It's a romantic movie with a deeper message, not often found in 1970s TV movies turned out weekly with low production values and retread actors. Love transcends race, community bigotry, hate... but always at a steep price. When I watched it on my parents' living room floor with my siblings and folks, the idea of America interning citizens in concentration camps was new to our Midwestern naive world: Sure, Nazis did that, but us? The guys fighting in Nam to free an Asian people? It wasn't a topic in our history books, it wasn't a topic at the dinner table. We knew Dad served in the Pacific with the Marines... knew the stories... Mom followed him to boot camp in Chicago & San Diego. When he left for Guadalcanal in the Solomons, she returned to her parent's farm because she was pregnant. He marched through the campaign hitting all the battles & got taken out in Iwo Jima with shrapnel from a Jap gernade. But internment camps for American families based on race? How could that happen? They tried explaining it all during commercials... and afterwards for days.
The most poignant moment in the film comes when Patty Duke's character has to prepare his body for burial. I haven't seen the film in 40+ years but the emotional triggers thinking of that scene, are still as strong as they were for that 7 year old kid on his parent's living room.
