This is part of a series of articles in a special magazine on Iwo Jima from World War II magazine. All the articles and photos are interesting, but the story that took my attention the most was the one about the commander of the Japanese forces, General Tadamichi Kuribayashi.
It's an excellent article. Some of the most interesting things I found are as follows:
He was reluctant to make war on the United States. That reluctance slowed his rise through the Japanese military ranks. He had spent five years in the US and had seen its economic potential. In his writing he noted that those planning the war in Japan did not know (or refused to acknowledge) this incredible potential of the US to convert its vast peacetime industrial base to a wartime military base.
Yamamoto was another famous Japanese military leader who felt the same way. There was no way at all that Japan could keep up with military production of the US. The longer the war went on, the further behind Japan fell.
Kuribayashi knew that his assignment to Iwo Jima was strictly a one-way trip. There was no way they could defeat the Americans, he knew. They could only make the Americans pay a heavy price in blood for the island, and perhaps give Japan more time to develop its defenses.
As far as his own military planning went, he basically threw the book out the window. He tried to outlaw the infamous Banzai charges, where troops that would left would charge the American lines in a great drive (even including wounded soldiers and ones without weapons), only to be mowed down in masses by the US troops.
He also set up a vast system of underground caves and tunnels (more than 11 miles worth), and did away with the “meet them at the beaches” approach used so often before.
An very interesting personal note was that he refused to use the “comfort women.” He abhorred the abuse of civilians in wartime.
He had around 21,000 men under his command. They had a major shortage of food and especially fresh water. The men were also going to fight to the last; no surrendering.
Kuribayashi and around forty of the men that were left made some kind of counter-offensive, but it seems that they all were killed. No one knows exactly how the general was killed or where he was killed. His body was never identified.
If you have any interest at all in the man, you should read the book So Sad to Fall in Battle. It's excellent.
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