Customer Reviews

Battle of Okinawa

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Saw this as a kid at Toyo Cinema here in Seattle back in the mid 70's.
Pretty intense movie showing the Okinawan civilians being killed or committing suicide because they refused to surrender because of fear of the American troops.
Review by David Carter
The Battle of Okinawa is quite possibly the most important battle of the Pacific Theatre, if not of the entire Second World War. Strategically, Okinawa was to be the jumping off point for the invasion of the Japanese mainland but the outcome and the toll the battle took drove history in a completely different direction. The American forces underestimated the resolve of both the Japanese military and the Okinawan citizens. Men, women, and children all took up arms in defense of the island creating a situation where civilian casualties were double those of the Japanese or American forces. JAPAN'S LONGEST DAY director Kihachi Okamoto brings us the tragic story of the battle in his BATTLE OF OKINAWA, now available from AnimEigo.

BATTLE OF OKINAWA is a historically accurate drama and the events unfold with clockwork precision and with occasional expositional narration. Unlike JAPAN'S LONGEST DAY, BATTLE OF OKINAWA deals with more than just the "big names" involved in the conflict. The real meat of the story is revealed through numerous fictionalized elements involving the people of Okinawa and not their military leaders. These citizens play important roles in several key events but are often not named, a metaphorical nod to their omission from history books. History provides us with statistics about the civilian casualties, but BATTLE OF OKINAWA gives them a human face. This makes the eventual (and historically controversial) push for mass suicides, either via rushing into battle or actual suicides, all the more shocking. Particularly haunting is the film's final scene, which goes farther than most similar films to adequately portraying the horrors of war.

It should be noted that BATTLE OF OKINAWA was made from the Japanese perspective for Japanese audiences. Therefore viewers from other cultures may want to take the time to familiarize themselves with Japanese culture (particularly during WWII) to be able to fully understand alien concepts such as kamikaze and seppuku. Films like this can be especially enlightening for American viewers, who likely have only heard one side of the story. BATTLE OF OKINAWA in no way glorifies Japan's imperialistic gambit; in fact the film condemns many of the prevailing thought patterns inherent in that belief. The film's highly symbolic ending contains a scene where a very nationalistic young solider is seen yelling at a group of women about Japan's imminent victory and the glory of dying for your country. Moments later, a mortar shell detonates nearby and he starts cowering and clutching to the women for safety. This is most likely a metaphor for the overarching theme of the film: that Japan in essence "sacrificed" Okinawa to the Americans by not providing enough military support.

AnimEigo brought us JAPAN'S LONGEST DAY so it's only logical that they should also present BATTLE OF OKINAWA on an equally impressive disc. The picture and audio quality are both outstanding here; no flaws in either can be found. AnimEigo outdoes themselves with an enormous amount of information in their Program Notes section. I'd go so far as to recommend that you read these notes before watching the film if you're not very familiar with the battle; the added information will increase your enjoyment and understanding significantly.

BATTLE OF OKINAWA may be too difficult for some viewers out there. Those of you without an interest in history may have trouble with the film's over two hour run time. I'd recommend that you give it chance, however. Unlike most historical dramas, BATTLE OF OKINAWA is more than a dry recounting of facts. It's a human story about a great tragedy that those on both sides regret, and one that the ramifications of still echo today.

Since the 1950's, the Japanese have steadily cranked out numerous large-scale big-budget war films, of which almost none have been released in America! Such fine works as RENGO KANTAI, STORM OVER THE PACIFIC, THE SIEGE OF FORT BISMARK, etc have barely even touched the western hemisphere. Finally one comes to DVD in the form of this highly depressing mood piece, though with a typically Japanese comprehensiveness to its detail and coverage of all the major highlights.

