The Last Bomb

The documentary is technically superb, apart from some rather boring repetitive air combat scenes (irrespective real people was being shot in the making), for everyone in the right side, from General LeMay to the least Chamorro folk strolling down some Guam street appears acting. The funny thing is that there is no face for the enemy.

We never see what happens when the napalm hits the wooden houses many feet below. We don't see the face of the victims.

One can naturally argue 'The Last Bomb' is a paradigmatic WWII propaganda movie, aimed to insufflate enthusiasm into every American heart. But even then, it's hard to believe the average spectator not having the least curiosity on the fate of the people in the wrong side of the film.

'The Last Bomb' is an interesting product, not only showing the massive destruction chain production American approach, but the sociology (maybe pathology) of a crazy age.

But... what was happening in the wrong side of this documentary, under the shinny armored bellies of the B-17 bombers? Take a look at 火垂るの墓, Hotaru no Haka, Grave of the fireflies, and find out.

There were a slew of documentaries made towards the end of WWII to bolster US public opinion and celebrate the imminent defeat of the Japanese. To that end, this rather dry affair uses an admittedly interesting array of archive to illustrate the US Air Force's detailed plans and complex logistics to carpet bomb and strafe what was left of the industry on Honshu island before the ultimate visit of Enola Gay. It has a job to do, and in 1945 it probably did it. Many years later, though, it looks more one sided and propagandist with an unashamedly patriotic narrative from Reed Hadley that could not have failed to resonate with a domestic population sick to the back teeth of the war and it's horrors. What happened to the civilians on the ground - many of them farmers or fishermen or just in the wrong place at the wrong time? I don't suppose balance was in it's sight-lines and taken in that spirit it's an interesting watch but one that is a mite uncomfortable to view now.

This short film debuted just after WWII ended. I doubt if it could have been done the same way had it come out before the last bomb was dropped on Japan. That's because the film is very straight-forward--without a lot of the typical propaganda language of films from 1942-1945. The enemy was neither demonized nor humanized in this film...it simply chronicles the bombing campaign in the Pacific against the Japanese. While this will no doubt come off as dry, it is very important historically--giving us a nice glimpse into the past.

By the way, I noticed another reviewer was critical that the film did not show the victims of the bomb blasts. Well, considering how bloody the war was, there certainly was no desire by the average American to see this--they just know they'd been attacked and their children were forced to go off and fight in a war. It's pretty easy today to be critical of the past--but in context, what else was there to do?! Good history should neither be filled with propaganda nor colored to satisfy modern sensibilities.

Reed Hadley narrates this Oscar-nominated documentary about the Air operations against Japan in the last months of the Second World War like a butcher talking about taking a steer apart. We see Curtis Lemay sitting with his staff, talking, planning, and then he stands. The junior officers -- they are all junior -- jump to their feet, of course, but is it protocol, respect, or outright fear of the man? Lemay would later run the Berlin Airlift, and later still, offer to bomb North Vietnam into a parking lot.

That's what he does here with Japan. Once the command takes off from Guam, the viewpoint becomes, not Olympian, but disengaged, the sky rolling around the plane as it drops its bombs or destroys targets in a strafing run, with a point of view like a modern shooter video game: factories, railroads, airplanes, battleships, tankers, fishing craft. "They are all the enemy" Hadley says, in flat, mildly contemptuous tones.