REAL HISTORY: ‘Don’t make plans for my return,’ General Tadamichi Kuribayashi wrote to his wife, Yoshii.

This seasoned military officer was well aware that his posting on Iwo Jima was little short of a death sentence.

On May 27, 1944, he was appointed commander of the 109th Army Division in the Bonin Islands. Two weeks later, Prime Minister Hideki Tojo ordered him to defend Iwo Jima.

Japan’s Rorke’s Drift

He carried the harsh policy of ‘protracted resistance’ to its highest degree of professional skill, leading 21,000 men, soldiers, sailors, and officers, against more than 70,000 Americans supported by sea and air.

Aware of American power, its industrial and logistical superiority, immense naval artillery firepower, and air superiority, Kuribayashi adapted his defensive tactics to the terrain and the enemy.

The Concealed Army

Kuribayashi transformed the 21 square kilometers of black rock into a vast network of tunnels, trenches, niches, and nearly impregnable concrete bunkers.

His plan was relatively simple and remarkably efficient.

On Mount Suribachi and throughout the island fortress, 21,000 Japanese soldiers would remain stationed, providing constant support from one position to another, and fire all their ammunition until they were killed.

Banzai Charges Forbidden

He completely forbade banzai charges, which he considered a waste of lives and ammunition, though not seppuku, or honorable suicide, when the men, condemned to a survival more akin to cockroaches, ran out of food and ammunition.

WITNESS TO HISTORY. MIKE WALSH. If a book is worth banning, it is worth buying. Click the picture for details.

Incinerated and Entombed

Only with flamethrowers and by sealing the bunkers with explosives were the Americans able to subdue that fanatical resistance when air attacks and naval artillery failed.

In the aforementioned battle for that small piece of land, barely 21 km², the Americans would suffer more than 25,000 casualties: 7,000 dead and 18,000 wounded. Of the 21,000 men under Kuribayashi’s command, only about 216 were taken prisoner. Salute your foes.

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