Flags of Our Fathers is a 2006 American war film directed, co-produced and scored by Clint Eastwood and written by William Broyles, Jr. and Paul Haggis. It is based on the book of the same name written by James Bradley and Ron Powers about the Battle of Iwo Jima, the five Marines and one Navy Corpsman who were involved in raising the flag on Iwo Jima, and the aftereffects of that event on their lives. This movie is taken from the American viewpoint of the Battle for Iwo Jima, while the sequel, Letters from Iwo Jima, is from the Japanese viewpoint of the battle, which Eastwood also directed. Letters from Iwo Jima was released in Japan on December 9, 2006 and in the United States on December 20, 2006, two months after the release of Flags of Our Fathers on October 20, 2006. The film is produced by Eastwood, Robert Lorenz and Steven Spielberg.

The story starts in medias res, using a complex series of flashbacks. The three surviving servicemen, Hayes, Gagnon, and Bradley, identified from the iconic flag-raising photograph atop Mount Suribachi, are recalled to the US mainland on President Roosevelt's orders, to help the 7th war bond drive. As they tour the country amid a deluge of enthusiasm, and under the guidance of a senior US Treasury official, they have a series of memory flashbacks which, for simplicity, are given here in chronological order:

Flags of Our Fathers (2000) is a New York Times bestselling book by James Bradley with Ron Powers about the five United States Marines and one United States Navy Corpsman who would eventually be made famous by Joe Rosenthal's lauded photograph of the flag raising at Iwo Jima, one of the costliest and most horrifying battles of World War II's Pacific Theater. The flag raisers included John Bradley (a Navy corpsman, and the author's father), Rene Gagnon, Ira Hayes, Mike Strank, Harlon Block, and Franklin Sousley; the latter three men died later in the battle. Strank refused several promotions during the battle in order to "Bring his boys back to their mothers." Block was a Corporal who reported to Strank, and the rest were privates in the Marines, except for John Bradley, a Navy Corpsman who administered first aid to Easy Company, the company to which all the flag raisers were assigned.

The book, published in May 2000 by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, spent 46 weeks on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list, spending six weeks at number one. Shortly after the book's publication, Steven Spielberg acquired the option on the film rights for DreamWorks Pictures.

Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide (1959–1965). He rose to fame for playing the Man with No Name in Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy of spaghetti westerns (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) during the late 1960s, and as Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry films (Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, The Enforcer, Sudden Impact, and The Dead Pool) throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These roles, among others, have made him an enduring cultural icon of masculinity.

For his work in the films Unforgiven (1992) and Million Dollar Baby (2004), Eastwood won Academy Awards for Best Director and Producer of the Best Picture, as well as receiving nominations for Best Actor. These films in particular, as well as others including Play Misty for Me (1971), Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Escape from Alcatraz (1979), Tightrope (1984), Pale Rider (1985), Heartbreak Ridge (1986), In the Line of Fire (1993), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), and Gran Torino (2008), have all received commercial success and critical acclaim. Eastwood's only comedies have been Every Which Way but Loose (1978) and its sequel Any Which Way You Can (1980), which are his two most commercially successful films after adjustment for inflation.

Andrew James Matfin "Jamie" Bell (born 14 March 1986) is an English actor. He is best known for his roles in the films Billy Elliot (2000), King Kong (2005), Jumper (2008), and The Adventures of Tintin (2011).

Bell was born in Billingham, County Durham, England, where he grew up with his mother, Eileen (née Matfin), and older sister, Kathryn. His father, John Bell, a toolmaker, left before Bell was born. Bell began his involvement with dance after he accompanied his sister to her ballet lessons. He was a pupil at Northfield School and took performing arts classes at the local franchise of Stagecoach Theatre Arts. He was a member of the National Youth Music Theatre. In 1999, he was chosen from a field of over 2,000 boys for the role of Billy Elliot, an 11-year-old boy who dismays his working class widowed father and older brother by taking up ballet.

Bell served as Honorary Jury President of the 2001 Giffoni Film Festival. Since his film debut in Billy Elliot, he has appeared as the disabled servant Smike in an adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby, a young soldier in Deathwatch, a teenager on the run in Undertow, a gun-toting pacifist in Dear Wendy, a disaffected Southern California teenager in The Chumscrubber, and the young Jimmy in the 2005 film version of King Kong. He also appeared in Close and True, an ITV legal drama shown in 2000, which starred Robson Green, James Bolam and Susan Jameson. In 2007, he played the title character in Hallam Foe – for which he was nominated for the best actor award at the British Independent Film Awards – and appeared as himself in lonelygirl15 spin-off KateModern.

Barry Robert Pepper (born April 4, 1970) is a Canadian actor. He is best known for playing roles like Sergeant Michael Strank in the Clint Eastwood film, Flags of Our Fathers, Private Daniel Jackson in Saving Private Ryan, Roger Maris in 61*, and Ned Pepper in True Grit. He has been nominated for three Screen Actors Guild Awards, a Golden Globe Award and in 2011 won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for his role as Robert F. Kennedy in the Canadian/American miniseries, The Kennedys.

Pepper, youngest of three sons, was born in Campbell River, British Columbia, Canada, the son of a retired lumberjack. When Pepper was five years old, his family set sail in a homemade ship, navigating through the South Pacific islands for five years. His education was completed in both public schools and correspondence courses. Due to the lack of television as entertainment, the family used sketch acting as a means of fun. When the family had finished their travels, they returned to Canada and set up a shop on Denman Island off Vancouver Island.