Genre: Drama/War
Director: Cary Joji Fukunaga
Writer: Chad Taylor
Producer: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Sonoya Mizuno, Miles Teller, Ken Watanabe, Ben Mendelsohn, Tamlyn Tomita, Ming-Na Wen, Louis Hofmann, Ryan Potter, Hamish Linklater
Plot: Based on a true story
In 1976, a woman (Tamlyn Tomita) turns the sign in a grocery store from ‘Open’ to ‘Closed’ and starts sweeping the aisles. As she passes a calendar, she crosses out today’s date - July 4th, her birthday. Fireworks can be heard from outside as America celebrates its 200th birthday. In the store, the woman hums to herself.
In 1941, Iva Toguri (Sonoya Mizuno) is a recent college graduate from UCLA with her whole life ahead of her. She has the ambitions to become a physician, which may be difficult due to her gender. She goes on a date with Joe (Ross Butler) - a classmate of hers and someone her parents would like her to marry. While her parents - Jun (Ken Watanabe) and Fumi (Ming-Na Wen) - are Japanese immigrants, she is American as American can be - born on the Fourth of July, in fact. Her mother receives news that Iva’s aunt in Japan is growing ill and she encourages Iva to go and represent their family at the aunt’s bedside. Given the ongoing military campaigns of the country, this may be one of her last chances to finally visit her parents’ homeland.
After arriving in Japan, Iva spends some time with her ailing aunt while getting accustomed to the changing Japanese society. Her aunt has words of wisdom aplenty and inspires Iva to pursue her dreams. Since she arrived with no passport, she applies for one with the local consulate to be able to return to the States. Iva’s aunt passes away peacefully in October. The bureaucratic process for the passport stretches weeks, eventually lasting until December.
On the 7th, the Japanese military execute a surprise attack on the U.S. base of Pearl Harbor and formally enter the United States into the world’s war. As a result, the State Department rejects Iva’s request and are not willing to certify her citizenship due to her Japanese heritage. Since she came from America, officials from the Japanese government track her down and tell her she must renounce her citizenship. Despite her own country essentially disowning her, she is not willing to renounce her American citizenship and so is labeled an enemy alien and denied a war ration.
Essentially stuck in a completely foreign land and unable to communicate with her family back home, she is left to survive on her own. She notices a stigma around her so she tries to tone down her “Americanness” while trying to gain employment. She finally gets a low-paying job as a typist at a news agency. All the while, she tries to play her part any way she can and so she gets a little extra at the grocery store and sneaks it into a nearby Allied prisoner-of-war camp. Upon doing this, she immediately forms a mutual liking for Cpt. Lou Harris (Miles Teller), an American POW, and starts to visit more regularly (being careful not to get caught).
Upon her fourth visit, Harris tells her that he and his comrades may have found a position perfect for her. He introduces her to Major Charles Cousins (Ben Mendelsohn), a Major in the Australian Army and Philip (Louis Hofmann), a Dutch soldier . They work in the radio communications division and need a female on-air talent who can speak good English for their show The Zero Hour. Iva is immediately skeptical, realizing that the broadcasts that the POWs are forced to put on are essentially propaganda - intended to lower the morale of American sailors. Harris promises that they don’t have to do any explicit Anti-American content and says that this could be the closest to a sense of community that she can get her in Japan. While still torn, she agrees that it at least gives her company and is a step up in pay from the minimal amount she currently gets. She accepts the offer.
Charles worked in radio before the war but was captured by the Japanese in the Fall of Singapore, making him a natural choice for heading this division. At the station, the crew are forced to facilitate English-language radio broadcasts to American soldiers stationed in the Pacific Islands, this being the only thing they can get on their radio. Stations like this play American songs as the on-air female broadcasters are made to taunt the soldiers about how their ladies have found someone new back home and convince them they are in a losing effort. Given that their Japanese superiors lack good English, Iva soon finds out that Charles and Harris are skilled at avoiding any truly Anti-American content. They write nuanced scripts that fly right over the heads of the Japanese but catch on with American soldiers, who are more amused than demoralized.
