First Yank Into Tokyo

That sentiment, which came at the tacked-on ending of this strange movie, didn't turn out to be true.

This film is notable mainly for the presence of Tom Neal, who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in 1965.

Neal plays Steve Ross, a soldier who had lived in Tokyo and spoke Japanese like a native. He agrees to undergo plastic surgery to look Japanese and goes undercover in a concentration camp to rescue Lewis Jardine, a scientist with valuable secrets about the atomic bomb. It's a doubly dangerous mission because Ross' old roommate, Hideko Okanura (Richard Loo) heads the camp.

The real story here is the love story between Ross and the camp nurse, Abby Drake (Barbara Hale), whom Ross had presumed dead after they left one another back in the states. She doesn't recognize him but feels sympathetic towards him.

This is a real Hollywood/World War II artifact. The set is unbelievably cheap and obvious, the concentration camp is more like a low-budget Holiday Inn, and the Japanese are Chinese and American.

There has been criticism levied at the way the Japanese are portrayed, and I like the analogy one of the reviewers here made -- would you like to see a film with a sympathetic Al Qaeda character? It's important to watch a film and see it in the context of the times. Grant you, it's a contrived plot and not particularly good.

Barbara Hale would go on to fame as Della Street in the Perry Mason series. She's still alive as of this writing and the mother of actor William Katt.

Tom Neal's private life was far more impressive than his professional one. He's okay here. These films were always made very quickly, so it's hard to criticize the finer points of his performance.

The atom bomb was dropped before the release of the film, so the studio went back and threw on another ending.

Lots of films in those days did not portray the grittiness and atrocity of the war. Most of these propaganda movies were made for general audiences and soft-pedaled some of the more horrible aspects.

It was a different time and the world was different. Today we can go to the movies or watch the news and see all the atrocity, violence, and horror we want. Whoopee.

What with the 1943 "Gung Ho", "Guadalcanal Diary," "Purple Heart,"

and other made-during-World War II films I saw as a kid on television,

I had thought I had seen every racist anti-"Jap" propaganda movie ever

made by Hollywood. But "First Yank Into Tokyo" is one I do not

remember seeing as a kid. It is not only the most racist movie I have

ever seen, it is probably simply the worst film I have ever seen in any

category of motion picture. To me as an American who has lived in

Japan for 30 years, the Asian-Americans playing Japanese soldiers are

as obviously not racially Japanese as if someone had made a movie about

William the Conqueror fighting the Battle of Hastings in 1066 with a

cast of Europeans recruited entirely from Athens, Greece and Instanbul,

Turkey. Everything, from the physical characteristics to the

mannerisms, is wrong. On the one hand, the film presents the Japanese as bespeckled, buck

toothed, arrogant goofs. On the other hand, when portraying a

Japanese prisoner of war camp during World War II, the film makes the

place a country club compared to the real horrors encountered by anyone

who was held in a Japanese POW camp during the war.

Overall, the film radiates an overwhelming ignorance and apathy by

the film makers towards any authenticity whatsoever.

When this film is mentioned at all, it is generally with a sneer. It has a reputation for being "cheesy," mostly because it feature Tom Neal in "Japanese" makeup. It's easy to judge movies from the past with today's eye and say they are racist, insensitive, etc., but keep in mind this was made while we were still at war. The disjointed ending is a result of the A-bomb being dropped before the film was finished. A new finale was thrown together so the whole thing made more sense. Not a great movie, but not bad...not bad at all.

This movie was so convincing, it might be difficult to watch. The acting was so real you can feel the hatred. I've watched it several times. I was disappointed at the ending, because Major Ross (Ton Neal) and Abby Drake (Barbara Hale) almost reunited. But Major Ross felt that his "changed appearance" would get in the way of their life. He forgot that if he had plastic surgery to change his appearance then he could change it again (just not the way it was before).

This film is almost camp in its sophomoric racism. As a member of a minority that has also experienced this kind of dehumanization at a time when this was not at all uncommon I think that this movie has value as an example of what generations ..even my own daughter will never believe unless they see it. I think we all need these movies in their uncut form as a reminder (embarrassing though it is to the filmmakers) of how dumb we can get with these kinds of issues. I speak as a minority and as a fellow brother to all of you reading this. This is not shocking and the Japanese I am sure have the self confidence (as does my minority group) to point at this as a laughable example of white racism in its most childish form. It does not inspire hate for the whites who made it ...it inspires incredulity and empathy in me personally because it is truly embarrassing. I am sure it is the whites who would most like to eradicate this film and forget they (or the few who believed this) ever exhibited this kind of insipid point of view. It was an emotional time. Sometimes emotions make us say and think stupid things. This movie is an example.