Further Adventures In Very Old Japanese WW2 Movies

[frustratedpilot]

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Taiheiyo No Arashi ("Storm Over The Pacific"), known to American audiences of the era as I Bombed Pearl Harbor. (In fact, when that big-budget stinker Pearl Harbor came along some years ago, I'd have bet some enterprising individual would have taken this movie and redubbed it to DVD. Guess they didn't think of it!) Parts of it were incorporated in Tora! Tora! Tora! and Midway and other American productions.

Why I care: in some ways the American war movies of the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies are a part of my own experience growing up. And how could any kid avoid them back then? Many of the kids of my generation were children of military veterans--if not from the War itself, from their younger siblings, nephews and nieces. The echoes of WW2 lingered through the American culture for a very long time. It involved a far greater portion of the nation than any event since in our history. After a period of silent healing in the Forties, the culture here had to tell the stories from that time, and it kept Hollywood busy all the way through the next two decades.

Now, Japan of course had it even worse than America. Leaving aside the physical effects, and the political ones, WW2 meant a different cultural effect on a different culture. If the American soldiers who fought WW2 were our Greatest Generation, the Japanese soldiers of the same War were their nation's Lost Generation. They were defeated and killed in huge numbers; they fought ambitious battles they knew they couldn't win; everything they had was taken from them. It was through their examination of their experiences through film that eventually led to the anime that attracted me in the Seventies and Eighties.

Of course, it helped that the profits from all those successful Kurosawa dramas and Godzilla stompfests could be rolled back into producing these epics. Yes, I know the planes are almost all models and mockups. The ships are either sets on dry land or models in a studio water tank. Doesn't detract from the level of artistry or technique or effectiveness. I can't help but admire it.

It's a shame that none of these are available on DVD in the West. Some of these are available streaming or as torrents over the web, but I want to see these on my big flatscreen and I don't have bandwidth for this kind of thing yet. More to come.

FP