Eastwood On 'Flags Of Our Fathers'

[thedrifter]

Oct. 23, 2006, 1:15AM

As lights dim, war memories replayed
Film depicting Iwo Jima binds two Marines who lived through it
By JEANNIE KEVER
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

Technically, Ken Whitfill and John Wilson were strangers when they walked into a movie theater on Friday afternoon.

But they were Marines and, more than that, Marines who fought on Iwo Jima. And so it was with a comfortable camaraderie that they settled into the theater seats to watch Flags of Our Fathers, Clint Eastwood's rumination on that World War II battle and the myth-making photograph of American soldiers who raised the flag during the fighting.

They liked the movie, although they had no illusions that any film could have captured perfectly their experiences. "I have never seen a movie that depicted battle as I know it and think it is," Wilson said. "But different people can see the same thing and know it differently."

The men are in their 80s now — "He's just a kid," the 85-year-old Whitfill joked about Wilson, who is 81 — long retired and dependent on canes to steady their gaits.

But when the theater lights dimmed, an unforgettable chapter of their youth flashed back to life.

The black sands of Iceland served as a stand-in for the volcanic rock of Iwo Jima, where Whitfill and Wilson were among 30,000 Marines who initially landed upon the beaches.

The 35-day battle during February and March 1945 gave the United States control of the island, providing an emergency base for B-29s flying to and from Japan, and, perhaps more important, stopping the Japanese stationed there from sounding the alert.

The Marines lost 6,821 men during the battle; about 21,000 Japanese soldiers were killed.

Flags of Our Fathers centers on the battle's first days, capped by the placing of a U.S. flag atop Mount Suribachi, the highest point on the tiny Pacific island. That moment was captured by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal and published in newspapers around the country. The film shifts between the battle and the government's use of the three survivors among the six men in the photograph to raise money for the war effort.

It is by turns brutal and sentimental as it looks at both the reality of war and the marketing of war. But Whitfill and Wilson watched without flinching.

"I think the beach scenes, they were quite realistic," said Whitfill, an East Texas native who joined the Marines after graduating from Texas A&M University in 1942.

He had read the book upon which the film is based, Flags of Our Fathers, co-written by James Bradley, whose father helped raise the flag, and had met the younger Bradley.

"As graphic as it was," he said, no film could capture the reality of that sustained battle.

Different perspective

Whitfill, who rose through the ranks at the Fuller Brush Company to retire as manager of the Gulf Coast region in 1987, was a member of the Marines 3rd Division.

"It was hard to believe when you were there, how anything could survive," he said. "It had been bombed by the Air Force days ahead of time. You'd think (the Japanese) would have been pulverized, but they were dug in. Just as soon as we quit firing and tried to move forward, up came the Japanese out of their caves. It was a matter of digging them out, almost inch by inch."

Eastwood plans to release Letters from Iwo Jima, told from the Japanese point of view, next year, but Whitfill is skeptical that it will portray the ferocity he remembers.

Wilson was an infantryman with the 5th Division. A native of Nacogdoches, Wilson asked to be drafted into the Marines when he turned 18. Two years later, he was on Iwo Jima.

The worst part, in some ways, was waiting to go ashore, Wilson said.

He jumped into a Higgins boat at 10 a.m. Feb. 19, 1945, the day of the invasion. He didn't make it to the beach until 4 p.m.

"Virtually everyone got sick and threw up from all the bouncing around," he told Whitfill as they traded stories.

Whitfill nodded. "That was bad," he softly agreed.

Seventeen days later, Wilson left the island on a stretcher, one of 47 casualties from an explosion set off by the Japanese. He spent the next six months in various hospitals, recovering from a shattered left arm and other injuries.

"I had my machine gun set up covering a draw, in case (the Japanese soldiers) were flushed out. ... Suddenly, a ridge just went up, and I was buried there."

Wilson dug his way out, but his fighting days were over.

Most of the fighting took place elsewhere on the island, and neither man was on Mount Suribachi when the flag was raised a few days into the battle.

Whitfill was on a ship in the island's harbor when an announcement went out over the loudspeaker. "We rushed out, and I still remember what a thrill it was," he said.

About the flag
Wilson, who later finished college at what is now Stephen F. Austin University and began a career as a newspaperman, didn't notice the flag until the following day, when a fellow Marine spotted it during a lull.

"It did give us a good feeling," he said.

They didn't see the photograph until later, of course.

Wilson, who retired as a sportswriter from the Houston Chronicle in 1982, was in a hospital in Guam when he saw it on the cover of Time magazine.

"I realized that was a photograph that had an impact on the United States," he said. "I'm proud of the image and the picture, and that it was this battle I was in and that it was the Marine Corps. But I always realized it was just a symbol.

"Hell, the battle was just beginning."

jeannie.kever@chron.com

Ellie

[thedrifter]

[October 23, 2006, 4:24 pm]
"WWII Marine Remembers Famous Battle"

More than 60 years ago, the World War II battle on the island of Iwo Jima was captured in one of the most famous news photos of all time. The photograph that shows marines and navy corpsman raising the victory flag now serves as inspiration for the new movie "Flags of our Fathers."

One marine was at Iwo Jima for the famous event and it has dictated his routine for the last 50 years. Everyday Lee Copeland raises his American Flag in tribute to the fellow Marines he served with on Iwo Jima. He said, "Sunshine in the morning you put it up... About 5 p.m. in the evening you take it down."

Copeland said he was 15 the day he decided to become a marine. It was the morning of December 7 1941. He was delivering papers in North Nashville. Nearly four years later he was standing at the bottom of Mt. Suribachi, watching the now famous scene take place.

Now, over 50 years later, Copeland, now 80 years old, still finds it hard to express the emotion he felt that day. He said there isn't a day that goes by that he doesn't think of what he witnessed on that island. He is proud to have played a part in the image that moved a nation.

