Letters From Iwo Jima/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Alternate Character Interpretation: Lt. Ito: The film makes him look like a Dirty Coward, but the real soldier he was based on was genuinely trying to ambush a tank but was disabled by sunstroke while playing possum.
    • Some people feel it looked like that in the film too--he did have explosives strapped to his chest why he was lying there, after all.
  • Nightmare Fuel: If you had nightmares from Flags of our Fathers, you ain't seen nothing yet. The most horrific scene? Some of the Japanese soldiers commit suicide by holding their active grenades to their bodies. while you are almost yelling, "Idiots, your commander told you not to do this!
    • The scene in which the captured Marine (possibly Iggy) is bayoneted repeatedly isn't any better.
  • Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped: War is bad, and the other side is human as well. This is shown when they read a captured Marine's letter from his mother.
  • Tear Jerker: The whole thing. The main theme music also works, and there's the "Song for the Defense of Iwo Jima", sung by the children of Nagano. Even General Kuribayashi sheds a few tears listening to it, not to mention the audience.
    • The scene in which Shimizu and another Japanese POW are executed by two Marines simply because they don't feel like watching over them, and when Saigo finds their bodies.
    • The entire film, when it's not being horrifying and realistically depicting War Is Hell, has the air of inescapable tragedy as most of the main characters come to terms with their situation, mortality, and the ultimate futility of everything.
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