LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA

US, 2006, 141 minutes, Colour.
Ken Watanabe, Kazunari Ninomiya, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Ryo Kase.
Directed by Clint Eastwood.

Letters from Iwo Jima was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar and Clint Eastwood nominated for Best Director. It is an extraordinary film both in conception and execution. It is, as a website commentator remarked, a film that the Japanese should have made.

Steven Spielberg had bought the rights to the American story of the raising of the American flag on the peak at Iwo Jima in February 1945, Flags of our Fathers. Clint Eastwood showed interest in the project and made a compelling film that was also a strong competitor for Best Film of 2006. Not only did it portray the battle for Iwo Jima, it re-created the two episodes of the flag-raising and the celebrated photograph and spent a great deal of its running time telling the story of the three young soldiers who travelled the US in a showbiz like morale boosting tour, especially for bond raising because of the near bankruptcy the war effort cost.

Interesting to note that the flag atop Iwo Jima is glimpsed only momentarily in the second film and only at a great distance.

Letters from Iwo Jima was written by Iris Yamashita using a book of actual letters by General Kuribayashi, Picture Letters from Commander in Chief, to underpin the narrative which shows the Japanese troops preparing for the American invasion, their practical abandonment by the Japanese high command after the destruction of the Japanese fleet off the Marianas, the incessant pounding of the bombardment, the mounting defeat and final attack. Apart from a prologue and epilogue set in 2004 when excavators find a chest of documents in the caves on the island, as well as some brief flashbacks to the lives of several of the central characters, the main action of the film is straight narrative of the attack and counterattack.

For western audiences, this is an invitation to look below the surface of battle and beyond the ideology of the governments responsible for sending thousands of men to fight for them. Each side speaks of the nobility of fighting for country. Each side prays to its God. The Americans are seen as quite pragmatic. The Japanese seem to have a fierce sense of duty – and believe strongly in honourable suicide in defeat.

In fact, Clint Eastwood, with his two films, is offering an inspiration for mutual understanding and for reconciliation.

Towards the end of the battle, the Japanese capture an American. The commanding officer, who had been a member of the equestrian team at the Los Angeles Olympics, talks with him and reads a quotation from the boy’s mother’s letter: ‘Do what is right because it is right’. One of the Japanese soldiers acknowledges that he had never met an American, had been taught that they were all savages but that the mother’s advice to her son is exactly the same as his mother had given him. And the officer, before he kills himself, repeats ‘doing the right thing because it is right’.

The commander on Iwo Jima is presented as a civilised man, abhorring some of his men’s cruel behaviour, remembering the happy times he had experienced when in the United States. The screenplay enables us to follow his strategies and tactics even as overwhelming defeat is looming.

There are moments of equal brutality by each side, the Japanese angrily bayoneting a soldier who had wielded a flamethrower at them, an American left in charge of two surrendering soldiers simply shooting them because he can’t be bothered staying to guard them.

It is over sixty years since these events. In those days, the war issues were fairly clear cut compared with current wars. Clint Eastwood has done us a great service in portraying the past to help us think more deeply about the present.

1.Clint Eastwood’s perspective on World War Two? His two films, two sides? The similarities? The soldiers as equals? The humanity of the soldiers? Searching for their soul?

2.The impact of Flags of Our Fathers: the perspective on the US, the war, Iwo Jima, the symbol, the victory, the showbiz style of the bonds campaign?

3.The title, the basis for the film? The letters of Commander Kuribayashi? The letters of Saigo? Of Shimizu? Incorporated into the screenplay? The visualising of the letters?

4.The place of Iwo Jima in Japanese history? Sacred land, the fatherland? The need for defence, to prevent the invasion of Japan? The events of February-March 1945? The destruction of the Japanese fleet?

5.The Japanese ethos, the worship of the emperor, veneration for the land, complete loyalty, discipline, aspects of violence and cruelty? The suicide ethos for honour’s sake?

6.The use of subtitles for Japanese language? For a Clint Eastwood audience? To get the feel and sound of the Japanese?

