Film
Wings of Defeat
Cert:(adv PG)
Dir. Risa Morimoto
USA/Japan , 89 mins, 2007
Cast: Documentary with: Risa Morimoto, Takehiko Ena, Eugene Brick, Henry Christensen
The short film Into The Woods will be shown before this film.
Some kamikaze survived, and their stories are told in Wings of Defeat, a highly illuminating film on Japan’s pacific war suicide pilots. Director and protagonist Risa Morimoto grew up the daughter of Japanese parents in New York City, and never questioned the received opinion that the kamikaze were extreme fanatics. After learning that her beloved uncle had been one of the many kamikaze to survive, a problem grew in her mind: “’Suicide attacks’, ‘self-immolation’: words I associated with terrorists, now applied to my own family”. Wings of Defeat sets out to reconcile the problem, to understand just what the kamikaze were.
As Morimoto observes: “Maybe as an American I can ask questions that the Japanese can’t.” And the responses of her interviewees suggest the grateful breaking of silences held for decades. It’s hard to imagine anyone better placed to make Wings of Defeat, nor a more revealing film on this subject. One pilot offers a rueful opinion on the Showa Emperor and his failure to end an impossible war. It’s something that would be very hard to voice to a Japanese interviewer, in a country where mute deference to the emperor often still prevails.
In the unearthing of survivors’ stories, we get a welcome revision of what’s assumed about the kamikaze. Upon meeting the pilots, it’s clear that most were ordinary, often unwilling and emotionally conflicted young men, ushered by overwhelming rhetoric to give up their lives for their country. And it’s revealing that US officers who fought the kamikaze understand only too well the attraction of martyrdom in wartime, one veteran offering that he would have done the same if offered the chance. Finally, Morimoto’s trump card is an invaluable wealth of archive film footage, much of it shot by the US. Combined with the human stories, they bring this history lesson vividly to life.
Tom Vincent
Other films showing that are part of Documentaries are:
