Posted on 02/15/2007 4:07:26 PM PST by CDB
For those Forum Members who have expressed an opinion on the movie Letters from Iwo Jima, please allow me to share how I re-acted to this film. For lack of a better way to begin, let me say, What “Nice Guys” the Japanese Soldiers Were.
It was obvious to me that the Japanese soldiers who fought the Americans on Iwo Jima were not the same soldiers who fought the Americans on Bataan, or were they?
As a survivor of the Bataan Death March, I can tell you for certainty, the Japanese depicted in “Letters From Iwo Jima” were in no way similar to the soldiers I encountered on the Bataan Death March. So what does that prove? Well, unless you truly believe that the Japanese soldiers fighting in the Philippines earlier in the war, were different than the soldiers on Iwo Jima, then you must come to the conclusion that the director, Clint Eastwood, was overcome by Japanese propaganda. Eastwood tried to “humanize” the Japanese soldier, and wanted to have the audience see the Japanese as nice guys fighting a war they didn’t want to fight, in a place they didn’t want to be.
The film "Letters From Iwo Jima," has been nominated for an Academy Award, which it may richly deserve for the quality of its acting, but the fact remains that as a historical movie, it’s a failure, it instead tries to show the enemy as the nice guys in the war and “so much like we Americans.”
Critics have praised the film because it "humanized" the enemy, but was it their humanity that caused the Japanese soldiers on Bataan to shoot and behead those men who were unable to keep up with the rest of the men on the Bataan March. The same Japanese soldiers, who fought on Iwo Jima and were depicted as being nice guys, were notoriously cruel and savage to prisoners of war. On the Bataan Death March, if you didn’t walk fast enough or didn’t bow low enough you were singled out and tortured, beaten and killed, all at the whim of the Japanese soldier, a private, a corporal, a sergeant or an officer.
Out of 12,000 American soldiers and more than 36,000 Filipino soldiers on the march, less than half of them returned home. In addition to the thousands that died on the March, thousands more died due to brutal barbaric treatment while in POW camps, unarmed and without any means of defense, were tortured and put to death.
This is the film where Clint Eastwood wants to portray the Japanese soldier as being, “just like the rest of us”: Sensitive, caring and concerned for our fellow man. Don’t you believe it!
Japanese soldiers, who were medical officers, carried out biological experiments on prisoners of war. The opening scene in "The Great Raid" movie showing Japanese soldiers burning American POWs alive is not fiction. It is reality.
The record of the atrocities inflicted by the Japanese soldiers on the American and Filipino civilians is numbered in the thousands. In Manila alone, as the war was winding down and the Japanese knew the end was near, they slaughtered more than 100,000 men, women and children.
The brilliant book "The Rape of Nanking" written by the late Iris Chang, chronicles the appalling savagery of the Japanese army during the 1930s. Ms. Chang uncovered the history of more than 360,000 Chinese men, women and children who were massacred by Japanese soldiers; some were, no doubt, the same “nice guys” on Iwo Jima.
It was the Japanese who attacked the United States: It was the Japanese soldier who savagely killed thousands of unarmed POWs, It was the Japanese soldier who placed POWs into bomb shelters and set them on fire so that no one could escape: and it was the Japanese soldiers who refused the offer of surrender when made, while knowing that to continue fighting meant death to hundreds of thousands of their own people,
There were one or two nice guys, but that’s about all. Yet the main thrust of the film was “The Japanese soldier is similar to the American soldier.” I personally knew of no “nice guy” within the enemy soldiers, and I offer this information as fact, not fiction. But the director, Clint Eastwood, along with the Japanese would want you to believe it was “fact”.
The above is my reaction to the film, sorry if I hurt some Forum members feelings.
Lester Tenney, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus Arizona State University Former POW and survivor of the Bataan Death March
This is the film where Clint Eastwood wants to portray the Japanese soldier as being, “just like the rest of us”: Sensitive, caring and concerned for our fellow man. Don’t you believe it!
Japanese soldiers, who were medical officers, carried out biological experiments on prisoners of war. The opening scene in "The Great Raid" movie showing Japanese soldiers burning American POWs alive is not fiction. It is reality.
