Iwo Jima Journal: Renewed Interest In Japanese Who Died In Epic Battle

IWO JIMA, Japan, March 14 — A breeze carried the scent of salt off sun-speckled waves, and a pod of whales spouted playfully near shore, but it was a prayer of mourning that Yoshitaka Shindo directed toward the sand and surf that stretched before him.

This was Invasion Beach, where 62 years ago 61,000 United States marines poured onto this remote volcanic island in the Pacific Ocean in one of the bloodiest and final campaigns of World War II. Mr. Shindos grandfather, Lt. Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi, commanded the badly outnumbered Japanese defenders, most of whom fought to the death.

The blasted concrete bunkers and splintered, rusting machine guns that still litter the island testify to the ferocity of the Battle of Iwo Jima, re-created in two recent movies by the director Clint Eastwood. Now it is a Japanese air base that is usually off-limits to civilians, though once a year a joint American-Japanese ceremony is held to mark the battle. Mr. Shindo said he came to pay respects to his grandfather.

I can feel hes still here, said Mr. Shindo, 49, a member of Japans Parliament, one of about 200 people — mostly veterans, family members and officials from both nations — who visited the island. Its heart-wrenching that he had to fight, and that his bones are still missing even now.

Of the 21,925 Japanese who died in action on or near Iwo Jima, the remains of only 8,595 have been recovered and brought back to Japan proper, according to the Association of Iwo Jima, a Japanese veterans group. Most of the rest remain sealed in their collapsed tunnels and bunkers, turning the island into a vast tomb.

By contrast, the United States, which returned Iwo Jima to Japan in 1968, was able to find all but 493 of about 7,000 Americans killed there, according to the Marine Corps. Most of the American missing were from the Navy, suggesting they were either downed pilots or seaman on ships hit by Japanese fire, not fighters lost on the island.

For decades, a defeated Japan put its dead out of mind, dedicating itself to rebirth through economic development. Only a fervent few, mostly veterans and bereaved families, kept their memories alive, visiting the island to pray and search for remains.

Japans amnesia underscores the nations broader failure to come to terms with the war, something for which it is frequently criticized, especially by Asian neighbors. But Japan is not alone in struggling with how to remember a war that it lost, and those who died in it. During the Vietnam era in the United States, many soldiers came home to indifference and ridicule, and there was an emotional debate over the erection of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington.

In Japan, the only significant memorials to the Battle of Iwo Jima, which took place in February and March 1945, are on Iwo Jima itself, a fish-shaped island about a third the size of Manhattan that is a two-hour flight south of Tokyo. Some are atop Mt. Suribachi, the dormant volcano at the islands southern end that was the site of the flag-raising famously depicted in the Joe Rosenthal photograph taken at the time.

During the memorial ceremony, veterans and families from both sides gathered at a stone monument close to Invasion Beach. With the sun beating down, they watched as Mr. Shindo, the commanders grandson, washed the monument with water and then bowed deeply in prayer, a traditional Shinto ritual.

Anyone who had that dedication should be honored, said Thurman Fogarty, 81, a former marine who was among 15 American veterans of the battle at the ceremony. The Japanese were tough people, tough fighters.

Of the 1,023 Japanese survivors, only about 20 are alive today, and only one was healthy enough to attend the ceremony, said the veterans association. Over all, the American visitors outnumbered the Japanese by about two to one.

Association members say that is because Americans often know more about the battle, which is barely mentioned in Japanese textbooks. It was not until the release last year of the second of Mr. Eastwoods movies, Letters from Iwo Jima, which showed the battle from the Japanese side, that there was a surge of interest in Japan. The veterans association said it was suddenly flooded with e-mail messages from young Japanese.

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