The what??? ;)
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 ...
Overall he's OK although he has some of the problems you might expect at his age. Ironically, given his eyesight then and the way he could shoot, he's essentially blind now. Has been to several D-Day events with his daughter though.
Thanks for the update.
My Apologies! I never meant to insinuate that we had to be "culturally sensitive" with reagrds to Japan and the Second World War; only that we make the mistake of believing they operated on the same wavelength that we do (or did at the time). What would have made good, political, tactical or strategic sense to a Westerner in the years 41-45 would not be viewed in the same way by most Japanese of the same period.
As an example, I submit that Japan went to war under the impression that they had been forced to. This feeling is advanced by a combination of factors: Japanese racial chauvanism, economics, notions of national pride, the shame principle and a host of other factors (like American sanctions).
No Western leadership (short of Nazi Germany) would have thought it necessary (or practicable) to incite an aggressive war against three other powers (USA, Britain, Holland) as a pre-requisite for finishing a war in CHINA (and which was obviously unwinnable to anyone with unprejudiced eye). In the Japanese mindset, the war in China was not being lost because the Japanese were rotten soldiers or the Chinese good ones; it was not being won because China was receiving Western aid that enabled them to hold out. This "aid" was keeping Japan from fufilling it's national destiny in China.
The Japanese came to the conclusion that once this aid was removed, China would either quickly crumble militarily or bow to the inevitable and join hands politically with Japan. The Japanese never intended to RULE China proper, per se, merely to pull the strings and reap the benefits. So long as western influences (missionary, economic, political, military) existed, this plan could never be successful.
In this reagrd, the attack on Pearl Harbor (and simultaneous assaults elsewhere) was intended to keep the Americans at bay (the Japanese believed that in the name of Anglo-Saxon unity, the US would go to war to save the British Empire) while Japan both closed the doors by which China received this aid (The railway from Hanoi, and the Burma Road), and simultaneously swipe the resources in the South that would allow Japan to complete the war in China free of western interference (and despite the Western sanctions imposed upon Japan). In any event, the Japanese never even thought of their actions as "conquering China" but rather as "liberating" China from western imperialism and guiding it forward under "enlightened" Japanese tutelage.
This is the guiding principle behind the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere"; Japan will liberate the Asians from the West, and guide them into the future in a spirit of Pan-Asian brotherhood (as befits a "master race"). The upside is that while all of Asia would benefit from this scheme, Japan proper would be center of this new universe. The Japanese would be worshiped by grateful Asians and Japanese business would prosper on a constant stream of cheap raw materials and ready-made markets for it's products.
And Japan would be free to build this world free (it thought) from Western interference. It's why the Japanese ALWAYS held out the hope that once armed resistance had proven futile, that the west would negotiate; they fervently believed the scheme was possible. But they had discounted the history of Western culture, particularly those aspects concerned with economic self-interest and warfare.
Now, does this make sense to you? In the light of the experience of World War II (and Western notions of logic and propriety), heck no. But to the Japanese of the day, it was a sensible compromise to a myriad of complex problems which Japan found itself up against.
>>>Some generations are required to kill the totalitarians in order to hand liberty down to the next generation<<<
Short and simple bump!
This bears repeating. Over and over.
As for Clint Eastwood. He's my all time hero. I will reserve judgement until I see the film. That said, I don't agree that in Million Dollar Baby, that Clint 'endorsed' eutanasia. I think he presented it as an issue and did not clearly land on either the for or against side of the issue.
I think the "controversy" is that this particular photo was posed, although there was a photo beforehand that was not.
I think we are born liberals, once we can process information we become conservatives, and as we age and get into our latter years we move back to being more liberal as we feel weaker and more vulnerable.
The what??? ;)
Several people told me that about 3 months ago. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate your effort,it's just that I thought this thread had been consigned to the dust bin of history.
It lives!
My Father served in WWII on the U.S.S. Mississippi which was hit twice by Kamikazes, with my Dad’s close friend being killed in one of those attacks. Will Eastwood portray the Japanese soldiers as being so desperate to kill Americans that they would sacrifice their selves? Much like the terrorist today.
I hate it when threads are like that. Sorry.
Not so. The famous Rosenthal photo was of a "second" flag raising (a much larger flag than the first) on the orders of the Fleet Admiral. He wanted a flag large enough for all the men on ships and on shore would be able to see. There was no posing and in fact, Rosenthal didn't even have the opportunity to frame the shot in his view finder. He had his back turned and when he turned around the men began raising the flag and he quickly fired off a frame from his hip and got very lucky. He never even saw the results until months later.
Thanks man.
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