Tadamichi Kuribayashi
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Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (栗林忠道 Kuribayashi Tadamichi, 1891 – circa March 23, 1945) was the commander of the Japanese garrison at Iwo Jima during the Battle of Iwo Jima.
Kuribayashi came from a samurai family. Starting in 1928, he spent two years as military attaché in Washington. While there, he observed the industrial power of the United States. An aristocrat, Kuribayashi was educated in Canada and toured the United States. He was one of the few soldiers ever granted an audience with Emperor Hirohito.
There were two things of which Kuribayashi was certain: that Iwo would eventually fall to the U.S. and that he and his garrison would all perish. Nevertheless he was determined to make the fall of Iwo Jima as costly as possible to the United States. General Kuribayashi had studied carefully other US assaults and had determined that he would not seriously contest the beach landings. Instead, the defense of Iwo was fought almost entirely underground. (However, to appease those in the Japanese High Command, he committed a battalion of troops to defensive positions just off the beaches. Naval gunfire and intense naval air support had wiped out nearly all of these defenders before the first LVTs touched the volcanic ash of the Iwo shore.)
The Japanese honeycombed the island with more than 18 miles of tunnels, 5,000 caves, and pillboxes. He also instructed his troops that each man should kill 10 of the enemy before they were killed.
On the 36th day after the invasion had begun, it was believed that it would not take more than 10 days to capture the island, the fighting ended. After a vicious and bloody battle almost 6,000 U.S. Marines were dead and more than 17,000 were wounded. Only 1,083 of the 22,000 Japanese defenders survived to be captured. The rest presumably died according to their code.
- "We are still fighting", Kuribayashi radioed on March 22. "The strength under my command is now about four hundred. Tanks are attacking us. The enemy suggested we surrender through loudspeaker, but our officers and men just laughed and paid no attention."
(James Bradley, Flags of Our Fathers, 245).
The US declared Iwo Jima secure on March 26, 1945.
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