My grandfather had finished grad school in 1942 and by mid 1943 was fighting his way across the Pacific toward Japan. He earned a Bronze Star and Purple Heart and battlefield promotion to captain the liberation of the Philippines.
His unit was scheduled to be among the first elements in for "Downfall" (the invasion of Japan that was to take place if they did not surrender) whihc was certain to be a bloodbath of unprecedented proportions even for the Pacific Theater which made most of the European theater look like a walk in the park.
He was among the first troops into Japan after the surrender, actually there between the first surrender and the formal surrender on the Missouri. Because his masters was in Asian Studies he was appointed to team drafting Japan's Constitution.
So I have always been interested in Japaneses non-fiction, fiction and film concerning heir views of the war -- especially anything that touches on what would have happened in Downfall.
This film really shows how the Japanese general staff and its military leadership simply did not understand or did not care, that their delusional "final battle doctrine" which was supposed to win them the war at Pearl harbor, and then win them the war at Midway, and then win them the war in the amazing no surrender battles on enumerable islands, up Okinawa and Iwo Jima, failed over and over -- yet they still intended to do it on Japan itself. With in fact, their own children, boys and girls, with happened sticks agains the largest military machine in history. The children are blindly loyal, which is accurate, and the mid to lower grade military officers are both loyal yet filled with doubt, and dread about the effectiveness and morality of leading the kids in the direction of resistance til death.
The film shows us, how, unfortunately, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary and how they probably saved millions of lives.