Copeland said what haunts him today is the sacrifices his friends made to achieve it. He said he doesplan on seeing the new movie "Flags of our Fathers" that is in theaters now.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

October 24, 2006
After Weak ‘Flags’ Debut, Studio May Face Costly Oscar Battle
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER and ALLISON HOPE WEINER

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 23 — Clint Eastwood’s World War II movie “Flags of Our Fathers” lumbered ashore this weekend weighted with the expectations of a studio needing to win big. Looking for Oscars and a payoff on the film’s $90 million budget, Paramount, its distributor, put the film in nearly 1,900 theaters, and still plans to add hundreds more as early as this week.

By Monday morning, however, the studio and its partners found themselves facing a costly fight to save their showcase awards entry, as “Flags” took in just $10.2 million at the box office — a relatively tiny beachhead that did not match expectations or its mostly strong reviews. The picture had failed to excite enough older viewers who could remember, readily identify or relate to its subject, the bloody battle for Iwo Jima, to make up for its lack of appeal to younger audiences and paucity of recognizable stars.

For Paramount, which inherited the movie when it bought DreamWorks last year, the combination of a weak opening and good reviews made for a problem that has become all too familiar to major studios offering big dramas at awards time: it now will have to mount a costly Oscar campaign, but it hasn’t yet made the money to pay for it.

The fate of “Flags” in the moviegoing marketplace could also provide the clearest test yet of the DreamWorks-Paramount marriage. The movie’s marketing is being run by Terry Press of DreamWorks, overseeing a Paramount team, and its distribution is being overseen by Rob Moore, a top colonel to Brad Grey, Paramount’s chairman, relying on a staff of former DreamWorks employees. To complicate things further, Warner Brothers, which helped finance the film, holds international distribution rights, and is expected to release a companion movie depicting the battle from the Japanese point of view early next year.

Still, even as they vowed to battle into the winter for “Flags,” hoping for awards nominations to rally its box-office performance, studio executives left broad hints that they were not willing to shoulder the blame alone if their efforts were for naught. Mr. Eastwood, they noted, held contractual rights to approve both the marketing and distribution plans for his movie. “Every step of the way, we are working with Clint or being directed by Clint,” Mr. Moore said.

“Flags” seemed like a sure bet on Paramount’s schedule when the studio and DreamWorks combined forces last December: Mr. Eastwood was coming off best-picture and best-director nominations for “Mystic River” in 2004, and wins in both categories for “Million Dollar Baby” last year. Paul Haggis, the screenwriter of “Flags,” won the Oscar (along with Bobby Moresco) for the screenplay for “Crash,” named best picture this March, and also wrote “Million Dollar Baby.” And Steven Spielberg, who had originally wanted to film “Flags” as a bookend to his own “Saving Private Ryan,” had decided to take a rare producer’s credit for a movie he did not direct.

Mr. Spielberg did the same with “Memoirs of a Geisha,” another Oscar aspirant that disappointed at the box office and came up short in the awards race for Sony Pictures last year. Following a different path, “Munich,” which was directed by Mr. Spielberg, was not a major audience hit, but did end up with a best-picture nomination.

True to form, the pedigree of “Flags” produced some blurb-worthy raves: Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called it “a film of awesome power”; David Ansen of Newsweek called it “tough, smart, raw and contemplative”; and Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote that it said “something new and urgent about the uses of war and of the men who fight.”

But the movie posed several marketing challenges that Mr. Eastwood’s last two films did not face. Unlike Mr. Spielberg, who cast Tom Hanks in “Private Ryan,” Mr. Eastwood wanted to give a sense of the youth and ordinariness of the marines who fought at Iwo Jima, so he deliberately avoided casting major stars. Ryan Phillippe is the biggest name in “Flags,” though hardly a household one. Some critics even wrote that the movie’s characters were almost indistinguishable in the mayhem of battle.

As Mr. Moore summed up: “The biggest draw of the movie is its director, who’s not in the movie.”

Some industry insiders also questioned the timing of the film’s release in late October — a time when audiences are mainly young and mainly interested in Halloween fare like next weekend’s release of “Saw III” — rather than closer to Thanksgiving, when audiences have been conditioned to expect more adult-themed movies with awards potential.

But Mr. Moore said the timing was nearly identical to that of “Mystic River,” which opened in mid-October 2003 in a platform release of 13 theaters before expanding to 1,467 theaters a week later. Any thought of a similar platform release a week or two ago was dropped, lest “Flags” go up against Martin Scorsese’s “Departed,” Mr. Moore said. But he and other executives said the calendar ahead looked forgiving, with youth-oriented movies like the “Saw” sequel and “Borat,” and family fare like DreamWorks’ and Paramount’s own “Flushed Away” on Nov. 3.

Counting on that window of opportunity, Mr. Moore said Monday morning that Paramount, DreamWorks and Mr. Eastwood had agreed to expand by 300 screens nationwide this week. He cited the movie’s reviews, as well as exit polls of audience members that were 50 percent better than average — a sure gauge of word of mouth, he said.

Robert Lorenz, Mr. Eastwood’s longtime producer, said the opening weekend box office, while lower than some projections, was not disappointing at all. “It’s on track with what Clint’s movies have done in the past,” he said.

Executives like Mr. Moore said they were counting on the many fans of Mr. Eastwood’s dramatic and darker recent movies to show up as they always seem to — in their own good time. “They come out slower,” he said. “Therefore, we roll out slower.”

And Ms. Press, of DreamWorks, said that the film’s reviews held out hopes that, once the movie made it to December, it could wind up on the year’s-best lists and start piling up the kind of accolades that might prompt moviegoers to give it another look.

“When you have that level of respect, you have to go the distance here,” Ms. Press of DreamWorks said, referring to Mr. Eastwood. “There is no other choice for a movie like this but to go the distance.”

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Tuesday October 24, 2006
'Iwo Jima was enough'

by ERIN CUNNINGHAM
erinc@herald-mail.com

HAGERSTOWN - They were preparing to watch what has been said to be a very graphic war film.

