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."
According to this man's own article, Eastwood's film features a "sadistic Bushido-oriented captain," and apparently pits the film's Kuribayashi character into conflict with his junior officers who are much the same. I don't see the relevance of this fellow complaining that Eastwood's Iwo Jima film doesn't depict incidents that happened in Nanking or Unit 731.
The outrage seems feigned, anyway, since even this guy writes that "Sure, all grunts are similar in that they miss their homes, their wives and sweethearts, they look at photographs of them before the battle, they tell jokes and form friendships, they are kind to little children and dogs."
It seems to me that that's all Eastwood was aiming to show, and if a fine film like Das Boot can be made about soldiers from Nazi Germany without shaking our confidence that there was "any point to us opposing them", then our tender minds should be able to survive Letters from Iwo Jima.