The acting is excellent by all and the directing taught and superb. There's plenty of action scenes and largely correct use of period tanks, guns, uniforms, planes, etc. Toho effects wiz (and Eiji Tsuburaya's next-in-line) Teruyoshi Nakanao supplies a generous dose of pyrotechnic effects, though unfortunately they're not given center stage or slow motion treatment like his brilliant work in THE SUBMERSION OF JAPAN around the same time.

No, this one focuses more on drama and really shines in the talking scenes. The only real lackage is in the action scenes which often feel cheap and small considering the scope of the battle. A lot of the bigger scenes such as the American landings and the sinking of the Yamato are neat to see, but are accomplished largely with stock footage! Black and White 1.33 stock footage horizontally stretched out to 2.35! The footage used is largely inaccurate too - subbing the HMS Barham for the Yamato. Nakano recreated the Yamato sinking (and quite spectacularly so) via a massive model in 1981's RENGO KANTAI (which is not available in the states though).

Overlooking these faults, it's a fine film and well worth your time. Buy a copy to encourage this (and other) companies to release more excellent Toho war movies.

Although best known in the West for his samurai flicks such as The Sword of Doom And Kill!, almost 1/3rd of director Okamoto Kihachi's work was war films. A soldier himself during the Second World War, he knew first hand the trauma and cost of total war. It is never simply a battle between soldiers, and non-combatant citizens often pay the heaviest toll of all.

"Battle of Okinawa" ("Gekido no showashi: Okinawa kessen") is Okamoto's attempt to tell the story of one of the bloodiest battles of the US/Japan war. Unlike such films as Tora! Tora! Tora! and Letters from Iwo Jima, this movie is told entirely from the Japanese point of view, or more particularly the Okinawan point of view. These are the people...general, barber, soldier, nurse, farmer, student, prostitute...who lived and died under the "typhoon of steel" lasting 82 days and ending with 1/4th of the civilian population of the island dead along with roughly 66,000 dead Japanese soldiers and 12,000 American.

A movie without main characters, an ensemble cast of familiar faces play the various walks of life bound up in the conflict. Kobayashi Keiju (Chushingura) plays the old Gen. Ushijima, a man trying his best to fight a hopeless battle with dignity and honor. His two aids, Tamba Tetsuro (Three Outlaw Samurai) and Nakadai Tatsuya (Harakiri) are the classic Hawk and Dove, with Tamba pushing for a glorious all-out attack and Nakadai wanting to go defensive and save lives. Tanaka Kunie (The Wolves) plays a hapless barber who joins the military staff in order to provide for his family, who has been sent to the mountains to hide. Ozora Mayumi (Samurai Banners) is a cheerful prostitute-turned-nurse who tries to keep spirits up while everything turns bleaker. There are many, many other characters that appear and disappear, live and die, in an eye blink, but add to the overall tapestry.

Politically speaking, as all war films are political, the general message is "war is bad for everyone, but especially the losers". Although told from a Japanese perspective, there are heroes and villains enough to satisfy, and this definitely isn't a "poor Japan"-type of flick. The soldiers try to believe they are dying for a good cause, but that belief becomes harder and harder to maintain. The civilians want to support their country, but they end up being slaughtered by ally and enemy alike, and sometimes it is easier just to kill themselves and get the job done early. The massive suicides of the Okinawan people are covered in this film, although the controversy surrounding it remains neutral in tone.

Almost a documentary more than a movie, the different character threads are intercut with actual war footage and voice over. This affects the pace of the film, which is slow and sometimes undynamic. Okamoto makes sure that the history is correct, and doesn't sacrifice reality for drama. Not that it is by any means boring, but there is something quite studious about it. Animeigo clearly recognizes this, as some of the bonus features are intended to be used in a classroom setting for those studying WWII. I could imagine this film to be quite the effective learning tool for high schoolers, putting a face on the enemy and understanding the true cost of war.

