I have now watched Clint Eastvvood's Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jims and been re-immersed in both sides of the battle that was the seminal experience of my young military life. Fields of Our Fathers (reviewed by the author in the November 2006 Proceedings) tells the American story. Letters from Iwo Jinui, winner of a 2007 Golden Globe award for best foreign language film. portrays the Japanese side. Letters leaves one with a profound feeling of sympathy and sadness toward the men who were then our mortal enemies.
Director Eastwood skillfully uses what I'll call "cinematic license" to dramatize the emotions and lives of the soldiers, For example, lieutenant Colonel Baron Takeichi Nishi, who won the individual equestrian Gold at the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, is shown as having brought one of his beloved horses to Iwo before the American assault. The horse appears in its death throes, hit by an American air raid, with Nishi consoling it in its dying moments. There was no Nishi horse on Iwo but we do know that Nishi clipped a bit of mane from his Olympic companion. Uranus, and carried it in his wallet when he left Tokyo for Iwo.
After his Olympic victory, Nishi campaigned for the belter treatment of horses in Japan. This contrasts sharply with the subhuman conditions to which his troops were subjected. But Nishi never sent a horse to Iwo Jima. What he did send was tanks. Nishi's tlrst shipment of tanks to Iwo in 1944 was sent to the bottom by an American torpedo. His second shipment of some 25 made it. The island's commander. Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, had them dug in as pillboxes.
Another dubious episode is the last banzai charge, with Kuribayashi in the lead. Kuribayashi, in fact, had committed seppuku well before a polyglot group of about 200 Japanese from bypassed caves made their way down to the two airfields on the island, killing 35 or more Army Air Forces pilots sleeping above ground. At dawn on 26 March. Captain Harry Martin of our Pioneers organized a counterattack, killing all the attackers, but losing his own life. His was the last heroic act on Iwo to merit a Medal of Honor.
Even with these lapses, the film is a superb achievement. The portrayal of the hardships of the common soldier in digging the labyrinthine defenses in 120-degree heat and living on a daily ration of a cup of stinking sulfur water and a hard biscuit is brilliant. And all the time the soldiers knew that death was inevitable.
Ken Watanabe and the other lead actors give outstanding performances and elicit sympathy for the condition of the Japanese. The only thing lacking in Mr. Watanabe's portrayal of Kuribayashi is the general's slight paunch. It was said of him that he had a belly full of courage.
The episode on the killing of a family pet, a dog, is indicative to me of the strange dichotomy in the Japanese psyche at that time and maybe at all times, which is well borne out by the movie: The Japanese can be very sensitive and solicitous of the feelings of others but they can be just the opposite-ruthless and unrelenting in their application of horror and terror.
My views of the Japanese tend to coincide with their portrayal in Flags of Our Fathers and Letters front Iwo Jima. I never haled them, which was good because hating tends to make a soldier more emotional-and less effective-in dealing with the enemy than if one simply considers him to be somewhat inanimate and an obstacle to be overcome. The only time during World War II that I had any real revulsion toward the Japanese was triggered by two incidents in which we recovered the remains of two Marines who had been captured. There was evidence of torture and desecration. We do not know whether these two Marines were wounded or dead when thev were taken captive but we do know that the fingers and forearms of one were broken and his head smashed. The Japanese had used the torso of the second Marine as an ashtray.
For me, all the enmity is gone. We have been meeting on Iwo annually for more than ten years in a Reunion of Honor. 1 have met and talked with General Kuribayashi's widow, his son, and his grandson on the Blaek Sands. Peaee is with and among us. Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers and Leiters front two Jima remind us to keep it that way.
A veteran of three wars, Major General Haynes was a eaplain in the regiment that seized Mount Suribachi and raised the American flag there on 23 February 1945. General Haynes is the chairman of the Combat Veterans of Iwo Jima. He lives in New York City, where he is currently at work on a hook about Combat Team 28 and the Battle of Iwo Jima.