Seventy years ago, many viewers in Japan's major theaters were moved to tears by the news from Iwo Jima. At the Battle of Iwo Jima, the only battle in the Pacific theater where U.S. casualties exceeded that of the Japanese, why should the Americans sympathize with and admire their opponent, Tadamichi Kuribayashi?
The commander of the Japanese tank unit on Iwo Jima, the US army begged him not to commit suicide, what is the hidden plot behind it? Let's restore the movie "Letter from Iwo Jima" to real history.
In early 1945, U.S. forces approached a small island in the Pacific Ocean, Iwo Jima. True to its name, the island is covered with sulphur, produces no food, has very little water resources, and few people live on the island except for the workers and fishermen who collect it.
In order to defend the isolated island of only 21 square kilometers, the Japanese army sent 23,000 soldiers to crowd on this isolated island, and the harsh living environment made the soldiers very dissatisfied. (Iwo Jima letter 4th minute line: This rotten island let the US military blow up, nothing, smelly and hot, all bugs, no water)
Why did the Japanese army send heavy troops to guard this isolated island? Simultaneous sound: Saipan to Tokyo, 2280 km, Iwo Jima to Tokyo, 1200 km. If the enemy pushes the air base to this island and makes a surprise attack on our mainland, it will be able to take control of the Pacific operation.
Kuribayashi, the commander of the Japanese army on Iwo Jima, is the protagonist of the movie "Letter from Iwo Jima". Kuribayashi was stationed in the United States and was a well-known "Zhimei faction" in the Japanese Army.
After the outbreak of the Pacific War, Li Lin, who spoke fluent English, served as the chief of staff of the 23rd Army, and it took only half a month to capture the heavily defended Hong Kong of the British Army. Since then, Kuribayashi has been valued by the Japanese army, and this time he is in danger and sent to Iwo Jima to deal with the American army.
Kuribayashi knew that the Japanese army could not resist the attack of the American army, and he and the soldiers on Iwo Jima could not avoid the fate of "all the jade fragments". But after arriving at Iwo Jima, Kuribayashi found that the situation was worse than he thought.
Not to mention resisting the American army, whether the Japanese army itself can survive on this island is still a question, and the Japanese army has thought of many strange ways to ensure survival.
After Li Lin went to the island, he ordered that each person should be given only one pot of drinking water per day, regardless of military rank, and all were equal. His style was different from that of other Japanese officers, not only was he not allowed to punish him at will, but he also talked to the soldiers frequently, and all the Japanese soldiers on the island had seen their commanders.
Kuribayashi also personally traveled all over the island in search of defensive positions, and eventually he decided to stop building positions on the beach. The origami mountain on the island became the main position set by Kuribayashi.
This is what the positions arranged by Kuribayashi look like, and it can be seen that the cannons were hidden by the Japanese army with branches, and the Japanese air defense positions were also hidden in the woods as much as possible.
Li Lin had laid out his position, but there was a serious lack of heavy equipment on hand. Most of the Japanese air power on Iwo Jima was lost in support of Saipan. At this time, the elite troops under Kuribayashi's command, as this historical image shows, were only the tank troops led by Nishitake Kazusaka, and a very small number of soldiers with advanced equipment such as flamethrowers.
Nishitakeichi is very close to Kuribayashi. He is a master of equestrianism, regards his horse "Uranus" as a relative, and when he goes to the land of no return, he carries not his wife's hair with him, but the mane of his horse.
Before the Pacific War, Kuribayashi was the head of the Japanese army and horses, and the most famous thing he did was to successfully promote an invasion military song called "Love Horse March Song".
Both men were also "pro-American" in the Japanese army, but this time, they became the Japanese generals who suffered the heaviest losses to the American army.
On February 16, 70,000 U.S. troops arrived at Iwo Jima and bombed Iwo Jima in three days and 24,000 tons of shells and bombs to bomb Iwo Jima into a scorched earth.
On the 19th, the US military officially landed. In the underground Japanese positions, in fact, the losses were very small. At Kuribayashi's order, the Japanese opened fire with all their might, and the American army suffered a major blow. Seeing that the Japanese army was about to completely annihilate the US army at the beachhead, the huge warships of the US army quickly supported it.
