Flying false flags: Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers is another attempt to rewrite history. It remakes American sacrifice and patriotism during WWII into vulgar excess and ignorance.

The beginning of the end was finally in sight. American forces had successfully island-hopped their way across the Pacific to the doorstep of Japan. Despite suicidal resistance by the Japanese, Tarawa had fallen to American forces in November 1943, in only four days. The American Army and Marine divisions held a growing naval and aviation advantage Emboldened by the successful amphibious assaults on Tarawa and Kwajalein, Admiral Nimitz ordered an assault on Eniwetok, one thousand miles to the west. A landing force of one Marine and one Army regiment seized the key anchorage and air base, depriving the enemy of another island possession. The Japanese fought hard, but the ratio of one dead American to 10 Japanese proved more than an acceptable figure in the eyes of American commanders.

While Nimitz set his sights on the strategically key islands of Guam, Saipan, and Tinian, MacArthur leapfrogged westward from Rabaul until he was in air range of the Philippines. Simultaneously, American forces launched operations against the Marianas Islands, forcing the Japanese to divert their effort to the north. By August 1944, the American 5th fleet had captured Saipan, Tinian, and Guam, and had destroyed Japan's naval aviation force at what became known as "The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot."

American commanders in the Pacific reacted boldly in the wake of their success, scrapping assault timetables and moving aggressively to destroy the Japanese forces. At Leyte Gulf in the Philippines, Japanese naval forces met the Americans in one last effort to stem the tide of defeat. Although they fought ferociously, the Japanese navy fell to the equally determined American 3rd and 7th Fleets, losing four large carders, three battleships, nine cruisers, 11 destroyers, and 500 aircraft in the decisive battle. American naval forces lost only two small carriers and three destroyers in the battle that effectively destroyed Japanese naval capabilities.

The American offensive was a tactical and strategic success, but it led to the development of Japanese tactics that would make further successes in the march to Japan much more brutal and deadly than anything the Americans had seen previously. The enemy developed a system of interlocking defenses that utilized caves and concealed bunker and artillery positions.

The Americans had their first experience dealing with these tactics at Peleliu in September 1944. For two months, Japanese forces defended their positions by literally clinging to the rocky island like barnacles on a ship's hull. Over the course of a bitter two-month struggle, elements of the 1st Marine Division fought for every inch of the island, using flamethrowers and grenades to dislodge the Japanese from their subterranean hideouts. In the end, the Marines lost twice as many men as they had lost at Tarawa.

Uncommon Valor at Iwo

The days of taking islands in mere weeks were over. The Japanese were not about to surrender another inch of land without fighting to the death. By the time three crack U.S. Marine divisions assaulted the obscure Japanese island of Iwo Jima, the Japanese cave and bunker defense, coupled with the Japanese' ability to repair their defenses after relentless American bombing attacks, would make the assault on Iwo Jima particularly deadly for the American forces.

On February 19, 1945, the tough and determined Marine divisions landed on the black volcanic sand of the island of Iwo Jima, a tiny area of approximately eight square miles, and began to slug their way across and up the island to the summit of Mt. Suribachi. John P. Marquand, a correspondent for Harper's, metaphorically described the view of the island as a monster as the LVTs, the Marines' amphibious transport vehicles, drew close to the beach:

   Anyone who has been there can shut
   his eyes and see the place again. It
   never looked more aesthetically ugly
   than on d-day morning, or more completely
   Japanese. Its silhouette was
   like a sea monster with the little dead
   volcano (Mt. Suribachi) for its head,
   and the beach area for the neck, and
   all of the rest of it with its scrubby,
   brown cliffs for the body.

Surprisingly, the Marines encountered light resistance as they made their way ashore. Only intermittent Japanese artillery fire interrupted their advance. But by the time they had penetrated 300 yards into the island, they were hit with a wave of devastating fire from concealed bunkers and mortar and artillery fire from Suribachi. First Sergeant John A. Daskalakis of the 28th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Battalion, Company E recounted the assault for the book Shadow of Suribachi: "Rough. Oh boy, they were terrible! It was hard going. Three terraces. Then turn left. Toward Suribachi. Then we got hung up there with their mortar positions--five-inch mortars. You could see them coming through the air. They'd explode. Fascinating. You kept your eye on those mortars, at the base of the mountain."

As deadly as the assault on Suribachi was, it was pure suicide to wait on the beaches. Death and wreckage were everywhere, and those who remained on the beach became sitting targets under the deadly eye of Japanese artillery positions on Suribachi.

Darkness brought no relief to the Marines. Star shells from destroyers offshore illuminated the sky, while artillery fire from both American and Japanese positions screeched overhead. Marines huddled in foxholes as many of the enemy's shells found their mark. In a scene that was replayed over and over again, medical corpsmen like Navy Pharmacist's Mate John Bradley risked their lives moving from foxhole to foxhole in order to attend to their wounded comrades.

The Marines assaulting Suribachi rarely saw their opponents hidden among the honeycombed bunkers that dotted Suribachi and the rocky terrain of the desolate island. They slugged and clawed their way across the broken landscape and up the mountain blasting and burning their determined opponents from their bunkers and caves. The Leathernecks fought relentlessly, matching Japanese stealth and concealment with flamethrowers, hand grenades, and demolition charges. It was not until March 26 that the last of the Japanese diehards had been subdued or killed.

