Flags of Our Fathers Based on the book written by James Bradley and Ron Powers about the Battle of Iwo Jima, the six men who were involved in raising the flag on Iwo Jima, and the aftereffects of that event on their lives. The film is told in media res, with events of the Battle shown through a series of flashbacks.

Eastwood also directed a film on the battle from the Japanese viewpoint entitled Letters from Iwo Jima.

John Bradley

Rene Gagnon

Ira Hayes

Errors in the Film… During the ending credit roll, an actual photo taken during the heroes meeting with President Truman shows sailor John H. Bradley using a pair of crutches. In the film's re-creation of the event however, Bradley is shown without using or needing the aid of crutches. When Ira Hayes goes to visit Ed Block (Harlon Block's father) at his farm near Weslaco, Texas you see mountains in the background. The Block farm was in the lower Rio Grande Valley of deep South Texas, which is quite flat. (Despite its name, it isn't a valley at all but the delta of the Rio Grande). The nearest mountains are in northern Mexico, over 100 miles to the south.

When Ira, Rene, and Doc are getting off the train there is a band playing for them, one of the alto saxophone players is using a leather ligature on his mouthpiece, a post WWII invention. During WWII they would have used metal ligatures. During the initial bombardment of Iwo Jima by the U.S. Naval Fleet, the distinctive shape of several Iowa Class battleships is shown (their bows had a unique curvature when seen in profile). One of these ships is shown taking a direct hit from Japanese batteries. Three Iowa-Class battleships were present at Iwo Jima and did perform shore bombardment duties, but none was hit as depicted in the film. One of the LSTs (Landing Ship Tank) shown unloading on Iwo Jima is the 393, which never saw service in the Pacific.

During the montage of newspapers being opened to show the raising of the flag one has the person removing a rubber band. As rubber was a rationed commodity during the war the paper would have been folded only. In explaining the importance of a successful bond drive, the treasury representative says that the fuel dumps are empty and "our Arab friends only take bullion." At the time of World War II, America was essentially self sufficient in oil production and not dependent on Arab oil. While oil was discovered in some Arab countries before the war, it was not extensively developed until after the war. At one point the main characters appear on a stage with lettering behind them. The lettering is in Helvetica, a type face that was not created until the mid 1950s.

As of April 2007 ‘Flags’ and ‘Letters’ had a combined worldwide theatrical gross of $135 million

Flags of Our Fathers’ cost $55 million although it was originally budgeted at $80 million. The film took Eastwood only 50 days to shoot.

The scene in which a sailor falls from a ship and is left in the water as the fleet steams toward Iwo Jima actually happened (possibly). The incident is described in "Iwo" by Richard Wheeler, himself a veteran of the fighting. Quote: "According to Coast Guardsman Chet Hack of LST 763: 'We got the man-overboard signal from the ship ahead of us. We turned to port to avoid hitting him and threw him a life preserver, but had orders not to stop. We could not hold up 24 ships for one man. Looking back, we could see him waving his arms, and it broke our hearts that we couldn't help him. We hoped that one of our destroyers or other small men-of-war that were cruising around to protect us would pick him up, but we never heard that they did.' "

Why didn't they stop for the man who fell overboard? ) They were in a convoy going 10-12 knots. It would be absurd for a convoy, with anywhere from 10-50 ships, surrounded by 3-8 destroyers to stop in mid-ocean and mill around trying to find one man. Not only was a convoy required to stay on schedule; but stopping would put the whole convoy at risk for air and submarine attack. 2) Accordingly, standard naval procedure was for a transport that man lost a man overboard to hoist a flag (or send message via other means) indicating man overboard. The last ships in the convoy and the trailing destroyers would then try to locate him and pick him up. In fact, usually one merchant ship or destroyer at the tail end of the convoy was given the task of trying to pick up any man overhead. 3) In real life, both Navy and Marine NCOs and Officers would have ordered the men not to hang off the rigging and put any violators on report. 4) The chances of surviving after falling off a ship in convoy were small despite the best of efforts. The ocean is big and one man insignificant. Pilots who ditched next to destroyers or carriers were often never found, despite men seeing them get out of their planes OK.

The newspapers containing the famous photograph are, in order of being delivered, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Hartford Courant, the San Antonio Express, and lastly the Washington Post. Clint Eastwood chose to film large part of the movie in Iceland. Actual Marines from the 5th Marines were used as extras during filming aboard ship as well as the the training work up. The extras who were actual Marines can be best scene climbing up and down the cargo nets.

