Flags Of Our Fathers: Film Analysis

During the height of WWII with the US I was still only a kid and therefore never got the opportunity to be drafted in the war, however, I learned a lot of things about the war and the Americans in school. I grew up learning how evil the Americans were and how they would torture our soldiers and kill them mercilessly, never taking in prisoners. Even in papers I would see them represented as Onis or read about how imperialistic and impure they are. What I was confused me as a kid was why we said bad things about them when it always seems like we secretly admire them. It seems like we just steal their ideas and convert it into ours. I understood that we, Japanese people are the purest out of every race and that the Americans are corrupt, yet why
I am surprised at how easily the citizens back at home were impressed of having some soldiers raise some flag. This really showed the difference between them and us. We Japanese believe that pureness is achieved through hardships, therefore putting up a flag on a battlefield is really no big deal. If they won the war completely at that point in time, then that would seem more appropriate to be celebrated, yet one flag was made into a huge deal. Not only that, I was surprised at how the people were too lax to investigate in who were present in the picture taken. They just randomly claimed a soldier to be present in the picture when he and the other soldiers blatantly claimed he was not present. There really is a limit to not even honor the right people and to only use whatever is convenient for them. This why I felt like I could also sympathize with how the soldiers felt when the person in charge of publicity said he did not care about who actually was in the picture. They did not properly honor the soldiers that died in the picture or care about what the soldiers went through. These citizens were so oblivious to their own soldiers’ feelings and forcing the role of heroes onto the soldiers. Not only that, I really do not understand the white people’s need to make everything so extravagant. We Japanese will be fine with just being able to serve our leader in order to be help purify the world. On the other hand, the white people are holding reenactments, making speeches to buy bonds, and traveling across the country just to promote themselves as heroes. The citizens are the real Onis in this film literally sucking out the life force of the soldiers and feeding onto their own delusional fantasies of how great their country is. The soldiers seem more like the victims of the war as it really showed that they were