I agree that the movie is not about the Japanese per se. It’s about how past trauma can kill a person going forward unless they find a way to let it go via forgiveness and in the case of Louis Zamporini, giving one’s life to Christ.
The setting just happened to be the backdrop of Imperial Japan and it is a shame and perhaps a danger that they have not yet faced fully what was allowed to happen in their history. Americans are pretty aware of Sherman’s March to the Sea during the War of the States. There’s no hiding it although it was less severe than what was documented about what the Japanese imperial forces did to people.
The movie is timely as it is places itself in the public eye at the same time that the liberal press is trying to gain traction with a report of ‘US Torture’ of Muslim combatents. Young thinking Americans who are relatively unexposed to historical accounts of state-sponsored torture should be able to draw a clear distinction between recent American ‘Enhanced Interrogation’ events versus the diabolical and unthinkable torture of prisoners at the hands of WWII Japanese tormentors.