First, let me say I purchased this piece of crap on the recommendations of the 5 star reviewers. I am somewhat of a historian, I lived on Okinawa in the 60's a mere 20 years after the war and I own almost every book, study, or article published on the Battle. Based on those things and my personal experiences living on Okinawa while most of the people over 20 had lived throught it, I can say that this movie is the worst kind of drivel. The movie was not just bad, it was insulting. It was insulting to the combatants and their memory and it was an insult to the civilians who suffered and died at the hands of both sides, an insult to the forced sexual slaves and an insult to anyone who fought to defeat the Japanese, who lest we forget, were the aggressors in the war.

The movie would have you think that the Japanese defense of Okinawa was some noble undertaking. Far from it. The Japanese willing sacrificed the Okinawan people in their last stand gambit. The movie tries to portray the Okinawans as willing participants for King and Country. Rubbish. The average Okinawan, wanted nothing more than to be able to tend his sweet potato patch, grow some rice and catch fish and raise his family. He knew nothing of the Americans and would have cared even less if he had not been fed propaganda.

You need to understand a bit of history of the Okinawa people to know just how insulting it actually is, and the root agenda underlying the movie at its core.

The Okinawans are not and never were Japanese. They are probably Chinese in origin, and at one time had their own Kingdom and it was referred to by the Chinese and Japanese as the Great Loo Choo, hence the Japanese term Ryukyu Islands. The Japanese forcibly annexed the islands in the 1800's taking their king hostage. He never returned. Karate originated on Okinawa due to the banning of all weapons on the Island by the Okinawan's oppressors and overlords, the Japanese. They were and still are to a large degree treated as the Koreans and any other non-Japanese, as second class citizens.

During the closing stages of WWII Okinawa assumed sudden importance, having been heretofore a backwater. Okinawans had been up to that point, useful only as forced labor, just as the Koreans, being sent to far flung outposts of the expanding Japanese empire to do manual labor building fortresses. Their devotion to the Emperor was displayed by the fact that Korean and Okinawan laborers were usually the only surviors of battles on many Island outposts, being the only ones willing to surrender and avoid self immolation.

Sure, there was the Boetai on Okinawa, young idealistic young people who were dosed with propaganda having been educated in state run schools, and eagerly wanting to be "Japanese". They volunteered in numbers far larger than stated in the movie, and died along with their Japanese overlords.

The civilian population of the Island were propagandized as well, just as on Saipan, and there were instances of suicide by civilians. But in large part, the civilians died in great numbers while fleeing with and amongst the retreating 32nd Army in the later stages of the battle. Up to 1/3 of the population died. In some cases as depicted in the movie, on Kerama Rhetto, the Japanese facilitated mass suicide of the Okinawans by providing them with grenades. No where in the movie do they mention or depict why. No mention of the tales by the Japanese that American Marines and Soldiers would rape all the women and eat the children. The movie would have you believe that these primative backward Islanders were doing it in devotion to the Empire and the Emperor. Rubbish. Once they saw that they would be given food, medical treatment and shelter by the Americans, the civilians came over in by the thousands. So many that the American forces had a hard time dealing with the numbers. Far too many died at night trying to infiltrate from Japanese lines to the American side.

Other myths and half truths saturate the movie. Not only do the typical Japanese stereotypes fill the screen, the stupid goofy female, in this case a more than willing prostitute/Comfort Girl patriotically taking on so many of the Emperor's soldiers she could barely pause to eat...real funny and noble, the truth was she probably would have been kidnapped or force into a military brothel against her will. The Japanese Government has still refused to acknowledge the hundreds of thousands of Chinese, Korean, and Okinawan women forced into sexual slavery during WWII. They have only recently admitted after years of denial, that such a program existed. They have refused reparations, in stead preferring to wait till the last of the women die.

The saddest thing about this movie, is that future generations of Japanese will actually believe that it occurred as depicted in the movie.

Colonel Yahara, a central character in the movie, was American educated, and very pragmatic. He was the highest ranking Japanese officer to surrender voluntarily to American forces. Read his Book, by the same name as the movie, and undoubtably the basis for this crap. He paints a bit different picture without all the nationalistic glorification.

