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diary and memoirs of japanese veterans who participated in the battle of iwo jima:

the skull's testimony: a personal account of the japanese survivors of the bloody battle of iwo jima (part 1) - from home to purgatory

the skull's testimony: a personal account of the japanese survivors of the bloody battle of iwo jima (part 2) - no escape

the skull's testimony: a personal account of the japanese survivors of the bloody battle of iwo jima (part 3) - the completely annihilated team

the skull's testimony: a personal account of the japanese survivors of the bloody battle of iwo jima (part 4) - die another day

original author: takahashi toshiharu

translator: vader

illustration: the führer’s guard

since the official account currently only authenticates my own account, if readers like this article and give rewards, all rewards will be transferred to the original author.

gam island

(translator's note: the japanese pinyin here is gamu, but i couldn't find out what island this is. when i was looking up information, i saw that other japanese soldiers who survived iwo jima recalled that they were first sent to guam. it seems that the author made a mistake here. there are similar questions about place names later.)

on march 24, 1945, i boarded a large ship from the west coast of iwo jima to guam, guarded by american soldiers with machine guns, and arrived in guam after waking up for an unknown number of days. almost all the coconut trees on the island were broken, and not a single one was standing upright.

i was imprisoned in a thatched hut of the local natives with other prisoners. many of them were missing arms and legs. i saw that it was not so shameful to be captured with so many people. there were officers who could speak japanese and asked questions every day, but i didn't know what they were asking. i am very grateful that the us military did not let me die like this.

go to hawaii

the wound gradually healed. i had been in guam for about ten days, and then i was taken to the port by a bus as big as a train. a large transport fleet arrived, with many female nurses returning to the united states. they were all second lieutenants. i hadn't seen women for a long time, and i thought they were all beautiful.

translator's note: i have read the memories of japanese prisoners of war sent to siberia before, and i was also shocked to see that the soviet female soldiers were all beautiful.

there were about a dozen ships in the fleet, and i was on one of them. after setting sail, i didn’t know where to go, so i just sailed every day.

one of the japanese prisoners died, and the us military buried him at sea. they wrapped the body in cloth and threw it into the sea. his life ended there. after that, the boat circled the area three times before the funeral was over. we all prayed silently.

go to the naval hospital

my wound began to fester again and i had a high fever. the american medical soldiers were shocked when they looked at the thermometer and said it was over the upper limit of the mercury meter, over 45 degrees.

i was no longer conscious. in my dream, i heard american soldiers tell me that they would take all the japanese prisoners to the united states to be shot. when i woke up the next morning, i remembered that the american soldiers probably couldn't speak japanese, so what i heard should have been a dream caused by the high fever.

ten days later the ship arrived in hawaii. the spiritual captives walked ashore, but i was sent ashore in a stuffy can and then got on a double-decker bus. the driver was a black uncle, as black as the bottom of a pot. when he smiled, his white teeth showed so that you could tell where his face was.

we finally arrived at the naval hospital on april 24, 1945 (translator's note: the battle of iwo jima had already ended for a month), and the long voyage was over.

my wound was very painful, and i was recuperating in a ward on a mountain where i could see pearl harbor. this was the site of the japanese air raid on december 8, 1945. it should have been a land full of resentment for the enemy. the sea was shallow and i could see half of the warships sunk by the japanese army still exposed above the water and burning.

translator's note: please confirm, is arizona still visible at this time? the others should have been fished out.

hospital

i didn't have any surgery, i just applied medicine to the wound every day. it kept festering and a large piece of bone was taken out of the wound.

i had been in the navy hospital for two months and was now being transferred to the army hospital. i took a tractor bus along the streets of hawaii and soon arrived at the army camp, where there were many german and italian prisoners of war. we were divided into different tents, and the koreans in the japanese army had separate tents.

labor camp

every day our work was to weed and clean, and also to do exercise. in the evening, the german and italian prisoners would come to the barbed wire and sing the national anthem together. we also sang the german and italian national anthems with them, and then shouted "boardboard" and said goodbye together.

i also sang kimigayo. singing the national anthem as a prisoner under a foreign sky made me burst into tears. it is a scene that is hard to describe.

