Letters From Iwo Jima Summary
Iwo Jima, the name of a place where people from the United State and from Japanese will never forget, is a barren island near Japanese mainland where in February 1945, one of the most significant battles in World War II had taken place (Geoffery 1996). In the need of establishing a base near the Japanese coast, the US military invaded this island with elaborated air and naval bombardment and an extensive amount of soldiers on ground, while the Japanese defended with only roughly 23,000 soldiers and they held on because of the adoption of a rather new tactic approach which is instead of defending at the beach line, they dug out a complex network of caves, tunnels and mostly underground installations that are difficult to find and destroy (Geoffery 1996). After a month of fighting, the US army wiped out most of the defending Japanese forces and captured 1083 prisoners (Geoffery 1996). Overall, the Japanese fought in severe conditions, and the Americans suffered loss bigger than they had expected. I believe that memories and perception of wars are drastically different on either side, mostly because of the fact that they consider each other as enemies, a congregated evil, and may also due to cultural and political differences.
Letters From Iwo Jima Subtitles
Letters from Iwo Jima (硫黄島からの手紙, Iōjima Kara no Tegami) is a 2006 Japanese-American war film directed and co-produced by Clint Eastwood, starring Ken Watanabe and Kazunari Ninomiya.
Letters From Iwo Jima Amazon
However, we must recognize that people, instead of vague evilness, were actually fighting in these wars. They are putting their lives out as sacrifices to bigger decisions. Now many years after the war, a movie like Letters from Iwo Jima directed by Clint Eastwood does a good job in making us to realize this, in evoking an universal guilt and sympathy for men with families and maybe ordinary lives and happiness just like any of us, who were lost at a place remote from home, with pain and agony. This movie is not a simply war-depicting movie with naturally “good guys” and “bad guys”, instead, it is an intricate representation of what is behind the firing of guns and cannons.