they still have these feelings towards Brazilian Japanese from my understanding. The attempted reverse migration has been met with considerable resistance.
For Memorial Day - favorite war films
- Thread starter TheOriginalHappyGoat
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they still have these feelings towards Brazilian Japanese from my understanding. The attempted reverse migration has been met with considerable resistance.
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anon_6hv78pr714xta
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Carlin starts his series with this, trying to explain it.
He Was The Last Japanese WWII Soldier To Surrender - in 1974
World War II ended in Europe on May 8, 1945. As for Southeast Asia and Oceania, peace only came several months later on September 2, when Japan finallywww.warhistoryonline.com
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anon_6hv78pr714xta
Guest
I just watched it last week. I liked it. WW II on the sea is a rarer film, so I learned a lot. If you liked it, and want to hear more, check this out (sorry to be such a shameless shill for Carlin, but I really enjoy his stuff and its free!):
Did anyone mention Kurosawa’s “Ran”
I was thinking Dr. Strangelove and noticed it was mentioned. Kind of holds the distinction as being the war movie to end all war movies, if you think about it.
I was thinking Dr. Strangelove and noticed it was mentioned. Kind of holds the distinction as being the war movie to end all war movies, if you think about it.
They don’t get much better than this. 12 o’clock High with Gregory Peck:
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Best post-war movie: the best years of our lives
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The Longest Day .
Different type for sure than the dramas but South Pacific has a lot of good underlying themes behind the music.
Different type for sure than the dramas but South Pacific has a lot of good underlying themes behind the music.
CoH, you bring up the issue of dealing with prisoners during wars. This issue has intrigued me since my basic officer training in 1960. As a soldier do you fight to the end with it being a disgrace to be taken prisoner, or do you live for another day and try to escape ?
At any rate, here is an interesting article on the subject. According to the article there were more Japanese combatants taken prisoner in the last months of the war. My guess is the Japanese troops finally sensed the war was a lost cause.
For most of history, the prospect of being taken prisoner was not a pleasant one for most combatants. I remember a famous scene from The West Wing, when Leo and Fitzwallace are discussing the potential assassination of a terrorist, and Fitzwallace reminisces on the time war was honorable, "when you could tell between peacetime and wartime" and when "if a man laid down his arms, he was treated honorably." He references the Battle of Agincourt as the exemplar of this honorable time in war.
But in real life, that's not what happened. In real life, Henry motivated his troops by telling them that the French had promised to cut the fingers from anyone they captured, so they could never draw a bow again, and then, when it turned out the English had captured a dangerous number of French troops, rather than ransom them or find a way to safely lock them up (which might not have been possible), Henry had them all summarily executed. Some of his knights objected, thinking it unchivalrous, or wanting to ransom the prisoners for money, but he threatened to hang any man who did not obey. Notably, contemporaries did not criticize him for the decision.
It seems to me, any man who surrenders must realize his is literally placing his life and his entire future in the hands of an enemy, with nothing to protect him other than the phrase (or equivalent of) "I yield, please don't kill me."
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anon_mlxxvlbug9dpa
Guest
Many people shit on American Sniper because Kyle was a deeply flawed person and much of his story is highly questioned.
interesting question and I think the answer is highly situational. I am always impressed by the scene from the Great Escape where they discussed the duty to escape. OTOH, that duty is often possible to carry out let alone consider.
A movie that hasn’t been mentioned is Escape from Sobibor. A dramatization of an actual mass escape escape from a Jewish concentration camp.
I still cannot understand the cruelty that people are capable of. I think that level of cruelty comes from a combination of feelings of supremacy and of inferiority brought somehow together I like to think that I am not capable of that, but who knows how we’d react to different circumstance.
Along those lines if you haven’t been to Andersonville and the national POW museum, it’s worth a trip.
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anon_mlxxvlbug9dpa
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Questioning the cruelty we humans are capable of is quite naive - no disrespect intended. People are mentally weak on average and are highly susceptible to propaganda and brainwashing. It’s a very small minority of people who will stand up to bad orders or to cruelty.
Milgram experiment - Wikipedia
Glad you included Gump.
The scene wherein Gump is caught up in a firefight was among the most realistic I've seen
Questioning the cruelty we humans are capable of is quite naive - no disrespect intended. People are mentally weak on average and are highly susceptible to propaganda and brainwashing. It’s a very small minority of people who will stand up to bad orders or to cruelty.
Milgram experiment - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
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anon_6hv78pr714xta
Guest
Re post-war experiences and Band of Brothers:
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How were the Milgram subjects chosen? I didn’t see that.Questioning the cruelty we humans are capable of is quite naive - no disrespect intended. People are mentally weak on average and are highly susceptibl e to propaganda and brainwashing. It’s a very small minority of people who will stand up to bad orders or to cruelty.
