By Yuki Tsukui

The movie Letters from Iwo Jima is based on the fierce battles between Japan and the U.S. at the end of the Pacific War. This is the second of two movies attempting to depict the battle from both the American and the Japanese perspectives. Letters from Iwo Jima followed Flags of Our Fathers and was released in Japan on December 9, 2006. Both movies were directed by Clint Eastwood, who received the Academy Award for best director twice, and they were produced by Clint Eastwood, Robert Lorenz who has been nominated once, and Steven Spielberg who has received an Oscar for best director.

The setting of the story is Iwo Jima in June 1944 at the end of World War��when the Japanese military situation grew rapidly worse. Iwo Jima, a small island in the Pacific Ocean, is located between Tokyo and Saipan and was considered a suitable base for American B-29 bombers to attack Japan by air. As for the Japanese, this battle was the last hope for Japan to avoid a full-scale invasion of the mainland.

America was so confident of their military strength that they thought Iwo Jima would fall in five days or so since the island covered only 22 square kilometers. However, Tadamichi Kuribayshi (Ken Watanabe), the lieutenant general in command at Iwo Jima, encouraged his men to defend this island for their family in Japan and to fight to the end. He plotted and schemed to defend the island using the strong underground fortresses in order to confront the superior American military strength and they fought to the death for a period of 36 days.

The battle for Iwo Jima was the only battle where the American casualties of about 6,000 dead and about 22,000 wounded were greater than the 20,000 Japanese soldiers killed. (Source: Wikipedia, http://en.org/wiki/Battle_of_Iwo_Jima). Even now, American people know Lieutenant General Kuribayashi as the Japanese commander at Iwo Jima and his story is handed down from generation to generation. On the one hand he was a brilliant strategist, but on the other he was also a dedicated family man as seen by the 41 letters he sent to his family from the island. He wrote his wife that he was concerned about the draft in the kitchen and he told his daughter about the growth of the chicks on the island.

As soon as Kuribayashi arrived at Iwo Jima he changed the traditional rules, introduced new methods, warned officers not to inflict physical punishment on their men, and rationed everything equally for all the soldiers which met with opposition from the veteran officers.

However, a foot soldier named Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya), had faith in Kuribayashi because he was totally different from the previous commander. Saigo despaired of his days on the island because he had to leave his pregnant wife alone at home. Also, Kuribayashi was strongly supported by Lt. Takeichi Nishi (Ihara Tsuyoshi) who had won a gold medal in the Los Angels Olympic Games in 1932. Japanese soldiers prepared for the battle for over a year without enough food and drink on the sultry island which also had an offensive smell of sulfur.

There were some officers who fought to the last man to show their military spirit, but there were also soldiers who wanted to live and who surrendered to the Americans. They were buffeted by the unavoidable winds of destiny and they were torn between deciding whether to live or to die under extreme circumstances.

Japanese researchers found hundreds of Japanese soldiers' letters that had not been sent to their families among the Iwo Jima war remains. These letters reveal their real sentiments and sympathies to their loving families, and they carried out their mission to fight to the end to protect them.

Japanese soldiers were taught that it is honorable to die for the Emperor and to devote oneself to serving him. Most of them were brainwashed by this inhuman indoctrination and many finally chose to die with honor by attacking the enemy recklessly or by committing suicide when they had no way out.

Of the approximately 22,000 Japanese soldiers at Iwo Jima, about 20,000 were killed in the battle, and only about 200 were captured alive.

Kuribayashi experienced studying in America, so he had many friends there. However, the tragic era of war doomed him to command the fight against them. Japanese leaders at that time ought to have anticipated that they would lose the war, but they could not go against the rising tide for war, which ended with the tragic use of atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Serious conflicts, including acts of terrorism, break out in many parts of the world almost every day and the fires of war are hard to extinguish. Moreover, there seems to be an attempt to amend Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution which renounces war and which Japanese are rightfully proud of. There is no other country besides Japan that knows the tremendous power of the atomic bomb or that has a constitution that renounces war, so Article 9 should not be changed. Japanese are well situated to warn of the horrors of war to people through the world.

The generations born after the war must understand and learn the historical truth so as to never repeat war again. Letters from Iwo Jima shows the cruel fate of the people who lived through the war, and it teaches us that tears and blood should not be shed again.