Those sitting in the theater Monday were familiar with the battle depicted in "Flags of Our Fathers." A few are World War II veterans, and one fought in The Battle of Iwo Jima.

But most of those interviewed at the special screening of the film at Hagerstown 10 Cineplex theater said they weren't there to see another war film. They've seen them all. And they weren't there for the memories.

"I don't need to see any more of that stuff," said Bernard Leasure, 85, of Saint James. "I don't need to see any more war pictures."

They were there for Clint Eastwood.

"Frankly, I'm just here because I like Clint Eastwood," Leasure said.

Leasure served as a combat engineer with the U.S. Army during World War II.

Eastwood directed the film, which follows the life stories of the six men who raised the flag at The Battle of Iwo Jima, a turning point in World War II.

The theater and the Disabled American Veterans, Chapter 14, sponsored the screening Monday, which offered free admission to World War II veterans and disabled American veterans. All other veterans received a reduced price.

Stephen L. Hansen, commander of the local chapter, helped organize the screening and said he was pleased that nearly 300 people attended.

Earl Blair, 90, of Rouzerville, Pa., served in the U.S. Navy from 1943-46 and is a World War II veteran. Blair said he wanted to see "Flags of Our Fathers" because he knows many of the Navy ships that brought the Marines ashore.

"I'm very interested in seeing the film," he said.

He said he expected the film to bring back memories from his tours with the European and Pacific theaters.

Arnold Gozora, 82, of Williamsport, was at The Battle of Iwo Jima and said he served in the Marines from 1943-46. The battle was fought in 1945 and, as a result, the United States gained control of the island of Iwo Jima. Perhaps the most famous image of that battle is of the Marines raising the United States flag at Mount Suribachi during the battle.

Gozora said it was hard to say why he chose to see the film Monday.

"I had enough of it," he said. "Iwo Jima was enough."

He said he read the book the film was based on, and that brought back many memories of the battle.

After seeing the movie Monday, he told his wife, Catherine Gozora, that it was very well done, and that the story of the flag was a wonderful story.

"You know, they don't like to talk about (the battle,)" she said. "They can't understand how they got back because everybody died around them. He used to say always that the ocean was red with blood. He doesn't know how he ever made it."

Before the movie began, Gozora was recognized as being the only one in the theater who was at The Battle of Iwo Jima. His wife said her husband stood, was recognized and everyone applauded.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

October 30, 2006

Film Review: ‘Flags of Our Fathers,’ 3 ½ stars
Heroes, for a time: Eastwood’s film shows the reality behind war’s most legendary photo

By Chuck Vinch
Staff writer


Every war needs heroes — people who do extraordinary things that inspire others in support of the grand and glorious cause. And, sometimes, if real heroes can’t be found, they must be manufactured.

For proof, we need look back no further than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. When Pfc. Jessica Lynch’s supply convoy was ambushed in Iraq, the Pentagon initially spun a startling story about the diminutive soldier mounting a ferocious defense, emptying her M16 rifle before being overwhelmed and taken prisoner. It was later revealed that she never got off a shot.

Then there’s Cpl. Pat Tillman, the square-jawed former pro football star who supposedly died from enemy fire while in combat with Taliban fighters in Afghanistan — until the military admitted that he was accidentally shot by U.S. troops.


What, then, is a hero? Can anyone ever really “be” a hero, or is heroism merely a thin and flimsy label that others slap on and tear off at whim? And what price do both heroes and hero-worshippers pay for that?

Those questions form the heart of “Flags of Our Fathers,” the eagerly awaited film adaptation of James Bradley’s best-selling book about his father’s role in the legendary World War II flag-raising on Iwo Jima. The second of two flag-raisings on Feb. 23, 1945, yielded one of the most famous wartime photographs in history — an image that is credited with helping to turn the tide of the war in the Pacific.

It’s a deeply moving, beautiful film, shot in a bleached, monochromatic color palette that is gorgeous in its stark simplicity.

But it’s not the film that many people have been expecting; it’s not really the Marine Corps version of “Saving Private Ryan.”

Yes, it has plenty of graphic combat footage. But lead-slinging carnage is not what Bradley’s book is about, and it’s not what this film is about. Rather, the film is about the way we eagerly build up and callously discard “heroes.”

From that perspective, it’s quite easy to see what made Clint Eastwood want to direct this project. He’s spent decades exploring various hero and anti-hero archetypes — and the mythic overtones that have enveloped the flag-raising on Iwo Jima over the years surely hit him right in his sweet spot.

As its framing device, the film has Bradley (Tom McCarthy) interviewing Iwo survivors about the battle as research for his book, which he undertook in an effort to better understand his father, Pharmacist’s Mate 2nd Class John “Doc” Bradley, a Navy corpsman who was one of the six flag-raisers.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning photo that made them all famous was shot by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal on Mount Suribachi, the high point of the desolate, 8-square-mile pile of volcanic ash and rock.

Eastwood cuts back and forth between events on Iwo, a battle that lasted more than a month and became the single bloodiest engagement of the war, and the subsequent struggle of the three surviving flag-raisers to come to terms with their complex legacy.

Bradley (Ryan Phillippe), Pfc. Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford) and Cpl. Ira Hayes (Adam Beach) had that legacy forced upon them when they were shanghaied by Washington bureaucrats to serve as poster boys for the war-bond effort on the home front.

Trotted out at stadiums and other public venues to be celebrated by an adoring nation, they were forced to take part in embarrassingly hokey stunts such as re-enacting the flag-raising on a papier-mâché rock, all in an effort to bolster the sagging national morale and refill the Treasury Department’s dangerously diminishing coffers.

All three felt like undeserving impostors; all felt that the real heroes were their buddies who died on Iwo. None was more reluctant to embrace his newfound fame than Hayes, a Pima Indian who was pursued by inner demons well before he hit the beach at Iwo and afterward quickly lost ground in that race.