The movie itself glosses over a lot of historical facts to present the post war Japanese revised version of what took place. Soldiers carrying satchel charges to blow up american tanks is presented in such a way as to avoid the acknowledgement that the intent was to blow themselves AND the tank up together. They depict it differently, showing the soldier throwing the charge and surviving, only later when wounded does a soldier sacrifice himself.

The fighting is pretty much fictitious. It is depicted as a lot of glorious standup fighting with the Amerians obligingly leaving their foxeholes or trenches to meet the noble Japanese halfway only to be bayonetted or cut down with samurai swords. Really.

What actually happened is they Japanese fought from caves. On the two occasions when they actually did come out and fight above ground, they were massacred in droves by superior firepower. On both occasions the suffered thousands of casualties, just as they had on Saipan, Guadacanal, and other islands. In both cases the attacks were launched at the insistance of Gen. Cho, a firebrand of the old school, over the objections of pragmatic Col. Yahara, Ushijima the commanding general wept after the second suicidal attack which included two disasterous counter landings. One was depicted in the movie, but reality had much less successful results. They did not land in the proper areas, were intercepted by armored amphibian vehicles and massacred on the reefs without any gains what so ever. The land based counter part met with equally dismal results, tanks and assault troops being decimated by american artillery concentrations on their assembly areas before the attacks could even launch. In one area they did make some gains and reoccupied some areas they had been driven from previously, but were rooted out and killed almost to a man.

Ushijima promised in the future to heed Yahara's recommendations, but the damage had been done and thousands of first rate troops had been butchered in a futile counter offensive.

The American troops recalled one thing about fighting on Okinawa, and it was the fact that they hardly ever saw an enemy soldier, except a dead one. There were no standup fights except possibly at night when infiltrators attacked isolated American positions. There were counterattacks to recapture hilltops but the fighting was predominately, "corkscrew and blowtorch", cork screw being explosives, and blowtorch, being a flame thrower. No american troops would have been foolish enough to actually attack into a Japanese underground complex...this is pure fabrication on the part of the filmmaker. They pumped gasoline in and threw in a grenade. It was not a case of, if you don't come out, we're coming in...

Another theme of the film is the fiction that "the only reason we lost is the Americans had more materials, if not for that our fighting spirit would have let us prevail." Crap, crap and more crap. This is exactly why the Japanese soldier died on the order of 10 to 1 against the Americans. The Japanese could not believe Americans could kick their but even in a stand up fight. An elite Japanese Marine on Tarawa wrote that he knew they had lost the battle on the first day, when the American Marines kept coming at them wading 700 yards through chest deep water in the face of withering machinegun fire.

The filmmaker makes a great deal out of the fact that the Japanese were outnumbered and outgunned. In actuality, the Japanese had more artillery on Okinawa than in any other battle in the pacific. There was only a 2 to one superiority of men on the American side, less than the gospel of at least 3 to 1. An error of intelligence. There were 6 US army and Marine divisions to the Japanese 2 and 1/2 divisions. The Japanese still lost around 100,000 killed to 15,000 American killed. With another 50,000 wounded.

The little ficticious scene about the M98 rocket or some such, was actually what the Americans referred to as the Spigot Mortar. A large single mortar bomb usually launched singly from a fixed site. They likened it to a VW bug coming through the air. They could see and hear it and said that while it made a big bang, it was erratic and inaccurate.
The "brain damage" suffered by the Americans in this scene is an misleading allusion to "combat fatigue" caused not by the M98, but the heavy Japanese use of artillery for the first and last time in the war.

