I've never felt any sympathy for war criminals including the ones from this country. For example, the soldier who interrupted his lunch to shoot a baby that had crawled out of a ditch at Mi Lai. I've had people enraged at me for saying this.
The Thick-Walled Room was based on the writings of B- and C-class Japanese war criminals, which may have been a mistake since the movie is more sympathetic to them than to the victims of Japanese atrocities. There are only a couple flashbacks to the crimes they committed. One killed a man who fed a group of Japanese soldiers. Another used a man tied to a tree for bayonet practice.
A prisoner's Communist brother visits him. He had himself been jailed for his opposition to the Korean War. His brother was a war criminal---he was a peace criminal. He argues that low level war criminals got harsher sentences than the ones who gave the orders. The U.S. keeps war criminals locked up even as they try to re-militarize Japan.
There was this one thing that made me think of those of us sheltering in place from Covid-19. The prisoner tells his brother, "At first I thought by staying in here, we'd become more pure and spiritual. As it turns out, the opposite is true."
The American guards seemed to be played by Japanese. A few were either in really convincing white face or were non-English speaking whites doing their lines phonetically. In one scene, an American guard sings "My Darling Clementine" while the prisoners work. In another scene, one sings "Camptown Races".
Some prisoner sneak into the execution chamber to get a look at the gallows. "I heard Tojo forgot to say 'Long live the Emperor'."
There are three comments on this movie on IMDb and they're all pro-war criminal.
Available on the Criterion Channel.
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