Posted on 05/27/2006 7:18:26 PM PDT by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at observer.guardian.co.uk ...
Five Marines and one sailor.
Friend, you'll have to take that up with the U.S. Marine press department - that's their caption, not mine.
Filipinos
The rape of Nanking makes Abu Ghraib look like a happy summer day.
Thanks for the kind words.
"I'm thinking in purely moral terms, not military ones;"
"And by the way, I LEARNED that from the Jesuits"
I'm not trying to imply any unintended links between those statements. It's just that; I think the comparison of "firebombing" to "gas chambers" is way off. And I'd be surprised to hear a Jesuit agree with it. At least "on purely moral terms."
Lou Lowery photographed the raising of the first flag. On his descent down Suribachi he encountered Joe Rosenthal and told him he had missed the flag raising. Rosenthal continued his ascent unaware that Rene Gagnon was being dispatched to the summit with a larger flag. SECNAV James Forrestal wanted the first flag as a personal souvenir; which the battalion commander was not going to give him, and the commanders wanted a larger flag raised that could be seen better by the fleet and those on the island. Rosenthal almost missed the event entirely as he was speaking with photographer Bill Genaust at the instant the replacement flag was being raised.
I'm not your friend, sweetheart. A rifle is not a gun.
Thanks for being an ignorant soul.
And while you're at it, quit carping on Memorial Day of all days and stick to the point -- the sublime bravery of the men like my father in law who fought at Iwo.
You're absolutely correct. My apologies to Navy corpsmen everywhere.
It's not about winning or losing,
OH REALLY ? Shows what a moron he has become. I could give a rats a$$ what the Japs were feeling or going through during that battle. Little be little we are turning into a nation of wimps.
Even a half-smart Okie can appreciate that......
“I submit, that genocide is as old as homo sapiens”
(1) How would you know that?
(2) We’re not talking about genocide; we’re talking about the bombings of Japan and Germany.
“Do we now arbitrarily decide that this murder is justified and that one not?”
Since you’re arbitrarily deciding what is murder and what is not, I don’t see why I shouldn’t arbitrarily decide anything I like.
“And please, stop with the simplistic notion that because I disagree with some of the methods used in the Second World War to bring about Allied victory that I somehow serve some sinister, evil purpose or worship the Devil.”
It’s not my notion that is simplistic, but your misinterpretation of it. The Evil One does much of his best work by selling notions such as “social justice” to those who would never willingly serve him.
"And if the way to put an end to evil IS to send an endless stream of young men into combat, are we to pull back from doing it simply because we're "not required to?"
(1) If the stream is endless, then clearly nothing is ended.
(2) "Not required to" implies not shirking, but the use of more effective means.
(3) When more effective means exist, which spare more lives on our side, then we may indeed have a moral duty to employ them.
“Quite frankly, the frontal assaults against the Japanese at places like Iwo Jima were just that: sending an endless stream of young men to their deaths, etc, etc.”
Unfortunately, it is a rule of warfare that you don’t leave a dangerous enemy behind you as you advance. That said, the streams of casualties on those islands were finite, not endless.
“warfare itself is a messy and chaotic business that unleashes the worst in human nature.”
And the best . . . a fact that is deliberately obscured in our culture.
“All I'm saying is that people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.”
And I’m saying you’re far too eager to assert that America is in a glass house.
“Perhaps it's just me”
No, it’s you and everybody else who has been taken in by that argument.
“I don't see how we justify one barbaric act and prosecute another and call somehow ourselves fair and decent.”
One problem is calling what we did in WWII “barbaric.” Once you accept that falsehood, it becomes impossible to reason your way to the truth.
Another, and this is a theological problem, lies in calling ourselves fair and decent.
Hollyweird would portray the soldiers as nothing other than fun loving tourists.
You've made the Liberals' day, Clint.
Superbly said. I'm in total agreement.
I beg to differ, of course the message matters. (Of course there's the chance that he'll send a different message than he intends.)
He's a great movie maker and well crafted antiwar movies often turn out to be great war movies.
I'd like to see him try to beat To End All Wars. (A superb movie, I highly recommend it... I should get the book too.)
[snip]and you can look on the bright side: 21 thousand Japanese are going to get killed.
That's not the bright side, that's the horrible side. The bright side is that we were victorious in defending ourselves. If you hate the Japanese people that much, then you should be ecstatic about the greatest failing of American Christian churches in the 20th century by failing to send missionaries immediately after the surrender. (Ironically, even the Admiral there said that missionaries were needed.)
Indeed. The only reason we lost, was because the politicians would not allow us to win.
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