Milgram experiment - Wikipedia
Your post doesn't address how abject cruelty happens. It only addresses authority bias which I agree is a huge problem and is getting worse. Authority bias supports most of the social and political ills we see every day. The patronizing government, media, and tech is taking a toll.
Lots of good ones listed already.
Saw "Saving Private Ryan" with my father-in-law who had been in the Battle of the Bulge as an enlisted and retired as a Colonel after having served in Vietnam. I noticed he was crying during the Normandy landing part of the movie and he said it had the most realistic battle scenes of any movie he's ever seen. So I have to have it up near the top of the list even though I have always had a beef with the premise of the movie. There were plenty of actual events during WWII that they could have based the movie around instead of the mission to save a private. Still great though.
Others that are excellent:
Schindler's List
Full Metal Jacket
Das Boot
We Were Soldiers
Inglorious Basterds (obviously not historical, but Christoph Waltz is awesome in this movie)
They Were Expendable (very good John Wayne movie)
Glory (lots of historical accuracy)
Black Hawk Down
Flags of our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima (great concept of doing these movies to show both sides of the battle)
Downfall
War Horse
1917
The Great Escape
Patton
Gallipoli
Sergeant York
Warsaw 44
Band of Brothers series
Burn's Civil War series
Victory at Sea series
I can't believe no one mentioned "Caine Mutiny."
Also saw a movie from a Korean and Japanese perspective recently which was very good, but I can't remember the name of it.
I'm sure I missed several others that I really liked, but there's a decent list.
Saw "Saving Private Ryan" with my father-in-law who had been in the Battle of the Bulge as an enlisted and retired as a Colonel after having served in Vietnam. I noticed he was crying during the Normandy landing part of the movie and he said it had the most realistic battle scenes of any movie he's ever seen. So I have to have it up near the top of the list even though I have always had a beef with the premise of the movie. There were plenty of actual events during WWII that they could have based the movie around instead of the mission to save a private. Still great though.
Others that are excellent:
Schindler's List
Full Metal Jacket
Das Boot
We Were Soldiers
Inglorious Basterds (obviously not historical, but Christoph Waltz is awesome in this movie)
They Were Expendable (very good John Wayne movie)
Glory (lots of historical accuracy)
Black Hawk Down
Flags of our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima (great concept of doing these movies to show both sides of the battle)
Downfall
War Horse
1917
The Great Escape
Patton
Gallipoli
Sergeant York
Warsaw 44
Band of Brothers series
Burn's Civil War series
Victory at Sea series
I can't believe no one mentioned "Caine Mutiny."
Also saw a movie from a Korean and Japanese perspective recently which was very good, but I can't remember the name of it.
I'm sure I missed several others that I really liked, but there's a decent list.
I remembered the name of the interesting movie. It's a South Korean movie about a Korean that was supposedly captured at D Day in Europe and the movie traces this guy's war story from Korea all the way to eventually finding himself fighting for the Germans. It's sub-titled and I found it very interesting and well made. It's called "My Way."
Way to late for this great post, but movies I haven't seen mentioned much....
Downfall is supposed to be excellent. Of course it was turned into one of the biggest internet memes of all time doesn't help.
Hacksaw Ridge - based on a true story of a conscious objector going to war, so all he did was pull out the wounded from battle (a real life Forrest Gump situation).
Come and see - I think TMP mentioned this a long time ago but it's an absolutely brutal and realistic look at the war in Europe. I've seen it called they most terrifying movie ever made and it's one that could never be made in the US because of the gore and overall evilness of war.
Personally one of my favorites as a child and then as I got older for different reasons was the original Godzilla. Not really a 'war' movie but it's a consequence of nuclear war movie post Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As a kid I just liked watching Godzilla stomping on Tokyo but when I found out that Japan didn't allow for anyone to discuss the bombing, so the author created a 'monster' that represented the devastation of the nuclear bomb and the philosophy behind how to beat a nuclear bomb (by making an even more deadlier weapon)....was genius.
Downfall is supposed to be excellent. Of course it was turned into one of the biggest internet memes of all time doesn't help.
Hacksaw Ridge - based on a true story of a conscious objector going to war, so all he did was pull out the wounded from battle (a real life Forrest Gump situation).
Come and see - I think TMP mentioned this a long time ago but it's an absolutely brutal and realistic look at the war in Europe. I've seen it called they most terrifying movie ever made and it's one that could never be made in the US because of the gore and overall evilness of war.
