Unique Ritual Pairs Survivors of Iwo Jima Battle

For Kei Kanai, Iwo Jima isn’t a symbol of victory or national pride. It wasn’t his nation’s flag that was raised atop Mt. Suribachi. And, 60 years later, the bones of thousands of his comrades still lie unclaimed in the countless caverns that hide under its thick, prickly underbrush.

“It’s a big grave,” Kanai said. “The whole place.”

Each year, however, he returns.

Iwo Jima is the site of a unique annual ritual -- the only war-related commemoration held in Japan that is co-hosted, on the spot, by both the American victors and the survivors of the futile Japanese attempt to hold them off in a battle that began 60 years ago this weekend and was one of the bloodiest of World War II.

It took 50 years to get the two together.

Thanks in part to Kanai, secretary general of the Iwo Jima Assn., hundreds of Americans were joined by Japanese soldiers and their relatives on the island in 1995 to mark the 50th anniversary of the battle. Five years later, the two sides met on the island again, and they have continued to do so every March 12 -- the day that the island officially fell.

The groups will meet again this year. But the memorial remains a complicated arrangement.

Typically, U.S. veterans and their families fly in on a chartered flight from Guam, while Marine Corps C-130s bring in a few dozen troops from the southern Japanese island of Okinawa to handle the logistics of transporting them around. The smaller contingent of Japanese -- Kanai said about a dozen Japanese who fought on Iwo Jima are still alive -- are flown in on a military plane from a base just outside Tokyo, 700 miles to the north.

The two gather at a cenotaph near the black-sand beach where the Americans landed. They offer speeches, prayers and, often, tears.

Then they split up.

The Americans board Humvees for Suribachi to see the site of one of history’s most famous flag-raisings, or walk carefully to the beach to collect sand to take home.

The Japanese head north. That’s where their troops were slaughtered. It’s also where, two months after the fighting was declared over, Kanai and two comrades were dragged out of a cave.

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Kanai, then a 20-year-old petty officer in the Imperial Navy, arrived on Iwo Jima in February 1944 with a 19-man advance unit. He was assigned to set up machine-gun positions and communications.

A tear-shaped volcanic crag, Iwo Jima was discovered in 1543 by the Spanish, who named it Sulfur Island. Then they moved on. It was uninhabited until the Japanese arrived in 1891 and translated Sulfur Island into Iwo Jima. Fishing was the villagers’ mainstay, but they also struggled to grow sugar cane and medicinal plants, and mine the sulfur. There was little contact with the outside world.

To Kanai, who had already fought in China, it wasn’t a tough assignment. “It wasn’t so bad there,” he recalled. “There were still about 1,000 villagers. It was fairly relaxed. We had food; we even had baths. The Americans were still a long way off.”

One year later, the sky fell.

For three days before U.S. troops came ashore, B-29 bombers pummeled Iwo’s nine square miles. One explosion narrowly missed Kanai but killed two of his superior officers.

Ordered to go out on a scouting mission, Kanai was overwhelmed by the massive invasion he saw unfolding. But he said he clung to his code.

“All I had in my head was to follow orders,” he said. “I wasn’t afraid or confused. I thought only of following orders. I felt that this was the only way to survive. I imagine this is how a lot of the young American soldiers in Iraq feel.”

As the Marines took the beaches and set up their big guns, the Japanese prepared to fight from a labyrinth of caves and trenches on the opposite end. The Americans wanted Iwo Jima’s three airstrips for staging long-range bombing raids on Tokyo and for the looming invasion of Okinawa.

“After about a month, just about everyone was wiped out,” Kanai said.

Those who survived lived underground, emerging only for hit-and-run attacks or to get water.

“It got to the point where you made the choice of whether you would prefer to die underground or with the sunlight on your face,” he said. “People went out to get water, knowing they would never make it back. They chose to die rather than stay in the trenches.”

All told, 6,821 Americans were killed and nearly 22,000 injured -- the highest percentage of casualties in any Pacific battle. Of the roughly 21,200 Japanese troops on Iwo Jima, 1,033 survived.

By March 12, all organized resistance was crushed. Kanai managed to keep fighting until May. For what seemed like an eternity, he had been fighting, running, hiding underground, watching his comrades die. He had had enough.

“I assumed they would shoot me as soon as they pulled me out,” he said. “That was what I was trained to believe the Americans did. But I didn’t have it in me to resist.”

To his surprise, Kanai said, he was treated well. After a couple weeks of questioning, he was shipped to Guam, then Hawaii. He saw the end of World War II in a Wisconsin prisoner of war camp.

He returned to Japan in January 1946.

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Japan holds three big annual war commemorations -- to remember the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on Aug. 6 and Nagasaki on Aug. 9, and the Japanese surrender Aug. 15.

The Tokyo city government, which has jurisdiction over Iwo Jima, began commemorating the battle in 1983, but the island has never held the symbolic impact for the Japanese that it does for the Americans. To most, in fact, it has been forgotten.

American veterans initiated the joint memorial, Kanai said. The Japanese veterans and representatives of the bereaved families chose to be involved if it wasn’t treated as a victory celebration.

“For me, it’s water under the bridge,” Kanai said. “The people on the other side were fighting for their lives, just as I was. They were following orders. They had families they wanted to go home to. But there are many people, especially those who lost loved ones, who still can’t forgive.”

Such feelings are made more complex by the fact that Iwo Jima is still giving up its dead.

Hideki Takahashi, a health ministry spokesman, said Japan had sent search parties to the island every year since 1968 and had recovered 8,420 sets of remains. There have been three missions this year. A fourth is to return March 2.

Iwo Jima continues to be inhabited only by soldiers. Several hundred Japanese troops are based there. A U.S. Coast Guard installation was shut down years ago, but the Navy frequently uses Iwo Jima’s airstrip to train fighter pilots.

Plans to develop the island’s hot springs into a resort have been floated from time to time, but have never gotten very far.

Kanai believes that the island is probably best left untouched. “You can’t even mention development around the bereaved families,” Kanai said. “I don’t think they would ever accept that option.”