Sp Sad to fall in Battle: An Account of War Based on General Tadamichi Kurbayashi's Letters from Iwo Jima

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	• So Sad to Fall in Battle: An Account of War Based on General Tadamichi Kuribayashi's Letters from Iwo Jima Kumiko Kakehashi Presidio Press, 2007 - 240 pages average customer review:based on 23 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

War from the other side

I picked up this book in at Schipol on the way back to the States, and couldn't put it down. I served in the Navy on the tail end of 'Nam and, to be honest, you never remotely considered that the guy lobbing B-40 rockets at you from the bend in the river had a wife and family back in Hanoi or some little village in the North. Certainly the Marines humping across Iwo probably didn't have much time for introspection, either.

Fascinating individual, and a rewarding view through the "other guy's" eyes. Highly recommended.

WWII history

Again, and excellent source for understanding the Japanese mind set on Iwo Jima. The book is a wonderful enhancement to "Pictures" and provides connections for the reader to both of the Eastwood films. Highly recommended!

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Not Eastwood's movie

This is not at the core of it a war story. It is a biography of a truly outstanding man caught in horrible circumstances. Expect a fascinating, subtle character study (not a "ripping yarn"). Unlike Eastwood's movie, which was a confused jumble of combat seen mostly from the enlisted point of view, this is about Kuribayashi, a 20th Century man serving a Japanese 17th Century feudal mind-set. The author does a good job of conveying the sense of anguish Kuribayashi must have felt at the circumstances.

Sp Sad to fall in Battle: An Account of War Based on General Tadamichi Kurbayashi's Letters from Iwo Jima

My husband founds this book to be excellent as far as the Japanese version of the war in the South Pacific.

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The human side of the enemy.

This book is based on the letters sent home by General Kuribayashi Tadamichi the commander of the forces on Iwo Jima. This book is the primary source information for Clint Eastwood's movie Letters From Iwo Jima. This book puts a very human face to the Japanese that fought that battle and outlines the strategy General Kuribayashi used for this fight along with the reasoning behind it. His intentions were similar to those used on Okinawa...in fact his strategy was planned a year before the battle for Okinawa began. Kuribayashi like Ushijima intended to fight delaying battles of attrition hoping to delay the Americans and give the government time to negotiate a peace between Japan and America. Unfortunately their resistance only served to cause the Americans to nuke Japan to avoid the necessary invasion that would be required to subdue Japan. Kuribayashi could have stayed on Chichi Jima and committed suicide there after the fight but he knew the Americans would land on Iwo and he elected to share the fate of the men he commanded, directing them from the front to the end. If he had fought the battle in the same manner as earlier island campaigns the American estimate of 1 week might have come to pass making the invasion of Okinawa a little easier in that resources used to complete the Iwo campaign would have been freed up to serve as reinforcements for Okinawa. I've never seen an estimate for the length of the campaign on Okinawa but I'm sure it was much less than actually occurred. A most excellent book well worth reading by historians wanting to see a glimpse of the losing side of a battle.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

The Battle of Iwo Jima has been memorialized innumerable times as the subject of countless books and motion pictures, most recently Clint Eastwood?s films Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, and no wartime photo is more famous than Joe Rosenthal?s Pulitzer Prize-winning image of Marines raising the flag on Mount Suribachi. Yet most Americans know only one side of this pivotal and bloody battle. First published in Japan to great acclaim, becoming a bestseller and a prize-winner, So Sad to Fall in Battle shows us the struggle, through the eyes of Japanese commander Tadamichi Kuribayashi, one of the most fascinating and least-known figures of World War II.

As author Kumiko Kakehashi demonstrates, Kuribayashi was far from the stereotypical fanatic Japanese warrior. Unique among his country?s officers, he refused to risk his men?s lives in suicidal banzai attacks, instead creating a defensive, insurgent style of combat that eventually became the Japanese standard. On Iwo Jima, he eschewed the special treatment due to him as an officer, enduring the same difficult conditions as his men, and personally walked every inch of the island to plan the positions of thousands of underground bunkers and tunnels. The very flagpole used in the renowned photograph was a pipe from a complex water collection system the general himself engineered.

Exclusive interviews with survivors reveal that as the tide turned against him, Kuribayashi displayed his true mettle: Though offered a safer post on another island, he chose to stay with his men, fighting alongside them in a final, fearless, and ultimately hopeless three-hour siege.

After thirty-six cataclysmic days on Iwo Jima, Kurbiayashi?s troops were responsible for the deaths of a third of all U.S. Marines killed during the entire four-year Pacific conflict, making him, in the end, America?s most feared?and respected?foe. Ironically, it was Kuribayashi?s own memories of his military training in America in the 1920s, and his admiration for this country?s rich, gregarious, and self-reliant people, that made him fear ever facing them in combat?a feeling that some suspect prompted his superiors to send him to Iwo Jima, where he met his fate.

Along with the words of his son and daughter, which offer unique insight into the private man, Kuribayashi?s own letters cited extensively in this book paint a stirring portrait of the circumstances that shaped him. So Sad to Fall in Battle tells a fascinating, never-before-told story and introduces America, as if for the first time, to one of its most worthy adversaries.

From the Hardcover edition.

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