ARS on Twitter
RSS
The real heroes of Iwo Jima were the guys who didn’t come back
Posted by Raven on October 2nd, 2006
A movie I will be going to see:
Flags of Our Fathers is based on a New York Times Bestseller book (year 2000) of the same name and is about a man’s quest to learn more about his father, a medical corpsman in WWII at the Battle of Iwo Jima. More than 22,000 Japanese soldiers would die defending a patch of ground a third the size of Manhattan, while nearly 26,000 Americans fell taking it from them. The battle, the largest sea armada invasion ever assembled and the costliest war ever fought by the US Marines, was also a turning point in the war because control of the island of Iwo Jima (Japanese territory) allowed Allied forces to launch B-29 bomber raids into the heart of Japan with the eventual dropping of the Atomic Bomb that would end WWII.
The battle would produce one of World War II’s most enduring images: a photograph of five Marines and a Navy Corpsman raising an American flag on the top of Mount Suribachi, the island’s commanding high point.
The heart of the book centers around the tragic life stories of the six men who raised the flag that February day–one an Arizona Indian who would die following an alcohol-soaked brawl, another a Kentucky hillbilly, still another a Pennsylvania steel-mill worker–and who became reluctant heroes in the bargain.
Like the book, the movie is expected to focus on what happened to the men after the famous battle. The men in the photo–three were killed during the battle–were proclaimed heroes and flown home, to become reluctant symbols. For two of them, the adulation was shattering. Only John Bradley truly survived, displaying no copy of the famous photograph in his home, telling his son only: “The real heroes of Iwo Jima were the guys who didn’t come back.”
October 2nd, 2006 at 11:06 am
I haven’t seen this film advertised. Did I miss the publicity?
October 2nd, 2006 at 8:52 pm
I saw an ad a couple weeks ago- and then last night during the Patsy game…so I looked it up. It’s an Eastwood flick- so it should be really good.
October 3rd, 2006 at 7:27 pm
Eastwood? Then I’m there! :mrgreen:
October 3rd, 2006 at 11:46 pm
The book was really good too.
October 4th, 2006 at 8:06 pm
Excellent book. I didn’t know they made it into the movie til the other night. LOL.