By Barbara Vancheri
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Paul Haggis turned the show-business axiom -- "Don't quit your day job" -- on its ear. After twice meeting with Iris Yamashita, he told her she could quit her day job as a Web programmer.

She did, but not until she received the contract for "Letters From Iwo Jima." Yamashita wrote the screenplay, and she and Haggis share story credit for "Letters," Clint Eastwood's companion film to "Flags of Our Fathers," which movingly tells the story of the bloody battle from the Japanese point of view.

	Iris Yamashita, on writing the screenplay for "Letters" -- "I wanted to make a different sort of protagonist ... the one who just wants to survive." And then go home. Click photo for larger image. Related story: Former Shop 'n Save meat cutter Doug Crise is 'Babel' editing nominee Listen In: Hear excerpts from Iris Yamashita's conversation with the PG's Barbara Vancheri: How Yamashita came to the attention of Oscar-winning writer Paul Haggis, who worked with her on "Letters From Iwo Jima." What Yamashita wanted to convey about Japan during the WWII era. On director Clint Eastwood.

It's competing tonight for four Academy Awards: picture, director, original screenplay and sound editing. Yamashita will stroll the red carpet with her father, an ophthalmologist.

"He actually didn't give me a choice," she said with a warm laugh over the phone. "He told me a week before the nominations, even, that he had ordered a suit. I wasn't as confident as he was, so I said, 'Well, I hope that suit's returnable.'"

As it turned out, he could keep the suit and a couple of weeks ago, Yamashita attended the Oscar nominees' luncheon and posed for the "class photo" a few steps away from Leonardo DiCaprio. She's still a bit incredulous about being swept into the awards circuit and says, "It's sort of like being Dorothy in the land of Oz, and you think at any minute you're going to wake up and be back in Kansas."

Yamashita's mother died in December 2005, but her parents' influence lingers in her atypical path to the Kodak Theatre. "I was always writing things on the side, ever since I can remember. I really love writing."

She minored in writing but earned her master's in engineering at the University of California at Berkeley. "I have Asian parents who are really about, you have to have a practical job, you have to learn something practical. You can't live on writing."

You can if Oscar voters like you. Haggis became the first person in the history of the Academy Awards to write back-to-back Best Picture winners in "Million Dollar Baby" and "Crash," and Yamashita's nomination is opening doors.

As for that engineering background, "I don't think it came in handy other than I was not afraid of researching, studying, doing as much research as I needed to," the Californian said.

Yamashita, born in Missouri (where her father's Fulbright scholarship took him to Washington University in St. Louis) and raised mainly in California, came to Haggis's attention because they were represented by the same agency. He read some of her work and liked it.

During their first meeting, a nervous Yamashita brought some Japanese military artifacts, courtesy of a friend. "I don't think he was very impressed with the artifacts, but he was more interested in the story." At their second meeting, she ran through her treatment or short summary of the screenplay, and Haggis told her she had the job.

Yamashita, who had researched Japan on the eve of World War II for another project (and whose mother's childhood home had burned down during the Tokyo fire raids), wanted to convey the propaganda, the oppressiveness of the military and its dreaded police, called the Kempeitai, and the citizens' inability to protest.

Yamashita either drew upon real people or molded characters based on actual incidents. "I had read an account of someone who said their neighbors' dog had been killed by the Kempeitai because it was barking too much. Snippets of real things made it into the story," as with accounts of soldiers strapping mines to themselves.

The Oscar nominee, who speaks conversational Japanese, traveled to Japan for the movie's premiere but didn't sit through the screening. "They shuttled us off somewhere, but my sister was in the audience. She said she was a little afraid because at the end of the movie, there was just silence and then there was polite clapping."

Japanese actors more familiar with the customs knew that was a roar of approval, which was borne out at the box office there, where the movie was No. 1.

Other than the iconic image of the newly planted American flag fluttering atop Mount Suribachi, there is little duplication from "Flags" to "Letters." Both, however, address the notion of heroes.

In "Flags," Haggis explored what heroes are, and how and why they're made. "It was interesting how, in America, it was the ones that came back, the ones that lived to tell the tale that became the heroes. Whereas in Japan, the culture was different. You're not supposed to come back. If you come back, you're a coward."

She also subverted the notion of the usual protagonist of war movies, the sharpshooter who wipes out 10 enemy soldiers with his last 10 bullets. "I wanted to make a different sort of protagonist ... the one who just wants to survive." And then go home.