div background image shrinks in ie

My background picture in my div works fine in FF and Safari but in IE it shrinks vertically so that there is about a 20-30px gap on the bottom. Here is the code:

[CODE].box_container{
width:827px;
margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto;
height:auto;
}

.leftupper {
margin-top: 0px;
border:3px solid #000000;
width: 408px;
height: 300px;
background-color: #354e35;
background-image:url(/images/pillow.png);
background-repeat:no-repeat;
float: left;
}

.textbox {

font-size:85%;
width:340px;
height:240px;
margin-left:auto;
margin-right:auto;
margin-top:20px;
background-color:#ffffff;
border:3px solid black;
/* for IE */
filter:alpha(opacity=70);
opacity:0.6;

}
[/CODE]

[code=html]

<div class=”box_container”>
<div class=”leftupper”>
<div class=”textbox”>
<p>a bunch of text here </p>
</div>

</div>
…
[/code]

Thanks for the help!

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