historical inconsistencies

Rating: Null/10 (10 May 2004)

i am here because a friend told me that here is where people dig into every crevice of a film. my question is two-fold. one, i heard that there were some noted historical inconsistencies in this film, one of which being the depiction of an american army being involved in this particular moment in japanese history. what others are there?
another friend told me about his previous mistake in modeling samurai armour. he had followed the european military logic of overlapping scaled armour so that a downward slash would glance down the interface, meaning the top scale was on top of the lower. the samurai armour in this film (and likely historically accurate) is scaled in the opposite way, meaning that the each upper scale tucks under the one below. this configuration seems doomed if it were to take a downward slash, especially from a japanese blade.
so, my primary question concerns the design of this armour. why is it so?
thanks for your insight.