If not, all they would have had to do was make a dubious ditching or bail out and a boat might have picked them up. Nothing to it. Just how many American crewmen lives would have to be saved to justify Iwo? One -- ten -- ten thousand? Was it worth the First Squadron's Ray Malo and crew of 11 who were on the first B to land at Iwo account fuel problems which probably would have cost them their lives?
But I have to retract this statement. The omniscient Boot has a good point. Malo and crew were all lost over Kawasaki anyway within the month -- so it wasn't worth fooling around with those losers. Noriko, your point in the article, and reiterated in your first reply above to me, was that the Japanese defenders of Iwo Jima came from cities in rubble, and you criticized the film for NOT portraying this. You reiterated in your post to me above that the defenders came from 70 cities reduced to rubble.
That may be emotionally true to you, but it is simply historical untrue--the chronology is wrong. It is simply wrong.
As for the Bs raids from from China, we are talking about a grand total of six raids in nine months, and the only city that was at all seriously hit was Kobe. I would also be very suprised if you can find manyJapanese soldiers on Iwo Jima being concerned about the island's contribution to ab air war that had not happened yet and whose destructiveness was at that point beyond anyone's prediction even in Washington where so far the Bs were viewed as a failure.
See conveniently Robert S. You'd be better arguing that the Japanese defenders fought fiercely because they believed they were defending Japanese home soil. But in the end, you criticized the film on the issue of "destroyed cities", and criticized it quite bitterly, when it was being accurate and you, by contrast, were not. You have misunderstood the historical situation. Second, the point of the article is NOT to say any party was "right" or "wrong" in a war.
I can't think of a war where both parties did not commit some atrocity. The point of the article is to say that this Hollywood movie is not necessarily showing the Japanese point of view, but an American-filtered view, and should thus not be marketed as a film showing the Japanese point of view.
I've just noticed that the editor misprinted the title: it should read, the "Japanese reaction to 'Letters,'" not the "Japanese response"--particularly as I am not a Japanese citizen, but of Japanese descent. You know what's ironic?
That's exactly what the writer of the article is saying. Most Americans don't know about American war atrocities, just as most Japanese don't know about Japanese war atrocities.
I wonder what Swiss students are taught. The author cites one Japanese viewer as saying "I wish the Japanese would make a film that will tell the real Japanese side of the story in World War II. But the leftists would pelt it as being 'hawkish and 'neo-nationalistic. Only in the s, and after the death of Hirohito, did Japan's Ministry of Education even introduce tepid water-downed accounts of Japanese atrocities perpetrated against its neighbors.
Just yesterday, Japan's Prime Minister denied Japan's well-documented role in forced military brothels. Instead of educating its own children about what Japan did wrong to other countries and how they attacked and provoked the United States, students like the author are raised to view themselves as victims.
The danger in failing to honestly acknowledge and take full responsibility for prior wrongs is to continually perpetuate values that lead to such actions. The article and subsequent comments prompted an interesting e-mail from Sadao Asada who was also one of the April evacuees although in his case it was from Kyoto.
Ironically, his class was sent to a village near the Maizuru Naval District which turned out to be a far more dangerous location than where he had left. But, of course, how was anyone to know at the time that Secretary of War Stimson had banned any bombing of Kyoto because of its cultural significance? In contrast, we who had no relatives in the country were crammed in inadequate living quarters.
In general, it is a bad place to learn history. For example, Star War. But none of that is real, pure fiction, it did not happen, it will not happen.
In the end, great movie! Pretty good movie shot in Taiwan. Again, pure fiction. None of my relatives were. Not even Yoko Ono left Tokyo until after the great firebombing there. Many of the posters here are missing the point of my article. My point is that the film is written and filtered through American eyes and the American film industry presumably with marketing to the American public in mind.
It is hence expressing a view of what Americans think what the Japanese must have been like; it's an exoticization of Japan, particularly in those flashbacks.
To then market it, not just in the US but internationally, as presenting "the Japanese point of view" is highly problematic, particularly as many people will form their views from these films, as another poster has echoed. That's what I mean by cultural imperialism.
To make my case, I have reiterated views of Japanese found on Japanese movie discussion boards, such as yahoo. Please check them out for yourself.
Thanks for that. But I must say, "By 29 March , when the last raid was flown from the China-India theater, they had undertaken 3, individual sorties and dropped 11, tons of bombs on military and industrial targets.
The people on the other end of that didn't think it was as minor as US websites might have thought it was. And the various attacks, such as the one for Kobe, would have been known by the Japanese troops and would certainly have been a key factor in launching a staunch defense of an island that could have easily become the launching pad for more airstrikes. That's not at all explained in the movie, which I think is unfortunate, as I wrote in the article.
I'm an American woman who had all her education in the US. All my pre-college education was in US public schools in the South and the Northeast. I was not taught about the firebombing, and I was shown films of Hiroshima that showed the giant mushroom cloud but failed to show the damage beneath it - people vaporized in their tracks, etc.
I had some good teachers, but I had trouble convincing one teacher that the Japanese did not ride around in rickshaws.
FYI, names ending in "ko" in Japanese are usually for women. There are two Japanese movies about the hardships endured by Imperial Army soldiers that basically portray them as victims. While the films focus on suffering of Japanese soldiers, I couln't help but notice there was no depiction of the inconvenience their invasions caused the civilian populations of Burma or The Philippines.
The Japanese civilian population was deceived by their military and government during the invasions of Manchuria, China and the events beginning in The Japanese people suffered greatly during and after the Pacific War. This is no secret in the United States and, at the same time, Japanese movies have not focused on the civilian suffering in the countries the Empire invaded in the '30s and '40s. Who wrote this article? Has he spent more than a day in America or in a hotel not watching Porn?
