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.
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.
thanks for posting
"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.
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.
The real reason the libs hate the Nazis is not because of the Holocaust but because they stabbed their good buddies the Commies in the back, after using the security achieved by the Hitler-Stalin Pact to launch the war in the first place. For years and years and years and years we've heard about how the poor Russians bore the brunt of Nazi brutality and did the job while ee-vil racist America was fighting quaint, non-western Japanese. They don't seem to recall how the wonderful, beautiful commies split Poland with the Nazis and used the Pact to conquer the Baltic countries, not to mention wage a war of aggression against Finland. And if Hitler hadn't stabbed Stalin in the back, the Commies would have probably spent the entire war as his allies.
If the atomic bomb had been dropped on Germany, or been dropped by FDR (whom liberals conveniently forget hated the Japanese, just like his cousin Theodore), we wouldn't hear a word about it.
I read recently, either on Drudge or World Net Daily, that Mr Eastwood, through his movies, wanted to show the "futility of war." Yeah, I guess it was futile to fight against Hitler. We should have all just gone along. That way, Mr. Eastwood could be making movies about the Super Race.
I love it when libs say war is futile! What tripe! Is crime fighting also futile?? Is it futile for the police to hunt down and arrest thieves and murders? Is it futile for police to hunt down rapists?? Should women be told to just go along with rapists, because it's just so futile to fight against them, that nothing good ever comes from hunting them down and arresting them! Was Hitler, or any dictator for that matter, really any different from your average street thug?? The only real difference between a Hitler or a Saddam Hussein is that they were able to obtain a better vantage point, and have more weapons and minions at their disposal.
If war is so futile,, why would so many movie stars have such high security!! I am sure Mr Eastwood has a nice high wall around his villa! Why wouldn't he just have the attitude that it is futile to protect one self against crazed fans, futile to protect against robbers and thieves??
Oops,, I am ranting again!
I knew a man who had a box full of photos from the Bataan Death March. I accidently found them in a shoe box while looking for something else for him in his study. The photos were taken by the Japanese and were horrid. He would not explain how he got them and refused to talk about them or the war. The gentleman has been dead for many years now. Whenever I hear about the death march I think of him and wonder....
That is why "letters from Iwo Jima" is not listed in my queue at Blockbuster and Netflix.
My uncle, a Marine, was killed at Iwo Jima and is buried there. My father felt that it would be too traumatic for their mother to bring his brother's body home (as their father had recently passed away as well). All I have of my uncle is my father's childhood reminiscences, and I gave my son his name as a middle name to honor him.
I won't be seeing that film.
"I was only following orders" should not be considered an acceptable WWII excuse for torture and humiliation these days.