Letters To Iwo Jima
The island of Iwo Jima was the location of the Battle of Iwo Jima between February 1945–March 1945. The island became globally recognized when Joe Rosenthal, who worked for the Associated Press at the time, published his photograph Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima which was photographed on Mount Suribachi. Letters from Iwo Jima; Sources; The Battle of Iwo Jima was an epic military campaign between U.S. Marines and the Imperial Army of Japan in early 1945. Located 750 miles off the coast of Japan.
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Preview — Letters from Iwo Jima by Kumiko Kakehashi
Kumiko Kakehashi's heart rending account is based on letters written home by the doomed soldiers on the island, most family...more
More lists with this book...
The book only made me tear up a couple of times, mo...more
You can live normally for a while then lose it horrifically for a cause, like your country’s war, then after many years be remembered and turned into a film by Clint Eastwood or some such Hollywood guy looking for some nice stories they can recreate on screen and win Academy awards for.
Before the war, Lt. General Kuribayashi Tadamichi stayed in the US for about two years and had seen with his own eyes how nice, normal and likeable the average Americans are and how far...more
I just finished watching FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS *which is told from the Americans perspective*. I thought it was an ok movie. But I'm half an hour into this movie and I'm already loving it more! Sure, Ken Watanabe *gorgeous man* softened me up to the idea of giving it a go, but I was also very curious to s...more
The story of the battle of Iwo Jima between the United States and Imperial Japan during World War II, as told from the perspective of the Japanese who fought it.
Ken Watanabe: General Kuribayashi
(Review of film, which was similar to the book, although obviously more detail provided...)
A film with powerful, historical significance. Told from the side of the Japanese as they pr...more
I think I'd rather have just read t...more
This time it was filled with books, including this one. My father wasn't an avid book reader, so for him to have bought this book (inside the cover he wrote where he bought it and when) and read it cover to cover, is an important clue to how much he enjoyed the subject matter.
I have recollections of...more
This book is written by a Japanese journalist, yet is elegant in expression while being well re...more
Books like this are there to remind us that there are actually several.
The letters of Lt. General Kuribayashi are not included in there entirety but rather quoted as inserts into the main text as it tells it's story. Alongside interviews with survivors and family members, these add to a well researched book about a very singular, a-typical Japanese officer and a 'quality human being' to boot, and therein lies the authors' aim.
Obviously writte...more
Those who have heard of the small island off the coast of Japan known as Iwo Jima have more than likely seen the famous Clint Eastwood film 'Letters from Iwo Jima' that depicts the epic thirty-six day confrontation between Japanese and American forces in 1945. While the film version itself is a masterpiece in it's own rights, I was most inclined to read the actual memoirs of the Japanese defenders who courageously fought and endured untold hardships thousands of miles from home. From her first b...more
Instead of doing a defense of Iwo Jima in the traditional way, he did it his way, literally, and his way produced far more American casualties than if he had followed tradition. The book reveals a lot about the...more
The real of strength of this book is the personal and direct insight it gives of the mentality of the Japanese Imperial Forces at the time. It certainly fills in alot of gaps in my own understanding as to why they were so brutal at tim...more
Written by a Japanese historian, there are a few small areas where the American military is lambasted, especially in regards to the fire bombing of Tokyo, and this writer did fail to mention some of the muti...more
What I liked most were the examples of 'last letters', which had to be patriotic and stoic else they were censored, and the demonstration of the general's manipulative 'kindness' - only the soldiers' loyalty to him, and not only the emperor, would have kept them from suicide. He...more
With this film, we can get the full measure of Clint Eastwood's bold and in its way remarkable two-part tribute to the fallen warriors of both sides at the Battle of Iwo Jima in the second world war. This second movie takes place entirely within Japanese ranks, with Japanese actors speaking subtitled dialogue, and whom the non-Japanese-speaking Eastwood presumably addressed through an interpreter. It is very different; despite some spectacular battle scenes, it is more muted, more restrained, even faintly anti-climactic.
Flags of Our Fathers (the first film) ranged freely from the field of battle to the manipulative political scene on the home front. Letters from Iwo Jima, however, sticks mostly and grimly to the action on the island itself, pictured in a grainy near-monochrome, supposedly summoned up from a cache of troops' poignantly unsent letters unearthed there by 21st-century researchers many years later.
Eastwood, perhaps in a spirit of gallantry, or simple caution, evidently does not care to ironise or call into question Japan's civilian beliefs the way he did with his own side. And he is extravagantly positive about the best qualities of the Japanese fighting man: tough, manly, courteous, good-natured. All this is personified in the Japanese commander, Lieutenant General Kuribayashi, very well and intelligently played by Ken Watanabe.
There is a horrible sequence in which a group of trapped Japanese soldiers in their dugout commit ritual suicide one by one, by snapping open a grenade against their helmets, and pressing it to their chests with a scream of 'Banzai!' When Kuribayashi confronts his own terrible destiny, it is in much less claustrophobic, stomach-turning circumstances. And the spectacle of Axis-power soldiers committing suicide in defeat is very different from that in, say, Oliver Hirschbiegel's Downfall, about the Hitler bunker. These, you see, are the good bad guys. Just as Noël Coward told us not to be beastly to the Germans, so Eastwood is suggesting something similar with the Japanese.
In the end, I felt that Eastwood's attempt to find a way inside the mind of the Japanese troops was high-minded and generous, but lacking in real passion and flair. It was confined, not by political correctness exactly - who could ever accuse Clint Eastwood of this? - but by a kind of Eastwoodian reticence, and a need to reach out to the vanquished enemy in very American terms. Kuribayashi's men are finally reduced to tears by a letter found on a dead GI from his mom, realising that she is no different from their mothers. It is a powerful moment, and yet the awful, un-Hollywood truth was that most Japanese troops probably died on Iwo Jima with their fear and hatred of the American enemy quite intact.
Letters To Iwo Jima Cast
There is another reason for this reticence and self-blinkering, I suspect. When some of the troops talked about their home towns, I found myself digging my nails into my palms with anticipation. Would anyone now say the H-word? Or the N-word? No. The terrible denouement of Japan's second world war - the great defeat to which this is leading - is not alluded to and yet this unthinkable nightmare is surely one thing which colours Eastwood's tribute to the fallen enemy. His diptych is concluded with muscular conviction and decency, but it is subdued and respectful: a floral tribute presented at a celluloid memorial.