The first flag raising atop Mt. Suribachi. Jim Michels holds the gun with (left to right) Hank Hansen, Boots Thomas, Harold Schrier and Chuck Lindberg behind. Photo by Lou Lowery. 10AM, Feb. 23, 1945
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 ...
Thanks. I should wait to post sometimes, but it just "comes over me". Google is your friend, as I've heard many times here.
Sensitiveeeeee
Let's wait and see, Clint is one of the good guys after all.
Hmm. First time I ever heard anybody refer to Rosenthal's photgraph as "controversial" - - doesn't make sense. Unless it is "controversial" because Rosenthal posed it after he didn't get a picture of the men raising the flag the first time.
Me too. More times than I care to think about. ;)
Damnedest thing, though, is that they didn't surrender after that fall.
With respect to winning and losing, for the winner it might not be that important afterwards, but for the loser the only hope of success was to win when it was possible.
Losers don't care if they win or lose.
Thanks for the info.
Kindly ignore my post #86.
Good glory - the 'hang him high' crowd is out tonight.
Until I see different - which means seeing the movies - I'm not going to knee-jerk prejudge Eastward...Unless he's radically changed in the past few years - he is a 'working' conservative...i.e. he puts his time and money where his mouth is.
Seems some here tonight could use a chill pill ;o)
I wasn't being insulting at all.
There was no still foto of the first raising.
This is what I was referring to in my post.
The larger second flag was raised because the first one was not visible from where the ships were anchored.
Rosenthal just happened to be there for the second flag raising.
It's still a great photo, the composition was perfect. He did crop it slightly in the darkroom.
Locke is an abomination as a human being = she was, it would seem from her actions, a 'fatal attraction' personality = and not just on Eastward but other men - and not just one at a time. That was a bad episode in his life - a big mistake he paid dearly for. Sometimes good people get taken in by not-so-good people...
The first flag raising atop Mt. Suribachi. Jim Michels holds the gun with (left to right) Hank Hansen, Boots Thomas, Harold Schrier and Chuck Lindberg behind. Photo by Lou Lowery. 10AM, Feb. 23, 1945
I understand how you could make this judgment. But here's the whole quote in context.
'I feel terrible for both sides in that war and in all wars. A lot of innocent people get sacrificed. It's not about winning or losing, but mostly about the interrupted lives of young people.
I read the antecedent of the "it" in "It's not about winning or losing" as being "all wars" -- not "this movie".
And every war is ALL about winning and losing.
For Clint's sake, I'd like to think I'm wrong, but I don't think I am.
By the same token, I have no difficulty admiring the bravery and courage of enemy soldiers. But I don't like being asked to ignore their cause...
Maybe that's what you meant, but you used the word reenactment when no such purpose was envisioned by the six Marines who raised the second flag; by the superiors who sent them up Suribachi where serious fighting was ongoing; or most certainly by Joe Rosenthal.
http://carol_fus.tripod.com/marines_hero_ray_jacobs.html
The Straight Scoop--ask someone who was there!
ray1jacobs@msn.com
I remember the Tony Curtis movie called 'The Outsider' about these men who raised the flag on Iwo Jima. Tony played the American Indian, Ira Hayes, who was one of the six. Terrific movie. Haven't seen it on TV for decades.
HA! Didn't say I didn't like Clint! My point was I think people make him out to more conservative than he considers himself.
They were late in the game, and felt cheated by the Treaty of Versailles. But then they invaded Manchuria, they raped Nanking. We cut off their steel and their oil. They retaliated. Perhaps we can depict Japanese Imperial soldiers claiming their right to Chinese territory, but only in its jingoistic, xenophobic context.
We can justify the attack on Pearl Harbor on that, and the invasion of Attu and Kiska. We can see them justifying themselves in the Bataan Death March and the Owens Stanley Range, too. We can see the Burma railroad, and how they built that.
They were brave, and resourceful. No one can deny that. But we have to see those attributes in the light of their armed assault on the entire Pacific Rim, and their complete disregard for the life of anyone not Japanese.
How this will make the World War II Japanese look like anything other than Satan, I can't see.
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