For the Marines, the cost was devastating. Over 6,000 were killed and another 20,000 were wounded. Japanese casualties were even more horrific. Their adherence to the Bushido Code--preferring death to the dishonor of surrender--compelled almost all of the 21,000 Japanese to fight to the bitter end. Their system of defense had neutralized American naval gunfire and air attacks, forcing the Marines to fight for every inch of the battle-scarred island with close-combat techniques.

In the end, the victorious but shattered Marine divisions had to be rebuilt before they could effectively fight again. But before the battle was over, the story of the famous flag-raising on Suribachi would energize a war-weary America--and years later provide fodder for skeptics and revisionist historians.

On February 23, Marines of the 28th Regiment raised two different flags on Mt. Suribachi. The first flag was raised shortly after a patrol reached the crest of the volcano, at about 10:30 a.m. The second, a much larger flag, was raised approximately three and one-half hours later. It was the second flag-raising that produced Joseph Rosenthal's iconic photograph of six Marines struggling to raise Old Glory on the battle-scarred mountaintop of Suribachi.

Through Eastwood's Lens

Clint Eastwood's film takes us back to the assault on Iwo, the raising of the flags, and the subsequent use of Rosenthal's famous photo as a propaganda tool. Through Eastwood's lens, we learn that the national character of America in the 1940s was essentially one of racism and corruption, and probably not worth dying for no matter what the circumstances. And we feel that the uncommon valor displayed by many of the Marines on Iwo Jima was a wasted virtue, something to be pitied but not necessarily admired.

The general decency and benevolence that most Americans associate with this country, whether their leaders are right or wrong, good or bad, is nowhere to be found in Eastwood's version of America. His one-dimensional portrayal of civilian America lacks the historical subtleties that would have made his film a more accurate portrait of the time. Nowhere do we see evidence of sacrifice on the home front. There is no government-imposed rationing or voluntary self-sacrifice in Eastwood's WWII America. On the contrary, everyone seems to be engaged in one giant cocktail party, oblivious to the sacrifice and suffering occurring overseas. In truth, Americans were well motivated to make sacrifices: they grew their own food in "victory gardens" and largely did without even small luxuries like butter. But the only civilian characters in the film who embody any sense of sacrifice are the families of the dead Marines.

This is not to say that he does not get it right sometimes. From a cinematic standpoint, the film offers some excellent performances, and Eastwood's decision to strip the color from the battle scenes heightens the otherworldly look of the battle-scarred island. His recounting of the two flag-raisings strips away the myth from reality and lays bare the true facts for all to see. And the battle scenes, although jarringly interspersed with scenes from an American bond drive, seem as accurate as one might expect in a film. But in the end, we are left with a false image of the battle and the flag-raising on Iwo. It is an image of fraud and deception borne of an agreement between a self-serving Marine Corps and a craven government propaganda machine willing to fool the public in order to fund yet another bond drive.

The fact that callous or unthinking superiors oftentimes misuse soldiers in battle is not a revelation, but here Eastwood bends history to emphasize the point. One scene in which a Marine officer pleads with the naval superior for additional bombardment of the island in preparation for the impending assault suggests that the American bombardment of Iwo Jima was insufficient, resulting in the unnecessary loss of American lives.

The fact is, however, that Admiral Chester Nimitz gave top priority to bombing Iwo Jima. Historian Samuel Eliot Morrison wrote, "no island in World War II received as much preliminary pounding as did Iwo Jima. For ten weeks, until 16 February when the intensive pre-landing bombardment began, the island was hit by land-based aircraft every day.... Under ordinary circumstances, so heavy and prolonged a bombardment would have been more than sufficient to pulverize everything on an island of that size."

Eastwood's obsession with racism in the case of reluctant hero and flag raiser Ira H. Hayes is the film's dominant theme. In the movie depiction, Hayes finds himself at the brutal end of a racist barb at almost every turn. His nickname of "Chief," likely bestowed upon him by Marine buddies in the spirit of camaraderie, comes across as a stinging insult.

Surely racism existed in 1940s America, but the extent to which Eastwood makes it a primary focus of Hayes' experience distorts reality. The movie does not convey that Hayes was proud of his Indian ancestry and made no attempt to hide it. In Eastwood's world, Hayes stoically suffers insults delivered by caricatures of white racists.

Factually, Hayes' Indian ancestry was positively acknowledged at a War Loan rally in Boston. On May 13, 1945 while participating in that rally, Governor Maurice Tobin introduced Hayes as "the only man here who can claim to be a real American?' To which Hayes replied, "I'm an Indian, and I'm d**n proud of it."

Eastwood's film is another Hollywood attempt at deconstructing history. His principals, the surviving flag raisers from Iwo Jima--Rene Gagnon, John Bradley, and Ira Hayes--come across not necessarily as men possessing uncommon valor, but as mere pawns in the scheme of generals and public-relations specialists. The bond-drive tour emerges as nothing more than a cynical exploitation of Gagnon, Bradley, and Hayes. Moreover, the film renders the hard-fought victory on Iwo Jima a waste of human life.

In reality, thousands of Marines gave their lives on the volcanic beaches and rocky slopes of Iwo Jima because they believed in America. They did not fight for any abstract idea, or for some rear-echelon general, but rather for the concrete ideals of constitutional liberty and the preservation of the American way of life. The veterans of Iwo Jima deserve better than the present-day cynicism that infects Eastwood's film.