The Purple Heart is a fictionalization of the mock trial that several of the Doolittle Raiders went through in 1942 after they were captured. Fortunately most of the men involved made their escape good. Still Dana Andrews and his intrepid crew paid with their lives.
As you see the Japanese were most concerned with where those bombers came from so they could take steps. Wouldn't do to have these people back again.
In point of fact that first raid, the damage was negligible, but the propaganda value was enormous, especially since it involved the losing of that oriental face.
Andrews and his crew are accused of deliberately choosing civilian targets to bomb, of machine-gunning civilians including women and children. But the Japanese are willing to let it all slide if the Americans fess up where they came from.
Mind you these are the same people who killed millions of Chinese citizens with bombing and with more up close and personnel methods of death and destruction.
It must have driven the Japanese high command to a frenzy when FDR was asked where the raiders came from and he replied it was from a secret base in Shangri-La.
The American public did not know the Holocaust until after the concentration camps were liberated, but we knew well what the Japanese did to American and other allied prisoners. Surrender was not in their Bushido code and they responded in kind.
Ironically enough American bombing by 1944 included all kinds of civilian targets. Japanese cities were primarily made of wood and they went up in flames if you dropped lit matches on them. More people were killed in Tokyo than were killed in both nuclear explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Had the Japanese won and had captured such Army Air Corps folks like Hap Arnold and on down, they would have been put on trial and that's a certainty.
Lewis Milestone who directed and got an Academy Award for the anti-war All Quiet on the Western Front directed this dated flag-waver. Good in its time and for its purposes, but not for today's audience.
As you see the Japanese were most concerned with where those bombers came from so they could take steps. Wouldn't do to have these people back again.
In point of fact that first raid, the damage was negligible, but the propaganda value was enormous, especially since it involved the losing of that oriental face.
Andrews and his crew are accused of deliberately choosing civilian targets to bomb, of machine-gunning civilians including women and children. But the Japanese are willing to let it all slide if the Americans fess up where they came from.
Mind you these are the same people who killed millions of Chinese citizens with bombing and with more up close and personnel methods of death and destruction.
It must have driven the Japanese high command to a frenzy when FDR was asked where the raiders came from and he replied it was from a secret base in Shangri-La.
The American public did not know the Holocaust until after the concentration camps were liberated, but we knew well what the Japanese did to American and other allied prisoners. Surrender was not in their Bushido code and they responded in kind.
Ironically enough American bombing by 1944 included all kinds of civilian targets. Japanese cities were primarily made of wood and they went up in flames if you dropped lit matches on them. More people were killed in Tokyo than were killed in both nuclear explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Had the Japanese won and had captured such Army Air Corps folks like Hap Arnold and on down, they would have been put on trial and that's a certainty.
Lewis Milestone who directed and got an Academy Award for the anti-war All Quiet on the Western Front directed this dated flag-waver. Good in its time and for its purposes, but not for today's audience.