So Sad to Fall in Battle

by Kumiko Kakehashi

  I was right. It was totally different.

  Sadaoka looked the picture of robust health, but he was, after all, eighty-five years old. It wouldn’t be strange if his memory had played a trick on him. But when I remembered the resonant voice in which he had intoned the dispatch, I changed my mind: it wasn’t possible. After all, how could he possibly make a mistake about the last words of “his lordship”?

  I had a sudden thought, and started looking for a book I was sure the library would have. It was the Senshisôsho, a series on the history of the war compiled by the Military History Department of the National Institute for Defense Studies in the postwar years. Regarded as the most detailed and objective record of the war, it is the so-called official published history. If the correct text of Kuribayashi’s farewell message was anywhere, it would be there.

  And sure enough, there it was, on page 410 in volume thirteen of the sixty-eight volumes on the army: ChûbuTaiheyô Rikugun Sakusen 2 Periryû• Angauru• Iô-Jima (“Mid-Pacific Army Operations 2: Peleliu, Angaur, Iwo Jima” ): “The battle is entering its final chapter. Since the enemy’s landing, the gallant fighting of the men under my command has been such that even the gods would weep….”

  Sadaoka had not been wrong. What he had recited from memory that day had been almost perfectly correct. I then checked all the books written about Iwo Jima. Many of them quoted Kuribayashi’s farewell telegram, but in every case the text they used was the same as in the official published history. Perhaps Sadaoka had gotten his version from one of the books.

  That had to mean that the text published in the newspapers had been altered.

  But surely Kuribayashi, who had held Iwo Jima for over a month in the face of a ferocious American assault, was highly regarded by the military leadership? On the night of March 21, the prime minister, Ku-niaki Koiso, made a speech on the radio about the last stand on Iwo Jima in which he praised Kuribayashi and the defense garrison for their “heroic resistance,” which was the “culmination of the Japanese spirit.”

  Kuribayashi was also popular among the ordinary people. While few may know his name now, on countless occasions when I’ve asked people from the generation that lived through that time what they know about Iwo Jima, they instantly reply, “the great general Kuribayashi.”

  So why then should there be any need to change the last words of such a famous man? Let’s compare both versions. First of all, here is Kuribayashi’s original message.

  The battle is entering its final chapter. Since the enemy’s landing, the gallant fighting of the men under my command has been such that even the gods would weep. In particular, I humbly rejoice in the fact that they have continued to fight bravely though utterly empty-handed and ill-equipped against a land, sea, and air attack of a material superiority such as surpasses the imagination.

  One after another they are falling in the ceaseless and ferocious attacks of the enemy. For this reason, the situation has arisen whereby I must disappoint your expectations and yield this important place to the hands of the enemy. With humility and sincerity, I offer my repeated apologies.

  Our ammunition is gone and our water dried up. Now is the time for us all to make the final counterattack and fight gallantly, conscious of the Emperor’s favor, not begrudging our efforts though they turn our bones to powder and pulverize our bodies.

  I believe that until this island is recaptured, the Emperor’s domain will be eternally insecure. I therefore swear that even when I have become a ghost I shall look forward to turning the defeat of the Imperial Army into victory.

  I stand now at the beginning of the end. At the same time as revealing my inmost feelings, I pray earnestly for the unfailing victory and the security of the Empire. Farewell for all eternity.

  I then looked at the text as published in the newspaper.

  The battle is entering its final chapter. At midnight on the seventeenth, I will stand at the head of my men, and, praying for the certain victory and the security of the Imperial fatherland, all of us will resolutely carry out a heroic all-out attack.

  I humbly rejoice in the fact that they have continued to fight bravely, since the enemy’s landing, against the enemy’s land, sea, and air attack of a material superiority such as surpasses the imagination, and the gallant fighting of the men under my command has been such that even the gods would weep.

