After almost 80 years still a unipolar view of Japanese

Rating: 7/10 (7 January 2017)

I thought it was overall a good movie with a fairly accurate portrayal of the history. I have not read the book and was more interested in the POW story, which is an interest of mine.
One thing that often comes out of POW stories is the intensely personal experience without any context given to the enemy. Most of the guards in these camps were either Korean, Taiwanese or, Japanese rejects including American born Japanese who weren't trusted. These Nisei often had a chip on their shoulder because of the discrimination they experienced. The non Japanese guards were also looked down on and got slapped around quite a bit.
Slapping subordinates was part of Japanese military discipline and so they didn't see anything wrong with doing it to prisoners. If the prisoners didn't take it the guard lost face and the situation escalated.
There actually were plenty of individual acts of humanity and kindness from guards which never seems to make it to film. The casualty rates among POWs were brutal, so overall it is not wrong to portray the camps as nasty inhumane places. Many of the deaths were due to malnutrition. Again it must be remembered that the Japanese were reduced to boiling grass towards the end - starvation of the civilian population was a war tactic caused by bombing and sinking of shipping.
Finally, the movie does acknowledge towards the end the Tokyo fire bombings. But the scale is played way down. 200,000 civilians burned to death on the night of 9th March 1945 alone. By American airmen. This is the context.