Kamikaze: Death From the Sky
Produced, directed, and written by Ed Topor
MPI Home Video, 1989, 54 min., Video
This very slow-moving video account of Japan's kamikaze
operations provides many firing guns and falling planes but few insights into
the motivations of the military leaders and feelings of the pilots. In several
places, the narrator remains silent during an extended sequence of film clips.
The narrator describes the last kamikaze attack at about 41 minutes into the
documentary, but the film continues on for another 13 minutes of very little
narration with most scenes showing the Hiroshima bombing and devastation.
The video starts promisingly, with the
narration in the first twenty minutes moving at a slow but acceptable pace. The facts related to the
kamikaze operations seem accurate, although few dates are mentioned. The
documentary includes some interesting facts related to the Allied defenses
against kamikaze attacks, such as the development of long-range search radar
and the three types of guns and cannons used against incoming planes. However,
the video mentions nothing about the formation of the first kamikaze corps in
October 1944 and has almost no information about attacks made after April 12,
1945.
The video has a few other shortcomings, such as repeated
film clips and mispronounced Japanese words. The script provides little
understanding of the reasons why kamikaze pilots made attacks, with only vague
references such as "incantations" [1] or inaccurate explanations such
as, "The commanding officer of the suicide unit was the officiating priest
of the pilots" [2]. In the final five minutes, the documentary's producers
combine words and images in a misleading and inappropriate way. As the narrator
remains silent, we hear an American broadcaster saying, "Peace is
wonderful," as Americans celebrate jubilantly the end of the war. Then the
scene switches quickly to the devastated Japan, which makes viewers think the
Americans shown in the film clip are gloating over the suffering that they
inflicted on the Japanese people during the war.
Notes
1. At 27:55 in video.
2. At 6:15 in video.
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