Posted on 02/15/2007 4:07:26 PM PST by CDB
For those Forum Members who have expressed an opinion on the movie Letters from Iwo Jima, please allow me to share how I re-acted to this film. For lack of a better way to begin, let me say, What “Nice Guys” the Japanese Soldiers Were.
It was obvious to me that the Japanese soldiers who fought the Americans on Iwo Jima were not the same soldiers who fought the Americans on Bataan, or were they?
As a survivor of the Bataan Death March, I can tell you for certainty, the Japanese depicted in “Letters From Iwo Jima” were in no way similar to the soldiers I encountered on the Bataan Death March. So what does that prove? Well, unless you truly believe that the Japanese soldiers fighting in the Philippines earlier in the war, were different than the soldiers on Iwo Jima, then you must come to the conclusion that the director, Clint Eastwood, was overcome by Japanese propaganda. Eastwood tried to “humanize” the Japanese soldier, and wanted to have the audience see the Japanese as nice guys fighting a war they didn’t want to fight, in a place they didn’t want to be.
The film "Letters From Iwo Jima," has been nominated for an Academy Award, which it may richly deserve for the quality of its acting, but the fact remains that as a historical movie, it’s a failure, it instead tries to show the enemy as the nice guys in the war and “so much like we Americans.”
Critics have praised the film because it "humanized" the enemy, but was it their humanity that caused the Japanese soldiers on Bataan to shoot and behead those men who were unable to keep up with the rest of the men on the Bataan March. The same Japanese soldiers, who fought on Iwo Jima and were depicted as being nice guys, were notoriously cruel and savage to prisoners of war. On the Bataan Death March, if you didn’t walk fast enough or didn’t bow low enough you were singled out and tortured, beaten and killed, all at the whim of the Japanese soldier, a private, a corporal, a sergeant or an officer.
Out of 12,000 American soldiers and more than 36,000 Filipino soldiers on the march, less than half of them returned home. In addition to the thousands that died on the March, thousands more died due to brutal barbaric treatment while in POW camps, unarmed and without any means of defense, were tortured and put to death.
This is the film where Clint Eastwood wants to portray the Japanese soldier as being, “just like the rest of us”: Sensitive, caring and concerned for our fellow man. Don’t you believe it!
Japanese soldiers, who were medical officers, carried out biological experiments on prisoners of war. The opening scene in "The Great Raid" movie showing Japanese soldiers burning American POWs alive is not fiction. It is reality.
The record of the atrocities inflicted by the Japanese soldiers on the American and Filipino civilians is numbered in the thousands. In Manila alone, as the war was winding down and the Japanese knew the end was near, they slaughtered more than 100,000 men, women and children.
The brilliant book "The Rape of Nanking" written by the late Iris Chang, chronicles the appalling savagery of the Japanese army during the 1930s. Ms. Chang uncovered the history of more than 360,000 Chinese men, women and children who were massacred by Japanese soldiers; some were, no doubt, the same “nice guys” on Iwo Jima.
It was the Japanese who attacked the United States: It was the Japanese soldier who savagely killed thousands of unarmed POWs, It was the Japanese soldier who placed POWs into bomb shelters and set them on fire so that no one could escape: and it was the Japanese soldiers who refused the offer of surrender when made, while knowing that to continue fighting meant death to hundreds of thousands of their own people,
There were one or two nice guys, but that’s about all. Yet the main thrust of the film was “The Japanese soldier is similar to the American soldier.” I personally knew of no “nice guy” within the enemy soldiers, and I offer this information as fact, not fiction. But the director, Clint Eastwood, along with the Japanese would want you to believe it was “fact”.
The above is my reaction to the film, sorry if I hurt some Forum members feelings.
Lester Tenney, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus Arizona State University Former POW and survivor of the Bataan Death March
This is the film where Clint Eastwood wants to portray the Japanese soldier as being, “just like the rest of us”: Sensitive, caring and concerned for our fellow man. Don’t you believe it!
Japanese soldiers, who were medical officers, carried out biological experiments on prisoners of war. The opening scene in "The Great Raid" movie showing Japanese soldiers burning American POWs alive is not fiction. It is reality.
The record of the atrocities inflicted by the Japanese soldiers on the American and Filipino civilians is numbered in the thousands. In Manila alone, as the war was winding down and the Japanese knew the end was near, they slaughtered more than 100,000 men, women and children.
The brilliant book "The Rape of Nanking" written by the late Iris Chang, chronicles the appalling savagery of the Japanese army during the 1930s. Ms. Chang uncovered the history of more than 360,000 Chinese men, women and children who were massacred by Japanese soldiers; some were, no doubt, the same “nice guys” on Iwo Jima.
