User Reviews

The memoirs of the real Gwen Terasaki serve as the basis for Bridge To The Sun. Carroll Baker and James Shigeta would have troubles enough in an interracial marriage in the Thirties in America, especially Baker who was from Johnson City, Tennessee. But as America and Japan edge closer and finally go to war, this star-crossed couple has to make some choices that not too many others have to face.

But Baker and Shigeta are soul-mates and that fact is what keeps them together despite the upbringings of both. For Baker she's a southern girl born and bred. She has an easier time of overcoming that than Ensign Nellie Forbush in South Pacific, but it's there.

As for Shigeta he's a Japanese diplomat who thinks the militarists are leading his country down the wrong path. But he's also traditional Japanese who believes that the woman is most inferior. There's a great scene of dinner at their house in Japan where the women eat separately at their own table. Some political remarks are made and she commits the ultimate social sin of speaking up. That leads to a nasty quarrel. It reminds of the scene in Giant where Elizabeth Taylor speaks up in a political discussion to Rock Hudson's chauvinistic chagrin. Texans and Japanese have chauvinism much in common.

Of course when war is finally declared Shigeta is shipped home and Baker takes their daughter and accompanies him. Her insights into the Japanese home front are the best part of the film and her life story.

It's not true that Gwen Teresaki took their daughter back to America much less Tennessee. She would know better than to take a mixed racial child anywhere in Dixie. 'Terry' Teresaki did die young and Gwen enjoyed a long widowhood in life not dying until 1990. But not within a year of their departure. The real Teresaki became part of the Japanese new government under the occupation and he died in 1951 just before the occupation ended.

Bridge To The Sun should have been done in color, but I'm supposing that was to allow that black and white newsreel footage to be integrated into the story. Baker and Shigeta are fine in the leads and the story is an eternal that while love can be on a rocky road, it finds a way if it's real.

I just saw this at the SF Asian American Film Festival. Apparently, there is only one print in existence and no VHS or DVD releases. I hope that you are as lucky as I was and get an opportunity to see it.

The lead, Shigeta, was at the screening and spoke a few words to the audience and answered some questions. He got a standing ovation. I was glad that he is still sharp and articulate.

The good:

1) James Shigeta is outstanding. He's handsome and skilled. He plays Terasaki with passion and sophistication.

2) It's a view of WW2 from the Japanese side, which is all too rare.

3)It's based on a true story, which makes the film resonate even more.

4) The dialogue is wonderful. The opening scene is written and acted with a lot of wit which had the audience laughing.

5) It was produced in 1961. Unlike many Hollywood films of the time, Asians have a reasonably accurate portrayal and not just crude caricature (e.g. "Breakfast at Tiffany's").

The bad:

1) The film is set in the 1930s and 40s but the costuming and furnishings are straight out of 1960. I'm a bit of a vintage clothing geek so this was jarring.

I've heard better sales pitches than one promoting a movie made by a bush league French director with a 99 per cent Japanese cast but the result is surprisingly pleasing. It's our old friend the mixed-race love story and may not have been possible had not the much higher profile Marlon Brando not broken the ground with Sayonara several years previously. Whilst Brando played a genuine bigoted Southerner - possibly in order to intensify his conversion - Carroll Baker plays a seemingly non-racist denizen of Tennessee who on a trip to Washington meets, falls for and marries Japanese diplomat James Shigeta around 1935. They move to Japan but are posted back to Washington shortly before Pearl Harbor and when he is deported she elects to go with him rather than stay in the US. This gives us a chance to see the war from the Japanes point of view almost forty years before Clint Eastwood showed us again and it is an interesting if not even rewarding experience. Baker was never much of an actress but she is well up to the demands made on her here and Shigeta is excellent.

Overall, this movie impresses me, and in fact I think there's even more of a story that could be told in perhaps a longer television miniseries. But then we wouldn't have the really outstanding performance of James Shigeta. And, just for the record, this is a true story.

