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The heart of the book centers around the tragic life
stories of the six men who raised the flag that February
day–one an Arizona Indian who would die following an
alcohol-soaked brawl, another a Kentucky hillbilly,
still another a Pennsylvania steel-mill worker–and who
became reluctant heroes in the bargain.
Like the book, the movie is expected to focus on what
happened to the men after the famous battle. The men in
the photo–three were killed during the battle–were
proclaimed heroes and flown home, to become reluctant
symbols. For two of them, the adulation was shattering.
Only John Bradley truly survived, displaying no copy of
the famous photograph in his home, telling his son only:
“The real heroes of Iwo Jima were the guys who didn’t
come back.”
The movie script for Flags of Our Fathers will try to
show the difference between truth and myth, the meaning
of being a hero, and the essence of the human experience
of war.
Movie Synopsis
February 1945. Even as victory in Europe was finally
within reach, the war in the Pacific raged on. One of
the most crucial and bloodiest battles of the war was
the struggle for the island of Iwo Jima, which
culminated with what would become one of the most iconic
images in history: five Marines and a Navy corpsman
raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi. The
inspiring photo capturing that moment became a symbol of
victory to a nation that had grown weary of war and made
instant heroes of the six American soldiers at the base
of the flag, some of whom would die soon after, never
knowing that they had been immortalized. But the
surviving flag raisers had no interest in being held up
as symbols and did not consider themselves heroes; they
wanted only to stay on the front with their brothers in
arms who were fighting and dying without fanfare or
glory. ‘Flags of Our Fathers’ is based on the
bestselling book by James Bradley with Ron Powers, which
chronicled the battle of Iwo Jima and the fates of the
flag raisers and some of their brothers in Easy Company.
Further plot details follows….
Flags of Our Fathers is based on a New York Times
Bestseller book (year 2000) of the same name and is
about a man’s quest to learn more about his father, a
medical corpsman in WWII at the Battle of Iwo Jima. More
than 22,000 Japanese soldiers would die defending a
patch of ground a third the size of Manhattan, while
nearly 26,000 Americans fell taking it from them. The
battle, the largest sea armada invasion ever assembled
and the costliest war ever fought by the US Marines, was
also a turning point in the war because control of the
island of Iwo Jima (Japanese territory) allowed Allied
forces to launch B-29 bomber raids into the heart of
Japan with the eventual dropping of the Atomic Bomb that
would end WWII.
The battle would produce one of World War II’s most
enduring images: a photograph of five Marines and a Navy
Corpsman raising an American flag on the top of Mount
Suribachi, the island’s commanding high point.
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In 1941, in an effort to
control inflation, the U.S. Treasury began marketing the
new Series E Bonds U.S. Savings Bonds as "defense
bonds". The government used the hype of the war to
market the bonds to the country as a way to raise money
for the war, when in fact they were used to take money
out of the economy so inflation would not occur. The
first one was sold to President Franklin D. Roosevelt on
May 1, 1941, by Secretary of the Treasury Henry
Morgenthau. |
