Spike Lee does not have A POINT about the blacks on Iwo Jima.
The all-black batallion was a munitions supply outfit which were only on the beach and were not involved in any combat. If they were 900 or less I do not know, but compared to the vast tens of thousands of non-blacks who fought on Iwo Jima, I’m sure they an insignifical number. Eastwood was no doubt aware of this fact.

To Tyrone,
” If you want to make a movie seem real then at least scatter a handful of black people around.”
I’m not sure if you are directing your attention towards the movie ‘Iwo Jima’ or all movies in general. But I must say that with the agenda of making historical movies seem REAL that it would be wise to only add people of a certain ethnicity which were actually THERE in any given location at any given time – and in order to not drum things up too heavily, I would limit appearances to contributing events of importance.

If in fact, you are adressing that “scatter a handful of black people around” in any movie in general would contribute to making a movie look real, I must again, beg to differ. I come from a small European country where there are mostly white, arabic and asian people. We all find it amusing that in American movies there are mostly only white and black people, it is very seldom we see asians or people of arabic appearance in American productions. So scattering “a handful of of black people around” as to add realism would not have a working effect on people where I live as we hardly ever see black people on our streets. Some of us could even consider it extremely racist not to “scatter a bunch of ” asians or arabic people around. But Asians and Arabs don’t bitch about this – do they? – only Spike and his fellows bitch about such matters.

Think about it – how often do you see Asians and Arabic looking people in movies and TV shows conmpared to how often you see black people? And how often have you heard Asians or Arbabic people bitch about it?

Not all countries have the same ethnic mix, so scattering “a bunch of black people” into movies will make it seem very distant and unrealistic to a very large percentage of the world’s population.