History Film / LettersFromIwoJima

* ShootTheMedicFirst: Lt. Ito shows tells his men to target medics because enemy soldiers will sacrifice themselves to save them.

* StateSec: The Kempeitai.

Despite being an American production, the film is almost entirely in Japanese. Characters include Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi (Creator/KenWatanabe), the commander of the island and a decent man who doodles drawings on letters home to his wife and family; Saigo, a MildlyMilitary private who only wants to go home to ''his'' wife and family, and Shimzu, a new arrival to Saigo's squad who Saigo suspects of being a spy for StateSec.

* AnimalsHateHim: A dog incessantly barks at Shimuzu's superior because it either doesn't like his smell or senses an aura of wicked evil coming from him. [[spoiler: It doesn't end well for the dog.]]

* KickTheDog: Shimuzu's superior accuses a harmless family dog of being a potential disturbance to Army Communications and orders him to put it to death. He goes back and does the job himself after Shimuzu fakes the execution.

* PetTheDog: Shimzu is mostly very quiet, feared to be from the [[StateSec Kempeitai]] and showed the possibility he'd shoot Saigo for not committing suicide like the other soldiers in his troop (he is convinced otherwise and doesn't go through with it). After Saigo tells him he's going to surrender and dares him to arrest him, he tells him he was actually discharged from the Kempeitai: he pretended to shoot a family's dog his superior ordered him to, but the dog barked while they were leaving and accidentally tipped off his superior who then had him discharged for insubordination.

* ObligatoryWarCrimeScene: The bayoneting of the American soldier [[spoiler:who got into the cave]], as well as the execution of two surrendered Japanese soldiers by a pair of paranoid Americans who were expressly ordered to keep them under guard.

* HopelessWar: You realize the full extent of how hopeless it is for the Japanese when the film shows the American fleet: hundreds of ships (including various battleships and carriers), transporting marines in overwhelming numbers and all the air and artillery support they need.

* HonorBeforeReason: The Japanese forces (or at least a large amount of them) would rather engage in futile and suicidal attacks because they deem it to be more honorable than fighting smart, something that frustrates Kuribayashi to no end.

* CueTheSun: At the end of the battle the sun dawns red over the sea.

* CueTheSun: At the end of the battle the sun dawns red over the sea, perhaps symbolising that despite the loss Iwo Jima will always belong to Japan... or that Japan will always remember her own, wherever they fell, and for whatever cause.

* TakingYouWithMe: The entire point of the battle. The Americans are going to win and the Japanese defenders know it, so the only thing left is to sell their lives at as high a cost as possible.[[note]]It worked. Unlike most other Pacific battles where the Japanese suffered much higher casualties than the Americans, at Iwo Jima the Japanese actually inflicted more casualties than they took. Of course the Japanese casualties were almost all killed while the Americans were mostly wounded.[[/quote]]

* TheCameo: The Flamethrower operator from ''Film/FlagsOfOurFathers'', who is shown clearing out the same pillboxes he did in the first film.

* {{A Father To His Men}}: General "I will always be right in front of you" [[KenWatanabe Kuribayashi]].

* {{Irony}}: Ito seems to be [[MartyrdomCulture insistent on dying in battle]], [[spoiler:and leaves everyone else to hope to destroy a tank by lying in wait with mines attached to him. He later grows tired of waiting when nothing comes by and heads back to the (emptied) caves, and is last seen in the film being found by a group of Marines...making him the only other implied survivor in the movie.]]

* LastStand: A given. Their only options were; die fighting; commit suicide; or be executed for treason.
* The MacGuffin: the bag of letters written by Japanese soldiers on the island found by modern day archeologists in a cave. They were originally hidden by Saigo just before the end of the movie.

* PerspectiveFlip
* PetTheDog: Shimizu is mostly very quiet, feared to be from the [[StateSec Kempeitai]] and showed the possibility he'd shoot Saigo for not committing suicide like the other soldiers in his troop (he is convinced otherwise and doesn't go through with it). After Saigo tells him he's going to surrender and dares him to arrest him, he tells him he was actually discharged from the Kempeitai: he pretended to shoot a family's dog his superior ordered him to, but the dog barked while they were leaving and accidentally tipped off his superior who then had him discharged for insubordination.

* TakingYouWithMe: The entire point of the battle. The Americans are going to win and the Japanese defenders know it, so the only thing left is to sell their lives at as high a cost as possible.

* TheNeidermeyer: Lieutenant Ito.

''Letters from Iwo Jima'' is the 2006 POVSequel to ''Film/FlagsOfOurFathers'', which was also directed by Creator/ClintEastwood, providing a PerspectiveFlip to UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan, the antagonists of the first film. It was widely well received and is commonly seen as [[EvenBetterSequel being even better than its well-received predecessor.]]

* CurbstompBattle: The Japanese are hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned by the American invasion force sent to capture Iwo Jima. Not helped by the fact that the Japanese Carrier Fleet was wiped out early in the film, thus isolating them from any support from the Imperial Navy.
** CurbstompCushion: That said, Kuribayashi makes a concerted effort to inflict as many American casualties as possible, which he succeeds in doing so thanks to the defense network built into the island.

** In RealLife this worked brilliantly. In every other land battle of the Pacific Theater from Guadalcanal through Okinawa the Japanese defenders always took much higher casualties than the Allies. At Iwo Jima, by contrast, the Japanese defenders managed a 1:1 kill ratio.

** ->''"How would you feel if America and Japan went to war?"''
** ->''"The United States is the last country in the world Japan should fight."''

''Letters from Iwo Jima'' is the 2006 POVSequel to ''Film/FlagsOfOurFathers'', which was also directed by Creator/ClintEastwood, providing a PerspectiveFlip to UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan, the antagonists of the first film. It was widely well received and is commonly seen as being even better than its well-received predecessor.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: You didn't really think the M1911 Kuribayashi was gifted would show up that much and ''not'' get used, did you? [[spoiler:[[DrivenToSuicide On himself]], that is.]]

* ForegoneConclusion: We already know how the Battle of Iwo Jima ends. Their orders were not to win... only to kill ten Americans apiece before they themselves were killed. This can give the illusion that the Japanese are GenreSavvy.

* ContinuityNod: The torture of a captured Marine is a reference to Iggy's death in ''Film/FlagsOfOurFathers''. Similarly, the scene in ''Flags'' where Doc sees [[NothingIsScarier an unseen horror in a cave]] runs on from a scene in ''Letters'' where some Japanese soldiers commit ''seppuku'' with hand grenades.