And when the government had squeezed all it could from them, they were tossed aside. In that pre-dawn prelude to the age of celebrity worship, their descent into obscurity seemed to happen as quickly as that flag had gone up back on Iwo.

Given the meatiest role, Beach makes the most of it, poignantly tracing Hayes’ descent into an alcoholic drifter’s life that ended tragically in 1955 when he died of exposure.

The others didn’t have an easy road, either. Gagnon tried to cash in on his fame, but opportunities promised him by powerful men eager to rub shoulders with a hero quickly evaporated, and he worked menial jobs — mostly as a janitor — until his death in 1979.

Only Bradley managed to find some semblance of normalcy, raising a family and working as a funeral home director. But even he was plagued by nightmares and hallucinations for the rest of his days until his 1994 death.

As their story unfolded on screen, the shifting mood of the packed house at my screening proved quite interesting.

Early on, a noticeable buzz filled the theater. But when the film ended, a brief smattering of applause quickly morphed into solemn silence as historical photographs of the battle for Iwo Jima appeared on screen, accompanied by elegantly spare music composed by Eastwood.

That seemed only fitting; this is a movie that invites reflection. It’s not without flaws — sorting out the characters in the early going is tricky, and the frequent hard U-turns between the battle scenes and stateside sequences may cause mild whiplash.

But if Eastwood’s “Letters From Iwo Jima” — the companion film told from the Japanese perspective that is due out early next year — is as good as this, he will have fashioned quite a set of bookends to cap his storied career.

Rated R for graphic violence. Got a rant or rave about the movies? E-mail cvinch@atpco.com.

[thedrifter]

Real screen drama: Rescuing 'Flags'
By David M. Halbfinger and Allison Hope Weiner The New York Times

Published: October 25, 2006

LOS ANGELES Clint Eastwood's World War II movie "Flags of Our Fathers" lumbered ashore this weekend weighted with the expectations of a studio needing to win big. Looking for Oscars and a payoff on the film's $90-million budget, Paramount, its distributor, put the film in nearly 1,900 American theaters, and still plans to add hundreds more as early as this week.

By Monday, however, the studio and its partners found themselves facing a costly fight to save their showcase awards entry, as "Flags" took in just $10.2 million at the box office - a relatively tiny beachhead that did not match expectations or its mostly strong reviews. The picture had failed to excite enough older viewers who could remember, readily identify, or relate to its subject, the bloody battle for Iwo Jima, to make up for its lack of appeal to younger audiences and paucity of recognizable stars.

For Paramount, which inherited the movie when it bought DreamWorks last year, the combination of a weak opening and good reviews made for a problem that has become all too familiar to major studios offering big dramas at awards time: It now will have to mount a costly Oscar campaign, but it hasn't yet made the money to pay for it.

The fate of "Flags" in the moviegoing marketplace could also provide the clearest test yet of the DreamWorks-Paramount marriage. The movie's marketing is being run by Terry Press of DreamWorks, overseeing a Paramount team, and its distribution is being overseen by Rob Moore, a top colonel to Brad Grey, Paramount's chairman, relying on a staff of former DreamWorks employees. To complicate things further, Warner Brothers, which helped finance the film, holds international distribution rights, and is expected to release a companion movie depicting the battle from the Japanese point of view early next year.

Still, even as they vowed to battle into the winter for "Flags," hoping for awards nominations to rally its box-office performance, studio executives left broad hints that they were not willing to shoulder the blame alone if their efforts were for naught. Eastwood, they noted, held contractual rights to approve both the marketing and distribution plans for his movie. "Every step of the way, we are working with Clint or being directed by Clint," Moore said.

"Flags" seemed like a sure bet on Paramount's schedule when the studio and DreamWorks combined forces last December: Eastwood was coming off best-picture and best-director nominations for "Mystic River" in 2004, and wins in both categories for "Million Dollar Baby" last year. Paul Haggis, the screenwriter of "Flags," won the Oscar (along with Bobby Moresco) for the screenplay for "Crash," named best picture this March, and also wrote "Million Dollar Baby." And Steven Spielberg, who had originally wanted to film "Flags" as a bookend to his own "Saving Private Ryan," had decided to take a rare producer's credit for a movie he did not direct.

Spielberg did the same with "Memoirs of a Geisha," another Oscar aspirant that disappointed at the box office and came up short in the awards race for Sony Pictures last year. Following a different path, "Munich," which was directed by Spielberg, was not a major audience hit, but did end up with a best- picture nomination.

True to form, the pedigree of "Flags" produced some blurb-worthy raves: Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called it "a film of awesome power"; David Ansen of Newsweek called it "tough, smart, raw and contemplative"; and Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote that it said "something new and urgent about the uses of war and of the men who fight."

But the movie posed several marketing challenges that Eastwood's last two films did not face. Unlike Spielberg, who cast Tom Hanks in "Private Ryan," Eastwood wanted to give a sense of the youth and ordinariness of the marines who fought at Iwo Jima, so he deliberately avoided casting major stars. Ryan Phillippe is the biggest name in "Flags," though hardly a household one. As Moore summed up: "The biggest draw of the movie is its director, who's not in the movie."

Some industry insiders questioned the timing of the film's release in late October - a time when American audiences are mainly young and interested in Halloween fare like the release Friday of "Saw III" - rather than closer to Thanksgiving, when audiences are conditioned to expect more adult-themed movies with awards potential.

But Moore said the timing was nearly identical to that of "Mystic River," which opened in mid-October 2003 in a platform release of 13 theaters before expanding to 1,467 theaters a week later. Any thought of a similar platform release a week or two ago was dropped, lest "Flags" go up against Martin Scorsese's "Departed," Moore said.

But he and other executives said the calendar ahead looked forgiving, with youth-oriented movies like the "Saw" sequel and "Borat," and family fare like DreamWorks' and Paramount's own "Flushed Away" on Nov. 3.

