Letters from Iwo Jima

[bhchao]

Anyone seen this film? I saw it today and liked it a lot. It is told from the perspective of the Japanese side in the Battle of Iwo Jima.

Unlike previous war movies depicting the enemy in a savage light for propaganda reasons, this one shows the human side of the enemy (in this case the Japanese combatants, no digressing please) and how they share many things in common with the winners of the battle.

For example, some of the Japanese soldiers have families back home and were forced to enter service by directives issued by militarist officials. Soldiers do not go to war with each other. Governments go to war with each other.

The film does show the nature of Japanese soldiers (fighting to the death), but much of this mindset was ingrained into soldiers (who were just ordinary men with families back home) by fanatical military officers who use brutality to force these actions out of their soldiers. Some of the soldiers depicted in the film look like ordinary momma boys who wish to surrender because they don't want to fight to the death for a lost cause. They don't see a rational behind the fanaticism. But they are repeatedly coerced by their superiors to do just that.

In one scene, two Kempeitai (Japanese secret police) agents patrol a village in Japan to make sure every house is displaying a Japanese flag to show their patriotism. They encounter a house with no flag displayed, and knock on the front door in the middle of the night. An elderly woman opens the door, panics upon seeing the secret police, apologizes for not displaying a flag, and hurries to put one outside.

Great acting from Ken Watanabe. He is not one of those fanatical officers. Instead he portrays an enlightened general charged with the hopeless task of defending Iwo Jima from the Americans. There was a scene where he was a military attache in Washington during the 1920's enjoying friendly relations with his American counterparts. A woman across the banquet table asks him "What if a war broke out one day between the US and Japan? Would you serve your country against us?" Watanabe replied in the affirmative. The woman answered, "So you would kill your counterpart seated across from you if needed?"

[novemberfog]

I thought it was a very well-done film myself. I grew up watching WWII films mostly from the US and UK, so this was an interesting take upon an event in the war. I espeically like how the film followed the one soldier who really didn't want to be there and he just wanted to get back to his family. I would like to see the film made for the US audencies, "Our Father's Flag" or something like that, however. I wonder if it carries the same type of message that "Letters from Iwo Jima" seemed to have--that war is always ugly and you don't want to go.

[YuehanHao]

Although I have not seen either of the two movies mentioned, I recently read an interesting book called "Choices Under Fire, Moral Dimensions of World War II." One subject it briefly discussed was the behavior of Japanese soldiers, in particular, their willingness to sacrifice themselves for concepts such as honor of the country, family, Emperor, etc. (e.g., through kamikaze attacks or in fighting to the last man). The book even mentioned an amazing phenomenon of which I had never heard (although it may be well known in Japan or other countries), that some isolated Japanese soldiers on islands in the Pacific did not surrender until the 1970s and early 1980s. In agreement with the previous posts, this book noted that a significant contributing factor to the behavior of such soldiers was the strident militarism of the Japanese government. However, the book also notes that volunteers were far from lacking for suicide missions, and that even well into 1945, although total victory in the Pacific was clearly out of the picture, some Japanese (particularly the leadership) still believed that such actions could bring more favorable terms of peace or dissuade an invasion of the home islands (i.e., were not universally viewed as worthless sacrifice).

约翰好！

[bhchao]

this book noted that a significant contributing factor to the behavior of such soldiers was the strident militarism of the Japanese government. However, the book also notes that volunteers were far from lacking for suicide missions, and that even well into 1945, although total victory in the Pacific was clearly out of the picture, some Japanese (particularly the leadership) still believed that such actions could bring more favorable terms of peace or dissuade an invasion of the home islands (i.e., were not universally viewed as worthless sacrifice).

The Japanese commander defending Iwo Jima, Kuribayashi, was the most respected officer in the army at the time. He was educated in Canada, travelled across the US (where he developed a respect for the American people), and was a deeply devoted family man.

Like Admiral Yamamoto, he opposed war with the US, especially having seen the industrial capacity of the US. But when push comes to shove, he would fulfill his job for his country to the fullest.

He knew that he was signing his own death sentence by being part of the defense of Iwo Jima. But he wanted to inflict as much damage and suffering as possible to the American invaders. Unlike other Japanese commanders, Kuribayashi had a contempt for death. He discouraged the "banzai" suicide charges typical of previous Japanese campaigns, like in the Battle of Saipan where local civilians jumped off cliffs to their deaths rather than being captured alive. He viewed these suicide charges as counterproductive because they gave advance notice to the Americans.

Kuribayashi ordered his men not to engage in mindless suicide charges. Many of his subordinate officers disagreed with him and beat their soldiers for "cowardice", but he stuck to his position. Instead he ordered his soldiers to engage in nighttime, "insurgency" attacks against American positions at Iwo Jima. This confused the Americans because they were used to hearing the "Banzai!" suicide charges that they encountered at Saipan. But here we have a rational, highly intelligent commander who used crafty, unorthodox methods to fight the Americans. And it worked. It worked in Vietnam under the execution of Vo Nguyen Giap, and it still works today in Iraq.

Kuribayashi incorporated guerrilla warfare into his strategy through a network of well planned tunnels. He took advantage of the island's terrain, trapped Americans in a lethal crossfire and gave them hell. As a result, Iwo Jima was the only battle in the Pacific campaign where American casualties (25,000) outnumbered Japanese casualties (22,000). Had there been televised media in the Battle of Iwo Jima, the American public would have been horrified.

So in response to your post, Kuribayashi did his job well. The US Pyrrhic victory gave his country more leverage power by discouraging an invasion of the home islands. Therefore it took an atomic bomb to defeat Japan. The Japanese monarchy would not exist today had there been an invasion of the home islands. The peaceful transfer of authority in Japan to MacArthur's command without bloodshed preserved the monarchy. (Japan and Thailand are the only countries in Asia today with the throne intact). So Kuribayashi indirectly preserved Japan's monarchy system by putting the fight of his life at Iwo Jima, and inadvertently showed that invading the home islands would be even costlier.

One reason why the US public viewed WWII favorably compared to Vietnam was because they never got exposed to bloody images that were broadcasted in Vietnam. In Letters from Iwo Jima, you see body parts from soldiers flying around. The American public cannot stomach casualties. They were fortunate enough not to witness the carnage at Iwo Jima on television.

MacArthur once warned that the US will never win a war on the Asian mainland. He was right. A prolonged stalemate in Korea after the Chinese intervened, and a defeat in Vietnam proved him to be correct. Too bad LBJ didn't heed MacArthur's words of wisdom.