Classics Considered

This past weekend, I rewatched the WWII movie Valkyrie (2008) with my brother.  (He, like me, is a history nerd and was the one who talked me into watching Lawrence of Arabia , for which I'm perpetually grateful.)  I don't believe I reviewed Valkyrie last time, so it seemed like a good time to talk about it and about history-themed movies in general. Tom Cruise plays Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, a Nazi officer, family man, and Catholic, who is tormented by his conscience and the events of the war.  In 1943, he joins a number of collaborators planning a political-military coup, which ultimately involves a plan to assassinate Hitler.  The genius of the plot is that it uses Hitler's own backup plan, "Operation Valkyrie," against him by feigning an emergency.  The movie zooms in on July 20, 1944, when Stauffenberg and his fellow officers attempt to carry out the assassination and coup. The first thing to get out of the way is the casting.  Now, don't...

Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty wherever ordered?  Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, to any other foreign government, power or organization?   No-No Boy follows the post-war lives of two young Seattleites: Ichiro Yamada and Kenji Kanno.  Published in 1957, John Okada's only novel takes a raw cross section of Japanese-American society and examines it through the eyes of these characters who made very different choices. When called to the draft, Ichiro followed his mother's guidance and answered "no" to both "loyalty questions," resulting in imprisonment.  After two years, he is released from prison to a community which abhors him for his decision, almost as much as he hates himself.  Kenji, on the ...

It's London in the 1930s, and Christopher Banks has what most people want: his dream job.  After a childhood of playing detective with his best friend Akira, Christopher grew up to be one of England's leading private investigators, highly sought after both professionally and socially.  In spite of his success, he can't forget the life he left behind him in Shanghai, nor the fact that his parents remain missing there and unaccounted for.  Christopher's greatest hope is to go back to Shanghai to find them, even if it means returning to a war zone.  It turns out, however, that new relationships - including his love for a lonely socialite - make committing to his past the hardest case to solve. This book could not have had a more promising premise.  I've raved about the nuances of Empire of the Sun (another story about an English boy in Shanghai), and I know Ishiguro can be incredibly subtle .  I also love a good mystery with a Sherlock Holmesian characte...

In The Sea and Poison , we find one Japanese author's perspective on the horrific human experimentation carried out by Unit 731 "doctors" in World War II. A small addendum to my comment in this episode, that there were "no Nuremberg trials, to speak of."  The Soviets actually staged their own show trials for some of the Unit 731 personnel.  However, sources indicate that the sentences were light and may also have been exchanged for data.  To me, this is hardly the equivalent of the Nuremberg trials, where several nations (not only the USSR) took part in the trial and the sentences included 12 executions and seven imprisonments. Sources / Further Reading: "Unmasking Horror -- A special report.; Japan Confronting Gruesome War Atrocity" - NYT article, 1995 "Unit 731: Japan's biological force" - BBC article, 2002 "Japanese veteran admits vivisection tests on PoWs" - Guardian article, (2006) "Department of ...

The past couple of weeks, I've enjoyed three very interesting, yet vastly different, films which take place during or leading up to World War II.  I haven't shared a movie review in a while, so I thought I'd just mention these before I forgot about them. First up is The King's Choice , a Norwegian film released in 2016.  This historical drama begins with the disturbing attack on Norway by the Nazis, who justify the invasion by claiming to offer "protection" against the British.  From there, the movie centers on the response of its government and, more especially, the role of the aging King Haakon VII in what became the resistance movement. I can't speak for historical accuracy, since I came into this knowing nearly nothing about Norway during WWII.  As a drama, it kept my family and me glued to the screen for its whole 2+ hours, and that's with (somewhat poorly formatted) subtitles.  The acting (including the extras') is some of the very bes...

Goto island by Masoud Akbari [ CC BY-SA 3.0 ] One day, Etsuko's quiet life is interrupted by a visit from her daughter Niki, who, though being independent and somewhat secretive, has taken time off from her London life to come visit her.  This visit prompts disturbing memories in Etsuko, from the recent suicide of her older daughter Keiko, whom she is still grieving, to her own life back in Nagasaki, Japan. As a young, pregnant mother and married to her first husband, Jiro, Etsuko's earlier life had been a witness to sweeping changes in Japanese society, as well as to the physical and cultural presence of the Americans, post WWII.  Most troubling of all, however, is her recollection of her friendship with Sachiko, a confident, middle-aged woman who had moved in to a nearby cottage.  Sachiko had a little daughter named Mariko, who suffered trauma from the bombings of Tokyo and other scenes of the war.  No matter how much Etsuko tried to help Mariko, it seemed ...