Shigeta stars as the real life Japanese embassy (in Washington) personnel who marries a country girl (Carroll Baker) from the deep South. They return to his Japan where she confronts a totally different societal norm that she must adjust to. At times it's humorous, but it does a good job of portraying the obstacles to miscegenation in both cultures...although if anything, understates it. They return to Washington for his new post, and Shigeta's character attempts to prevent WWII from breaking out, but this aspect of the film is shirted to the point of being confusing...as it that general subplot through the rest of the film. He is deported after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and she insists on returning with him to Japan, where she and their daughter must endure the harsh realities of war time and cultural biases. Again, that is marginalized in the film compared to what it must have been in real life. After the war, he becomes increasingly ill and sends here back home to America before he dies alone in Japan.

The main thing to complain about in the plot is that things are seen through rose-colored glasses. The realities in most aspects of the film would have been far more challenging. But, part of the problem is compressing such an expansive story into 113 minutes. As a result, we do not see the characters as courageous as they must have been.

James Shigeta was actually born in the Territory of Hawaii, studied drama at New York University, and enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps during the Korean War where he became a Staff Sergeant. Nevertheless, he is superb here...not to mention being a real "hunk". I would blame the one flaw of his performance on the director -- he's too Americanized in the early part of the film when working first time around at the embassy in Washington.

Carroll Baker -- not an actress I've happened upon often -- does fine as the wife.

James Yagi and Hiroshi Tomono turn in pleasing performances in the supporting cast.

This is a very pleasing film...perhaps to pleasing. If it were remade today I rather think we would see more bluntness regarding the attitude toward insemination in both the United States and Japan, and more depth in terms of the hardships the characters endured during and after WWII. Nevertheless, it's a fine film for its time, and highly recommended.

Carol Baker and James Shigata are good highly capable performers, but they tended to peak early in the 1950s and 1960s. However, they both did very well in telling this true story about Gwen, an American from Tennessee, met, fell in love with, and married "Teri" a Japanese diplomat in Washington, and how the events of 1935 to 1945 made their lives together extremely difficult if not dangerous. For the events leading to the Great Pacific War between Japan and the U.S. made Gwen's insistence on staying with Teri and their daughter Mako (two young girls play Mako as she grows to be nine years old) lead to one problem after another.

This film was produced in 1961, and it was made just at the moment when American audiences began being willing to make some extended effort at burying the hatchet with Japan. In the 1950s, thanks to Douglas MacArthur's work as our "proconsul" rebuilding Japan, the country retained it's imperial family (even Hirohito) and yet became a fairly reliable ally and democracy. It helped that in this period China (formerly the tragic victim of Japanese militarism) was now (except for Formosa) a bastion of Communism. The films of this period did show negatives in part (Sessue Hayakawa's Col. Saito in "The Bridge On The River Kwai" at first), but also showed the pressures on our old enemies. Hayakawa's Saito loses face to his prisoner Nicholson who is better organized in engineering the bridge than the Japanese Colonel is. Other films dealt with re-understanding Japan. There was "Sayonara", where Marlon Brando, Red Buttons, and Myoshi Umeki try to sexually bridge the divide of East and West, with tragic results. There was the kids travelogue - adventure film "Escapade In Japan", wherein American and Japanese kids pal around the country. There was also the film "A Majority Of One", wherein middle aged Roselind Russell and Japanese industrialist Alec Guiness find a romance despite her children's opposition. Also despite some past history (her son died at Pearl Harbor, his wife and children at Hiroshima). There was also the French film "Hiroshima Mon Amour" which was about an inter-racial love affair, but looked at the long range effects of the radiation in the bombed city. It was a good moment to reevaluate the past. The period probably lasted until 1970 when "Tora, Tora, Tora" properly and somberly presented the story of the attack of December 1941 from both sides.