It was the Japanese who attacked the United States: It was the Japanese soldier who savagely killed thousands of unarmed POWs, It was the Japanese soldier who placed POWs into bomb shelters and set them on fire so that no one could escape: and it was the Japanese soldiers who refused the offer of surrender when made, while knowing that to continue fighting meant death to hundreds of thousands of their own people,
I think it is safe to say that Mr. Eastwood will not be getting any of our money.
My dad was a WW II vet who had a close friend who was also a Bataan Death March Survivor. He was missing three fingers on one hand. My dad told me the Japanese had cut off one finger at a time with an ax because he had cut wood too long for the wood stoves. "Flags of Our Fathers" did not depict the barbarism of the Japanese that was shown in the book either.
Thanks. As good as this movie looks (they had a Hollywood vs history thing on the history channel and the movie replicated historical film and photos in many places) - I've heard enough about it to know that I won't be spending my money to hear how the Japs were "just like our guys".
My thanks to Dr. Tenny for his service to our country.
I loved the Great Raid movie...can't say the same about much else out of Hollywood.
nor mine
Did you see the film? That's a complete misrepresentation of its content.
Mr. Eastwood is a liar.
I am very disappointed in him.
Amen and thank you for recounting the truth of that horrific event in American history that Hollywood purposefully fails to tell. We owe it to those who did not survive that brutal time in history and those who are no longer here to tell their story.
Good points. I would like to see a current movie depicting the evils of the Japanese atrocities. However, as the writer admits, the soldiers at Iwo Jima may have been quite different. This seems especially plausible since we're talking, essentially, about the end of the war. Perspectives may well have changed and "humanized." It's also possible that the available human material in the later stages of the war for losing armies -- Japanese and German -- was younger and/or gentler, losing armies have to reach further and further into the available pool to keep up their manpower.
It was an excellent movie and could have been much more relativistic than it was. It could also have been anti-American, and wasn't. I don't think it conveyed a message about the pointlessness of the war from an American standpoint, but rather conveyed the increasing pointlessness of Japanese resistance, and the human side of the Japanese soldiers.
It would be interesting to hear from someone who actually knows what the Japanese on Iwo Jim were like.
Thank you for your service to our country, Dr. Tenney and thank you for this review. That's a movie I will not see.
The Japanese were not portrayed as saints. And the Americans weren't portrayed as phonies -- they were barely portrayed at all. And I don't believe the Americans actually were saints, either. How could they have been?
thanks for posting
The Great Raid movie was indeed a well done film, in my opinion.
The scene where the Battalion Commander is workin' over the Japs in a stream with his Springfield is absolutely wonderful!
Semper Fi,
"This is the film where Clint Eastwood wants to portray the Japanese soldier as being, “just like the rest of us”: Sensitive, caring and concerned for our fellow man. Don’t you believe it!"
I don't. They were MONSTERS!
Using bayonets to pierce babies thrown up in the air - it's ALL TRUE. They remind me of Muslim terrorists - little difference.
I saw the movie and I liked it. I didn't accept the premise that the enemy was just like us.
ping
I saw "Letters..." I thought it was a very good movie. I didn't think that it sanitized the Japanese. It showed a couple of Japanese who were scared young men filled with doubt, and most of the Japanese were simply doing whatever they could to fight and die "honorably". But it did not draw any equivalence between American and Japanese societies of the time, or between the overall conduct of our respective militaries. It just showed the experiences of a handful of soldiers in one particular (losing) battle.
I understand that the Japanese troops on Iwo Jima were the cream of the crop and the toughest the Japanese had. No old men and young kids like Hitler used in Berlin.
Are you saying the movie seems to have that premise?
Interesting. If true, the film is misleading.
I'll reword it. I didn't accept a point of view that they were just like us.
That's what I saw, too. Maybe there should have been less of a focus on the younger, nicer guys -- if it's true, as one poster says, that the Iwo troops were really hard-asses. But in any case, a good movie. Strict historical accuracy, although both desirable and achievable, is very rare in movies. However, there are worse things than inaccuracy. I believe Eastwood made not only a riveting film, but a basically honest one.
When I watched it, I kept thinking it would be a good double bill with "Downfall", the German movie about the last days in Hitler's bunker. Both had that sense of "we're all going to die."
I don't think that's the point of view the film put across. The relationship of those soldiers to their Officers and to their job was copmletely different from the way it's depicted in American war films about Americans.
Any such point of view would definitely be wrong.
Personally, I didn't pick up that sense of "just like us." But I do think it's true that their better features were stressed -- in most, though not all, major characters.
At one point, they read a letter from home from the soldier who was captured. It mirrored some of the words of the soldiers who had written to their own homes. A comparison was being made that the Japanese soldiers were like the American soldiers.
