Tadamichi
KURIBAYASHI, the General-Poet who defended the Isle of Iwo Jima, born in 1891.
Destined from the father to the career of arms, doing quickly the hierarchic
scale till to be appointed, even if very young, general.
Kuribayashi,
General Tadamichi (1891-1945):
31-33:
Military Attaché to Ottawa
36-37:
Commanding Officer ? Cavalry Regiment
37: Chief ? Section Military Administration Bureau Ministry of War
40: Commanding Officer 2nd Cavalry Brigade
40-41:
Commanding Officer 1st Cavalry Brigade
41-43:
Chief of Staff 23rd Army, China
43-44:
General Officer Commanding 2nd Imperial Guards Depot Division
44-45:
General Officer Commanding 106th Division, Bonin Islands
45: Death, Iwo Jima
At the beginning of 1945, he became
lieutenant-general. He was 53 years old. He was considered a very good senior
officer.
He
was married and father of two sons: Taro e Yoko.
Kuribayashi
was tall for a Japanese: he was 1,75 m. and his weight was 90 kg.
During
his thirty years in the army, he has done his service in almost all the world.
Captain
in 28, when thirty seven he has been sent to Washington as substitute of the
military attaché and for 2 years he visited the United States of America.
In
1930 re-entered in his homeland to pass a short period with his wife Yoshii; the
in 1931, he had been designed to Ottawa as military attaché having the
possibility to visit a second tile the United States. The 10 June 1944 he left
Tokyo to Iwo Jima, without to take with him the sword belonging to his family
from many generations, nor the sabre handed over to him by the Emperor in 23
only just graduated from the school Major Staff, classified second in his
course.
His
name passed to the history principally to has been the tenacious and intelligent
defender of Iwo Jima in his long and sanguinary battle.
Man
with open-mindedness
and brilliant strategist,
he had been one of the few Japanese officers that established to abandon the
tactic of the suicide assaults chosen as method to throw again in the sea the
enemy only just disembarked, finishing always in dreadful
massacres, preferring to turn to method very similar to those used by the
Vietcong during the war against Vietnam.
He
overturned the schemes of the Major Staff, and used his soldiers, meticulously,
to defend every nook of the isle till the death, building an inextricable net of
caverns, bunkers, positions, entrenched fields.
He
renounced to fortify the beaches and to face the enemy only just having set foot
on the filed: his objective was to wear down adversary forces and to lengthen
the longest possible the resistance of the Isle, that would anyway fallen and
could never receive helps from the motherland.
The
goodness of his choice is proofed by the long resistance of the Isle to him
entrusted and by the very high number of losses he could inflict to the
Americans.
During
the days of the battle, from the 19 February to the 27 March '45,Kuribayashi
was near his soldiers, inciting them and supporting them.
He
had always taken pleasure in the Poetry. The 23 March '45, he transmitted his
last message: “To
all the soldiers and to the officers goodbye”.
Three
days later the Lieutenant John W. MacLean of the 28° Regiment, that was able to
talk Japanese, using loudspeakers invited Kuribayashi and his soldiers to
surrender.
Approximately
in that moment, the Japanese radio was transmitting the song of the defence of
Iwo Jima: it was a special transmission from the Radio of Tokyo for the garrison
of the isle and ended with the prayer of the victory recited by the children of
the native town of Kuribayashi.
His
corpse was never found, whe don’t know if has made hara-kiri or was been torn
by a bomb.
In
one of his last letters he wrote to his wife:
“I
regret to end my life here, but I want to defend this isle as longest as
possible. Ah! You
have been for me a good wife for long and a good mother too to my children. Your
life will become harder and more precarious. Take care of yourself and live
long, the future of our children will not be easy ..”
The
general of the Marines Smith will write later that: "The battle of Iwo Jima
has been the most rude and sanguinary in all the history of the Marines
Corp". Iwo Jima killed 28.649 American Marines, two thousand per square
kilometre.
For
it and on it, has found the death nearly 30.000 men, in one of the most rapid
and monstrous slaughter of all the second world war".
Famous
became the photography made by a marine remained unknown, when was hoisted theAmerican flag on the mount Suribachi. Will give the origin to a second
photo, called: "second flag-rising on the mount Suribachi", for the
wear and tear of the Photographer of the Associated Press, Louis Lowery, then
Pulitzer Prize for the best photography of the war of 1945.