  One after another the officers and men are falling in the ceaseless and ferocious attacks of the enemy. For this reason, the situation has arisen whereby I must disappoint your expectations, and am forced to yield this important place to the hands of the enemy. With humility and sincerity, I offer my repeated apologies.

  I believe that until this island is recaptured, the Emperor’s domain will be eternally insecure. I therefore swear that even when I have become a ghost I shall look forward to turning the defeat of the Imperial Army into victory. Our ammunition is gone and our water dried up. Now is the time for all the survivors to make the final counterattack and fight gallantly, conscious of the Emperor’s graciousness, not begrudging our efforts though they turn our bones to powder and pulverize our bodies.

  At this point I together with all my officers and men reverently chanting banzais for the Emperor’s long life bid you farewell for all eternity. [Emphasis added.]

  So how do the two versions differ?

  In Kuribayashi’s original text, the first thing he talks about is the bravery of his men. By contrast, the altered text that was published in the newspapers emphasizes “the certain victory and the security of the Imperial fatherland,” rather than the soldiers themselves. Equally, the words “heroic all-out attack”—a commonly used expression at the time that served as a stock euphemism to beautify final suicide charges—do not appear in Kuribayashi’s message.

  There are no major changes in the fifth paragraph of the text, except for the insertion of one phrase that does not appear in Kuribayashi’s original: “I together with all my officers and men reverently chanting banzais for the Emperor’s long life.”

  There is one section, however, that has been cut from the newspaper in its entirety: the part about being “utterly empty-handed and ill-equipped.”

  The agony and the frustration of soldiers who had to keep on fighting when they had no weapons and their supplies had been cut off— that is probably what Kuribayashi wanted to get across most desperately. And it is this part that has been excised.

  Talking about being “empty-handed and ill-equipped” is tantamount to whining. A proper soldier never complains, no matter how hard things get, but sticks it out, keeps on fighting, and goes to his death in silence. The accepted “common sense” of the time comes through in this change.

  Kuribayashi’s own text does include some of the stock phrases used by military men of the time—for example, “conscious of the Emperor’s favor, not begrudging our efforts though they turn our bones to powder and pulverize our bodies,” and “turning the defeat of the Imperial Army into victory”—so in terms of style it conformed to the formal conventions of a commander in chief ’s farewell telegram. But at the same time it conjures up a vivid image of the doomed and dying soldiers having to face an overwhelmingly more powerful enemy “empty-handed and ill-equipped,” with their “ammunition gone” and their “water dried up.” What permeates the whole message is the raw grief of the commander summarized neatly in the phrase “such that even the gods would weep.”

  It was this, I suspect, that alarmed the upper echelons of the military establishment.

  Farewell telegrams were always sent to the Imperial General Headquarters, but they were also published in the newspapers to be read by the general public. Kuribayashi must have been aware of that. He was making an effort to communicate the heroism of his men not just to the Imperial General Headquarters, but more widely to the man in the street. High-ranking army officials, however, decided that publishing the text in the newspapers in its original form might give offense.

  Right next to the article on the defeat at I
wo Jima, on the front page of that day’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper, is an article about the proposal of a special military measures bill in the legislature (National Diet). The bill gave the government the legal power to expropriate land and buildings, force individuals to perform certain necessary duties, and get unconditional cooperation from corporations in the event of a final battle against the Americans on the Japanese mainland.

  At a time when Prime Minister Koiso was making speeches about “the only choice we have” being “between victory and death” and urging “one hundred million fellow countrymen … to fight together with the army, should the enemy come, and exterminate them completely,” it was hardly surprising that Kuribayashi’s message was deemed likely to undermine the morale of the people.

  Kuribayashi, who had thought about becoming a journalist in his youth, wrote a letter to his wife on January 21, 1945, from Iwo Jima saying: “It’s best that you say as little as you can to newspaper journalists or anyone else like that. You must be especially careful if they ask you to show them any letters. If you’re thoughtless and end up showing them anything, it’s guaranteed it will be in the paper in no time.” Clearly, he was conscious of how he would be treated by the newspapers and other media. The last letter he wrote to his elder brother, Yoshima, on January 12, 1945, includes the following passage.

