Wars are terrible things.
American prisoners suffered horribly in Japanese captivity, as did mot of the people who had to endure life under the warlords of Japan, Nazi Germany and later Joseph Stalin.
But the policies urged by governments or the warlords who ran the governmnet were not necessarily reflected by all indivudals.
The Japanese soldiers were fed a diet of war-propaganda about Americans and American cruelty. They were taught that they were modern re-incarnations of the Samurai and the Samaurai would never surrender, they would rather die fightening than disgrace themselves by surrender and anyone who surrendered had lost face and personality as a human being. They lived by that code themselves and believed that any enemy soldier who surrendered had lost their humanity and were worthless as human beings. This was a distortion of Bushido.
This is not a defense of Japanese war cruelty, but an explanation.
At the same time, there was at least one case of a Japanese official in Eastern Europe who risked his life and the lives of his family by issuing visas to European Jews as he felt NAZI extermination policies towards them made no sense.
The average Japanese soldier, like the average American, German, Russian soldier, was fighting for his country.
Its ironic that during the siege of Peking, two of the Countrys' troops which distinguished themselves by such outstanindg bravery were the Japanese and Americans who behaved much better than the Europeans there. Both sides should have taken a closer look at each other - perhaps WW2 would have been written differently.
WW2 is over. Both the Japanes and Americans suffered horribly at each other's hands. Now we are allies and face new enemies. I hope this movie doesn't create bad blood.
I would rather have the Japanese as allies than the French, Germans and other Euroweenies.