The Purple Heart

Film, the Purple Heart is a film that was made in tribute of all the American soldiers that fought in World War II. In the film, there were eight Americans which were all soldiers. The reason that those eight soldiers were arrested by Japanese was because they took a one-way flight, their sole aim was to attack Japan in response of their attack on Pearl Harbor. They knew they were risking their lives, and they knew they were leaving their loved ones behind, for only one purpose that was to secure their lives, and American people’s lives, more importantly freedom. It is exactly what Eric Foner talks about in his book, which is to promote and fight for freedom.

As the film reflected, we learned a lot about American culture even though there were not much of dialogs. We knew that American freedom was threatened by the imperial power due to the invasion of Japanese naval force’s attack on Pearl Harbor. A lot of people feared that imperial power would attack on American soil again, but American people would not bent down to imperial power to risk their freedom, they answered when the country needed them the most, so the U.S. government decided to declare war on Japan as a lesson. It was not just a war, it was a message that sent by the American people that our freedom would not and could not be challenged by anyone, because that’s American people’s belief.

The film did not reveal much of gender, class or race issues. But it did reflect Japanese soldiers’ cruelty; they tortured American soldiers one after one so they could get a conviction on them, but they stood on their grounds and did not say a word.

My favorite part of the movie was when the American soldiers were talking over with each other if anyone of them had second thoughts about not giving or saying anything to the Japanese, unsurprisingly, none of them wanted to. Words do not say a lot, action does. That tells us a lot about American true value, and those few individuals’ character.