Letters From Iwo Jima

by Gaetana Caldwell-Smith / January 2007 issue of Socialist Action Newspaper

Director Clint Eastwood released “Letters from Iwo Jima” on the heels of his poorly received but still important “Flags of Our Fathers.” “Flags” is told from the American perspective and concerns the soldiers who planted the flag on the top of Mt. Suribachi, whereas “Letters,” in Japanese with English subtitles, is a look at the battle of Iwo Jima from the Japanese viewpoint.

The film begins in 2005 with Japanese researchers excavating the miles and miles of tunnels soldiers had dug from one end of the island to the other, branching off in all directions. It then seamlessly segues back to 1944 to a scene of soldiers digging trenches in the sand along the beach.

The general in charge is soon replaced by General Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe), from an institution akin to West Point in the United States. He goes against the previous orders, stating that the best strategy would be to fight the Americans from the hills around the island. Thus the tunnel building starts. There is conflict among the brass about the new general’s direction, but Kuribayashi has the last word.

Twenty thousand Japanese soldiers divide into battalions stationed in tunnel bunkers all around the island to protect it from an imminent attack by the Americans. Saipan has already been taken and is being used to stage an attack on Iwo Jima.

One awesome scene is an aerial view of hundreds of U.S. ships streaming towards Iwo Jima, trailing wakes like silver ribbons. The island, we learn, is a place where little grows and water has to be shipped in, as there’s no natural supply.

Eastwood does a masterful job of humanizing the war by focusing on the stories of a couple of grunts: One is Saigo, a former baker (Kazunari Ninomiya), with a pregnant wife back home. As the film progresses, he and Kuribayashi develop a heartwarming relationship. The other grunt is a soldier who had been in an elite military unit that stayed behind to police the populace. We learn later that he’d broken military rules and was sent to Iwo Jima as punishment.

All in all, “Letters,” which is based on actual letters to and from wives and sweethearts of the soldiers that the excavators dug out of the tunnels in 2005, is an antiwar film. In one scene, a Japanese soldier reads aloud a letter he found on a dead American soldier they had tried to help. It was from his mother. “It sounds like my mother,” he says.

There is a disturbing scene in the film in which two Americans are left to guard a couple of prisoners (one is Saigo’s friend). The GIs arbitrarily kill them after slinging racial epithets—under the supposition that they are not even human.

Eastwood does not show Americans in a good light. We recall the propaganda spread about the barbarity of the Japanese during the war, ignoring the fact that the U.S. government rounded up Japanese-American citizens, stole their land, and herded them into concentration camps; firebombed Tokyo, killing over 100,000 people; and dropped atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

When all is lost and there’s no water, no ammunition, no food—even an attempt at being a suicide bomber has failed—and the Americans are entering the tunnels with flame throwers, some soldiers blow themselves up with hand grenades. Only days ago, before each battle, they had stood in a circle, raised their rifles, and shouted, “Banzai!”

What is striking about this film from the first frame is its color, or lack of it. It is as though Eastwood depicted the mood of war in cinematographer Tom Stern’s palette of grays, muddy greens, and black. Color is seen only in the reds that suddenly appear when soldiers’ limbs are blown off and in explosions as gray smoke billows into the sky, with flares of white yellow and red.

World War II took place six decades ago and is already the subject of many films. Why two more? Clint Eastwood puts a human face on the imperialist conflict, and with an understated, austere hand, illustrates the utter futility of war. No one wins when tens of thousands of young men are slaughtered, families torn apart, destroyed—along with towns, cities, and countryside.

Critics place “Letters” at the top of their 10 best films of 2006. I am one of them.