movie, Letters from Iwo Jima

H-JAPAN [archived at www.h-net.msu.edu]
March 12, 2007

From: Janet R. Goodwin <jan@pollux.csustan Dot Ed>

I see no reason why Letters from Iwo Jima should be considered a whitewash
of Japanese military behavior. Eastwood, in the humanist mode
of, well, Akira Kurosawa, examined the diverse reactions of people in a
horrendous, and helpless, situation. He saw these people not as
"Japanese soldiers" but as soldiers who happened to be Japanese. That's
why it was a good film. To demand that all Japanese soldiers be
portrayed as brutal because there were those in the Japanese army who
committed brutal acts makes me, as an American in the days of Abu
Ghraib and Guantanamo, feel very uncomfortable indeed.

--Janet Goodwin, H-Japan co-editor