Posted on 04/06/2005 8:45:13 AM PDT by Sthitch
TOKYO - Tokyo's nationalist governor had one request for Clint Eastwood before the American film director begins his next project, about the World War II battle at Iwo Jima: Respect the fallen soldiers.
During their 45-minute meeting Wednesday, Shintaro Ishihara told Eastwood that thousands of Japanese soldiers who died on the island in one of the war's bloodiest battles remain unaccounted for more than a half century later.
Ishihara asked Eastwood to avoid "sacred" sites of the dead if he films on the island, Tokyo metropolitan government spokesman Katsumi Kumagai said. Eastwood replied that he would "absolutely not" trample on Japanese feelings, he said.
Eastwood was in Tokyo for a stopover after visiting Iwo Jima, which is 700 miles south of Japan's capital but is governed by Tokyo. He is expected to begin filming an adaptation of the book "Flags of Our Fathers: Heroes of Iwo Jima" later this year, but has yet to ask Tokyo's permission to shoot on the island, Kumagai said.
Nearly 7,000 American troops and more than 20,000 Japanese died in the battle from February to March 1945. Japan surrendered after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
The island — whose name means "Sulfur Island" and is dotted with natural hot springs — is part of a volcanic archipelago that the United States handed over to Japan in 1968. Relatives of fallen Japanese soldiers have opposed any building on what they consider to be the hallowed ground of a mass grave.
Thanks for the tip--will do!
I have as well. I like that the USS Missouri is now docked next to the USS Arizona memorial. Kind of puts things in perpective.
1968, Lyndon Johnson maybe?
1968, Lyndon Johnson maybe?
I'm more worried about the people that we saved rather than the ones that we fought. -France & China.
I laugh when I hear people say we've never face an enemy like today's terroists because "they don't care whether they live or die". They obviously never heard the term "divine wind".
The Germans may have been better off if Italy had remained neutral.
Which reminds me, time to dig out the old Fess Parker "Davey Crockett" videotapes.
TS
("back in my day, we didn't have chips that you could implant directly into your brain. Why, we didn't even have those old DVDs. We had to use this pesky old videotape that could get worn and mangled in the machine. And we LIKED it that way!)
LOL!
BTW, what did you think about the Superbowl score?
Not quite a romp...Oops, sorry about the thread hijack!
If they want to show the true horror of war the should make a movie about the fighting in the Huertgen Forest.
No it doesn't. I really liked Alamo. Basically everyone on FR who actually SAW it liked it. All the people I know personally in my family and friends liked it. None considered it particularly PC.
However in one of the more embarrasing FR episodes professional moron Joseph Farah from WingNutDaily "reviewed" the movie without seeing it and trashed it, and a vast assortment of FReepers piled on, also without seeing the film, based on misunderstood hearsay.
Santa Ana is portrayed in the film as a war criminal and child molester. Beats me how that is a favorable portrayal of the Mexicans (some of his generals are portrayed, apparently accurately, in a more favorable light. One tried to persuade Santa Ana not to kill prisoners and then at San Jacinto when Santa Ana ran, the general honorably stayed in the line and was killed.)
Well the Pats didn't play their best game but as always they did enough to get the job done.
Interesting. Thanks.
Not to diminish the sacrifices of the Marines but in a lot of ways the US Army gets a bit of short shrift (other than the 101st Airborne) in World War II, mainly because the Marines were very good at getting publicity.
The various Marine invasions in the Pacific were horrific battles, but didn't last that long, and in-between them the various Marine divisions spent many months training and refitting in paradisical Hawaii.
In contrast in Europe and New Guinea Army divisions would spend month after month in continuous combat without being relieved, with some divisions suffering 200% casualties (so many soldiers being killed and wounded cycling through that divisions racked up twice as many killed and wounded as the strength of the division.)
Oh, absolutely. A lot of those Japanese soldiers basically committed suicide, and we all know how Clint feels about that.
I'll get you, Michael Moore!
I haven't seen the movie yet but my brother told me it was much more historically accurate than he thought it would be.
The Japan of 1968 was not the Japan of 1945. I suppose you're also still holding a grudge against the British for the Boston Massacre.
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