korean

korea is japanese territory, and koreans are of course japanese. there are many koreans in the army and auxiliary forces. according to them, they are receiving training for landing in japan in hawaii, and will land in busan to liberate their motherland korea from japan. (translator's note: this is hard to comment...)

go to the united states

in june 1949, after two months of recuperation in hawaii, i was sent to the united states. on june 21, i set off from hawaii on an american transport ship and sailed eastward. there were more than a dozen ships in the fleet. on the tenth day, i saw a mountain that looked very similar to mount fuji, half of which was covered with snow and was very beautiful.

we could see animals like sea lions swimming in the sea, making strange noises. then we came to the continental united states, which we had never seen before. we headed north from the wide river entrance with land on both sides, and soon arrived at the port, which was a port with many ships. i heard that this was seattle.

going ashore

on july 1, 1953, i got off the ship and walked onto american soil through the plank road. it took 500 meters to walk from the street to the quarantine area. there were american military sentry posts with live ammunition every ten meters. the street was crowded with people, both men and women. they all spoke english, and i couldn't understand a word. they must have been talking about japanese prisoners, and i guess they didn't say anything good, but i don't know.

after entering the quarantine center, we stripped naked and poured white disinfectant on our heads. then we got on the train. i had no idea of ​​my fate or where i was going, so i just got on the train.

train

the train kept running, crossing the wilderness and mountains, and arrived in san francisco two days later. it was already july 3rd.

after getting off the train, we took a small boat to a place called angel island, where there was a prisoner-of-war camp. after settling down, everyone was given cigarette rations. i put the cigarettes by the bed and found that they were stolen when i came back from work. i looked for them but couldn't find them.

translator's note: angel island was originally a fortress during the civil war, and was later converted into a concentration camp. it once held more than a million chinese, japanese and other east asian immigrants during the chinese exclusion act, and was used to hold japanese and german prisoners of war during world war ii.

lynching

once, an army non-commissioned officer came to the mess hall where the navy prisoners were cooked and seemed to have some complaints and started an argument. that evening, he was called out by several navy cooks and lynched in a place where the american guards could not see him.

he was severely beaten in the face and kicked in the abdomen in front of the prisoners. he begged for mercy and said sorry while being beaten. his face was swollen and purple. although everyone was a fellow japanese and a soldier, no one stopped it.

although everyone was living a miserable life as prisoners in a foreign country, they fought against their compatriots. these people were not soldiers at all, they were simply hooligans!

everyone thought so in their hearts but no one dared to say it out loud. such things often happened inside the prisoner-of-war camps, and there were rumors that people were killed and thrown into the toilet pit. the american toilets have a small opening and a large inside, so if the bodies were thrown in, no one would know how many people died.

transfer

after only four or five days, it was time to leave the island. going up the river from the small boat, we saw that angel island was connected to the mainland by a huge iron bridge. the bridge had two levels, with a carriageway on the upper level and a pedestrian walkway on the lower level.

the us military asked us if japan had such a big bridge. i lied to them and said that japan had a bigger bridge. they were all shocked. in fact, japan did not have such a big bridge at all.

the boat slowly went up and reached the shore after five kilometers, and went to the new prisoner-of-war camp. after we entered, everyone was given a flu shot, which was super painful. so we spent our days doing nothing but singing and dancing.

by train

this time we took a train to transfer. unlike the black trains in inland japan, the trains here are all beautiful red and yellow. we always thought that trains were all black, but we didn't expect that there could be such beautiful colored trains.

we started to cross the american continent. all we ate was canned food. ah, i really wanted to eat japanese rice and miso soup. canned food was not tasty at all, but we had to eat it to survive. every day we took the train. next, i will write down the scenes of america i saw from the train window.

train on the field

every day trains run through the fields. railways extend through the long fields. large iron pipes for diverting water crisscross the fields, distributing water to farmlands everywhere. they can also spray water in a gurgling and rotating manner, so that water can be irrigated in places where it does not rain.

it doesn't rain here for several months, and people still grow crops this way. at the same time, the railway can be used to transport agricultural products, with locomotives pulling freight cars for transportation. japan does not have such a farming method, nor such vast farmland. the two countries are completely different.

