Iwo Jima Letters: Silent Voices Carried Through Time

Kumiko Kakehashi's So Sad To Fall In Battle: An Account of War Based on General Tadamichi Kuribayashi's Letters from Iwo Jima is a masterpiece. I find this book challenging, as it reveals the depth of my own ignorance.

This is the story of Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi. Five months before Japan's surrender on August 15, Kuribayashi led a fierce battle against overwhelming American forces on the isolated island of Iwo Jima. He ultimately died in combat.

Kakehashi's book reveals that Japan's Imperial General Headquarters (IGHQ) altered his famed death poem. "Unable to complete this heavy task for our country, arrows and bullets all spent, so sad we fall" was the original first line in the poem. However, the IGHQ changed "so sad we fall" to "so bitterly we fall."

Along with this historical fact, Kakehashi presents 41 letters that Lieutenant General Kuribayashi sent to his family from Iwo Jima.

I also read Kuribayashi's letters and telegrams from Iwo Jima in 1995. This was a decade before the publication of Kakehashi's book.

A Father's Lessons

At that time, Kuribayashi's wife, Yoshii, was living in Akishima City, Tokyo, with their eldest son, Taro, an architect. I was then conducting interviews for the series "Voices Without a Voice: The 50 Years of War Dead's Families."

Despite the chaos during and after the war, the family managed to preserve the letters from Iwo Jima carefully. However, I focused not on their content but on how the family read them.

"Have you ever seriously considered developing your willpower? I doubt you have. In the future, establishing a family as a man will be challenging, and you may end up failing in life ..."

Lieutenant General Kuribayashi had addressed this letter to Taro, who had turned 20 in November 1944. He drew red lines next to "developing willpower" and "challenging future," hoping Taro would remember his father's teachings.

The Unspoken

There was also a letter addressed to Yoshii, with parts of the text blacked out. Yoshii had personally obscured these sections, which included lines such as "My remains will likely never return..."

The post-war life of the Kuribayashi family, once venerated as the "House of the War God," underwent a dramatic change. In her forties at the time, Yoshii was left with Taro, a university preparatory student, and their ten-year-old daughter Takako. Both Yoshii and Taro spoke little about their post-war hardships during the interviews. However, the silent voices of Kuribayashi's wife and children can be heard clearly through his letters.

CAPTION: A letter from Lieutenant General Kuribayashi to his wife, Yoshii, sent from Iwo Jima in January 1945. Their eldest son, Taro, rewrote the text that Yoshii blacked out. (©Sankei by Kinya Fujimoto).

*A letter from Lieutenant General Kuribayashi to his wife, Yoshii, sent from Iwo Jima in January 1945. Their eldest son, Taro, rewrote the text that Yoshii blacked out. (©Sankei by Kinya Fujimoto).*

I also had the honor of interviewing Takako decades ago. Back then, she was the head of a kindergarten in Kawaguchi City, Saitama Prefecture.

"Relatives of the soldiers who died on Iwo Jima came to our house on several occasions asking for money," she revealed.

Takako related this story in an interview at the kindergarten. I remember seeing posters of her eldest son, who served as a city councilor, on nearby streets.

The Sorrow of War

In July, I met with politician Yoshitaka Shindo (66) in his ministerial office, which overlooks the National Diet Building. Shindo is Takako's son and Lieutenant General Kuribayashi's grandson.

Some 30 years after my interview with his mother, he has become a member of the National Diet. As minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry, Yoshitaka Shindo is shouldering a significant responsibility.

"My mother was very strict, always telling me to reflect on how I should conduct myself," he said. "Our relatives often say that she's the one who most inherited Tadamichi Kuribayashi's personality."

Reflecting on his grandmother Yoshii, Shindo remembers her as "elegant and never angry. In fact, I can't recall ever seeing her laugh genuinely, either."

"We can never truly heal the sorrow of war," Shindo opined. "It is our responsibility to ensure that our country never experiences such devastation again."

*37 mm gun fires against cave positions of Japanese troops on Iwo Jima (public domain, via Wikimedia)*

Historical Testimony

I recently visited the Kuribayashi family for the first time in about 30 years. Yoshii passed away at the age of 99 in 2003, and Takako followed the next year. Kuribayashi's eldest son Taro passed away the year after that.

This time, I revisited Taro's eldest daughter, Yoshie (65), to review the letters from Iwo Jima once more. She kept them in a plastic file along with paraffin paper to protect against moisture. Although the paper has deteriorated, the text remains readable. Yoshie, also a granddaughter of Lieutenant General Kuribayashi, faces the challenge of preserving these historically valuable documents.

In July, I spoke with Kakehashi, who published her new book War Museum: Connecting the Circuits of Memory.

"As long as the family wishes to keep the letters, they should be allowed to," she commented. "However, there comes a point when these personal items become 'historical testimony.'" She worries where the family should entrust the Iwo Jima letters at that juncture. "There is no museum in Japan that provides a complete overview of the war," she explained.

So sad to fall in battle —. We are approaching the 80th anniversary of the end of the war next year. This summer, I felt that once again, I could hear the "silent voices" from Iwo Jima.