{"id":35240,"date":"2021-05-14T19:07:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-14T23:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=35240"},"modified":"2021-05-14T19:07:00","modified_gmt":"2021-05-14T23:07:00","slug":"the-bootleg-files-our-job-in-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2021\/05\/14\/the-bootleg-files-our-job-in-japan\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bootleg Files: Our Job in Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 766: <\/strong>\u201cOur Job in Japan\u201d (1946 U.S. Army propaganda film.).<\/p>\n

LAST SEEN:<\/strong> On YouTube and Internet Archive.<\/p>\n

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO:<\/strong> In collections of U.S. World War II military films.
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\nREASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS:<\/strong> No copyright was ever filed on this film, so it can be duped endlessly.<\/p>\n

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE:<\/strong> A digital restoration for commercial home entertainment release is unlikely.<\/p>\n

One of the most bizarre news stories of this year involved the decision by Dr. Seuss Enterprises to discontinue the publication of six books by the beloved children\u2019s author due to racially insensitive illustrations of Africans and Asians. The books in question were minor additions to the author\u2019s canon and were never adapted into films or television productions, but for many people the idea that a Dr. Seuss book would be taken off the shelves due to political correctness was the epitome of cancel culture run amok.
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However, this was hardly the first time Dr. Seuss was the victim of cancel culture. Back at the World War II when the author was Capt. Theodor S. Geisel in the Animation Department of the First Motion Picture Unit of the United States Army Air Forces, he wrote a screenplay for a film that was nearly cancelled by no less a figure than Gen. Douglas MacArthur because it was perceived as being too sympathetic to the Japanese.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur Job in Japan\u201d was a short documentary designed to be seen by U.S. troops heading to Japan as part of the postwar occupation. Prior to World War II, relatively few Americans had any understanding of Japanese culture \u2013 and, of course, during the war even less were interested in pursuing a more holistic consideration of Japan. Thus, the film needed to indoctrinate American occupation forces into understanding the people who were previously their enemy.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur Job in Japan\u201d opens with footage of the Japanese surrender to Allied forces aboard the U.S.S. Missouri in September 1945. The film\u2019s narrator bluntly states the Americans could achieve peace \u201cif we could solve the problem of 70 million Japanese people.\u201d From here, the film provides a skein of footage from Japanese newsreels that were seized by the American forces upon their arrival in the country. This footage, which was never seen by Americans during wartime, offered a rare glimpse of life in Japan during the conflict years.<\/p>\n

The difficulty before the occupying forces, it seems, is understanding what they should do with the former soldiers and the families that supported them during the war \u2013 especially when they blindly followed their leaders\u2019 orders to start a war that was \u201cso disgusting, so revolting, so obscene that it turned the stomach of the entire civilized world.\u201d These words were framed by images of children slain by the Japanese during their occupations of Asian nations.<\/p>\n

The challenge, the viewer is told, exists \u201cinside the brain in the Japanese head\u201d \u2013 which leads to a brief animated sequence showing disembodied brains. This leads to a montage of Japanese babies and younger children, and the narrator\u2019s observation that these youngsters were not born harboring evil ideas. \u201cThe Japanese brain, like our brain, can learn what it is taught.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alas, the Japanese brain was stifled by living in \u201can old, backward superstitious country\u201d and corrupted by military leaders who were \u201csmart enough to do tricks with the Japanese brain,\u201d the narrator insists. The key to their strategy, the narrator adds, was the militarists\u2019 use of the Shinto religion, which is dismissed as \u201cout of date, harmless\u201d \u2013 but a perfect vehicle for warlord propaganda.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey filled up the Shinto religion with hokum and used it to sell Japanese people war,\u201d the narrator said, adding that the warlords played up \u201cthe bloody fairy-tales and pagan superstitions\u201d while excavating the \u201cmumbo-jumbo\u201d from \u201cJapan\u2019s murky past.\u201d The result, the narrator intones, was the Japanese were told they could \u201crule like gods over all of the other peoples of the Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, the narrator states, the occupiers will make sure World War II will be Japan\u2019s last war because the nation\u2019s war machine will be dismantled. But it will be up the Japanese, the viewer is told, to recognize the errors of the previous thinking while the occupying force\u2019s job is to ensure they do it. <\/p>\n

At this point, another narrator\u2019s voice is heard and he talks about how American soldiers are making in-roads with the Japanese, particularly with children. He highlights how the U.S. Army believes in giving \u201ca fair break for everyone regardless of race or creed or color.\u201d (That might have come as a surprise to the servicemembers forced to sit in the back of the bus or drink from a separate water fountain.) Then, the first narrator comes back to state, \u201cWe\u2019re sticking around until they\u2019ve shown us \u2013 convinced us \u2013 that they\u2019ve got themselves under control.\u201d The film closes with a grisly montage of dead American fighters floating in the water and the narrator reminds the viewer that \u201cwe\u2019re not the type of people who forget things overnight \u2026 we\u2019ve had enough of the bloody, barbaric business to last us from here on in.\u201d<\/p>\n

In retrospect, it is easy to see why MacArthur was apoplectic over \u201cOur Job in Japan.\u201d Geisel\u2019s script put the entire blame for the war on the nation\u2019s military leaders and gave the impression that the Japanese people were duped into going into a vicious war by a corrupted version of Shintoism. The general tried to prevent the film from being screened, but strangely his authority was not strong enough to censor \u201cOur Job in Japan.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, the 17-minute \u201cOur Job in Japan\u201d would later be expanded upon to become the 48-minute 1947 release \u201cDesign for Death.\u201d Geisel and Elmo Williams, who edited \u201cOur Job in Japan,\u201d worked on the longer film with director Richard Fleischer \u2013 RKO Pictures put the film in theaters and it won the Academy Award as Best Documentary. \u201cDesign for Death\u201d was out of circulation for so many years that Geisel wondered if the film was lost \u2013 it still survives, but is not in commercial circulation. <\/p>\n

\u201cOur Job in Japan,\u201d as with other U.S. military films made during World War II, were never copyright protected. As a result, the film has been duped endlessly. Some not-pristine versions can be found on YouTube and Internet Archive, offering a blurry reminder of what Dr. Seuss was making before he was putting a cat in a hat and saving Christmas from the Grinch.<\/p>\n

IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.<\/em>
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\nListen to the award-winning podcast \u201cThe Online Movie Show with Phil Hall\u201d<\/a> on SoundCloud, with new episodes every Monday. <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 766: \u201cOur Job in Japan\u201d (1946 U.S. Army propaganda film.). LAST SEEN: On YouTube and Internet Archive. AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: In collections of U.S. World War II military films. REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: No copyright was ever filed on this film, so it can be duped endlessly. CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":35241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1513],"tags":[292,297,1370,2737,800,1371],"class_list":["post-35240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bootleg-files","tag-documentary","tag-dr-seuss","tag-japan","tag-our-job-in-japan","tag-propaganda","tag-world-war-ii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35240"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35242,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35240\/revisions\/35242"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}