Counting on that window of opportunity, Moore said Monday that Paramount, DreamWorks, and Eastwood had agreed to expand by 300 screens in the United States this week. He cited the movie's reviews, as well as exit polls of audience members that were 50 percent better than average - a sure gauge of word of mouth, he said.

Robert Lorenz, Eastwood's longtime producer, said the opening weekend box office, while lower than some projections, was not disappointing at all. "It's on track with what Clint's movies have done in the past," he said.

Executives like Moore said they were counting on the many fans of Eastwood's dramatic and darker recent movies to show up as they always seem to - in their own good time.

And Press, of DreamWorks, said that the film's reviews held out hopes that, once the movie made it to December, it could wind up on the year's-best lists and start piling up the kind of accolades that might prompt moviegoers to give it another look.

"When you have that level of respect, you have to go the distance here," Press said, referring to Eastwood. "There is no other choice for a movie like this but to go the distance."

Ellie

[thedrifter]

10/26/2006
World War II movie hits home for area Marines
By: Jamie Ward

JWard@News-Herald.com

While more than 60 years is enough time to cloud a memory, four Northeast Ohio men will never forget their experiences on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima during World War II.

The men met Wednesday at Gunny's Hall, 8720 Twinbrook Drive, Mentor, to talk about Clint Eastwood's new movie, "Flags of Our Fathers."

"No comment," was the response of 86-year-old Frank Smolinski of Concord Township. "It's Hollywood. They make money off us poor guys who went over there."

The director's many Academy Awards meant nothing to Charles "Gunny" Malinowski, 84, of Mentor.

He was not impressed.

"Clint Eastwood ought to stop making movies," Malinowski said. "No Marine general would ever use those four-letter words with their troopers. We never used that kind of language. I thought it stunk."

George Dorko, 85, of Chester Township, wasn't as certain in his criticism.

"It was all right," said Dorko, who went to boot camp with Malinowski and served in the same division. "There was a lot of propaganda. It ain't what I seen."

Bob Cain, 83, of Willowick, was a bit kinder.

"(I was) a little disappointed," Cain said. "But it had interesting parts, like the scenes of battleships and destroyers. But it was pretty accurate."

Cain said the language was a little over the top, and the movie bounced around a lot.

"It was hard to understand," he said.

All the men said they could see the flag made famous from the photograph on the island after it was hoisted.

"The ships started blowing the whistles, and then we had to go about our business - which was staying alive," Cain said.

Malinowski, who said he often watches the History Channel, was startled by some of the movie's more graphic battle scenes. He said he had "rubbed off" some of the grim recollections after all of these years.

But two hours in a movie theater brought back reflective stories of friends lost.

"I was proud of being a Marine. I did what my country and I wanted to do," Cain said. "When you lose a friend, it's a different ball game."

Eastwood is currently making another movie, this one from Japanese soldiers' perspective.

While Smolinski, who gave this one a zero rating, said he would not go, the others said they would give it a try.

"If we're alive - we will," laughed Dorko. And the others laughed with him.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Another WWII film, another open wound

More than 700 African-American Marines served on Iwo Jima in World War II, running ammunition to the front lines and burying the dead, among other harrowing duties.

These men, in addition to facing the Japanese, had to endure bitter racism from their white counterparts. When they came home they received no respect or honor for their sacrifice. These elderly warriors are asking why they are being made to feel the same neglect again.

Hollywood has made another movie, called Flags of Our Fathers, about the Iwo Jima battle. It's directed by Clint Eastwood and produced by Eastwood, Steven Spielberg and Robert Lorenz.

Unlike Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, this movie shows a couple of African-American soldiers briefly in a cutaway shot on one of the ships heading toward Iwo Jima. At the end of the film, if you hang around long enough, you'll see one photograph that features a few black Marines in prayer.

Lorenz told me that blacks who are burning up the phone lines on talk radio and angry bloggers have it wrong. He said 12 black extras were used in the landing scenes. "They are there in this film ... but the focus of this film is the story of the flag raisers. This film is very much about racism and the treatment of Ira Hayes, the Native American flag raiser. "

But these extras are difficult to find, and for black veterans this movie is like a bloody wound being reopened. Those who served on Iwo Jima were among the first black Marines, trained in a segregated boot camp at North Carolina's Montford Point.

Joe Geeter, national president of the Montford Point Marine Association, has seen the film. He says this perceived slight doesn't affect just the vets but all blacks whose contributions to U.S. history are too often ignored.

Iwo Jima survivor Gene Doughty, 81, says that he realizes the movie is about the flag raisers, but that blacks and Hispanics on Iwo Jima were just as heroic. "This is vital history," he says. "This movie tells the story to the world, but we are not included, and it hurts."

It's time for black movie producers, directors and screenwriters to step up so that surviving black WWII veterans - and indeed, all African-Americans - won't have to feel slighted again. Their service triggered desegregation in the military, the civil rights movement and the emergence of a strong black middle class. Their service changed America.

We owe them - and future generations - this recognition.

Yvonne Latty, author of We Were There: Voices of African American Veterans, from World War II to the War in Iraq, is a journalism professor at New York University.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Fight battle of Iwo Jima from comfort of home

By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff | November 4, 2006

Film director Sam Fuller , a veteran of World War II, once said that to make a truly realistic war movie you'd have to have snipers shooting at the audience during the picture. The History Channel isn't going quite that far -- after all, it's a cable TV network pumped into millions of homes, and there's no way to get hold of that many snipers.

So the History Channel will settle for a piece of software -- a free, downloadable computer game that'll let viewers re enact the violent struggles depicted in the channel's military documentary series, "Shootout."

With Clint Eastwood releasing not one but two movies on the World War II fight for Iwo Jima this year, it's no surprise that the bloody struggle for this volcanic island was picked as an episode of "Shootout." But Dolores Gavin, the show's executive producer, wanted to engage the audience more deeply than any documentary could achieve.

