Letters from Iwo Jima won the best picture prize from the National Board of review. Clint Eastwood has released two films in one year about the battle of Iwo Jima: Flags of Our Fathers, which illustrates the American perspective of the conflict, and now Letters from Iwo Jima, which draws us into the experience of the outnumbered, ill-equipped Japanese defeated in that battle in 1945. Letters from Iwo Jima is distinguished by something rarely seen in American war films. It lets us enter the minds of our enemies, recognize their humanity, and come to care for them.

The director’s Flags of our Fathers was called a “box-office underperformer”. Letters of Iwo Jima is quality from first fram to the last. The films are being released within months of each other, giving the audiences the chance to experience one moment in history, from both sides.

In making "Flags of Our Fathers," Clint Eastwood said he was bothered that he was only telling half of the story of the vicious World War II battle for a tiny volcanic island in the Pacific in 1945. So he made another film. "Letters From Iwo Jima," shot with Japanese actors in their language, tells the story of the men who defended the island with their deaths.

The focus is primarily on one young soldier named Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya), a baker who wants only to live to see the face of his newborn daughter, who struggles to survive while watching many of his friends and his fellow soldiers die in battle. Letters from Iwo Jima also focuses on the ongoing conflicts among the commanders, soldiers, and the compassionate General Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe), whose travels in America have revealed to him the hopeless nature of the war but also given him strategic insight into how to take on the vast American armada streaming in from across the Pacific. With little defense other than sheer will and the volcanic rock of the island itself, Gen. Kuribayashi’s unprecedented tactics transform what was predicted to be a quick and bloody defeat into nearly 40 days of heroic and resourceful combat.

Almost 7,000 American soldiers were killed on Iwo Jima; more than 20,000 Japanese troops perished. The black sands of Iwo Jima are stained with their blood, but their sacrifices, their struggles, their courage and their compassion live on in the letters they sent home. From Academy Award winner Clint Eastwood (“Million Dollar Baby,” “Unforgiven”) comes the untold story of the Japanese soldiers and their General who defended against the invading American forces on the island of Iwo Jima.