Eastwood Rejects Lee's Criticism of His WW2 Films

reuters.com ^ | May 23, 2008

[DMZFrank]

I suspect that the racial grievance monger Spike Lee is more interested in agitation than historical accuracy. notwithstanding that, there is a historical basis for his complaint.

The black Marine 8th ammunition company landed on Iwo Jima on D-Day plus two, February 21, 1945. They performed bravely under very heavy indirect and sniper fire. After the island was secured, the 8th ammunition company, along with black marines from the 5th Pioneer Battalion, Navy Sea Bees, and United States Army Air Corps personnel engaged 300 enemy soldiers conducting a last-ditch Banzai charge. This ad hoc battle group killed 250 Japanese soldiers for a loss of 50 of their own.

As to Clint Eastwood’s movie, “Flags of Our Fathers” at 16 minutes and 39 seconds of the movie the Marine captain charecterized by the actor Neil McDonough says in his shipboard briefing to the gathered marines that the “28th Marine regiment will land at Green beach, and the 8th Ammunition Company will be landed here.” The camera then shifts to a shot of several black marines who are listening to the briefing.

This the only reference to black marines in the movie. I suspect that other shots of them were left on the cutting room floor. As a black man I am enormously appreciative of their heroism and service to their country. The story needs to be told. But it would be dishonest to pretend that the vast overwhelming majority of fighting and dying on that hellhole called Iwo Jima was done by other than white,. Hispanic, and Native American marines. Black Marines would have been every bit as heroic, but the misguided military racial policies of the time simply prevented their participating in the breadth that their white brothers were. I have always been concerned with historical accuracy and not therapeutic political correctness to make modern-day audiences feel good. I cannot fault Clint Eastwood for his decision to keep the Black Marines on the peripherey of his story.

If you want to read about a real hot shot Black fighting outfit, read about the 761st Tank Bn, the “Black Panthers.” SSG Reuben Rivers recently got a belated Medal of Honor for his incredible heroism as a tank commander, and their story was well told by one of their white company commanders, David Williams, (who spent decades lobbying for the MOH for Rivers) in his excellent book “Hit Hard.” Kareem Abdul Jabbar wrote the very fine “Brothers in Arms” about the 761st. They were the best black combat outfit of WWII, notwithstanding the great Tuskegee Airmen. Their battle record was as good as almost any independent tank battalion of the US Army. They also got a belated Presidential Unit Citation in 1976.

[dcwusmc]

My late former wife was Korean, born in Japan just prior to WWII, whose father and mother were taken to Japan from Korea for some slave labor or other. When she lived in the PI sometime during the ‘60s, they confused her with the Japanese and treated her pretty badly.