7.Iwo Jima at the locations, the black beach, the mountains, the caves, the terrain? The quiet piano score?

8.The special effects, the fleets of planes, the ships in the convoy, the action sequences, violence and death, the bombardments?

9.The prologue of 2004, the excavations, the Japanese working in the caves, discovering the box? The flashback? The return to the cave at the end, opening the box? Opening up this aspect of history?

10.Commander Kuribayashi? Seeing him get his mission, his relationship with the higher command, flying to Iwo Jima, the landing, meeting the officers, walking over the island, preventing the caning of Saigo and his friend, his assessing the situation, his sense of realism? Shrewdness? The dissenting officers? The criticism that he loved Americans? His headquarters in the cave? His justice, contact with the soldiers? His plans? Stopping work on the trenches, getting the troops to the caves? Preparing for the attack? Experiencing the bombardment? The insubordination of his officers? Waiting until the last moment with the Americans on the beach to fire? His acknowledging the imminent defeat? His not wanting the men to kill themselves? His being cut off? His encounters with Saigo, saving him from being beheaded? Giving him work? The commander in himself, his age, experience, the details of his letters, the tone, the sketches? With his men? His experience in the United States, the dinner, the speech, his delight, the gift of the gun? The defeat. On the beach, the officer to behead him being shot? Saigo and saving him, getting him to burn the documents? His shooting himself with the American gift? Portrait of a dignified Japanese commander?

11.The other officers, their knowledge of the situation, their limited points of view? Ito and his critique, the defeat, his going against the commander? His rousing of the men? Japanese honour, going and lying down so that the tank would go over him and he would explode it? Frustrated? The other officers, their deaths? Nishi as a baron? In the Olympics, riding the horse, the photos of his horse, with his men, his style, saving the American, questioning him humanely, discussions about the Olympics? His reaction to the prisoner’s death? Reading the mother’s letter, doing what is right because it is right? Quoting it before his death?

12.The ordinary men, their backgrounds, Saigo as a baker? Digging the trenches, hollowing out the caves? Experiencing the bombardment in the caves? Their limited numbers? Their fears? The mission, the attacks, told to be ready to die? Sago and his friend, the trenches, the threat of the caning, talking treason? The dysentery and its effect, his friend dying? In the caves? Shimizu and the suspicions about him? That he was taking notes and reporting them? Shimizu and his background, sitting in the cave, writing, the others’ expectations? His experience of the fighting? The flashback, the issue of the dog, the mother and the family, the officer, his pretending to shoot the dog? The dog barking? The officer shooting it? Shimizu being sent to Iwo Jima? Sharing these memories with Saigo? Wanting to surrender, leaving the cave, his freedom, the pathos of his being shot?

13.Saigo as the central character, the everyman character? His talk, in the trenches, his being saved, his friendship and the man dying of dysentery, the suspicions of Shimizu but becoming friends with him? Encounters with the commander, carrying messages? Caught in crossfire, running, the hail of bullets? The threat of his being beheaded and the commander saving him? Lack of knowledge of what was going on, following orders? Emptying the pail and seeing the fleet? The final encounter with the commander, staying and burning the documents, saving the box, on the beach and captured?

14.The captured American soldier, his being the same as the Japanese, his wounds, dying, his mother’s letter, Nishi reading it out, doing what is right, Shimizu and his realising that his mother had given him the same advice? Not knowing Americans, thinking they were cowards? The point about equality?

15.The flashbacks, life in Japan, the scenes in the United States, the possibilities of friendship rather than war? The commander and the discussion about taking sides, the gift of the gun?

16.The Japanese soldiers, their being decimated, trying to escape to the north of the island, coming under heavy fire, the number of deaths?

17.The Americans, the planes, the fleet, the bombardments, the soldiers, the flamethrower, his being caught and stabbed? Sam? The two sentries and their killing the prisoners? The end – and the death of the commander?

18.The violence on both sides, the brutal stabbing of the American, the guards shooting the surrendering Japanese?

19.A story of a defeat, yet loyalty and honour? The clarity of the causes and the ideologies in those days? The film as a means of reconciliation of two sides in war?