http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1927788,00.html 
Guardian (UK)
October 20, 2006

Absent from history: the black soldiers at Iwo Jima

Nearly 900 African-Americans fought on the Japanese
island but not one appears in Clint Eastwood's Oscar-
tipped film, writes Dan Glaister

By Dan Glaister in Los Angeles

On February 19 1945 Thomas McPhatter found himself on a
landing craft heading toward the beach on Iwo Jima.

"There were bodies bobbing up all around, all these
dead men," said the former US marine, now 83 and living
in San Diego. "Then we were crawling on our bellies and
moving up the beach. I jumped in a foxhole and there
was a young white marine holding his family pictures.
He had been hit by shrapnel, he was bleeding from the
ears, nose and mouth. It frightened me. The only thing
I could do was lie there and repeat the Lord's prayer,
over and over and over."

Sadly, Sgt McPhatter's experience is not mirrored in
Flags of Our Fathers, Clint Eastwood's big-budget,
Oscar-tipped film of the battle for the Japanese
island. While the battle scene's in the film - which
opens today in the US - show scores of young soldiers
in combat, none of them are African-American. Yet
almost 900 African-American troops took part in the
battle of Iwo Jima, including Sgt McPhatter.

The film tells the story of the raising of the stars
and stripes over Mount Suribachi at the tip of the
island. The moment was captured in a photograph that
became a symbol of the US war effort. Eastwood's film
follows the marines in the picture, including the
Native American Ira Hayes, as they were removed from
combat operations to promote the sale of government war
bonds.

Mr McPhatter, who went on to serve in Vietnam and rose
to the rank of lieutenant commander in the US navy,
even had a part in the raising of the flag. "The man
who put the first flag up on Iwo Jima got a piece of
pipe from me to put the flag up on," he says. That,
too, is absent from the film.

"Of all the movies that have been made of Iwo Jima, you
never see a black face," said Mr McPhatter. "This is
the last straw. I feel like I've been denied, I've been
insulted, I've been mistreated. But what can you do? We
still have a strong underlying force in my country of
rabid racism."

Melton McLaurin, author of the forthcoming The Marines
of Montford Point and an accompanying documentary to be
released in February, says that there were hundreds of
black soldiers on Iwo Jima from the first day of the
35-day battle. Although most of the black marine units
were assigned ammunition and supply roles, the chaos of
the landing soon undermined the battle plan.

"When they first hit the beach the resistance was so
fierce that they weren't shifting ammunition, they were
firing their rifles," said Dr McLaurin.

The failure to transfer the active role played by
African-Americans at Iwo Jima to the big screen does
not surprise him. "One of the marines I interviewed
said that the people who were filming newsreel footage
on Iwo Jima deliberately turned their cameras away when
black folks came by. Blacks are not surprised at all
when they see movies set where black troops were
engaged and never show on the screen. I would like to
say that it was from ignorance but anybody can do
research and come up with books about African-Americans
in world war two. I think it has to do with box office
and what producers of movies think Americans really
want to see."

He added: "I want to see these guys get their due.
They're just so anxious to have their story told and to
have it known."

Roland Durden, another black marine, landed on the
beach on the third day. "When we hit the shore we were
loaded with ammunition and the Japanese hit us with
mortar." Private Durden was soon assigned to burial
detail, "burying the dead day in, day out. It seemed
like endless days. They treated us like workmen rather
than marines."

Mr Durden, too, is wearied but unsurprised at the
omissions in Eastwood's film. "We're always left out of
the films, from John Wayne on," he said. Mr Durden
ascribes to both the conspiracy as well as the cock-up
theory of history. "They didn't want blacks to be
heroes. This was pre-1945, pre civil rights."

Eastwood and the makers of the film, Warner Bros and
Dreamworks, did not comment for this article. The
omission was first remarked upon in a review by Fox
News columnist Roger Friedman, who noted that the
history of black involvement at Iwo Jima was recorded
in several books, including Christopher Moore's recent
Fighting for America: Black Soldiers - the Unsung
Heroes of World War II. "They weren't in the background
at all," said Moore.

"The people carrying the ammunition were 90% black, so
that's an opportunity to show black soldiers. These are
our films and very often they become our history,
historical documents." Yvonne Latty, a New York
University professor and author of We Were There:
Voices of African-American Veterans (2004), wrote to
Eastwood and the film's producers pleading with them to
include the experience of black soldiers.
HarperCollins, the book's publishers, sent the director
a copy, but never heard back.

"It would take only a couple of extras and everyone
would be happy," she said. "No one's asking for them to
be the stars of the movies, but at least show that they
were there. This is the way a new generation will think
about Iwo Jima. Once again it will be that African-
American people did not serve, that we were absent.
It's a lie."

The first chapter to James Bradley's book Flags of Our
Fathers, which forms the basis of the movie, opens with
a quotation from president Harry Truman. "The only
thing new in the world is the history you don't know."
It would provide a fitting endnote to Eastwood's film. 

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