Eastwood attacks Japan war myths

The Observer (U.K.) ^ | 05/28/06 | Justin McCurry

[Pokey78]

Two new movies based on a bloody 1945 battle are stirring up memories and forcing both sides to re-examine their history

---

More than 60 years after it became one of the bloodiest battlefields of the Second World War, Iwo Jima's tragic history retains the power to overwhelm. As his plane prepared to land on the isolated Japanese island last month, the actor Ken Watanabe found he could not hold back the tears. Accompanying Watanabe, who shot to stardom playing a feudal warlord opposite Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai, was another hard man of Hollywood whose time on Iwo Jima would lead to something of a professional epiphany.

When Clint Eastwood's two films about Iwo Jima, one of the darkest periods of the Pacific War, reach cinemas this year, audiences could be excused for forgetting the man behind them was once the trigger-happy Dirty Harry.

The 75-year-old director has promised Flags Of Our Fathers and Red Sun, Black Sand will attempt to show for the first time the suffering of both sides during 36 days of fighting in early 1945 that turned the island into a flattened wasteland.

[maine-iac7]

After John Wayne died, there were those who said Clint would take his place as Hollywood's symbol of heroic manhood.

LOL

John (Marion Morrisey) Wayne was a "symbol of heroic manhood" on screen. In person, he could be rude, crude and ungentlemanly. Wayne was "playing" the 'heroic man' on film...it's called acting -

On the other hand, Eastward, in person, is polite, gentlemanly and has done much, quietly, to help others both on a personal level and for the communities he lives in.

Maybe we could hold our fire until we see the films...

[xkaydet65]

This is a still taken from the Marine film. If you watch the whole shot it's quite simple yet moving, I think more so than the film footage of the second flag, shot from the same angle as Rosenthal's.But the remarkable image taken by Rosenthal was evident as it appeared in the soup at the foto lab on Guam where it was developed.

BTW if you want to see what IMHO is the finest and most emotional moving picture image of the war you have to see the re raising of the Flag on Midway during the attack by the Japanese on 4 June 1942. It's greatness lies not only in the subject but in the fact it was filmed by Hollywood legend John Ford.

[gunnyg]

One More...

http://www.freerepublic.com/~gunnyg/

Semper Fidelis
(not semper fi)
Dick Gaines

[sig226]

Please see post 100.

[kms61]

There were some accusations that it was staged. I think they were conclusively proven wrong, but maybe that's the controversy the author is referring to.

[maine-iac7]

oh good grief

guilty until...........

[kms61]

Homma was executed as well. There may have been others, but I know he was.

[Rembrandt]

"This is a bad sign."

I'm ok with this film JUST AS LONG AS IT TELLS TRUTH AND NOT LIES. Personally, I don't think Clint Eastwood lies as a practice.

In fact, I'd like to see a movie such as this made about the VN Conflict - then the U.S. people could see that our side was victorious in the battles, was winning the war on the ground and the people who gave victory away were the scumball Democrats walking the halls of Congress!

[maine-iac7]

LOL

[F.J. Mitchell]

Eastwood has turned into a taller slimmer but not a damn bit brighter, Michael Moore.

[epow]

A very close friend who I worked with for years spent almost the entire war in Japanese POW camps. He was captured on Bataan before the Coregidor surrender so he missed the death march. He was a strapping 6-footer when he was captured, but he weighed 85 lbs and was almost dead when he was liberated in 1945. His back was a mass of scar tissue where Japanese guards had ground out cigarette butts on his bare back while he worked the coal mines on Hokkaido(sp?) Island. If a POW made a noise or looked up when he was burned he got a rifle butt in his face and usually a broken jaw which many men died from. They were fed two golf-ball size rice balls twice a day splashed with a watery fish sauce and a weak cup of unsweetened tea, and they had to work 12-16 hours 7 days a week in the mines on that food. Winters on that northern island were brutally cold and snowy, and the men slept on rough boards laid on dirt in open air sheds with very little or no bedding or blankets. A large but unknown number of American and British POWs died of exposure and cold in those coal mine camps durng the course of that awful war, unknown because the camps didn't keep records of what they died from.

