Letters From Iwo Jima

When I was young, war movies made it very clear who were the good guys and who were the bad guys. The Americans were always the good guys. The enemy (be it German or Japanese) was always vicious, godless and bordering on the inhuman. In more recent years, we have had films that treat all combatants as people caught up in events beyond their control. Perhaps this is seen most clearly in last year's Joyeux Noel.

Earlier this year, Clint Eastwood released his film Flags of Our Fathers about the famous image of the raising of the flag on Mount Suribachi. That story focused on the American Marines and sailors in that battle. Now he has released Letters From Iwo Jima, the story of the same battle, only this time from the Japanese perspective.

The two films are often spoken of as companion pieces -- two films telling the same story from different points of view. I prefer to see them as two films that coincidentally have the same director, a writer that worked on both films with others, the same setting and were filmed back to back that really need to be looked at separately. Although they have so much in common, each stands on its own and if seen together the whole isn't more than the sum of the pieces. Letters is also by far the superior of the two films.

The Japanese soldiers defending this small island were doomed from the start. Most of them knew this. They were outnumbered, didn't have air support, didn't have enough weapons or ammunition. The reasonable course might have been to surrender. But because this island was part of Japan, they were defending their homeland. Even if defeat is inevitable, fighting for the island provides a bit more time for preparations on the main island to defend against the American invasion. I was reminded as I watched of America's memory of the Alamo. They defend this little piece of volcanic rock out of a sense of honor.

That sense of honor plays out in many ways, some unhealthy. It is honor that leads the general to lead a final all out attack that is a suicide mission. It is honor that leads some soldiers who have failed to hold Suribachi to commit suicide by hand grenade. It is honor that leads a colonel to have his medic use some of the dwindling medical supplies to treat a wounded American soldier, even though his wounds are too serious for him to survive. The colonel also, under the guise of interrogating the prisoner, speaks with him in a way that calms him and gives him a sense of peace before death.

Much of the film focuses on choices that have to be made during war. In the heat of battle, there isn't room to think or make choices, but often along the edges of war, those choices are possible. How should an enemy prisoner be treated? We see both American and Japanese soldiers treating them well and badly. Should commanders save their soldiers when defeat is inevitable, or continue to fight to their certain death?

Choices always must be made in war situations. We know that there have been bad mistakes made in places like Abu Ghraib and Haditha in Iraq. We may hear less of the choices that have been made that have brought a bit of peace to those in the conflict zone -- choices made everyday.

There is a scene in flashback as the commanding general remembers his time in America where he was hosted by American cavalry officers. He made many friends among the American soldiers. At a farewell dinner, one of the officer's wives asks him about if Japan and America fought in a war if he could kill these friends. He skillfully avoids an answer, but we know that soldiers do what they must. As he drives away he speaks of these people as his friends. But we know that his future will put him in a position of fighting against and killing these who have befriended him.

From time to time through the story we hear in voice over the letters soldiers write home to families -- letters that never were mailed because of the island's isolation. It is these letters that reflect the ways these Japanese soldiers were so like American soldiers. The letters we hear are from the lowest private and the commanding general. They have very different perspectives, but both write with tenderness about their situation and of their love for their family. At one point the two talk a bit about family. The general says that the irony of their situation is that he fights to the death for his family, but thinking about his family makes it hard to do his duty.

But the most touching letter read is not one of these letters home to Japan, but a letter from Oklahoma carried by the wounded soldier cared for by the Japanese colonel. After the soldier dies he reads this letter from the soldier's mother to the Japanese soldiers with him. She tells her son to "do what is right because it is right." This touches the other soldiers because they recognize that this is what they have been told as well.

The opening and closing shots of the film are of present day Iwo Jima, showing a peaceful beach looking toward Mount Suribachi. The beginning of the film shows artifacts of war -- ruined bunkers, rusted tanks. We are reminded by these shots that this island, where so much blood was shed by both American and Japanese soldiers, has scars of the war fought there, but those scars do not last forever. The island is renewing itself with new life.