Then she learned about Kuma, a New York company that makes free, advertising-supported action games based on incidents from military history. Kuma has cranked out dozens of short games inspired by events in Afghanistan and Iraq, and has even been denounced by the government of Iran for a "what-if" game about a US raid on an Iranian nuclear weapons site.

Gavin contacted Kuma CEO Keith Halper , and together they began to design a series of games based on episodes of "Shootout." "This series was really developed by people who are gamers," Gavin said, "and we always had gamers in mind."

Kuma doesn't design each game from scratch. The company licenses the technology used in the superb 2004 action game Half-Life 2, then builds specific game scenarios on top of it. This means that developing a game takes weeks instead of months or years. Still, Halper admitted, "It turns out to be a little more challenging than we originally set out." So Kuma will do games for just three episodes of the series -- the assault on Iwo Jima, the Battle of the Bulge, and the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War.

As each episode airs, the related game will be posted at HistoryChannel.com. The games run only on desktop computers running Microsoft's Windows operating system. Each is designed to require about one hour of game play. But you can extend the fun by selecting a multiplayer version. This lets you connect over the Internet with other military buffs, and even play on opposite sides of the battle.

The events in each game will be based upon actual events during these battles. The Iwo Jima game features three specific incidents -- storming the beach, capturing Mount Suribachi, and fending off a ferocious Japanese counterattack. "We're looking at several discrete segments of the battle of Iwo Jima," Halper said, "to create not just the terrain and the emplacements but the actions of those who were there."

As the game opens, you're put in the shoes of Tony Stein, a legendary US Marine. Your mission is to clear out a series of bunkers from which Japanese troops are spraying your buddies with machine gun fire. Your weapons are a handful of grenades and an improvised machine gun called a "stinger." The Marines, desperate for better weapons, invented stingers by ripping machine guns from the wings of damaged US Navy fighters,

Just as well; completing the mission requires all the firepower you can muster. But with a gun that fires 1,300 rounds a minute, you have to reload a lot, and you can carry only three magazines. So you must attack a bunker, wipe it out, run back to the beach for more ammo, then come back and hit the next bunker.

Yes, it's difficult. Now try doing it barefoot, under fire, and carrying a wounded Marine to safety on each trip. That's how Stein did it -- eight times. That's why they gave him the Medal of Honor.

An early version of the game had a few glitches, like dreadful lighting that made the battlefield so dark I couldn't see who was killing me. But my biggest problem was simply staying alive. Kuma's game designers don't take it easy on the player, and it takes serious effort to achieve your objectives.

Sure, it's fun to try and die and try again; but it's also an informal education in American heroism, the kind of lesson that may stick in the mind far better than an hour in front of the TV. Kuma hasn't quite managed to put snipers in our living rooms, but you'll find yourself ducking for cover all the same.

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Another WWII film, another open wound

Fri Nov 3, 7:10 AM ET

More than 700 African-American Marines served on Iwo Jima in World War II, running ammunition to the front lines and burying the dead, among other harrowing duties.

These men, in addition to facing the Japanese, had to endure bitter racism from their white counterparts. When they came home they received no respect or honor for their sacrifice. These elderly warriors are asking why they are being made to feel the same neglect again.

Hollywood has made another movie, called Flags of Our Fathers, about the Iwo Jima battle. It's directed by Clint Eastwood and produced by Eastwood, Steven Spielberg and Robert Lorenz.

Unlike Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, this movie shows a couple of African-American soldiers briefly in a cutaway shot on one of the ships heading toward Iwo Jima. At the end of the film, if you hang around long enough, you'll see one photograph that features a few black Marines in prayer.

Lorenz told me that blacks who are burning up the phone lines on talk radio and angry bloggers have it wrong. He said 12 black extras were used in the landing scenes. "They are there in this film ... but the focus of this film is the story of the flag raisers. This film is very much about racism and the treatment of Ira Hayes, the Native American flag raiser. "

But these extras are difficult to find, and for black veterans this movie is like a bloody wound being reopened. Those who served on Iwo Jima were among the first black Marines, trained in a segregated boot camp at North Carolina's Montford Point.

Joe Geeter, national president of the Montford Point Marine Association, has seen the film. He says this perceived slight doesn't affect just the vets but all blacks whose contributions to U.S. history are too often ignored.

Iwo Jima survivor Gene Doughty, 81, says that he realizes the movie is about the flag raisers, but that blacks and Hispanics on Iwo Jima were just as heroic. "This is vital history," he says. "This movie tells the story to the world, but we are not included, and it hurts."

It's time for black movie producers, directors and screenwriters to step up so that surviving black WWII veterans - and indeed, all African-Americans - won't have to feel slighted again. Their service triggered desegregation in the military, the civil rights movement and the emergence of a strong black middle class. Their service changed America.

We owe them - and future generations - this recognition.

Yvonne Latty, author of We Were There: Voices of African American Veterans, from World War II to the War in Iraq, is a journalism professor at New York University.

[thedrifter]

'Flags of Our Fathers' vs. reality
Monday, November 06, 2006
By Dave LeMieux
CHRONICLE STAFF WRITER

Charles W. "Chuck" Lindsay of Muskegon was just 40 yards away when Joe Rosenthal took the famous World War II photograph of six Marines raising the U.S. flag over Iwo Jima.

Lindsay, now 81, knew most of the six and was pals with one, Ira H. Hayes.

According to one Marine Corps historian, Rosenthal's photo captures "the very embodiment of the American war-fighting spirit on film."

Asked what the photo means to him, Lindsay says, "Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It's just another picture of the war, you know," he says, his voice trailing off.

"A lot of people got the idea the flag-raising ended that battle, but that flag-raising started that battle," Lindsay says. "It was really hell from then on."

Lindsay landed with the first wave on Feb. 19, 1945, and was in combat in one of the bloodiest battles in America's history continuously until he was wounded on March 10.

"It was quite an experience," Lindsay says. "I don't think I would take a million dollars for it and I wouldn't give a nickel to go through it again."