crop

there were lots of white radishes and carrots. no matter how many days i walked, there were no mountains, only vegetable fields. it was very similar to what i saw in mainland china and hokkaido. i didn't know the united states was so vast.

from the train window, i saw the lumber mill. there was a conveyor belt next to it, which was used to cut and saw the huge logs. the sawn logs fell onto the conveyor belt and were sent to the bottom to be burned. they only used the best quality wood in the middle section and didn't want the rest.

it was really extravagant, unimaginable in japan. so i thought about it and it was terrifying. this is the difference in national strength! how could we win the war against such a big country?

whether it is the japanese soul, the military soul or the kamikaze, it is all in vain and useless in the face of massive materials and mechanical civilization.

my country was gradually losing ground in the war, and i was crossing the american continent as a prisoner of war. i didn't know whether the war was won or lost, and i was crossing the continent on a train.

forest

the train entered the forest. although it was a mountain, there were also flat areas covered with trees. this place was not like the high mountains in japan, which had both flat areas and forests.

there were large trees with a diameter of one meter standing everywhere. as we walked, we saw continuous forests. the huge trees were cut down by machines and then loaded into train carriages by cranes and pulled out by the locomotive. because there was flat land, the railway could be built into the mountains.

there is no way for japan's mountains to transport timber out of the valley in this way, because the united states has such abundant timber resources, so they can cut down as much as they want, take whatever they want, and discard the rest.

what a rich country it really is. no matter how long we walked, we were always in the middle of the same big forest. it was just so vast and endlessly rich. the train carrying us, who didn't know where to go, just kept going.

transverse

on july 28, 1949, the train crossed the american continent and arrived at kennedy, texas, where there was a prisoner-of-war camp. we stayed there, with non-commissioned officers and senior officers living together, and soldiers and auxiliary military dependents living together. many seniors came, most of whom were prisoners of war from the navy. there were all kinds of people, from colonels to privates.

there are many small houses here, some of which can accommodate five people. since i am a non-commissioned officer, i live with four non-commissioned officers in total. there are four beds in the room, and you can use it as you like.

this place is about the same size as a village in mainland japan. there are many houses, and people live in them in groups of four or five. of course, there is no furniture or anything.

meet the god of war

translator's note: many people probably know this so i won't go into detail, but it was about the ten unlucky souls who sneaked into the pearl harbor in five class a mini-submarines to steal something during the attack.

there were so-called nine military gods in the pearl harbor attack, but there were actually ten people in total, and one of them might have been captured, so later it became nine military gods.

these people rode on human-operated torpedoes (translator's note: please pronounce the word "operate" clearly...) and launched a one-way attack on the enemy ships with their physical bodies. only one person was stranded on the shore and was captured. he became the first prisoner, lieutenant sakamaki of the navy.

i met this second lieutenant in this prisoner-of-war camp. he claimed to be from ochi town, kochi prefecture, but i don’t know if it was true.

it is inevitable that people speak half-truths in such situations. we had nothing to do every day and just lived there leisurely.

translator's note: second lieutenant sakamaki's full name is sakamaki kazuo, who is actually from tokushima prefecture. after he was captured, his family became non-citizens and suffered discrimination, so later japanese soldiers who were captured would use fake names and fake birthplaces to inform the us military to avoid being implicated. it is said that sakamaki was very obedient in the prisoner-of-war camp and became a model prisoner. he cooperated happily with the us military and later died peacefully at the age of over 80. he once wrote a book recalling his experience of being captured.

my daily job is to weed near the house where i live. three meals a day are provided in the cafeteria, and i can receive ten cents pocket money every day. there is also a store here, and i can buy a lot of things with ten cents. it is very cheap.

there is a barbed wire fence one mile square here, so it is impossible to escape. there are tall sentry towers all around, and the us military sentries are heavily guarded. if you try to escape, they will be machine-gunned.

there was a naval officer who might not be in a clear mind. he walked around in circles under a willow tree every day, muttering to himself. according to naval soldiers, he might have suffered a mental trauma after being captured.

(to be continued)