Personally one of my favorites as a child and then as I got older for different reasons was the original Godzilla. Not really a 'war' movie but it's a consequence of nuclear war movie post Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As a kid I just liked watching Godzilla stomping on Tokyo but when I found out that Japan didn't allow for anyone to discuss the bombing, so the author created a 'monster' that represented the devastation of the nuclear bomb and the philosophy behind how to beat a nuclear bomb (by making an even more deadlier weapon)....was genius.
One that no one has mentioned that prompted some pretty good discussions for me:
Eye in the Sky.
Forgot Hacksaw Ridge. Another excellent war movie.
Downfall is outstanding, I just don't think of it as a war movie though it is. It would probably be 2 after BoB for me.
It is hard to get over the bias that a war movie has to be combat filled.
Two days ago was the anniversary of the American Navy dealing a crippling blow to the Imperial Japanese Navy. Today is the anniversary of the landings at DDay.
Facebook is filled with posts about D-Day, almost nothing two days ago about Midway. Same for news sites. Any thoughts why?
Facebook is filled with posts about D-Day, almost nothing two days ago about Midway. Same for news sites. Any thoughts why?
It seems to me that in the popular mind the Pacific war has always played second fiddle to the European campaign. Can't really venture a guess as to why.
At IU I took an upperclassmen level course on US Military History. The textbook we used was a product of West Point/US Army. The prof even acknowledged that would mean that ground operations would get more attention than naval operations as a result. He did little to fill in the blanks.
I was talking to a friend about the history of the B-29 and why there isn’t much about it compared to the B-17. Lots of movies about the bombing campaign in Germany, but almost nothing about bombing Japan except for the A-bombs. The B-29 was an amazing aircraft, the Japanese had no answer for it, and was a quantum leap forward for military aviation. Curtis LeMay left his Mark with it.
I think Americans were/are Eurocentric. So anything in the Pacific, except the bombs, is lost.
You are right about the 29. It was a generation ahead of anything.
Interesting to me is how many more comedies/ comedy drama there were about the Pacific though
I think this is right. Every "world war" was really a European war. The Thirty Years' War, the Seven Years' War, the Napoleonic Wars, WW1, WW2, if it can conceivably be called a World War, chances are we are focused on what it meant for Europe.
Of all the "World Wars," WW2 was probably the one that was truly the most "global," thanks to the Pacific Theater. But even there, Asia plays second fiddle. The Japanese got us into the war, but there's also always sort of been this sense that they were something that we fought on the side, and then dealt with after Germany was done. I mean, look at Yalta. Japan was a bargaining chip. Everything still revolved around Germany.
Interesting, but in reality Japan was a greater threat to the US, not taking mainland over but to a lot more of our territories at the time than Germany ever was
I think that's probably true, in theory. I only qualify it because I don't think Japan was ever truly a threat to U.S. interests, and the war in the Pacific was lost the very minute Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
I don't think a true threat in a big way, but Germany was never on /attacked actual US lands ? Japan did, Phillipines, Hawaii, Aleutians, Guam , Samoa, I am sure missing some places in the pacific. Japan was doomed from that day. Line from the movie where the Japanese says I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant. Japan may have well been able to have taken and held on to a lot of islands and territories had they stopped but once they attacked us it was only a matter of time. Germany likely posed a bigger actual threat but again once the US was involved it was only a matter of time. Had they held the USSR on their side it could have had a different outcome.
Yeah, Germany probably doomed themselves when they invaded the USSR. The sacrifice of Soviet soldiers and civilians is on a level unimaginable to us. And the Germans knew it, too. That's why Germans were rushing to the West to surrender to Brits and Americans and even French. They knew what they'd done to the Russians and what the Russians had gone through to beat them back, and they didn't want anything to do with that.
I dunno. Midway was a stroke of luck, even with us knowing some of the Japanese navy code. Guadalcanal could have gone the other way if the Japanese had been more on the ball. If those the other way, the war in the Pacific would have been much different and much longer. Japan would have had no resistance to its continued expansion for years. We were the only player.
True and they wouldnt surrender. It could have gone on for years and then where would the Korean war be ? Interesting to what if. Japan could have taken a lot of territory over if they hadn't have attacked us. I always kind of wonder what Italy's stake really was?
I mean, anything is possible, but even Japanese military leaders recognized that they couldn't beat America outright. Their goal was to hurt us enough for us to agree not to fight, and let them have Asia and the Pacific while we bothered about elsewhere.
Our carrier production was going to crush them. We churned out Essex class ships, I think Japan only built 2 carriers.
That book I read last fall suggested Midway was a disaster even if Japan took the island. It expanded her defensive perimeter far beyond what her fleet could defend and required massive investments in fuel to keep it supplied. Japan's navy was already totally hamstrung by her lack of oil.