Lindsay also wouldn't give a nickel for Clint Eastwood's film adaptation of the bestselling World War II memoir "Flags of Our Fathers."

Lindsay left a recent screening of the movie after 45 minutes.

He was upset by what he says is the film's inaccurate depiction of the actions of U.S. Navy corpsmen -- the Marine Corps battlefield medics -- in combat.

"I was getting a little angry as I was watching the movie," Lindsay says. "Finally, I said, 'The hell with this! I can't see any more of this crap!' "

Lindsay says the movie may also have stirred old memories buried deep down inside him.

"I wouldn't want to pan the movie. A lot of people who like war movies will probably enjoy it. It was just too close to me, too personal," Lindsay says.

Flag raising

When Rosenthal shot his famous photo of the flag-raising on Feb. 23, 1945, Lindsay, then a 19-year-old Marine from Detroit, was nearby using bits of C-2 explosive to heat up a cup of coffee.

"Somebody says, 'Oh look. They changed that flag over there. We all looked, 'Oh, yeah. That's right.' We had no interest in it at all," Lindsay says.

Rosenthal's photograph shows the second flag-raising on Mt. Suribachi. The first had taken place three hours before, at 10:20 a.m.

Both were greeted with cheers from the Marines fighting around the foot of Mt. Suribachi.

Lindsay's 28th Regiment of the 5th Marine Division suffered 900 casualties in the five days it took to fight up the steep black sand slopes to the volcano's 550-foot summit.

D-Day

Iwo Jima was the 5th Marine Division's first battle.

For almost two years leading up to the battle, Lindsay and the other men in D Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Regiment had lived and trained together.

There were few men Lindsay knew better those in the fire team he commanded -- riflemen Carl Amato and 'Red' Jackson and automatic weapons specialist 'Pappy' Nettles.

Within 15 minutes of landing on Iwo Jima, Nettles was wounded and Amato and Jackson were dead.

Amato was killed climbing over the side of the landing craft. Nettles was wounded near the beach.

"There was a bunker, not too far in. We were trying to get to that. 'Pappy' crawled up in there and it blew up on him. Man, his face had that black sand in it. He was just peppered with it," Lindsay says.

Jackson was killed by a sniper as he ran for cover.

"We had these gas masks you strapped on like a old West holster," Lindsay says. "The damn things, as you're running along, they get twisted around. Red was trying to move up and stopped for a minute to get that damn thing out of his way, and they caught him."

Lindsay's fire team advanced just 30 or 40 yards from the water's edge, he said. It would take D Company another four hours more to cover the next 60 yards.

"There was some talk, that first day, that they were going to pull us off that island," Lindsay says.

Mt. Suribachi

Over the next days, the 28th fought its way up the mountainside.

The Japanese had honeycombed Suribachi and the whole island with countless caves.

"Every morning, at 8 o'clock, the word would come down, 'Jump off.' And the Japanese knew that, so they would have everything all set and be there to greet us," Lindsay says.

Japanese resistance was fiercest on Feb. 22, the day before the flag rising.

"Oh man, I swear I saw that kitchen sink go by. We lost a lot of people that morning. Then, all of the sudden, the firing stopped. So we're sitting there and everybody is trying to figure out what's going on. How come they quit shooting at us?"

The Marines didn't know it at the time, but the Japanese defending Suribachi had been ordered off the mountain. They used an extensive network of tunnels to slip through the Marines' lines to the northern half of the island.

The following morning, after a 40-man platoon secured the summit and raised the first flag, Lindsay and the rest moved forward.

When he reached the summit, Lindsay turned to take in the view.

"I looked back down and I could see the LSTs (Land Ship Tank) moving in to the beach. They couldn't move in until we got that mountain because (the Japanese) were looking right down on 'em," Lindsay says.

An LST like the ones Lindsay was watching unload tanks and supplies onto the beach -- LST-393, a D-Day veteran -- is now moored on the Muskegon waterfront.

"I was thinking, 'Now I wonder if I could get down into one of them LSTs and get something to eat?' "

The battle for Iwo Jima would last another 23 days.

"We had as many Japanese behind us as what we had in front of us," Lindsay said. "After a while they were behind us trying to infiltrate to get back to their own lines. At night you had to watch both ways."

Lindsay's fight on Iwo ended on March 10, just days before the Marines secured the island. He was later evacuated by air.

Home again

Lindsay returned to Detroit after the war.

"I had the world by the tail. Things were going smoothly," he says.

He enrolled at Wayne State University. He had a good job selling insurance and was driving a cab on weekends to earn a little extra spending money.

"Then, all of the sudden, I didn't want no more school, I quit (the insurance agency), then I started drinking, drinking awful heavy," Lindsay says. "Just all of the sudden the whole world turned over on me. Nothing was important to me."

"I suppose it was that delayed stress syndrome that they talk about it. At that time, though, there wasn't no answer for it. They just said, 'Ahhh, you're nuts.' "

He said there was no medical understanding of the combat roots of his problem and no help dealing with it. "That's when I started wandering around the country working construction and drinking heavily."

By the 1960s, Lindsay's travels landed him in Muskegon. Marriage and the birth of his daughter, Karen, set things straight for a while.

But his drinking and the acrimonious divorce that followed led to a long estrangement from his daughter.

Lindsay's life changed again when he married his second wife, Evelyn, in 1970. He's not had a drink in more than 30 years.

He and Karen are now close.

Hollywood's Iwo Jima

It was at Karen's urging that Lindsay went to see "Flags of Our Fathers."

"I was a little reluctant," he says.

Once in the theater, Lindsay became angry. It may be a good war movie, he says, but it doesn't show what he saw on Iwo Jima.

Lindsay was particularly upset by the film's portrayal of Navy corpsmen.

"They had more guts than anybody had a right to have," Lindsay says.

A scene early in the movie shows a corpsman and another Marine together in a foxhole at night.

"There's just the two of them and the corpsman goes to sleep," Lindsay says. "Those kinds of things just did not happen."

