperor, I was always ready for my corpse to lie in the field of battle. It is my long-cherished desire as a soldier.
I go to my death happily and with a feeling of calm. But the shame of being unable to perform my duty satisfactorily is unendurable.
My honorable father and mother, for more than twenty years I have caused you great bother; under your warm guardianship you raised me to be a fine man over five shaku in height, and it is truly inexcusable that I am unable now to do anything for you in return. All I can do is express my warmest thanks.
The young man goes on to say that he wants his 200 yen’s worth of savings to be spent “for the country,” tells them how his personal effects should be dealt with, sends his regards to his relatives and neighbors, and prays that his native village will thrive. He writes about how things were when he left for the front, which suggests that he did not compose the message in advance, but after getting to Iwo Jima.
In conclusion, I would like to wish good health and long life to you, Father and Mother, and to my big brothers and sisters Torao, Kei, Eizô, Tadashi, Otaka, Suehara, and to Tatsumi, Fumiko, and Tatsuko. Father and Mother, you are old now, so please take care of yourselves.
My only regret is that I was never able to see the splendid new house that you both worked so hard to build, Father and Mother. I am sorry about that. For the rest, I have no regrets.
What was the young soldier thinking as he wrote the names of all the members of his family? The first half of his final message is typically soldierly and stiff, but the part that follows the names of his six older and three younger siblings shows some of the uncertainty one would expect from a young man in his twenties.
By the time the soldier wrote this message there were probably no more planes to deliver it to his family. Did he have his final message on him as he fought in the battle? Even after his body rotted away, his final message did not molder away into the earth of Iwo Jima but reaches out across six decades.
No relative has stepped forward to claim it. Still undelivered, his final message ends like this:
There is more that I would like to write, but I am so overwhelmed by emotion that I cannot remember what it was.
Best Wishes.
Tatsuo
To my father and mother
CHAPTER NINE
THE BATTLE
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THE AMERICANS GAVE MOUNT SURIBACHI THE CODE NAME “HOT Rocks.” Suribachi was a dormant volcano that only spat out the odd lick of steam here and there; nonetheless, quite a few marines were worried that the tremendous bombardment they were subjecting it to could reawaken it and provoke a volcanic eruption.
It was 10:31 a.m. on D-day plus four (February 23) that the Stars and Stripes first flew from the summit of Hot Rocks. The flag was a little on the small side—just 70 centimeters high by 135 centimeters wide—but the island was small enough that nearly all the marines there could see it. In their joy at having captured the mountain that symbolized the island, some cheered, some wept, and others waved their helmets in the air and whistled. The ships out at sea all sounded their horns together.
The wild enthusiasm of the American forces was in proportion to the massive damage they had suffered in the days between the landing and tha
t moment. After D-day, which produced more casualties than they had expected, they had occupied Chidori Airfield and then divided the jobs of taking Mount Suribachi and the main Japanese defensive position northeast of the island. The Japanese continued to offer stiff resistance and the Americans were able to advance only from 50 to 500 meters a day. Many of the frontline officers were killed in action, and it was only on D-day plus three that the Americans were finally able to concentrate on taking Mount Suribachi, though it had seemed to be right there in front of them on the beach where they had landed.
The photograph of the six soldiers raising the flag that was featured on the front pages of newspapers and went on to be turned into a stamp and a bronze statue was not taken at this time, because the flag was actually raised on the summit of Suribachi on two separate occasions.
Immediately after the first flag had been raised, someone wanted to save it for a souvenir. That someone was Lieutenant Colonel Chandler W. Johnson, commanding officer of the Fifth Division, 28th Regiment, Second Battalion, to which the marines who went up the summit of Suribachi belonged. As they were about to start their ascent, Johnson handed one of them a flag he had brought ashore, “If you get to the top, put it up.” He was thus the originator of the whole episode.
Johnson wanted to keep the first historic flag safe and raise a substitute in its place. And anyway, wouldn’t a bigger flag be better? He therefore tracked down a second flag and had that taken up to the summit. The new flag measured 140 centimeters by 245 centimeters.
In this way, the first flag was taken down and a second flag was hoisted in its place. The celebrated photograph by Joe Rosenthal, an AP photographer, captured this second flag raising. His photograph not only reached Guam faster than the pictures of the first flag raising taken by the marine press corps, but had such magnificent composition and lighting that it ended up being featured in hundreds of newspapers.
So Sad to Fall in Battle Page 15
