Photo/Illutration Yoshie Kuribayashi, right, offers flowers at a memorial service for the war dead on Iwoto island, previously known as Iwojima, in Ogasawara village in Tokyo, on Jan. 16. (Pool via The Asahi Shimbun)

A memorial service was held for Japanese soldiers who perished in ferocious fighting while defending the Pacific island of Iwojima in World War II.

The site of the famous battleground has since been renamed Iwoto island.

It is part of the Ogasawara island chain more than 1,000 kilometers south of the capital and comes under the jurisdiction of the Tokyo metropolitan government.

The Jan. 16 government-sponsored ceremony was held at a facility called Chinkon-no-oka (requiem hill) in the village of Ogasawara.

Forty-two individuals attended to pay their respects.

U.S. forces landed on the volcanic island in February 1945. The offensive lasted 36 days, and about 21,900 Japanese soldiers and 7,000 Americans died.

The family members visited several locations, including a cenotaph erected over a trench that marked the last stronghold of the former Imperial Japanese Army, and a medical bunker where Japanese wounded and sick soldiers were housed.

They laid flowers at each location, and quietly put their hands together in prayer.

The ceremony began in 1983, and this year marked the 42nd time it was held.

Last year, the ceremony was canceled due to the eruption of an undersea volcano nearby.

Yoshie Kuribayashi, a granddaughter of Tadamichi Kuribayashi, the general who commanded the Battle of Iwojima and died there, delivered a speech representing the bereaved families.

“Many of those who fought on the battlefield had families. While I am proud that they fought bravely, I can only imagine the sorrow of the bereaved families who lost their loved ones,” she said.

Eighty years on, the remains of more than 10,000 soldiers are unrecovered.

“I sincerely hope that the remains of the war dead who have yet to return home will soon be welcomed to the mainland and memorialized,” Kuribayashi, 65, said.

The central government initiated a program in 1952 to recover the remains of the war dead from Iwojima.

One of the problems is that the topography of the island was radically transformed by U.S. bombardments and the destruction of underground bunkers.

All these decades later, only a very few people remember the island’s terrain from prewar days.

These factors make the collection of remains more difficult each year.

Even when remains are found, it does not automatically mean they can be returned to the families.

In response to requests from the bereaved kin, the central government eased the conditions for DNA analysis to confirm the identity of remains even if there are no clues, such as personal belongings with the names of the deceased nearby.

Only three sets of remains have been identified since fiscal 2020 when the pilot operation to relax the conditions began.

Kuribayashi said that her grandfather wrote in a letter during the war, “My remains will never return” and her grandmother who received the letter blacked out that part after she read it.

“It must have been very hard for her,” Kuribayashi said.

This was her seventh visit to the island.

“(My grandfather) fought here, but I feel sad that his remains have not been returned,” she said.

Related News