The Battle of Iwo Jima (February 19–March 26, 1945), or Operation Detachment, was a battle in which the United States fought for and captured the two islands making up Iwo Jima in Japan. The battle produced some of the fiercest fighting in the Pacific campaign of World War II

The Japanese positions on the island were heavily fortified, with vast bunkers, hidden artillery, and 11 miles of underground tunnels. The battle was the first American attack on the Japanese Home Islands, and the Imperial soldiers defended their positions tenaciously. Of the more than 18,000 Japanese soldiers present at the beginning of the battle, only 216 were taken prisoner.The rest were killed or were missing and assumed dead. The U.S. invasion was assigned with the mission of capturing the second airfields on Iwo Jima.

The battle was immortalized by Joe Rosenthals photograph of the raising of the U.S. flag on top of the 166 meter (546 ft) Mount Suribachi by five Marines and one Navy Corpsman. The photograph records the second flag-raising on the mountain, which took place on the fifth day of the 35-day battle. The picture became the iconic image of the battle and has been heavily reproduced.

Later, it became the only photograph to win the Pulitzer Prize for Photography in the same year as its publication, and ultimately came to be regarded as one of the most significant and recognizable images of the war, and possibly the most reproduced photograph of all time

Of the six men depicted in the picture, three (Franklin Sousley, Harlon Block, and Michael Strank) did not survive the battle; the three survivors (John Bradley, Rene Gagnon, and Ira Hayes) became celebrities upon the publication of the photo. The picture was later used by to sculpt the USMC War Memorial located adjacent to Arlington National Cemetery

By morning of the fifth day of the battle (February 23), Mount Suribachi was effectively cut off from the rest of the island—above ground. By then, the Marines knew that the Japanese defenders had an extensive network of below-ground defenses, and knew that in spite of its isolation above ground, the volcano was still connected to Japanese defenders via the tunnel network. They expected a fierce fight for the summit but one did not really materialize on their way up.

Occasionally the Japanese attacked in small groups and were generally all killed. Marines reached the top of Mount Suribachi without incident. Using a length of pipe they found among the wreckage atop the mountain, the Marines hoisted the U.S. flag over Mount Suribachi, the first foreign flag to fly on Japanese soil

Of the 22,786 Japanese soldiers entrenched on the island, 21,703 died either from fighting or by ritual suicide. Only 1,083 were captured during the battle. The Allied forces suffered 27,909 casualties, with 6,825 killed in action. The number of American casualties was greater than the total Allied casualties on D-Day

After Iwo Jima was declared secured, the Marines estimated there were no more than three hundred Japanese left alive in the island's warren of caves and tunnels. In fact, there were close to three thousand. The Japanese bushido code of honor, coupled with effective propaganda which portrayed American G.I.'s as ruthless animals, prevented surrender for many Japanese soldiers. Those who could not bring themselves to commit suicide hid in the caves during the day and came out at night to prowl for provisions.

Some did eventually surrender and were surprised that the Americans often received them with compassion, offering water, cigarettes, or coffee. The last of these stragglers, two of Lieutenant Toshihiko Ohno's men, Yamakage Kufuku and Matsudo Linsoki, lasted six years without being caught and finally surrendered in 1951 (another source gives the date of surrender as January 6, 1949).

What happened to Iggy? He was tortured by the Japanese. The Japanese found surrender and shameful and did many awful and torturous things to their POWs.

Nobody even noticed that second flag going up Nobody even noticed that second flag going up. Everybody saw that damn picture and made up their own story about it. But your dad and the others knew what they had done, and what they had not done. All your friends dying, it's hard enough to be called a hero for saving somebody's life. But for putting up a pole? --Dave Severance

I finally came to the conclusion that he maybe he was right I finally came to the conclusion that he maybe he was right. Maybe there's no such thing as heroes. Maybe there are just people like my dad. I finally came to understand why they were so uncomfortable being called heroes. Heroes are something we create, something we need. It's a way for us to understand what's almost incomprehensible, how people could sacrifice so much for us, but for my dad and these men, the risks they took, the wounds they suffered, they did that for their buddies. They may have fought for their country but they died for their friends. For the man in front, for the man beside him, and if we wish to truly honor these men we should remember them the way they really were, the way my dad remembered them. --James Bradley