A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

(C) 2009 Warner Home Video In 2009, Warner Home Video released The Battle of Iwo Jima Collection, a box set comprised of director Clint Eastwood’s Iwo Jima Duology – Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. Co-produced by Eastwood’s production company Malpaso and Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, these two movies examine one of World War II’s fiercest battles through the experiences of the American and Japanese troops that fought it. Legendary filmmaker Clint Eastwood cuts open the heart of war and reveals the souls of men on both sides in a landmark dual film project hailed as his masterpiece. Shot back to back to be viewed in sequence, Flags of Our Fathers is a riveting chronicle of U.S. heroes on the front lines and in the headlines at home, while Letters from Iwo Jima reveals the untold stories of the ill-equipped but fierce Japanese fighters who rallied against awesome American forces in a brutal 40-day campaign. Together, they create a triumphant, stirrin...

On February 23, 1945, D+4 of the battle for Iwo Jima (code-named Operation Detachment), five Marines and a Navy corpsman clambered up to the summit of Mt. Suribachi, a dormant volcano on the southern tip of the 7.5-square mile island; with an altitude of 166 m (546 ft), Suribachi dominates the unusually flat terrain of Iwo Jima and, as such, was an important military objective – whoever held the high ground could direct artillery and mortar fire at any point on the small island located nearly 700 miles southeast of Tokyo. The five Marines - Franklin Sousley, Harlon Block, Michael Strank, Rene Gagnon, and Ira Hayes, along with their Navy medic, John “Doc” Bradley – were just a small fraction of the 110,000 members of the Fleet Marine Force that were involved in Operation Detachment, but as a result of what at the time they considered a routine – almost mundane – assignment, they became immortalized when Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal took one of the most famous pictur...