This World War II TV movie opens with a Japanese single-engine plane flying in the Philippines. The pilot broadcasts the "news" to the people below (civilians and POWs), that "the Americans have surrendered." The war is over, he proclaims. Japan has been successful.
Of course, that was a lie. But it is a true picture of the type of propaganda that Japan used throughout the war. The Japanese army and navy put a great deal into these efforts to demoralize and deflate the people. Weakened enemies would speed up their conquest of the Pacific Ocean nations. Later broadcasts from Japan that became known by the Americans and Allies as "Tokyo Rose," were similar propaganda efforts. These were aimed to demoralize and weaken the Allied troops..
After this opening, the movie plot then picks up on the ground where hundreds of POWs are being marched off by Japanese soldiers. So, this was probably set in late December of 1941, before the Japanese had overrun the entire islands.
Most people know the entry of the U. S. in WW II after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. But that was not its sole target to begin its siege of the Pacific. The very next day, Japanese ships, planes and troops attacked the Philippines with a fury. The Philippines and USA were allies. And, military command for the South Pacific was there, under Lt Gen. Jonathan Wainwright. So, this was a key objective of the Japanese forces. The embattled and bombed Allied forces on Bataan surrendered on April 9, 1942. By that time the U. S. and Filipino forces had lost 25,000 killed, 21,000 wounded, and 100,000 captured.
Of course, few believed the Japanese propaganda. Not the Allied force, nor the people of the islands. Indeed, the underground fighting and resistance to the Japanese by the Filipinos equaled that of the French underground and its efforts against the Nazi invaders in Europe.
Well the bulk of this story is about the break away from the POW march by one American GI, and his subsequent efforts to escape that soon include a missionary priest, some orphan children, and a Navy nurse who had been in hiding. It's a fair story as they make their way across their island over 100 miles to a pickup site the nurse knew of for people fleeing the Japanese. Doug McClure is okay as the American corporal, Steve Bennett, and Katharine Ross is okay as Lt. Laur Huntington. Ricardo Montalban plays the missionary, Father Sanchez. He and several of the children are part of the best of this film.
While some may find the film slow, especially with the fast action of so many modern movies, I urge anyone who starts the film to stick with it. It has quite a surprising and very meaningful ending. And, it's interesting to realize that more than 20 years after the end of WW II, the American public, and indeed, people in Europe and around the globe, were still very much interested in the war and movies about it. Interest in WW II would wane slowly through the end of the century. But in 1967, this TV movie was tied with another, "The Doomsday Flight," for the highest rated TV movie of the year.
