CLINT CELEBRATES JAPANESE WAR HEROES

Clint Eastwood tells the Japanese story of the battle of Iwo Jima in Letters from Iwo Jima.

Letters from Iwo Jima tells the story from the Japanese point of view when the United States and Japanese armies fought on the stark island 61 years ago. Decades later letters to their loved ones are discovered buried in the black sand which director Clint Eastwood uses as a device to show even the enemy can be human.

Clint says Letters from Iwo Jima was an extension of Flags Of Our Fathers which was the Americans point of view.

“Americans were sent into the South Pacific war hoping that they were gonna come back, knowing that it was gonna be tough sledding but everybody goes hoping you’re gonna come back. In the case of the Japanese they were told they weren’t coming back so it’s a different mentality. I didn’t want to get trying to tell two stories in the same movie which has been done before but it’s very difficult to do successfully so I just decided to make a whole other movie of it.”

In his research Clint said he found the Japanese to be very spiritual when it comes to celebrating their war heroes.

“You go along and you’ll see a Japanese memorial and you’ll see a bottle of whisky sitting there with the cap off sitting there but it’s full. In a lot of areas they’d say, ‘hey it’s full, well I’m empty that’ but not there. Everything is to the spirit. That bottle of whisky is put there for the spirit of people who died there.”

Letters from Iwo Jima stars Ken Watanabe as the Lt. General who is torn between his experience of western ways and the old traditions of Japanese warfare.