I agree. Many American soldiers were far from admirable, but this is utterly different from the "culture of evil" that (you rightly say) had a powerful role in the Axis militaries.
I did not see "Flags of Our Fathers" because I figured it might well be unfair to our boys -- our fathers.
In this limited respect, though, they may have been very similar.
The real reason the libs hate the Nazis is not because of the Holocaust but because they stabbed their good buddies the Commies in the back, after using the security achieved by the Hitler-Stalin Pact to launch the war in the first place. For years and years and years and years we've heard about how the poor Russians bore the brunt of Nazi brutality and did the job while ee-vil racist America was fighting quaint, non-western Japanese. They don't seem to recall how the wonderful, beautiful commies split Poland with the Nazis and used the Pact to conquer the Baltic countries, not to mention wage a war of aggression against Finland. And if Hitler hadn't stabbed Stalin in the back, the Commies would have probably spent the entire war as his allies.
If the atomic bomb had been dropped on Germany, or been dropped by FDR (whom liberals conveniently forget hated the Japanese, just like his cousin Theodore), we wouldn't hear a word about it.
It has been a while since I read the book, but Iwo Jima was the last outlying bastion the Japanese had before the "Home Islands" and it was very important that they hold it. It is spelled out by James Bradley, but I can't remember the details. I do remember the details of what the Japanese did to the poor American Medic they caprured and tortured for 3 days. Sickening, to say the least.
I've never heard of "Downfall." Do you recommend it?
That was a terrible scene that should have axed. It's atpyical of the film as a whole though.
Yes, I liked "The Great Raid" too. One friend (of our same political views) thought it was awful, but I strongly disagree.
I suspect you're right -- few liberals (some, but few) would have complained about use of the A-bomb on Germany. Most are real hypocrites.
My father who fought in France after D-Day spoke with
disgust of GI`s shooting Germans wanting to surrender.
War is hell.
The Japanese were systematic at being barbaric killers
I have had the privilege of talking to the youngest survivor of the Bataan Death March who frequently speaks at Beale AFB. I can assure you that the brutality the Japanese soldiers inflicted on our soldiers was horrific. No movie showing the humane side of the Japanese soldier can whitewash that.
Tell that to Time Warner Cable, or Dish Network!
Cerially! If more people shut off their piggybank, they will fade away!
ABC CBS NBC CNN its all the SAME, Propaganda.
Might as well call them all AmeriJazerra.
Show them how much Psychological Gravitas Hugh Bris has. Vote with your remote! Shut down the Alphabet channels. *"aka the
Liberals refuse to condemn the WWII-era atrocities of fascist, Nazi Germany-allied Japan . . . but they scold them for killing whales! How dare western cultures judge them for this quaint custom???
Yeah, I do. It's apparently the first time the Germans have done a movie about Hitler, and it's largely based on the recollections of Traudl Junge, one of his secretaries. (There's also a documentary about her called "Blind Spot" that's pretty good, too--two hours of a single medium close up of her in her apartment just telling the story ). The whole Last Days of Hitler in the Bunker has been filmed a couple of times before, but this is by far the best. There's this sense of the end of the world in it--the true believers, the cynics, the people trying to figure out how to escape, the people getting drunk. It's like a bad fever dream. And the scene of Magda Goebbels poisoning her children is just harrowing to watch.
I read recently, either on Drudge or World Net Daily, that Mr Eastwood, through his movies, wanted to show the "futility of war." Yeah, I guess it was futile to fight against Hitler. We should have all just gone along. That way, Mr. Eastwood could be making movies about the Super Race.
I love it when libs say war is futile! What tripe! Is crime fighting also futile?? Is it futile for the police to hunt down and arrest thieves and murders? Is it futile for police to hunt down rapists?? Should women be told to just go along with rapists, because it's just so futile to fight against them, that nothing good ever comes from hunting them down and arresting them! Was Hitler, or any dictator for that matter, really any different from your average street thug?? The only real difference between a Hitler or a Saddam Hussein is that they were able to obtain a better vantage point, and have more weapons and minions at their disposal.
If war is so futile,, why would so many movie stars have such high security!! I am sure Mr Eastwood has a nice high wall around his villa! Why wouldn't he just have the attitude that it is futile to protect one self against crazed fans, futile to protect against robbers and thieves??
Oops,, I am ranting again!
Yes, get it. It's very good.
I knew a man who had a box full of photos from the Bataan Death March. I accidently found them in a shoe box while looking for something else for him in his study. The photos were taken by the Japanese and were horrid. He would not explain how he got them and refused to talk about them or the war. The gentleman has been dead for many years now. Whenever I hear about the death march I think of him and wonder....
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.