The history channel has maybe 30 hrs a week on the fire bombings of Japan. We can't even take out our garbage with out seeing the name LeMay!! This article doesn't in anyway reflect my education.
I think I got a pretty well rounded education on why what and how the war was prosecuted. We were informed that: 1 The US wasn't specifically innocent in the instigation of the war. There were several reasons for this. This among many others If the author would like to discuss the american reasons for fire bombing's and the Nuclear attack please refer to the American plans for the invasion of the main Islands and the esitmated losses for Americans.
Then ask whether he would have been stupid enough to not take the easy way out. Re the comment "If you have seen the movie, one of the letters from Kuribayashi's wife talks about a daughter who's been sent away to the countryside. That was a common tactic among the privileged to save their children from the firebombs, which were already attacking many cities.
In fact, of the four evacuation categories established by the Ministry of Home Affairs, the one covering children in the first through sixth grades was the only category declared mandatory. A prefect's Department of Education was responsible for the relocation by class including teachers and additional domestic help. And unlike the other categories, the government paid the overwhelming bulk of the costs.
Parents were charged a fixed fee of 10 yen a month per child in case you are wondering, that was a very small sum even for poor Japanese , with whatever the remaining balance amounted to then divided at 85 percent paid by the national government, and 15 percent by the prefectural administrations and municipalities.
The compulsory evacuations did not occur all at once, and came principally in two big surges. The first in August after the fall of the Mariana Islands, and the second in April after the US turned from precision bombing to area bombing.
Some 90 percent of the school children in these grade levels were ultimately evacuated. Ominously, however, the Japanese cabinet also adopted the March 18, , Decisive Battle Educational Measures Guidelines, suspending all school classes above grade six from April 1 of that year through March 31, , in anticipation of the planned US invasion of Japan in the fall of Although this organization was originally aimed at strengthening internal defense and increasing production, many of these older children began to receive simple military training, principally as suicide bombers targeting American tanks, starting in June and July See also I have worked in the Japanese educational system as believe me the students are not taught too much about World War 2.
If at all they are given the impression that Japan was led into the War. The rape of Nanking is not mentioned at all, and no mentions of any invasions from Japan, or of the forcing of women to be "comfort women". Visit Hiroshima and a person is made to feel guity for the atomic bombing on the poor Japanese. World War 2 is a big joke. Noriko, you are simply wrong. There was no sustained air campaign against Japanese cities between and late , hardly any bombing at all.
Japan was simply too far away for the Americans to strike. There was the isolated Doolittle Raid of April , which was launched from aircraft carriers and did little damage. The defenders of Iwo Jima were long in place by that time. In an extraordinary feat, they flew sixteen twin-engine Bs off the carrier Hornet about miles west of Japan and hit Tokyo and other nearby targets before heading for landing in China.
This isolated raid, led by Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle, came less than five months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt arranged with British and Chinese authorities to build bases in India and western China for the B, a four-engine strategic bomber the prototype of which had gone into development in By the spring of , were available for deployment to India and China.
On 14 June , B crews struck Japan from China for the first time. His ship reached Iwo Jima on March 2 and was close enough for sailors to watch the battle waging. Room at the rail was at a premium and very crowded to say the least.
Overhead the carrier planes were going on their rocket runs and the chatter of machine-gun fire — on shore. There were tanks blasting away. We could see the flamethrowers working over a pillbox and the artillery positions taking up the fight.
It had rained all day on March 4. Either a plane or flamethrower got them," he said, describing a scene that was portrayed in the movie "Flags Of Our Fathers. I had shot my carbine just 45 times. Boy, were we trained men, ha ha," he wrote in one dispatch. We ate early chow and got ready to storm the beach — Commando Lee! About 12 noon one of our corpsman came aboard to get some plasma and he just about looked like a ghost. He was red-eyed, unshaven, looked so darn tired. They hit the beach not knowing what to expect, only to realize that no one knew where their unit was located.
We rode and rode. We passed through the different camps and then up a road we passed some tanks and then I see a lot of Marines in foxholes. Boy did we ever get out of that place. They eventually found their camp about one-quarter mile from the 5th Marine hospital and cemetery, near the edge of the main airstrip, "so I saw a lot of horrors of this battle.
It was terrible. You know, just like a couple of moles! We crawl in our hole at dark and stay there until daylight. For that I will be thankful. We are eating K-rations and anything else we can steal from the Army or Marines. We get two canteens of water a day and if there is any left over, Beze and I have a can we save it in.
Then after a week we use that water for a bath. Lee then acknowledges receiving a letter from his wife, writing, "I am glad to know that Pamie is being a good girl and helping mother around the house.
With all my love, Johnnie. The Japs have used mortars, machine guns and sniper firing, rockets, etc. They are so darn hard that I almost break my teeth. By March 19, word had reached Iwo Jima through radio broadcasts that the last German troops on the Ruhr River had surrendered, and the war in Europe would soon be over.
I brushed the dirt off my sack and as I did I knocked something on the deck. I picked it up and to my amazement it was a. There was a hole in the top of our tent! On March 21, Lee told his "sweetheart, I miss you something awful. Two days later he was surprised when one of the pilots gave him some corn-on-the-cob roasting ears. Nothing grows here but sand crabs and flies. This is the hellhole of creation. In desperation, Japanese Imperial Army soldiers pulled a "banzai" attack in his area the day before the battle ended.
He wrote his "darling wife and babies" on March 27, one day after the Battle of Iwo Jima , to let them know he was all right after the Japanese banzai attack. Over the decades, Mr.
Voegelin looked at the letters just three or four times. He couldn't read the Japanese script, and he always wanted to send them back to Japan. As he got older, "I started thinking about these letters," says Mr. Voegelin, "and thought that people around my age might be around who would want them.
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