  Perhaps I’m just worrying needlessly, but there is a general tendency for newspapers and magazines to cook up articles that have no basis in truth about how notable people got where they are in life. As an example, take the story that as a boy General Ugaki put himself through school by selling daikon radishes or delivering newspapers. It’s simply not the truth. These are just stories that journalists have cobbled together by distorting and exaggerating things irresponsibly.

  As a boy, I was raised in the house where I was born. I then went to Nagano Middle School, progressed smoothly through the Military Academy and the Army War College, and got where I am today with help from my seniors and other people. I sincerely hope I have done nothing that could embarrass me after my death.

  Despite the atmosphere in Japan in those days, Kuribayashi was able to take a cool, detached look at the way he would be placed on a pedestal after his death as “a commander in chief who had died with honor.” He knew perfectly well that the text of his farewell telegram would be published in the newspapers—and that was why he wrote what he did.

  He added a jisei—a death poem in three stanzas—to the end of the farewell telegram.

  Unable to complete this heavy task for our country

  Arrows and bullets all spent, so sad we fall.

  But unless I smite the enemy,

  My body cannot rot in the field.

  Yea, I shall be born again seven times

  And grasp the sword in my hand.

  When ugly weeds cover this island,

  My sole thought shall be the Imperial Land.

  In their death poems, soldiers of the Imperial Army were traditionally expected to write about love of country and devotion to the emperor. In Kuribayashi’s poem, for example, the idea in lines 5–6—“Yea, I shall be born again seven times / And grasp the sword in my hand”— is derived from “Shichishôhôkoku,” a stock phrase of the time that means “to be reborn seven times to serve one’s country.” The case can be made that Kuribayashi’s poem contains all the proper clichés that a death poem composed by the commander of a defeated army should.

  But here, too, there is something different. Something we must not overlook.

  “So sad we fall”—the end of the first line in the Japanese poem—is changed in the newspaper version to “mortified, we fall.”

  Kuribayashi wrote that soldiers were “sad” to die for their country. Undoubtedly, he was giving honest expression to his most acute feelings, but that was not acceptable in the middle of a war on which the fate of the nation was riding.

  The next day, I went to visit Kuribayashi’s family and got them to show me the real thing.

  Kuribayashi’s farewell telegram had been sent to the Imperial General Headquarters, but after his death, Colonel Tanemura Sakô of the Army General Staff, who headed the Twentieth Army Corps, visited Kuribayashi’s home and presented the telegram to his wife, Yoshii, with the words: “Regard this telegram as the sacred bones of your dead husband.” From the general all the way down to the common soldier, Iwo Jima was a battleground from which the bones of none of the dead made it home.

  The message was three pages long and was written in the hand of the telegraph operator who had received it. The three stanzas of the death poem were on the final page.

  There was a red mark in the shape of two concentric circles at the head of the very first line—the line that had been altered. Then the word “sad” had been blocked out with a thick black line, and the word “mortified” had been written in its place. Both the black of the crossing out and the red of the circles looked fresh, bright, and new.

  In this telegram there was no sign that the body of the text had been tampered with. The main text was probably “reworked” when it was published in the newspaper. The detail that caught the attention of the Imperial General Headquarters and that they felt they could not leave unchanged was the word “sad” in the death poem.

  Sadaoka had told me that Kuribayashi’s farewell message was “like a sutra” for him. At the time, I had interpreted it to mean that he chanted the text whenever he thought of Kuribayashi in order to soothe his ghost. But when I compared the original version with the doctored version that appeared in the newspaper, the farewell message that I had originally thought of as having a quintessentially soldierly beauty revealed a whole new side of Kuribayashi to me.

  This telegram was an ode for the repose of the souls of the soldiers who had already died or were about to die. Sadaoka had been frustrated in his attempt to die at Kuribayashi’s side, but when he chanted the text he was performing an act of mourning for Kuribayashi’s twenty thousand men in the commander in chief ’s place.

