Le premier Américain à Tokyo

I swear when I watched this movie as a child it was called " I Was a Jap for the F.B.I." Does anyone remember that or am I thinking of something else? I remember that the main character undergoes plastic surgery and the only way the Japanese are able to discover him is by watching films of old American college football games when he played and noticed he had a habit of twiddling his thumbs which he is still doing during a secret meeting with the Japanese.

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.

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.

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).

During World War II, Hollywood tried everything to boost the morale on the homefront. Some films were great, but other films reached into the bottom of the barrel especially this one. This has got to be one of the most racist films in the history of the medium. What especially was disturbing were lines like "You all should be put in cages", the film makes it seem like that they are trying to portray the Japanese were less than human. I don't mind movies that try to boost morale, but there is no place for racism in the movies.