The War at Sea From Hawaii to Malay / Hawai — Maree oki kaisen (1942)

Made in 1942 when Japan saw all the Pacific being swept before it, The War at Sea is a remarkable movie, though more significant today as a social document than as an entertainment. Technically, it is a blend of news/propaganda footage, studio live action, and model work, handled with competence if not flair by the director Kajiro Yamamoto The blend is not always seamless to our contemporary eyes, but it was convincing enough to audiences at the time.*

In general, it fits right into the format of the “Our Brave Boys” movies made in America and England during and even more often after the war when we were sure who would triumph. It follows a young man through his training for the naval air corp and then  stages Pearl Harbor and the attack on HMS Repulse off Singapore.

 

Pearl Harbor revealed

The bombing begins

American planes on the ground

Torpedoing the Repulse

As can be seen from the screen captures, the use of models is pretty obvious to our CGI-trained eyes, but then so are the models in Tora! Tora! Tora! Eiji Tsuburaya would go on to be the most highly regarded effects man in Japan, eventually creating Godzilla.

Our young hero, while not a commander, just happens to be the co-pilot who finds the break in the clouds that reveals Pearl Harbor when all thought they had missed it and then again is the one who spots the Repulse when all hope had been lost of finding it. But beyond that, there are no individual heroics.

This shortage of individual heroics is something I have mentioned in posts about other Japanese war movies, doubly remarkable because so many of the chanbara are built around the lonely battles of a single ronin. Almost an hour of the two-hour movie is spent depicting the training, where they learn not only flying skills but also long-sword dueling, among many other things. All emphasis is on building a team, so to speak, but not a team of different specialists such as we would see in American war movies — we don’t follow the pilot, the navigator, the mechanic, etc. Likewise, there is a “band of brothers” but not with any individualization. There is no joker, no tough guy, no professor, no homesick youngster, no dear-John letter, no tough sergeant with heart of gold, no relaxation on pass, and no brawls in the bars with the competing services. All relationships, in training and on board ship, are very formal and rigid to American eyes. It’s all very much about becoming a true servant of the Emperor and being taught that the proper fighting spirit will conquer all odds.  For the most part I don’t believe a word of it – the movie was after all financed by the Navy – but then I don’t believe a word of the US war movies either (though I admit that I often did before I actually served in the Army in a combat zone). Even so, this is obviously what the government and the studios wanted to sell to the public and what the public wanted to believe. (So did the critics — the movie was Number 1 on the Kinema Junpo poll.)

And then there’s that emotional reserve we have seen in so many other Japanese movies. The son comes home twice on leave and never once does he touch his mother or his two sisters, nor do they ever touch him. Since we have seen something like that so often in movies at all levels of society, I do believe it but still find it hard to understand.

The young hero is not a recognizable face from other more familiar movies. Interestingly, his squadron commander is played by Susumu Fujita, who would later become famous for his portrayal of Colonel Kato, commander of the most famous and decorated Japanese fighter squadron of the war.

If you’re interested in war movies in general, this is well worth a visit. But even if you are not interested in the battle scenes themselves,  it is certainly the very best available view of how the Japanese saw (or wanted to see) themselves during their war with America and England.

• Reportedly, the Americans believed that the Pearl Harbor sequences were real and put a secret label on the film after the war, but I haven’t been able to find any independent confirmation of that story.