Corrected entry: At the beginning of the film, the Olympic athlete says that his horses name is "Uranus" but later when the horse is killed in a bombing run he calls the horse "Jupiter".
Corrected entry: A group of Japanese soldiers, standing in a small circle in a cave, commit suicide one at a time, using grenades. Each grenade harms only the solder pulling the pin and no-one else. In reality, every grenade would have wounded and perhaps killed everyone in the group. (01:14:20)
Correction: People are mistaken about the power of hand grenades, caused by years of Hollywood blockbusters showing them virtually demolishing buildings. In reality, a small grenade from WW2, especially clutched to the chest like they did, will only kill that person, possibly small shrapnel wounds to those nearby. The TV show Mythbusters had the old "jump on a hand grenade to save your friends" myth (which turned out to be true) and many people were surprised by how small the explosion was of a grenade just sitting on the ground. Even ten feet away you could survive with maybe minor wounds.
Corrected entry: A group of solders, standing in a small circle in a cave, commit suicide, one at a time, using grenades. Four suicides are seen on camera. The time from arming the grenade to the explosion is less than two seconds in first, second and fourth suicide and about three second in third. Clearly, no army would equip it's soldiers with grenades that would explode faster than they could be thrown. (01:14:20)
Correction: Grenade fuses are commonly set to explode with 3.5 to 5.5 second fuses. some are set with no fuse, but to explode on impact. It doesn't take long to pull a pin and throw, certainly not more than 2 to 3 seconds, tops.
Correction: Baron Nishi speaks of his competition horse and shows its photo to Kuribayashi while standing next to the horse that is killed later. Clearly, if they were the same horse, the photo would have been pointless to display. The live horse has white markings down the center of its face while the one in the photo has none. The horse brought to the island is another horse with a different name. It's easy to understand why Nishi would leave his Olympic-champion steed ('Uranus') safe at home, and, based on his status as a national hero, he'd have the pick-of-the-litter of military-issue horses ('Jupiter') to take with him to Iwo Jima.
johnrosa