An ending full of hate

You ARE too sensitive. I suppose that you would have prefered that Hollywood made movies that showed the Allies as being just as evil and nasty as the enemy, just to be fair and so the folks at home would turn against the war effort and cause a negotiated settlement? After all, the Allies forced the Japanese into Imperial aggression and conquest and we were just getting our just dessert.

jvissers:

It's a war propoganda film, and evidently you weren't around during the war years. Thank God you weren't. You'd've been sniveling.



"So what else is on your mind besides 100 proof women, 90 proof whiskey, and 14 karat gold?"

I love how everyone is implying that jvissers is saying that Japanese ships shouldn't have been bombed, or that the Japanese didn't instigate the Pacific war, or that war isn't ugly, or that movies should be sanitized, or that in combat, soldiers should return fire with flowers and balloons.

The issue has nothing to do with the morality or realities of the second world war. It has to do with basic disgust at the horror of human suffering--a sentiment which should be inherent in every human being. That Japanese commanders instigated the Pacific war with a sneak attack should not permit our reveling in the live burning of Japanese servicemen. The Allied campaign in the Pacific was absolutely justified. Every effort had to have been made to destroy Japan's ability to continue its aggression. Ships had to be sunk. That does not mean that we should linger over images of human horror and revel in it.

Jvissers is absolutely correct that we should look back at our own propaganda, understand its function, but temper our understanding with regret at our own bloodthirst.

Those of you who attempt to hit out at this notion with accusations of ignorance, cowardice and liberalism (an overly maligned and misunderstood label if ever there was one) should be ashamed. And anyone who suggests that compassion for another human being, even an enemy, is shameful are as morally wayward as those who would call themselves a master race.

You need to delve deeper into what happened back then.

Read "The Knights of Bushido" and you'll really get sick from what the Japanese did to many of their Allied prisoners and read "The Rape of Nanking" for info on the real-life slaughter of Chinese civilians done by the Japanese.

Those Japanese troops in the convoy were on their way to slaughter and torture in an all-out total war. Their deaths were quick in comparison to what the hideous Imperial Japanese Forces inflicted on Allied prisoners and civilians.


The huge land-sea-air battle of Midway cost around 5,000 American lives. The Japanese lost much more in that battle and lost the war- do you have a problem with that?

My votes:http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=9422378

Just finished watching this, to my mind, rather ridiculous portrayal of men in war.

However, speaking to your point regarding the camera “lingering on the suffering and dying” … it didn’t look quite so extreme to me.

I noticed:

A Japanese pilot get shot who merely slumps into death. No writhing or gnashing of teeth — he’s hit and dies instantly.

Gunners on a Japanese carrier manage to shoot down a few planes. As should be expected in a movie. We don’t get out quite clean and easy.

I didn’t at all get the impression that ALL the bombs hit their targets. Only those dropped by the characters in the single plane the film followed closely.

I didn’t see any Japanese on any of those ships writhing, running around or screaming while flames licked their clothing or anything like that. A bomb hits, men go flying over the side, fall to the deck, scramble about for safe haven, some cling to a raft… some die. To me, it seemed a pretty tame representation of whatever the real horrors of such a situation must be like to see, or worse, to experience.


So, for me, the fighting at the end of the movie, if not accurate, was commonplace wartime movie fare so far as I could tell. The phrase “Those dirty Japs” annoys me a little now that I’m a grown man, but I can recall most kids using that language, picked up from films such as this, all the time when we played at being soldiers. We thought it sounded exciting and tough with a hint of justifiable vengeance. Now it sounds trite and ridiculously melodramatic.


It’s everything BEFORE the fight that I found most unbelievable. Jocular guys swaggering about. All near equivalent in their academic ability and intellectual perspective. We all know it just ain’t so in this would of ours.

And what’s with all those bullets managing to barely come near about oh… maybe 100 cans of gasoline just sitting around while everyone starts firing like crazy in every direction? I found that pretty laughable. Again, common wartime movie fare for those days.

nah… This film is more silly and/or skewed than it is cruel in its portrayals.


“Your thinking is untidy, like most so-called thinking today.” (Murder, My Sweet)

jvissers, I hate to say this, but you are an idiot. Yes, people in this country hated the Japanese with a passion in 1943; and yes, they wanted to see them destroyed. Thats a normal psychological reaction when one country launches a sneak attack on another country. In this case the film makers were giving the audience of 1943 exactly what they wanted to see.

By the way, in the real war in the Pacific, whenever one side discovered the opportunity to annihilate the other side in an action, they took that opportunity without hesitation, thats what happens in real wars. Google "Battle of the Bismarck Sea" and you will find an allied action that makes the final scene in this movie look tame by comparison.

About racism; was it a motivating factor in the War in the Pacific? Yes it was, but on both sides. Westerners had there prejudices and the Japanese had there own.

Finally, this movie wasn't terribly realistic for several reasons. One, in 1943 there wasn't a general understanding in the public of how the Japanese had managed to pull off the Pearl Harbor attack. Today we know almost all the details which made that event occur in the way it did. In 1943 no film maker was going to speculate that poor decisions by American leaders left planes lined up like perfect targets for Japanese attackers, that the Navy didn't send out reconnaissance aircraft around the Hawaiian Islands because someone high up thought that was the Army's job. By the way, the Japanese did have a spy who reported on the movements of the U.S. Pacific fleet at Pearl; however, he was not an American citizen. You are right about one thing. It was very difficult for B-17's to hit ground targets accurately and most of time damn near impossible for them to hit moving ships. The Army Air Force claimed great results with the B-17. They pretty much claimed B-17's won the Battle of Midway without the Navy's help even though that was complete fiction. Would you expect a film maker in 1943 to know the truth, or even if they did to show 50 bombs hitting the water for each one that actually scored a direct hit? To fully understand Air Force you have to understand the time and the culture that it came from.

It was a differant world back then.

The japanese would not surrender. Even after the first Abomb. They were the most evil party in WWII when it came to their military. They refused to sign the geneva convention after WWI , they treated our POWs horribly. Torture and death were common for our POWs. Whatever it took to bring them to submission, whether it be carpet bombing , atomic bombs, etc. the quicker the war would end and this torture and death would end.

I have no sympathies for the japanese during THAT time.. Today its a differant story. If Japan were attacked today and it came to war, as our ally, I would fight for them in the same manner as we have done for other countries.



-- 'I dont mind a reasonable amount of trouble.' Humphrey Bogart, The Maltese Falcon

I'm not going to wade through two pages, so forgive me if it's been stated. I am non-PC and hate all the tiptoeing that goes on today. But even I was a little taken aback by the sheer glee with which they kill the "Japs." I think one character even says, "This is gonna be fun!"

As tough as it is to watch, remember, there was a war going on. People did have the hard job of going to a foreign land to kill other people. One way to make the job easier would be to desensitize them. Especially if they feel like they're not killing another human being, but are instead killing a horrible monster. I'm not saying what's right or wrong, but that was the justification. Although I've seen many movies made during WWII and this one does win the award for most overzealous soldiers.