User Reviews

You can do worse than this World War II high seas saga containing an idea I had never come across before. A Japanese naval officer is transporting around two hundred Allied prisoners on a freighter from Karaku Island to an unknown destination. Unkown, because the intent is to make the ship visible to American destroyers so that it can be attacked and sunk, thereby fulfilling two goals. Primarily, it's a diversionary tactic to keep Allied naval vessels away from Japanese fighting ships, and on a more inhumane level, to kill all the prisoners aboard so they don't have to be quartered and fed at Japanese expense!

How the prisoners manage to foil their enemy is somewhat impractical, so you have to go along with the story for it to work. When a guard is called in to break up a fight among the prisoners, he unlocks a cell and enters among at least twenty men and women, thereby exposing himself to being overwhelmed, which he is in short order. The plan was to steal the key to the cell so a prisoner who was a locksmith could make an impression using stale bread, which would be used to make a new key once Captain Osikawa (Richard Loo) maintained order again. How that would have been possible without any sort of tools was not explained, so again, some suspension of disbelief is in order. While a female newspaper journalist among the prisoners offers the captain photos of Japanese atrocities in exchange for the lives of the prisoners, a number of men who escape from their cell by way of the newly made key, overwhelm the captain and free Anne Graham (Nina Foch). From there, the remaining prisoners take over the undermanned ship and signal an American submarine to come to their rescue.

Aside from some of the inconsistencies in the story that make it less than credible, the picture is actually pretty entertaining and would have made an impression among American audiences at the time. The only other quibble I have with the story though is a remark made by a senior Japanese officer as Captain Osikawa was about to leave on the mission. He seemed to imply that the captain wouldn't survive it, almost as if that was part of the desired outcome!