Iwo Jima (literally Sulphur Island) is an
eight square mile volcanic island about 650 miles south of Tokyo.
The battle there was among the most violent ever fought. It holds
special importance in U.S. history, and especially for the U.S. Marine
Corps, which did most of the fighting on the U.S. side, though Army
and Navy land units also participated. Some of you may have seen Flags
of our Fathers, the companion film to Letters from Iwo Jima,
or visited the Marine Corps War Memorial near Arlington National Cemetery,
which is a statue duplicating Joe Rosenthal’s iconic photograph
of the raising of the flag on Mt. Suribachi — an event that happened
only five days into a five-week battle, and which in fact was the second
raising of a flag (here
is a photo of the first). The second flag-raising stemmed from a dispute between
Marine Corps and Navy commanders over who deserved the flag as a souvenir
more. One-third
of the U.S. Marines who died during the entire war died at Iwo Jima during the five
weeks after the invasion. It was the only major battle of the
war in which American forces took more casualties (though fewer killed
in action) than the Japanese. Of the eighty-two Medals of Honor, the
highest recognition of military valor the United States bestows, presented
for actions during World War II, 27 derived from what happened at Iwo
Jima. However, Letters from Iwo Jima presents the battle
from the Japanese perspective. The protagonists are Japanese,
and though this is not the same as saying the Japanese are the heroes,
it does mean that as an audience we are expected to be emotionally invested
in them. How does seeing a film depicting the war from the perspective
of the enemy affect your experience of it?
On
the other hand, from The Iliad onward, we are used to seeing
war from the victor’s perspective.We know when we watch
a typical World War II film, for example, that whatever happens to the
individual characters in whom we are invested, on a larger scale the
good guys win. That is also true with a novel like The Naked
and the Dead. Yet a victor requires a vanquished.The Japanese
fought brilliantly and couragerously at Iwo Jima against a much larger
and better equipped force — only 1,083 Japanese survived out of
a force of about 22,000, and the last two hold-outs did not surrender
until 1951 — but they did lose. How does knowing you are
watching the side that will be defeated affect your experience?
The
film portrays both Tadamichi Kuribayashi and Baron Takeichi Nishi quite
accurately except for the relationship between them, which was not as
friendly in real life as the film shows. Kuribayashi had lived in the
United States for three years, had briefly attended Harvard, and had
many friends in the United States. Like Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto
(the supreme commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy who, despite his
opposition to the policy, planned the Pearl Harbor attack), he strongly
opposed war with the United States. Unlike most Japanese commanders
he refused virtually all privileges of rank including better food, he
forbade suicide attacks (banzai! charges), and contrary to
Japanese custom he apparently died in combat with his men (though his
body was never found) rather than commit seppuko behind the
lines. Nishi
won an equestrian gold medal at the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles and
was indeed friendly with Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, the big
Hollywood couple of the day — think Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie when they were still a couple,
or Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz. Every day the U.S. forces
broadcast personal messages to him to surrender because the world would
regret his death. Consider why Clint Eastwood decided to focus
on these two characters, plus Saigo the baker, and Shimizu, the former
member of the kempetei.
