This Guardian piece by L.A. correspondent Dan Glaister says almost 900 African-American Marines took part in the battle of Iwo Jima — mainly in a backup/ support mode but with some engaging in sporadic combat — and yet there’s not a single American-American face in Clint Eastwood‘s Flags of Our Fathers. A Warner Bros spokesperson tells Glaister that “the film is correct based on the book” — i.e., James Bradley and Ron Powers‘ book of the same name. For what it’s worth, I called and asked my dad — a Marine lieutenant who fought all through the 35-day Iwo Jima battle — if he ran into any black troops, and he said, “No, I didn’t see any. But the Marines Corps. was very racist back then.”