Iva thrives in this role as the war rages on, learning to have fun with it and develop a sense of comedic timing. For the likes of Charles, Philip and Harris, this is all they have to cling on to as they face the harsh realities of being a POW. As such, Iva continues smuggling in food for the crew while also continuing a romantic connection with Harris. Philip, Harris’s closest comrade, escapes the camp overnight, to the surprise of everyone. He is replaced in the crew by George (Ryan Potter), a young Japanese-American POW. This makes the rest of the crew more cautious given the Japanese can use him as a translator. Not long after, Philip is recaptured and executed in front of the rest of the prisoners to set an example.
The camp is liberated by American forces, and the prisoners get to return home. Iva, however, still faces difficulties with her citizenship status. She asks Harris to stay but he reveals that he has a wife back home that he needs to get to - something he had never told her. Once again she is all alone in Japan and increasingly impoverished in a recovering nation. On the day of Japan’s surrender from the war, she hears about an open interview request from an American magazine journalist named Clark who is seeking out the infamous “Tokyo Rose” - the name American soldiers gave these female broadcasters. Given the high amount of money that the journalist is offering, Iva decides to answer his open call.
After being interview by Clark (Hamish Linklater), Iva discovers that this was a set-up and that this interview will be used as a confession of her “crimes”. Iva is adamant that she did nothing wrong but is arrested anyways. The American officials, however, find that there is no evidence so they release her. Still, her name is now known to the public and this makes her fight to get back to the country even harder.
She lobbies the American government to let her return to see her family and is finally granted a passport to return home. When she returns home, she finds that a lot has changed in the years she was gone. Her mother has died and Joe, her college sweetheart, was put in a Japanese-American internment camp - something her father was lucky enough to avoid. Her and her father share a tender moment - unable to get themselves to speak about the tragedy of the last 5 years.
Word of Iva’s arrival in America reaches the American tabloid press and they go on a full-on campaign against her being here. This raises tensions within the public, who still hold resentment against the Japanese, and there are calls for her arrest. The FBI give in and arrest Iva again, only days after her return. This time, they charge her with eight counts of treason against her country for aiding the Imperial Japanese forces in World War II.
Iva’s trial is highly-publicized, turning into a media firestorm. It is of particular importance since it is one of only a handful of treason trials in United States history. Harris shows up to testify in defense of Iva - saying they made a point to avoid being explicitly Anti-American. However, George also shows up and - to the surprise of Iva and Harris - testifies that Iva did commit treason. This is part of an all-out legal assault by the prosecution, despite not having any actual recordings. George recites a broadcast where Iva asks the soldiers where they will go now that their ships are sunk. His convincing testimony and the jury’s anti-Japanese bias are disastrous for Iva and she is found Guilty-without-evidence of one count of treason and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Iva's father and Harris watch on in despair as she is taken out of the courtroom in handcuffs.
30 Years Later
An older Iva (Tamlyn Tomita) lives by herself in Chicago. Since her release from prison, she has ran an Asian grocery store like her parents - a far cry from being a physician but better paying than a typist or radio broadcaster. The U.S. government has repeatedly tried to get her deported but she has constantly fought back and tried to clear her name. Luckily for her, American citizens have become less biased against Japanese during this time so she is able to blend into the background of society. As she reads the newspaper, she learns that George, now in his 50s, has come forward and said he was coached by the FBI for two months about what to say in the trial and threatened to be tried for treason if not.
Weeks later, Iva is visited by government officials - something she has gotten used to over the course of her life. This time, they are there to inform her that she has been selected by President Gerald Ford to be pardoned of her crimes. She can hardly get a word out, instead letting out a sigh of melancholic relief as a single tear strolls down her cheek.
No comments:
Post a Comment