Within a day, nearly 40,000 shells were fired at the Japanese, and many American tanks also took advantage of the situation to clear the Japanese fire points one by one.
However, the tank units of the Japanese army Nishitakeichi were delayed in seeing each other on the battlefield.
When the US tanks took advantage of the victory to attack a valley, the tank group suddenly could not move, they entered the hinterland of Iwo Jima, where a thick layer of volcanic ash was deposited, just when the US tanks were in a dilemma, the Japanese army that had been ambushed here for a long time under the command of Xi Zhuyi, dozens of cannons fired in unison, this gun was exceptionally accurate, and the US tanks suffered serious losses. The Japanese's precision anti-tank artillery threw the Americans into a panic because they had no prior intelligence on such weapons.
However, this cannon is not a new weapon.
Knowing that his tanks were small and difficult to compete with the U.S. tanks, Nishitake simply ordered the expensive tanks to be dismantled, put the tank turrets into the tunnels, and made fortress guns, condescending to aim at the U.S. troops. The Japanese infantry also hid in the tunnels, supporting each other in a mysterious way, making the attacking American troops dizzy, and many American troops fell into the tunnels, either tragically or became prisoners of the Japanese army.
But what made it unimaginable to the captured American troops was that Nishitake actually ordered the few medicines left by the Japanese army to treat the captured American troops.
It turned out that Nishitake was an outlier among the ferocious Japanese troops. Born into the Japanese nobility, his father, Nishitoku Jiro, gained the privilege of importing Chinese tea by currying favor with Empress Dowager Cixi, making him a huge Japanese richman.
In the 1932 Los Angeles Games, Nishitake won the equestrian gold medal and won a high popularity in the United States, and many Hollywood female stars became his fans, so he had a deep affection for the United States.
However, the war could not tolerate the warmth of sympathy, the US military was not in a favorable situation, and it was decided decisively to use flamethrowers on a large scale to burn the Japanese troops hidden in the caves alive.
The screams of the Japanese army when they were burned made the US troops feel creepy and countless people were insane, and the US commander decided that it was necessary to capture the Folding Bowl Mountain as soon as possible to boost the morale of the US army. The U.S. army has suffered more than 10,000 casualties, and in Japan, kuribayashi has become a hero, but on Iwo Jima, Kuribayashi is under special pressure, and he is anxiously preparing to die.
On March 17, Kuribayashi sent a farewell telegram to the Japanese base camp, indicating that the general trend was gone, and he was ready to personally lead his troops to launch a suicide charge. Mistaken for Kuribayashi, kuribayashi had died in battle, he applied to be posthumously promoted to general, and on March 22, the appointment was officially issued. But in fact, Kuribayashi was still alive at the time, and at the age of 54, Kuribayashi became the youngest army general in the Japanese army. He knew that the base camp did not hesitate to award honors to soldiers, but also did not hesitate to honor the lives of soldiers, no matter how strong his desire to survive, but he could only die to prove the "Yamato soul" preached by the Japanese army.
On the 23rd, after a bloody battle, the US military finally planted the Star-Spangled Banner on the top of origami Mountain, and this scene was frozen into a photographic work, and then frozen into a sculpture, becoming a symbol of the Pacific theater of World War II, and accepting the admiration of future generations. After Nishitake was heavily surrounded by the U.S. army, the U.S. military used a loudspeaker to persuade this equestrian master, who was loved by the Americans, but Nishitakeichi chose to die in battle.
On March 26, Kuribayashi delivered his final speech and sent his final telegram. He said that although the battle was lost, he would always stand with the soldiers, and after the speech, he led about 350 remnants of the Japanese army to launch a charge, and eventually all of them were killed.
The U.S. military believed that Kuribayashi could have become a respectable general. But together with his country, he became a disgraceful aggressor, which doomed him to a tragic end.
After the war, the Japanese bone collection team found the family letters written by Kuribayashi and others to their families on Iwo Jima, which were no longer deliverable, full of love for life, longing for their families, and deep pain from the war.
Soon, a large air raid rarely seen in human history began over Tokyo. The home that Li Lin missed day and night before his death was also reduced to ashes in the future air raids.
This article is a transcript of the large-scale historical documentary "Heavenly Punishment" co-produced by modern history and iQiyi.