I could go on for pages retelling the horror stories he told me about his time in those camps, but suffice it to say that he was one of 18 survivors out of a group of almost 300 American soldiers who were captured at the same place and time he was. He never forgave the Japanese for their inhuman treatment of him and his buddies, most of whom didn't make it to liberation. He would not ride in a Japanese car, buy or use any Japanese-made product, or eat rice in any form. Not long after he returned home and recuperated somewhat, he had to be forcibly restrained by his companions in a San Francisco restaurant when a Japanese-American sat down at a nearby table. He was trying to get to the man with a steak knife when they stopped him.

I can't imagine the suffering that men like my friend experienced in those camps. He died in the late 1960s much younger than he should have, I believe due at least in part to the physical abuse, diseases, and severe malnutrition his body absorbed in those camps. As a born again Christian I have to believe that I could forgive that kind of abuse for Christ's sake, but unfortunately for him he couldn't. But I will say one thing that may not be as Christ-like as I should be. I am not particularly interested in hearing or seeing an American film actor who never faced a brutal, depraved, inhuman enemy like the WWII Japanese sympathize with the hardships of Japanese military personnel on Iwo Jima or anywhere else. They made their bed when they attacked an unsuspecting nation by surprise and murdered helpless POWs in wholesale lots, let them lie on it.

[Doctor Stochastic]

If Germany or Japan want to produce movies that explain what their men went through, I have no problem with it.

"A Time to Love" isn't a bad look at the war from the German point of view.

[annelizly]

yes, when my mom was younger she knew a man(a local grocer) who had been a POW during WWII in germany and she got up the nerve to ask him one day "do you hate all germans now"(he had lost a foot in the camp)

he replied that he didn't. he said that they were all starving too and that most of them were very nice to them and even brought them some food from what little they had to feed themselves and their families.

somehow i don't think this ever would have happened with the japanese.

[bannie]

Screw 'em. You attack us, and we fight back. We hope that, when we do, you will die instead of us.

You start it: We hope to finish it.

Shut up, and take what you started.

[DocRock]

" it focuses on the six US soldiers captured in AP photographer Joe Rosenthal's iconic and controversial photograph, as they raised the Stars and Stripes at the summit of Mt Suribachi."

Click the Pic

[NCC-1701]

"...and reread Ernie Pyle's description of London..."

I have visited Ernie Pyle's grave in Punchbowl-the National Burial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. It was easy to find. Elison Onizuka, STS-51L astronaut is buried next to him. Compared to what these two flicks are trying to portray with the reality of who's buried in Punchbowl as a result of Japanese agression, I'm sure I won't pay good money to see them.

[brazzaville]

Good evening.
"I am not quite sure how to take this:"

Try this.

The majority of the FReepers posting on this thread are outraged that Clint is going to make a movie that shows the Japanese as more than faceless savages and that this will somehow make the sacrifices of the Marines less than they were.

It doesn't matter that none of us have seen either of the movies, or that the article that inspired the anger is in a socialist British rag that makes the WaPo look conservative. That is where the 21 thousand dead Japanese comment comes from. I guess I should have added a sarcasm tag.

One anti war movie that I consider a great war movie is "Saving Private Ryan". That would probably horrify Spielberg, but he captured the reality that, as awful as war is we still are willing to risk it all for our people. It would probably horrify some here that I believe that. The fact is, that I believe all war movies are designed to be anti rather than pro war, but the movies take on a life of their own.

I consider Gettysburg to be another really well done war movie that is meant to show how bad it is, yet shows us the better part of humanity. "The Steel Helmet", "All The Young Men", either version of the "All Quiet On The Western Front" are all movies that I say fit the bill. "A Walk in the Sun" and "Hell Is For Heroes" are others. Few movie makers set out to show anything positive about war but it just brings out the good in us along with the the bad and they can't stop showing that fact if they are good at their craft.

I read on your homepage that you are on your way to Iraq or Afghanistan. Good luck and let us know what you think about what you experience.

Michael Frazier

[maine-iac7]

the people who gave victory away were the scumball Democrats walking the halls of Congress!

Got that right!

It needs to be told -