I could go on and on about the unapologetic jingoistic imagery. The "I hate Americans" rant not by a soldier, but a stalward Okinawan young woman. Sure you can point to American movies with similar content, like Guadacanal Diary or some such movie. But they were made DURING the war and were propaganda movies. This piece of crap was made in 1971 twenty six years after the war. We hadn't even given Okinawa back to the Japanese at that point, reversion didn't take place till 1974. So I think this movie was actually an attempt to galvanize the Japanese public into thinking that the US was still occupying a part of Japan proper, and that the Okinawans really wanted to rejoin the Japanese nation.

There is currently a movement in Okinawa, which is now the 19th prefecture of Japan, to get all the remaining combat troops removed from the Island. I might point out that Okinawa is the only place they are currently based in Japan. Another example of how the Okinawans still are considered 2nd class citizens. Okinawa has at long last been thoroughly Japanized, along with the corresponding problems of sea water pollution, overcrowding, and other problems of urbanized Japan. I dare say that the locals are being assimilated if not displaced by an influx of Japanese.

By every account I have read, the Okinawan's were never enthusiastic members of the Japanese war effort, except for the young idealistic students, both male and female who joined the Boetai, or home troops, or volunteered as nurses. The Boetai fought and died valiantly. The nurses, well, there is a cult of sorts around the nurses. The Cave of the Virgins is an example. Some student nurses have been mythologized around their deaths in a cave at the hands of the vile Americans. There is a monument. Of course believing the stories they were told, they refused to come out to safety after entreaties by American troops, and the cave was destroyed along with them in it.

Were they virgins? Who cares? The monument should be called "The cave of the sadly misled young nurses who died as a result of lies told by the Japanese military propaganda during the great war of Japanese agression."

I think that has a more truthful ring. I might add that after the reversion to Japanese control, the Japanese government demanded the removal of all American monuments onto American Military bases on the Island. I guess they don't want any thing seen that might contradict their official revisionism of the war. I understand the Japanese have very sensitive feelings about the war.

My time in Germany in the 70's before the WWII vets all started dying off, and in my living in Japan during the same period, has left me with the impression that both the Japanese and Germans are sorry for only one thing: that they lost. Given similar circumstances and a better chance of winning, they would do it again. Although the Japanese I fear lost their only chance, since the Middle Kingdom could now squash Japan like a bug, and will most probably do so some time in the future.

The Chinese have a long memory. They will not soon forget the millions of Chinese killed in wanton rapine of their cities at the hands of Japan. They are only biding their time. We think on the order of decades, the Chinese, on the order of hundreds of years. The Dragon will have its due.

If you want to really educate yourself on the Battle of Okinawa, read, Tennozan: the battle of Okinawa and the Bomb or as it was renamed, The Battle of Okinawa and the Blood and the Bomb by Feifer (I think) He is married to an Okinawan and the book is filled with first hand recollections by both combatants and civilians. Another is Retribution,the Battle for Japan, a classic by Max Hastings, documenting the horrific attrocities committed by Japan against the Chinese and others they were trying to "liberate" in their war of conquest.

My recommendation is to avoid this movie at all costs, it is the worst possible combination of sammurai movie, grade D wartime propaganda, and historical revisionism. Total crap.

This is one of the most realistic movies on war I have seen, and I have seen many and served in war myself! Having served on Okinawa and lived with Okinawans for four years I wish I had seen this movie a long time ago. The people of Okinawa did their duty to the Emporer and never received credit for their valor. They were and still are treated as second class citizens by the Japanese. They are a brave and likeable people and this movie is a must for anybody that ever served there. This movie is one of the best directed and filmed that I have in my collection. A true masterpiece!

A very different perceptive of a topic I have read a lot about. In true Japanese fashion, they gloss over history. The Japanese never take responsibility for their actions against the Okinawians and how they fought the war, i.e. no surrender, which in turn leads to U.S. soldiers acting the way they did, i.e. no mercy toward a very determined enemy. But there are always two sides of a story and somewhere in between the truth exists.

Story was o.k., on human interest side. Acting was comical on certain battle scenes. Very little or non existent real battles shown from WW2.