63 Years Later, A Japanese Sailor Returns To Iwo Jima

His mission, to say a final farewell to some dead comrades.

Worth reading in full. The sailor, Tsuruji Akikusa, never surrendered on Iwo Jima, was captured after he became too weak to move, and was hospitalised in the US, spent a short time in a prisoner-of-war camp, then returned to Japan for a career as an electrician. Recently he wrote a novel of his experiences on Iwo Jima; I hope it gets translated into English.