'Letters from Iwo Jima', then and now.

[Wiley]

I just saw Clint Eastwood’s ‘Letters from Iwo Jima’, the companion piece to his ‘Flags of Our Fathers’, and while I expect the mods may decide this is more a Jetblast subject, I thought to have it start out here where more people directly involved – i.e., serving members of today’s military – might answer the question I pose at the end.

‘Letters from Iwo Jima’ is, in my opinion at least, a thoroughly excellent film – far better than the same story as told from the American side in Eastwood’s ‘Flags of Our Fathers’. However, anyone planning to go to see it will be robbed of one of the movie’s strengths if they have not seen ‘Flags of Our Fathers’, first, for Eastwood employs a very clever device in showing two or three engagements on the island from the Japanese side that correspond exactly with those seen from the American side in FoOF.

Which leads me to my question: during WW2, in and endeavour to make their troops fight the ‘no holds barred’ mode of warfare that was required to beat the Japanese, the Allies went to great lengths to demonise, even dehumanise, the Japanese soldier, (not altogether unreasonably given the way the Japanese military conducted themselves in China and elsewhere in the Pacific).

If, 60 years from now, the US and Hollywood are still around in some semblance of what they are today, (not, by any means, a lay down mezzaire, I think we’d all have to agree), how would you, the protagonists currently fighting against an often similarly suicidal Al Qaeda, feel about a similar movie being made showing sympathetically the battles currently being fought from their side of the fence?

[Wader2]

Wiley, an interesting question that I shall side step. However, from my recent OU studies I am drawn to the conclusion that there has been a continuum of German foreign policy since Bismark, namely a single European entity led by a Greater Germany.

If we step back to the Ottoman Empire and then look forward to the future we may see a similar underlying thread with self-determination being the goal.

For may read might and not a presumptiuon that we will see this.

[Load Toad]

Have a look at this - and the date....
http://www.ep.tc/howtospotajap/howto03.html
It was withdrawn from use - I don't know what it was replaced with.
If you look at the cartoons of the period - these as an example:
http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/speccoll/dspolitic/Frame.htm
Then it seems the demonising was done more by 'the media'.
I'm interested in what the soldiers at the time where actually told about the enemy? Not how the press represented the enemy.
From a lot I've read about the war in East Asia and the treatment of POWs', civilians etc there isn't a common experience; it seems to depend more on the local conditions and the local experience. It is the press and the media after and or during the war that creates his dehumanised image which I think is what leads to atrocity.

[dallas]

Wiley,

To sympathetically reflect Al Qaeda's battle you would, presumably, have to explain or show what their cause is, otherwise they would just be portrayed as the loonies the popular press portray them as. And while Al Qaeda try and claim some kind of holy war against us infidels - which many foot soldiers may indeed believe and give their lives for - I'm not totally sure what the motives of the hierarchy are.

If they are the armed representatives of downtrodden peoples such as the Palestinians, or are otherwise fighting back against America's unfair domination or simple interference in other countries affairs for selfish reasons, I can see their basic argument. But when they use tactics such as suicide bombers to stir up shia/sunni differences in the hope of a civil war, their means don't justify the ends. Killing another group to save the original cause isn't justified.

Conversely, my eyes have been opened to the West and I no longer regard us simplistically as the good guys. We're greedy and as manipulative as Al Qaeda sometimes, even if our tactics overtly differ.

Syriana touched on the other side of the coin, but it would be a clever film producer who could reflect Al Qaeda's battle sympathetically and make a success of the movie, especially in America where they don't want to hear the other side - they want to kill them.

[Wader2]

Load Toad,

There is a problem of course between contemporary history and hindsight. The images of emaciation from the concentration camps and the eastern POW camps was more real than cartoons.

I had one book that was so horrific I barely skimmed it and then binned it. The fast growing bamboo was one of the stories.

There are atrocity stories from every campaign and you either believe reports or you see it yourself. The stories out of Kenya with the Mau-mau were stomach churning too.

Yesterday's terrorists home to today's tourists?

[Load Toad]

Hold on - I'm not doubting that atrocities happened at all.

My point - referring to the original post was that I had an interest in what the soldiers themselves were told about the enemy and their accounts of the enemy. Not media cartoons or such....

[Wiley]

Load Toad, (bit of thread creep here, but interesting, none the less), I can only speak, (very much at second hand, from my father and uncles), for what the Australian soldiers were told and it was very much a dehumanising message. "Two bullets for every Jap." was drummed into all Australian soldiers heading north, this because of too many instances early in the Pacific war of seemingly dead (or wounded) Japanese soldiers killing passing Australian troops. (Wasn’t something similar done with the Bomber Command crews in rationalizing area bombing?)

I had a neighbour, almost a parody of the grizzled 'Old Digger' who’d had a very active war in New Guinea and Borneo in WW2. In a rare moment of introspection, he once said to me something along the lines of "Don't believe all that **** about the Japs never surrendering. Lots of them did.” And later in that conversation: “We only beat them because we were even worse animals than they were." I have to say that I thought at the time that they were the words of a man who didn't want to remember some of the things he had seen and perhaps done.