About
the Flag-rise
{bmcThe
first flag used was too small. The first flag, measuring 54x28 inches, was
obtained from attack transport USS Missoula (APA-211), and raised on a 20-foot
section of pipe at 10:20 a.m. Several hours later, an 8-foot-long battle ensign,
obtained from tank landing ship LST-779, was raised, resulting in Associated
Press photographer Joe Rosenthal's famous photograph of the flag raising. This
photograph inspired the bronze monument to the Marine Corps by Felix de Welden
located near Arlington National Cemetery. The photo has been taken by Louis
Lowery for the magazine Leatherneck (the one of the Marines). Another has been
found coming from a storehouse of Pearl Harbor.
The new flag-rise happened at the 11,55 by the Marines of the 2nd battalion, 28°
regiment of the 5th division. Joe Rosenthal took 17 photography of the group of
the 6 soldiers that were hoisting the “Stars and Stripes”. That photo has
been taken at the beginning of the battle, the 5th day. It was the 23 February
1945. Three of the 6 soldiers that planted the flag remained killed in action.
The names of that 6 soldiers are: Ira Hayes, Franklin Sousley*, Michael Strank*,
John Bradley, René Gagnon, Harlon Block*. It has been Harold Shrier to plant
the first flag.
On
the morning of February 19, 1945, the 4th and 5th Marine Divisions invaded Iwo
Jima after a somewhat ineffective bombardment lasting 72 hours. The 28th
Regiment, 5th Division, was ordered to capture Mount Suribachi. They reached the
base of the mountain on the afternoon of February 21, and by nightfall the next
day had almost completely surrounded it. On the morning of February 23, Marines
of Company E, 2nd Battalion, started the tortuous climb up the rough terrain to
the top. At about 10:30 a.m., men all over the island were thrilled by the sight
of a small American flag flying from atop Mount Suribachi. That afternoon, when
the slopes were clear of enemy resistance, a second, larger flag was raised by
five Marines and a Navy hospital corpsman: Sgt. Michael
Strank, Cpl. Harlon H. Block, Pfc. Franklin R. Sousley, Pfc. Rene A. Gagnon,
Pfc. Ira Hayes, and PhM. 2/c John H. Bradley, USN.
Cemetery of Iwo Jima
The
Statue
News-photographer
Joe Rosenthal caught the afternoon flag raising in an inspiring Pulitzer Prize
winning photograph. When the picture was later released, sculptor Felix W. de
Weldon, then on duty with the U.S. Navy, was so moved by the scene that he
constructed a scale model and then a life-size model of it. Gagnon, Hayes, and
Bradley, the three survivors of the flag raising (the others having been killed
in later phases of the Iwo Jima battle), posed for the sculptor who modeled
their faces in clay. All available pictures and physical statistics of the three
who had given their lives were collected and then used in the modeling of their
faces.
Each figure is 32 feet high. The flagpole is 60 feet in length. It's the
world's tallest bronze statue. It's stands 78 feet high. A cloth flag flies from
the pole. The cost of the statue was $850,000 (1954 Dollars.) No public
funds were used. Private donations picked up the tab. The base of the memorial
is made of rough Swedish granite. Burnished in gold on the granite are the names
and dates of every principal Marine Corps engagement since the founding of the
Corps, as well as the inscription: "In honor and in memory of the men of
the United States Marine Corps who have given their lives to their country since
November 10, 1775." Also inscribed on the base is the tribute of Fleet Adm.
Chester W. Nimitz to the
fighting men on Iwo Jima: "Uncommon Valor was a Common Virtue."
Once the statue was completed in plaster, it was carefully disassembled
and trucked to Brooklyn, N.Y., for casting in bronze. The casting process, which
required the work of experienced artisans, took nearly 3 years. After the parts
had been cast, cleaned, finished, and chased, they were reassembled into
approximately a dozen pieces--the largest weighing more than 20 tons--and
brought back to Washington, D.C., by a three truck convoy. Here they were bolted
and welded together, and the statue was treated with preservatives. Erection of
the memorial, which was designed by Horace W. Peaslee, was begun in September
1954. It was officially dedicated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on November
10, 1954, the 179th anniversary of the U.S. Marine Corps.
