So Sad to Fall in Battle by Kumiko Kakehashi

If, like me, you found Clint Eastwood’s movie Letters From Iwo Jima and its companion film, Flags of Our Father, shoddy work, you can turn to So Sad to Fall in Battle, by Japanese freelance writer Kumiko Kakehashi, for a more nuanced look at this remarkable story.

A best-seller when it appeared in Japan, So Sad to Fall in Battle covers the same material as Eastwood’s movie — indeed, actor Ken Watanabe is said to have referred to it in creating his portrayal of Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi.

Iwo Jima was the bloodiest, most arduous contest, according to Kakehashi, in the history of the U.S. Marines. American commanders, with overwhelming superiority in firepower and manpower by that point in the war, expected to take the island in five days. Instead, the Japanese force of about 20,000 men — mostly conscripted farmers, shopkeepers and students — held out for more than a month, inflicting horrific casualties on the American troops.

The architect of this stunning military achievement was a maverick Japanese general mistrusted by his own commanders for “pro-American” sentiments.

The Japanese military culture of the time followed the German model, and most young officers, when studying overseas, went to Germany. Kuribayashi, however, fluent in English, spent five years in the United States and Canada. He admired Americans, and spent his free time exploring the country, sending letters and drawings to his wife and children.

When Japan, led by a corrupt military elite, attacked Pearl Harbor, Kuribayashi made no secret of his certainty this was a fatal mistake. He had seen for himself the American industrial capacity, and he knew Japan could not, in the long run, stand against it.

Yet Kuribayashi was loyal to his country if not its leaders, and he feared for the safety of his family, and by extension, all families on the Japanese homeland. If the American advance could not be stopped, he believed it was possible to kill so many U.S. soldiers that civilian support for an invasion of Japan would be blunted.

An original strategist, Kuribayashi discarded conventional Japanese war doctrine, which dictated defense against seaborne invasion take place on the beach, where soldiers coming ashore would be most vulnerable. But Kuribayashi, with no support against American air power or the heavy guns aboard warships, elected to prepare for battle in the island’s interior.

He spent eight months directing his men to dig a massive series of tunnels, as much as 30 meters deep. It was here they survived the massive barrage of bombs — 6,800 tons all told — that rained down on the island and destroyed all plant and animal life. It was from these tunnels that his men made punishing counterattacks against American troops.

Kuribayashi knew how to motivate his men. Turning aside the traditional Japanese warrior code, he did not allow his men to make all-out “banzai” attacks, and he ordered them not to take their own lives to preserve honor in defeat. He prodded his men to remain alive and effective as long as possible.

The brilliance of Kuribayashi’s tactics earned the respect and praise of his American counterpart, Lt. Gen. Holland M. Smith, Marine commander of the assault on Iwo Jima, who said, “Of all our adversaries in the Pacific, Kuribayashi was the most redoubtable.”

Kuribayashi, who could have directed the battle from the safety of a nearby island, instead shared all the hardships he demanded of his men and he died in combat near the end of the battle. His body was never identified.

Writing in a simple, direct style, Kakehashi succeeds where Eastwood falters. She talked to Kuribayashi’s children and surviving comrades and even interviewed Americans who fought in the battle. This thoroughness lends Kuribayashi, his friends and foes, credible texture. The courage and sacrifice on each side are illuminated in equal measure. When Kakehashi writes of a joint Japanese-American reunion in 1985, bringing together veterans from both sides, the humanity and the emotion she evokes are unforced and genuine.

Ironically, Kuribayashi’s spectacularly successful defense of Iwo Jima had the opposite effect he intended. The high American death toll did dampen civilian enthusiasm for further casualties, but instead of strengthening Japan’s negotiating position, this led directly to the deployment of the atom bomb against Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The book’s title is taken from the jisei, or traditional “death poem,” that Kuribayashi composed on the eve of the battle. It reads in part, “Unable to complete this heavy task for our country/ Arrows and bullets all spent, so sad we fall.” A maverick to the end, Kuribayashi parted from tradition by acknowledging the sadness of soldiers, no matter how devoted to duty, when they know they are doomed.

“Kuribayashi was a warrior who respected the realities, if not the aesthetic conventions of war,” writes Kakehashi, “and the extreme campaign that he waged on Iwo Jima and the manner in which he chose to die showed just how empty the values professed by the Japanese military establishment were.”