Tadamichi Kuribayashi was a descendant of samurai, yet disliked much of Japanese military culture. He graduated near the top of his class at Japan’s leading military academy, yet enjoyed Shakespeare, spoke fluent English, and almost chose journalism as his career rather than the army.

A cultured man, he spent three years in the United States as a deputy military attaché, developing an admiration for the country and becoming friends with many Americans. Kuribayashi spent the summer of 1929 driving through the Midwest in a Chevrolet, sketching the people and places he saw.

As was the case with many other Japanese familiar with the United States at the time, Kuribayashi thought it was folly for Japan to go to war with the country:

“The United States is the last country in the world Japan should fight,” Kuribayashi wrote in a letter home…According to colleague Army Capt. Kikuzo Musashino, “The general spoke about his years in America, saying they had enormous industrial resources. He said: ‘When war comes, they can convert all that ability into military use. The people who planned this war in Japan know absolutely nothing about this. Whatever way you look at this war, we can’t win.’ “

His grandson said he was sidelined for promotion during the war because “he didn’t fit in with military thinking (and) had friends in America and respected the country.”

Yet, Kuribayashi was selected with the hopeless task of defending Iwo Jima, a strategically and psychologically important objective, against the American invasion.

He did his job so well that in five weeks of fighting, one-third of all the American Marines who died in World War II were killed in that battle. When the fighting was over, U.S. troops called him “The best damn general on this stinking island.”

The story of Kuribayashi and his defense of Iwo Jima is told in this excellent article by David McNeill in the Japan Times. Registration is required, but the article is so good, unregistered readers might consider signing up for this piece alone.