[dannavy85]

The sad part is how the populace meekly sat by and allowed themselves to be dragged into this catastrophe, especially most of the senior officers of the Imperial Fleet who displayed serious reservations about a war with the United States. The Navy had to keep Admiral Yamamoto at sea to protect him from being killed by Army hotheads who saw him as a pro-Western toad.

Emperor Hirohito was guilty due to his silence during the course of the war even when it became obvious that defeat was eventual, had he stood up and opened his mouth, even risked his life to demand an end to the conflict he would have been seen as a saint, a martyr against madness but he chose to keep silent.

The color footage is amazing and poetic in its timeless sorrow, I cried when they talked about having to kill the animals at Ueno Zoo in Tokyo, the child who wrote her letter begging the Zoo Keepers not to kill her favorite elephant, Miss Harra.

It's one thing to speak of the war from outside Japan, it's another thing to actually stand at the places of history like Yamamoto's command cave at Yokosuka or the spot where Douglas MacArthur touched down at Atsugi Naval Air Station or the many ruined battlements overlooking the expected landings of the never attempted Operation Olympic or Hiroshima and Nagasaki.