Rinosuke Ichimaru (20 September 1891-26 March 1945) was an Imperial Japanese Navy admiral who commanded the 27th Air Flotilla during World War II. He was killed in action at the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945.
Biography[]
Rinosuke Ichimaru was born in Karatsu, Saga Prefecture, Empire of Japan in 1891. He graduated from the Etajima Naval Academy in 1913 and served in the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War I before rising to the rank of lieutenant commander in 1925, commander in 1930, and captain in 1936. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, he commanded the Yokohama Air Group and the Chichi Jima Aircraft Group. In 1942, he was promoted to Rear Admiral, and he led the 1st Attack Force during the Guadalcanal campaign. In August 1944, he was given command of the 27th Air Flotilla on Iwo Jima, replacing Vice Admiral Sadaichi Matsunaga. While he, like his predecessor, disagreed with Lieutenant-General Tadamichi Kuribayashi's defense-in-depth approach to resisting a potential American invasion, he built 135 casemates. During the Battle of Iwo Jima, he led 7,347 naval men into battle, and, on 26 March 1945, he was killed by the US Marine Corps while attempting to abandon the cave in which he had taken refuge. Before he died, he was able to write a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt that blamed the United States for provoking World War II with its imperialism and its cooperation with the Soviet Union; that letter was later published in the New York Herald Tribune.