Taught that surrender was deeply shameful, even badly wounded Japanese would sometimes attempt to kill the medics treating them, or try to kill one last passing enemy before they themselves died. Faced with this, Allied troops very quickly arrived at a set of rules that got around this problem. (Compare this with the outcry in the Western media when a US soldier killed a badly wounded Iraqi insurgent some months ago during house to house fighting in what could be described as a ‘fluid battle situation’. But of course we never hear of Iraqi insurgents being suicidal in attempting to kill Coalition soldiers.... do we?)

Read into what the old WW2 soldier said what you will, but I think it would be true to say that later on in the war, a lot fewer Allied soldiers died as the result of their bypassing seemingly dead Japanese than in the early months because they had been mentally prepared by their training for what they would face and what it would take to survive fighting in jungle conditions. The way they achieved this is probably not particularly palatable to many in the West today who have never been to war.

A very different observation than my original question, but what with the new revisionist versions now coming out about the Mau Mau campaign in Kenya in the 1950s and only in last weekend's London papers of an alleged Mei Lai-style massacre by the Brits during the Malayan Emergency, it would seem that there are many in our society who can't handle what has been done – and had to be done – to give them the lifestyle we all enjoy today. I’m remained of Jack Nicholson’s USMC Colonel and the speech he gave to Tom Cruise in the movie about the Marines in Cuba pre 2001.

dallas, I think I’d be on a pretty safe bet if I said that your feelings about the tactics employed by today’s Al Qaeda fighters would have been shared by 99.9% of Allied troops towards the Japanese during (and long after) WW2 - which was the point of my original question.

[Wader2]

how would you, the protagonists currently fighting against an often similarly suicidal Al Qaeda, feel about a similar movie being made showing sympathetically the battles currently being fought from their side of the fence?

I think you have probably answered your own question. What we think now will not be what we think in 60 years time.

When the Japanese were major players in the electronics market some WW2 vets would still refuse to buy Japanese. On the other hand their sons and daughters think nothing of buy a Walkman or whatever.

In 60 years time you will eat your kebab and watch the latest movie with sounds, movement and smells, and marvel at the cinematic effects.

PS, you will also moan when yet another American Harrier or Apache comes to the rescue of the embattled Airborne or Seals holding theground against great odds.

[Load Toad]

I don't think it is 'dehumanising' to have troops trained to make sure the enemy was dead and not a possible threat by being wounded but still capable of fighting.
I think the comments made by your Old Digger mate are telling. And I also agree from (only what) I have read that a lot of the Japanese soldiers would have equally being conditioned to dehumanising the enemy and that together with aspects of their religious culture would certainly have contributed to the actions of their troops.

However the point I find that still stands is that the military condition their troops to bring about a swift conclusion in their favour. The 'media' conditions its public...................

To achieve what for whom?

[dallas]

Wiley,

Not necessarily. The Taleban/Al Qaeda are my enemy because the government I work for have told me to fight them (albeit indirectly in my personal case). I do not hate them, nor see them as subhuman demons or anything of the sort; in fact I respect their tenacity, determination and ability to hold several of the world's most technologically advanced countries at bay, let alone go on the offensive with their much-heralded forthcoming spring operation. Over sixty years ago similar hit and run operations were carried out against conventional armies by the fledgling SAS, which is somewhat ironic.

I also had a healthy respect for the IRA for the same reason - their tactics were effective against their chosen enemy, even if they weren't fighting to Queensbury Rules.

That said, Iraq is a different war completely. Al Qaeda, or their sponsors, are trying to spark a civil war, and while America has undoubtedly tried similar tactics over the years when interferring elsewhere, I personally view the provocateurs in Iraq as more worthy of elimination than, say, Afghanistan. But who provoked who?

But if you're comparing my outlook to a WW2 allied soldier, I would like to think I use my much better access to information (from all quarters) to make a more balanced and informed judgement of my enemy than they would ever have been able. Moreover, the public as a whole has grown to have a healthy mistrust for things they are told by people holding office and to question spin, which was previously known as propaganda. And while I wouldn't say my views are conventional, the traditional hatred for the enemy isn't as widespread as the 1940s.

[Wader2]

Dalls, not sure how this fits with your view, but remember, we invaded Iraq and the insurgents there could argue that they are trying to eject the invader. Although not on the side of the elected government they can argue that they are freedom fighters.

We were invited in to Afghanistan and we would argue that the Taliban are trying to overthrow the government and are therefore illegal.

[dallas]

Dalls, not sure how this fits with your view, but remember, we invaded Iraq and the insurgents there could argue that they are trying to eject the invader. Although not on the side of the elected government they can argue that they are freedom fighters.

We were invited in to Afghanistan and we would argue that the Taliban are trying to overthrow the government and are therefore illegal.

Oh I don't doubt it. I re-worded my third paragraph a few times after referring to provocateurs. We were the ones originally hellbent on having GW2! And while Afghanistan too is an operation of questionable objectives and longivity, it is certainly way more legitimate than Iraq.

[ORAC]

The Eastwood films are just that, films, written in the context of their time through the prism of 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq. They reflect contempory culture as much as the past - as did the John Wayne movies reflect their time.

Is "letters" a more realistic movie than some earlier ones? I am not sure (I will mention Tora! Tora! Tora! as being just as sympathetic, but much earlier), ask the Chinese whether the Japanese armed forces were as humana as portrayed.

Movies, and movie makers, tell you more about their cultures and times than what they portray. But I suppose that is true of any story teller - or historian.

[Wiley]

Nicely put ORAC.