  That was what Sadaoka had meant by the word “sutra.”

  AT THAT TIME I did not yet understand. I did not yet realize how much of a taboo it was for a Japanese commander to describe his soldiers as “sad” to go to their deaths. Kuribayashi was one of the officer elite. What did he experience on the battleground of Iwo Jima that drove him to write not only a poem, but a subtle protest against the military command that so casually sent men out to die?

  CHAPTER ONE

  LEAVING FOR THE FRONT

  —

  LIEUTENANT GENERAL KURIBAYASHI TADAMICHI SET OFF FOR TWO Jima on June 8, 1944. His family was not informed of his destination. Whether you were a career soldier like Kuribayashi or just a conscript, in those days your family never knew to which theater of war you had been sent.

  “This time maybe even my dead bones won’t be sent back home,” Kuribayashi told Yoshii, his wife. But he looked so relaxed that she did not take his remark seriously.

  The final meal served at home that morning was herring wrapped in seaweed, and rice steamed with red beans. Yoshii had not boiled the red rice to celebrate her husband’s departure for the front; she made it simply because it was one of his favorite dishes.

  The Kuribayashis were a family of five. In addition to Tadamichi himself, there was his forty-year-old wife, Yoshii; Tarô, the eldest of the children and a young man of nineteen; a fifteen-year-old girl called Yôko; and finally another daughter, Takako, who, at nine, was the baby of the family. They lived in Tokyo, in a detached house not far from Hi-gashi Matsubara on the Teito Line (now the Keiô Inokashira Line) to which they had moved less than two months earlier.

  In September 1941, Kuribayashi had been appointed chief of staff of the South China Expeditionary Force (Twenty-third Army) in Canton and took part in the capture of Hong Kong in December of that year. In June 1943, he was made commander of the Second Imperial Guards Home Division, which was in charge of the defense of the capital, Tokyo. But he resigned this post in April 1944 to t
ake responsibility for a subordinate who had accidentally started a fire, and was attached to the Eastern Army Headquarters. Obliged to leave the grand mansion he had lived in as division commander, he ended up renting the house in Higashi Matsubara.

  Kuribayashi’s de facto sinecure at the Eastern Army Headquarters did not last long. On May 27, he was given the command of the 109th Division. With a range of battlefield skills, the 109th was a large-scale force capable of carrying out independent operations.

  The 109th had been created largely from units already in place on Chichi Jima in an effort to strengthen the defenses of the Ogasawara Islands. After his appointment as division commander, Kuribayashi had no time to relax in his new house but instead headed straight for Iwo Jima to take up his post.

  His wife, Yoshii, and Takako saw him off.

  Kuribayashi was shaving out on the veranda when Tarô left for school that morning. The farewell between father and son was low-key: “I’m off to school!” “All right, then.”

  Nine-year-old Takako was the one who worried Kuribayashi by bursting into tears. She was a student at Matsubara Elementary School, but it just so happened that, with school finishing early that day because of a parents’ association meeting, she was back home in time to see her father off. Still, no one had the heart to scold the normally sensible and obedient girl for her moodiness.

  The car came to the gate of the house to collect Kuribayashi in the early afternoon. Takako, who had no way of knowing that her father was setting off into the jaws of death, kept crying long after he had gone.

  She sat down in the hall and wept for hours. The place was full of memories of her father. A stickler for punctuality, Kuriba-yashi would be ready to leave the house early every morning. He was in the habit of waiting in the hall for the adjutant who came to pick him up by car. During this short wait, he would ask his youngest daughter, herself about to head out to school, to dance for him. Takako, who was later to make her debut as a starlet of the Daiei film studio, would use the hallway step as a stage and delight her father by singing “Ame-furi O-Tsuki-san” (“The Moon in the Rain”) while mimicking traditional Japanese dance motions.