Eastwood honored French President Jacques Chirac pins the medal of the Legion of Honor on the lapel of actor and director Clint Eastwood during a ceremony in Paris on Saturday. (AP photo by Remy de la Mauviniere) Feb 17, 2007
Posted on 02/15/2007 4:07:26 PM PST by CDB
Good Lord, you may have discovered another primary source of information! Check with the man's survivors and question them about those historical photographs. They need to be compared against archived ones to see if they are perhaps unique.
A B-29 was more than the lives of the men on board. A B-29 was a valuable fist even with conventional bombs. The Dinah Mite was the first one to land there in an emergency. Over 30 followed.
Keep in mind too that there were certain other advantages in having the island cleared, the airfield operable, and como on the mountain.
Agreed.
However, I'm sure you agree that it is arguable whether saving 30 bombers and their crews justified the cost of 26,000 American casualties.
Hindsight, of course.
Were you aware that some American captives on Chichijima, an nearby island, were not only tortured but eaten?
GHW Bush was shot down in a raid on Chichijima, but was picked out of the water. So he narrowly escaped being eaten, in which case the world would have been spared that monster, his son. :)
My father too served as an air corps pilot in the Pacific. He said the atrocities committed by the Japanese were incomparable to that of the German soldier in Europe.
In the battle for Iwo Jima there were American soldiers that were captured in tunnels that honeycombed the island.
They were tortured and then killed.
Seems like all the "nice guys" were nowhere to be found.
War never solved anything except freedom from the English during the birth of our Country, conquest of the Great Lakes, the end of slavery, the end of Nazism, and Imperialism.
Clint Eastwood might consider doing a film one day about how the troops support each other even after wars. And so do their children.
There's an untold story here, which to date, has only been covered by such one-sided films as "Coming Home". That film made me so angry due its one-sidedness.
It's not just in Veteran Halls where and how our vets and their families are cared for, watched over.
There were over 300 B-29s that made emergency landings at Iwo after the Americans took control of the island. (My father piloting one of them.)
10 crew members to each plane = 3000 American Airmen.
It was a necessary battle.
The depiction of the Japanese is much less flattering in the Eastwood film than it is in Kwai.
Mr. Eastwood has turned PC. trying to get another oscar?
A friend of mine's uncle was one of those Filipinos on that death march. He survived, but he would not have called the Japanese soldiers, nice guys.
"Letters from Hiroshima" -- now THERE's a film I'd like to see!
I hope Mr Eastwood is tortured in the next life by all those souls tortured by the "Just the Same as You or I" Japanese in WWII. I knew two Bataan marchers. Neither would talk about their experiences and neither would allow anyone even remotely Asian in appearance take care of them.
Thank you
Thanks, I'll look into that.
That's a very nice story. Your dad is a good guy.
Yes, my dad is one of those evil military guys who cares about and for other people.
Eastwood honored French President Jacques Chirac pins the medal of the Legion of Honor on the lapel of actor and director Clint Eastwood during a ceremony in Paris on Saturday. (AP photo by Remy de la Mauviniere) Feb 17, 2007
My late uncle and father-in-law were both WWII vets from the Pacific Theater. They both HATED the Japs. They said they saw Americans hung upside down and gutted like cattle. There is a great book out there somewhere called:"Prisoner of the Japanese." All WWII stories. They were barbaric!
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