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2007 |
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IWO JIMA |
 Japanese soldiers Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya), left, and Shimizu (Ryo Kase) hunker down as U.S. Marines move in on them in "Letters From Iwo Jima." |
Is this revisionist war film
telling the whole truth?
By MAURY ALLEN
of TheColumnists.com
I was nine years
old when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December
7, 1941. I had never heard of Pearl Harbor. I don’t think
I heard much about Hawaii in my Brooklyn, New York depression
home in the late 1930s into the 1940s.
My older brother and I came home from a movie western that Sunday.
My parents, clearly traumatized, sat staring at the floor-model
Philco radio. I kept hearing about bombs falling on civilians,
loss of lives, terrible explosions and massive destruction.
We had concentrated on the war in Europe, that bad man Hitler,
the fate of Jews, the frightened letters from elderly relatives
still living in Poland and Russia.
Suddenly Tojo was the new enemy. We sang “Let’s Remember
Pearl Harbor,” on the way to school in the next few days.
There were soon photographs in our newspapers of Americans being
killed alongside Filipinos, of something called the Bataan Death
March, of General MacArthur leaving the islands by PT boat for
Australia, of neighbor boys being lost at sea.
None of this could be ignored as I sat in a theater recently
watching the dignity, pride, courage and intelligence of Japanese
soldiers in Clint Eastwood’s "Letters From Iwo Jima."
It was tough to take all these years later.
James Bradley, the writer whose father was the Navy corpsman
with five Marines who raised our flag at Mount Surabachi at Iwo
Jima and authored the brilliant "Flags of Our Fathers,"
created this historic perspective.
He has talked, taught and lectured in Japan for many years, speaks
the language and is responsible for the objective view of one
of World War II’s most bitter battles.
What made Iwo Jima a special battle event, clearly portrayed
in Eastwood’s film, is the fact this was the first Japanese
soil attacked by land in the war. Tokyo had been bombed by General
Jimmy Doolittle as early as April of 1942 in a psychological
ploy. Now the Japanese could understand that American forces
were closing in on the homeland.
Two scenes in the film clearly disturbed me and I believe made
anyone over the age of 65 shudder.
One showed Japanese soldiers caring carefully and patiently for
a wounded Marine. He died overnight from his wounds. The other
scene showed a Japanese soldier, sick of the war, attempting
to surrender to the Marines. When he reaches their lines, he
is executed in cold blood.
True, the Japanese fought bravely and fanatically for what they
believed at Iwo Jima. Did they care for any wounded Marines?
I doubt it. These were fanatic warriors, brainwashed to despise
the enemy.
 |
as Gen. Kuribayashi, scouting the island before the U.S. landings. That's the real Mt Suribashi in the background. |
Did Americans kill Japanese prisoners? Possibly. There hasn’t been a war in history in which captured soldiers weren’t killed on the battlefield. It even happened in the Civil war when Americans killed other Americans.
I only know one Iwo Jima Marine. He is Bill Gallo, famed writer and cartoonist from the New York Daily News, who was 19 years old when he looked up at Suribachi and saw the American flag being raised.
Gallo, someone I know for nearly half a century, never talked of his war experiences. Tom Brokaw loosened his tongue with his book "The Greatest Generation" because he convinced these veterans they owed their stories to their grandchildren and to history.
“I think guys of my time didn’t talk about our war experiences because everybody was in the war--your relatives, your friends, your schoolmates, your playground pals. When we came home everybody had a different story and nobody wanted to hear them. The idea was to start all over again,” Gallo said.
He said he was curious so he went to see "Letters From Iwo Jima."
“I’d like to know how they got all those letters off the island,” he said. “I don’t think we got any mail until the battle was over.”
Gallo said the scene of the Marine being cared for by the enemy could not have happened.
“These guys (the Japanese) were in these caves and tunnels. They didn’t pull wounded guys in there. They just shot them,” he said.
Gallo said he sat through the entire film but found it uncomfortable, inaccurate and just a bunch of revisionist history.
“It was all about making money,” he said. “Isn’t that what all movies are about? I’m sure it is selling big in the Japanese market.”
The Iwo Jima story from the Japanese point of view reminds me of the long-lasting on-going argument about the dropping of the atom bomb on Japan. Certainly it was a horror. But just as certainly it saved American lives and ended the war.
American kids who are coming home from Iraq in body bags or other kids who arrive without arms and legs may not be displeased if larger weapons could wipe out the insurgents without damage to innocents. Unfortunately, in this crazy war, that can’t be done.
I served in the occupation Army in Japan during the Korean War. I always knew, about eight years after the surrender, that this was enemy territory. I flew home from Japan with a rest stop at Iwo Jima. Not much to see by 1955. Maybe 60 years later not many remember World War II from either side of the Pacific.
I’ll be rooting against "Letters From Iwo Jima." I hope "Little Miss Sunshine" knocks all the other films out of the box.
As for Iwo Jima, I’ll forgive but I’ll never forget.
©2007 by Maury Allen. The Maury Allen
caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The photo is courtesy
Warner Bros. and DreamWorks studios. This column first posted
Feb. 19, 2007.
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