What a pity. Eastwood humanizing murderers. You'd think they were the good ole guys next door to you.
"Below, Clint Eastwood will find a list of more specific barbaric acts committed by those good-natured boys in the Imperial Japanese Army who loved their moms and girl friends. The details of them all are readily available on the internet."
"In China alone, during 1937-45, approximately 3.95 million civilians were killed as a direct result of the Japanese invasion. The most infamous incident during this period was the Nanking Massacre of 1937-38, when, according to the findings of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the Japanese Army massacred as many as 260,000 civilians and prisoners of war. A scorched earth strategy used by Japanese forces in China in 1942-45, sanctioned by Hirohito himself, was responsible for the deaths of 2.7 million Chinese civilians."
"Special Japanese military units conducted experiments on civilians and POWs in China. One of the most infamous was Unit 731. Victims were subjected to vivisection without anesthesia and amputations, and were used to test biological weapons, among other experiments."
--and then there was that enlightened, compassionate POW camp commander, who in one of his final acts of compassion to a group of American airmen had them killed, butchered and served the livers to the guards---
Michael Medved, who is quite conservative, didn't quite see it this way. He gave the movie 4 stars out of 4, and had this to say about it:
"Clint Eastwood’s heart-breaking vision of the Japanese side of one of the great battles of World War II, this subtitled battlefield classic exceeds the acknowledged excellence of its American-perspective counterpart (Flags of Our Fathers). Through directorial alchemy and consistently capable performances, Eastwood makes the suicidal intensity of the doomed Imperial defenders look believable, if not comprehensible. Far from a whitewash of a fanatical enemy, the film highlights both the best (with a compassionate commander played by the great Ken Watanabe) and the worst of the Japanese militarist traditions."
Please keep in mind that Medved, unlike many of the folks here, actually saw the movie.