tells the story of a Japanese soldier on occupation duty in Leyte, Philippines during the Allied re-taking of the country. The Japanese military units were on the run from the Allies, had to hide in the jungles, and were practically starving to death, forcing them to forage for food. The sounds of far-off explosions of artillery and air-to-ground bombing continually permeate the audio as a constant reminder of the relentless approach of the Allied fighting force that pursues the Japanese.
The soldier in question trudges back and forth from the makeshift field hospital to his Imperial Japanese Army unit (identified as a mixed battalion), neither of which accept him. At the field hospital, he was turned away because he didn't have a combat-related wound, he merely suffered from something such as yellow fever or malaria, and the food they provided for patients was becoming more scarce day by day. When he returned to his unit, he was severely berated by a senior NCO (or a commissioned officer; the man's rank was not revealed in the dialog) because he was not strong enough to either fight the enemy or help forage for food. The soldier tries to explain that his short stint at the hospital had only resulted in his being kicked out and ordered back to the unit, but the NCO/officer was having nothing if it. After being chewed out thoroughly, he is ordered back to the hospital, the logic being that he is useless to the unit and only takes up valuable food that can go to an able-bodied soldier. Claiming that the hospital won't take him, he is given a grenade and is told that he should at least try, but if the hospital turns him away, he cannot return to the unit and must do the honorable thing by committing suicide.
Wearily dragging his rifle, he heads back through the jungle toward the field hospital, which is apparently several kilometers or miles away. In a narrative of the soldier's thoughts, he laments that in addition to lacking food, the Imperial Army is also so very short on supplies that they don't even have shovels to dig foxholes and air-raid trenches, they must resort to discarded pots and pans as improvised tools. He passes a group of his fellow soldiers who are thusly digging, they are as surprised to see him as the NCO/officer had been; they chide him for leaving the supposed comfort of the field hospital, its supposed lack of hard work and its supposed abundance of food.
Passing through the remains of a tiny Philippine village, he encounters a Filipino man who is cooking food. Interestingly, the film's dialog switches to Tagalog, but the subtitling only translates the Japanese dialog fully, the Tagalog dialog was subtitled only in bits and pieces. [Note: I speak Tagalog, so I understand what was being said.] The Filipino offers the soldier some food, explaining to him that he is cooking lunch for his parents and siblings who are working in the fields. The Japanese soldier speaks halted, broken Tagalog, and at first accepts the food, but immediately becomes suspicious that a Filipino would help a Japanese. The Filipino, sensing his mistrust, scurries off into the fields to get his family members, but when he doesn't return right away, the soldier follows the path he took and sees that he has disappeared completely. The soldier thinks it's a trap and that the man is fetching Philippine partisans or Allied troops to capture him, so he angrily kicks over the pot of soup and runs into the jungle opposite of the man's direction of flight.
Unfortunately, I fell asleep then and that's all I saw of the movie. Being just a middle portion, I saw neither the opening nor closing credits. The Battle of Leyte Gulf itself was in October of 1944, and the Allies continued to fight the wholescale Japanese units there until the end of the Pacific War in August of 1945 when Japan surrendered.
The graininess of the movie indicates it was made anywhere from the late 1940s to the late 1960s. Being that the film was in the Japanese language, I surmise that it was made by the Japanese for Japanese audiences. The English-language subtitling was not of a modern font, indicating that it was almost as old as the movie itself. The fact that the Tagalog dialog wasn't fully translated into English makes me wonder if it might have been made in the Philippines, but if that's so, why is it chiefly in Japanese? The actors portraying the Japanese soldiers appeared to be actual Japanese, and while I don't speak that language, it did not appear that they were non-Japanese men. The Filipino man spoke fluent, unhalted Tagalog, so I believe he is actually Filipino.
I tried to contact the channel that aired it, but it's a small local independent firm that has a small staff and they air movies in a "TBD" format, so there's no set schedule, guide or printed resource to see what will air or has aired. Calls and emails have proven fruitless. If you recognize anything about this film, please help me with its name, thank you.
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