The record of the atrocities inflicted by the Japanese soldiers on the American and Filipino civilians is numbered in the thousands. In Manila alone, as the war was winding down and the Japanese knew the end was near, they slaughtered more than 100,000 men, women and children.
The brilliant book "The Rape of Nanking" written by the late Iris Chang, chronicles the appalling savagery of the Japanese army during the 1930s. Ms. Chang uncovered the history of more than 360,000 Chinese men, women and children who were massacred by Japanese soldiers; some were, no doubt, the same “nice guys” on Iwo Jima.
It was the Japanese who attacked the United States: It was the Japanese soldier who savagely killed thousands of unarmed POWs, It was the Japanese soldier who placed POWs into bomb shelters and set them on fire so that no one could escape: and it was the Japanese soldiers who refused the offer of surrender when made, while knowing that to continue fighting meant death to hundreds of thousands of their own people,
I think it is safe to say that Mr. Eastwood will not be getting any of our money.
My dad was a WW II vet who had a close friend who was also a Bataan Death March Survivor. He was missing three fingers on one hand. My dad told me the Japanese had cut off one finger at a time with an ax because he had cut wood too long for the wood stoves. "Flags of Our Fathers" did not depict the barbarism of the Japanese that was shown in the book either.
Thanks. As good as this movie looks (they had a Hollywood vs history thing on the history channel and the movie replicated historical film and photos in many places) - I've heard enough about it to know that I won't be spending my money to hear how the Japs were "just like our guys".
My thanks to Dr. Tenny for his service to our country.
I loved the Great Raid movie...can't say the same about much else out of Hollywood.
nor mine
Did you see the film? That's a complete misrepresentation of its content.
Mr. Eastwood is a liar.
I am very disappointed in him.
Amen and thank you for recounting the truth of that horrific event in American history that Hollywood purposefully fails to tell. We owe it to those who did not survive that brutal time in history and those who are no longer here to tell their story.
Good points. I would like to see a current movie depicting the evils of the Japanese atrocities. However, as the writer admits, the soldiers at Iwo Jima may have been quite different. This seems especially plausible since we're talking, essentially, about the end of the war. Perspectives may well have changed and "humanized." It's also possible that the available human material in the later stages of the war for losing armies -- Japanese and German -- was younger and/or gentler, losing armies have to reach further and further into the available pool to keep up their manpower.
It was an excellent movie and could have been much more relativistic than it was. It could also have been anti-American, and wasn't. I don't think it conveyed a message about the pointlessness of the war from an American standpoint, but rather conveyed the increasing pointlessness of Japanese resistance, and the human side of the Japanese soldiers.
It would be interesting to hear from someone who actually knows what the Japanese on Iwo Jim were like.
Thank you for your service to our country, Dr. Tenney and thank you for this review. That's a movie I will not see.
The Japanese were not portrayed as saints. And the Americans weren't portrayed as phonies -- they were barely portrayed at all. And I don't believe the Americans actually were saints, either. How could they have been?
thanks for posting
The Great Raid movie was indeed a well done film, in my opinion.
The scene where the Battalion Commander is workin' over the Japs in a stream with his Springfield is absolutely wonderful!
Semper Fi,
"This is the film where Clint Eastwood wants to portray the Japanese soldier as being, “just like the rest of us”: Sensitive, caring and concerned for our fellow man. Don’t you believe it!"
I don't. They were MONSTERS!
Using bayonets to pierce babies thrown up in the air - it's ALL TRUE. They remind me of Muslim terrorists - little difference.
I saw the movie and I liked it. I didn't accept the premise that the enemy was just like us.
ping
I saw "Letters..." I thought it was a very good movie. I didn't think that it sanitized the Japanese. It showed a couple of Japanese who were scared young men filled with doubt, and most of the Japanese were simply doing whatever they could to fight and die "honorably". But it did not draw any equivalence between American and Japanese societies of the time, or between the overall conduct of our respective militaries. It just showed the experiences of a handful of soldiers in one particular (losing) battle.
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