Any squad leader worth his salt made sure there were two combat Marines in every foxhole, Lindsay explained -- one to stand watch while the other slept. Leaving a single exhausted combat Marine to stand watch over an unarmed corpsman all night could get them both killed.

"To me, that was an insult, not only to the Marine but to the NCOs," Lindsay says. "I got a little touchy about that. I guess I got a little over-critical."

In another scene, a corpsman goes to the aid of a wounded Marine at night in no-man's land.

"There are several riflemen around there with the wounded man," Lindsay says. "The corpsman says, 'I'll take care of it.' Those riflemen disappear. They leave a corpsman in the middle of the night out there with a wounded man?!,"' Lindsay says, indignantly.

"Who the hell's watching over that corpsman? That was part of our job -- to watch over these guys!"

The unprotected corpsman is forced to defend himself in a knife fight with a Japanese soldier. There was no way a corpsman could have won that fight, Lindsay says.

A promotion company for the studio sent Lindsay five "Flags of Our Fathers" movie posters because of his service on Iwo Jima. He gave one away, but the rest went into the recycle bin when he got home from the theater.

"If they can find me to send those posters, and they probably did to everyone in the 5th Marines Association, why couldn't they have found somebody to act as technical director who knew what the hell they were doing?"

The film also does a disservice to Ira Hayes, one of the six Marines photographed by Rosenthal, Lindsay says.

"I knew Ira pretty well and I liked him. He was a crazy bastard," Lindsay says. "They portrayed Ira as an intellectual, as a serious dude that was worried about his outfit. That was not Ira. He was fun-loving. He was always pulling (practical) jokes on people in the outfit."

Reunion

Lindsay plans to attend the 5th Division reunion in Branson, Mo. next year.

"It's going to be the last one. We're getting too old. Too many of us don't show up any more. Karen is looking forward to it. She's going because her old man's going."

While Lindsay looks forward to sharing a good time with old friends, he says he will never go back to the battlefield they shared.

"I'm proud of having been there. But if you asked me to go back, I wouldn't ever do it. Too many memories, too many ghosts over there," he says. "I've heard it said before that the real heroes never came back from there. That might be a cliché now, but it's true, it's actually true."

Ellie

[thedrifter]

November 13, 2006
Keeping the legend straight
Press surrounding Iwo movie perpetuates inaccuracies

By Charles A. Jones

I want to address the hyperbole and misinformation that have accompanied the recent film “Flags of Our Fathers.”

The characters in the movie repeatedly state that the dead left on Iwo were the true heroes. Those heroes deserve no less than the truth when their story is told.

I can judge these aspects because I have seen the movie; I went to Iwo Jima in 1995 for the battle’s 50th anniversary commemoration; and I have attended almost all 5th Marine Division reunions since 1995. Also, I have interviewed numerous Marine and Navy Iwo veterans.

NBC Nightly News featured interviews with two of the movie’s actors. Ryan Phillippe, who portrays corpsman John “Doc” Bradley, said: “One of the commanders wanted that flag because he knew what it would represent in terms of securing the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps was fairly new at that time, and he knew that it meant the Marine Corps would last forever.”

Wrong. Navy Secretary James Forrestal, not a commander, expressed interest in the flag and observed that the flag-raising would secure the existence of the Corps, although the battalion commander wanted the flag because his battalion raised it. Also, the Marine Corps was not “fairly new” during World War II. The first two battalions of leathernecks were created Nov. 10, 1775. Congress made the Corps a separate service in 1798.

In the same interview, Barry Pepper, who portrays Sgt. Michael Strank, said, “Iwo Jima is a memorial site. Nothing has been touched since ’45. ... It is just absolutely the way it was left when Iwo Jima was waged.”

Wrong. Three Marine divisions had cemeteries on Iwo, but the dead were removed circa 1947-48. Also, the U.S. maintained a military presence on Iwo for years after the battle. The U.S. returned the island to Japan in 1968; the last U.S. presence was a long-range navigation station maintained by the Coast Guard until 1993. The island is now home to Japanese military installations. These developments hardly left the island untouched.

The Wall Street Journal’s film review stated that the famous photograph of the second flag-raising “was the second of two flag-raisings snapped that day by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal; a do-over was required when, supposedly, the secretary of the Navy demanded the first flag as a souvenir.” The review also states that Strank, one of the second flag-raisers, was a “commanding officer.”

Wrong. Marine photographer Louis Lowery photographed the first flag-raising; Rosenthal was not present during that event. Rosenthal accompanied the second patrol ascending the mountain when he took his famous photograph. As a sergeant, Strank would never have been a commanding officer, although sergeants later had to command companies when officer casualties required junior enlisted Marines to take control until replacement officers could be found.

Accompanying the movie is the saying, “A single shot can end the war.” I also read words to this effect: “The right picture can win or lose a war.”

Wrong. The idea that Rosenthal’s photograph could or did shorten or end the war is fantasy. What ended the war was relentless combat at sea, on land and in the air, along with two atomic bombings.

Marine Corps Times’ review of the movie noted that it “became the single bloodiest engagement of the war.”

Wrong. The Germans and Soviets suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties at Stalingrad. Iwo Jima was the bloodiest engagement for the U.S.

In his Parade magazine essay about the movie, director Clint Eastwood writes that “nearly 7,000 American soldiers died” on Iwo.

Wrong. Those familiar with the military know that a soldier is a member of the Army. While the Army undoubtedly lost personnel at Iwo, most of the casualties were not soldiers but “sea soldiers” — Marines — and Navy support personnel accompanying them.

In the final analysis, an event as important to the Corps and its image as “Flags of Our Fathers” should be evaluated by facts, intelligent commentary and promotion that is true.

The writer is a lawyer and Marine Corps Reserve colonel in Norfolk, Va. He is an associate member of Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 26th Marines, 5th Marine Division, an infantry company that fought on Iwo Jima.

Ellie