MANY eyebrows were raised when Clint Eastwood first announced he would be making two films about one of the landmark battles of the Second World War – one from the US perspective, and another from the Japanese.

But it’s a gamble that seems to have paid rich dividends for the veteran filmmaker, who has won widespread acclaim from both US and Japanese critics.

Letters From Iwo Jima, the Japanese-language successor to Flags Of Our Fathers, has already been named the film of 2006 by American’s National Board of Review, won a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film and is now in line for an Oscar.

But most crucially, it has reduced Japanese audiences themselves to tears of pride and regret. Far from shunning the film, Japanese viewers have been turning out in droves to learn more about those that gave their lives on Iwo Jima.

Of the 20,933 Japanese defenders who were posted to the island in advance of the US invasion, only 804 survived. The Americans, in turn, lost 6,821 during the five weeks of battle, prompting military advisers to predict up to a million casualties should they invade Japan itself.

Faced with such figures, President Harry Truman opted to use the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to bring a quick end to the fighting. Since then, the sacrifice of those Japanese soldiers has barely been recognised.

Indeed, it was only the recent discovery of hundreds of letters buried on the island, that were never sent to the soldiers’ families during the war, that paved the way for Letters Of Iwo Jima to be made.

Having done extensive research into the conflict to prepare Flags Of Our Fathers, Eastwood felt compelled to tell the story from the Japanese perspective and to depict their soldiers with respect and humanity.

Audiences, likewise, have now started to ask questions of the battle and, most importantly, the decision by Japan’s rulers to send so many men to near-certain death. The defence of Iwo Jima was seen as futile even by those who fought.

Eastwood, himself, has been praised for his honest depiction of the war effort and for enabling people to honour the memory of General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, the Iwo Jima commander in chief who mounted such a formidable campaign against the Americans.

Played by Ken Watanabe (of The Last Samurai fame), Kuribayashi is portrayed as a brilliant tactician and humane commander, who refused to become corrupted by the cruelty around him.

In real-life, he was a sophisticated officer who had studied in America from 1931 to 1933 and who later served as a military attache to Canada. His knowledge of the West and its military thinking are widely believed to have contributed to his military strategy against them, which delayed the inevitable for weeks.

Yet rather than surrender to his former colleagues, Kuribayashi followed time-honoured Japanese tradition by taking his own life when defeat seemed certain. The film has, however, enabled a new Japanese generation to see what a great leader he was.

Critics and veterans have been quick to heap praise upon Letters From Iwo Jima. Saburo Takai, a retired colonel turned war historian, believes it has enabled Japan to honour his memory, while Kiyoshi Endo, one of the few survivors of the fighting, praised it for “reflecting the truth” about the campaign.

And Yoshio Tsuchiya, a reviewer from Yomiuri Weekly magazine, praised Eastwood for keeping open-minded and for allowing viewers to see “General Kuribayashi’s sincerity and [the] soldiers’ real feelings”.

For Eastwood, such accolades probably speak louder than any American awards and vindicate his decision to make both films in the first place.

Flags Of Our Fathers is currently on release. Letters From Iwo Jima opens on February 23.

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