WWII - Kamikaze (DVD)

Shockingly brutal archival footage highlights this sobering account of the conflict between America and Japan during World War II! Kamikaze begins with the events leading up to Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and ends with the devastating bomb blast over Hiroshima in 1945. Most horrifying of all are the scenes of the kamikaze ("divine wind") pilots, devoted to crashing their planes into Allied warships, sacrificing their lives for Imperial Japan. Writer-director Perry Wolff (who filmed Jacqueline Kennedy's famous tour of the White House in 1962) brilliantly combines remarkable newsreel footage with re-enactments from postwar Japanese films to raise this documentary above the usual propagandist WWII fare. Kamikaze screened in the U.S. as part of a double bill with The Smashing of the Reich, also produced by Wolff. They served as direct competition to Darryl F. Zanuck's epic war film The Longest Day, which opened in theaters the same week.

• documentary