The ink was faded, almost illegible. But Sato, whose own grandfather had died on a ship in Tokyo Bay, could read the old-fashioned characters. He read about the white tern. He read about the laundry. He read about the ocean.
He signed it with a trembling hand.
He had no envelope. There was no postman on Iwo Jima. There was only the next assault, the next dawn, the next order to fight to the last man. So he folded the paper into a tiny, tight square—smaller than a playing card. He slipped it into the same leather pouch as the sen nin bari , next to his heart. letters iwo jima