To me "Bridge To The Sun" is a natural follow-up of Jimmy Cagney's "Blood On The Sun". Although the Japanese were mostly villains and sneaks in Cagney's film (especially the politician Baron Tanaka - John Emory) Cagney was willing to show there were good Japanese, in particular an elderly Japanese aristocrat seeking to prevent the success of the militarists (and who is murdered by them). That happened to be true regarding the politics of Japan in the 1930s. Several leading politicians who seemed too peaceful or not patriotic were killed off by assassins (most of whom got slap on the wrist punishments). Shigata's Teri happens to be of the peace party, and as the film continues one sees he is fighting an impossibly well organized foe. The best moment that shows this is in a portion of the film dealing with November - December 1941. Shigata tries to get a missionary friend to speak to FDR to send a personal message to the Emperor to keep Japan and the U.S. at peace. Instead, we see that despite all attempts to be careful, Shigata and his fellow peace lovers are being observed by the militarists.

The story of the mixed marriage is fascinating because both Americans and Japanese stigmatize the couple. While going to the train with Mako to be reunited with Teri, Gwen sees American racism and hatred at it's worse ("how dare she marry one of those people!"). Similarly Teri is bothered in Japan by military bullyboys, and Mako is crying when she is teased and hit by Japanese children and even her teacher. Yet by the time the film ends, Mako has become so identified with her father's people she hates the Americans as invaders.

"Bridge To The Sun" may be the best Hollywood film to show the home front in Japan in the war. It is disheartening. While America and Britain went into rationing in the war, they never went as far as Japan did where a little rice was given to the Japanese people for most of their stamps. Actually even Germany was being less hard for awhile. According to Albert Speer, luxury items were being produced in Hitler's Reich up to late 1944. Not Japan - every available crumb went into the military's stomachs.

The film follows Teri's continued attempts to rebuild the peace party, which only gets him into serious trouble with his oldest friend Hara (James Yagi, who gives a good performance of a committed militarist who won't let old friendships keep him from his work). But Teri won't give up, despite Hara and the Kamentai. And Gwen remains loyal to her husband, up to the film's end...which is quite unexpectedly poignant.

Saw this by chance last night on TCM. It was very good, although melodramatic at times. My husband and I cried at the end. Highly recommended. This was a very interesting portrayal of Japan during WWII and interracial marriage. The depiction of Japanese life was well done. For example, the young woman who betrays Teri does it for food. She's shown a couple of times stuffing handouts from people in her mouth. I did not know that the Japanese people were starving during WWII, but this made it clear. Carroll Baker did a good job of showing the transformation of her character from a young sheltered woman from the South to an older woman who endured hardships that most of us never will and grew to understand her husband at the end. A real weeper.

I just saw Bridge To The Sun a few moments ago on TMC for the first time. Man, am I impressed! The acting was superb and completely believable, and the direction and overall production was first rate. About a Japanese man who marries a small town southern girl shortly before the outbreak of the second world war. What happens to them and their fight to stay alive and together is nothing short of heartbreakingly sad, all the more so because it is based on a true story. The love of these two is to me the strongest anti-war statement that one could make. A reminder that in the insanity of war, the civilized, the gentle and loving are always the first to die. A great, great film - not to be missed, but be prepared to weep and to curse war.

Top notch performances by Carroll Baker (low key and more grounded than "Baby Doll") and James Shigeta makes this war drama about a scandalous romance truly a must see. They are sensational together, and go through so much as their real life characters that at times, it's truly a heart-wrenching story.

Racism is abound in the most disgusting of ways, whether subtle from Baker's old fashioned aunt or the white woman screaming at her violently when Baker and Her half Japanese daughter are taken by bus to an interment camp before they can somehow get back to Japan where war is now in full force and her race makes her an outcast even though she's married to a loving Japanese man.

These two characters are not saints, although Baker tries desperately to remain a devoted wife and mother and strives to avoid becoming racist among her husband's people who are very anti American. He struggles to overcome his anti-west mentality and fights to maintain peace, but as a close ally of the emperor's is as powerless as Hirohito was. Shigeta has star quality by the case load and gives a dignified, strong performance, one of the best of 1961, as is hers.

This goes into great depths to show the squalors of war, both emotionally and physically, and while not in an America internment camp, Baker's existence is definitely an emotional prison. These factors fly off the screen and give the viewer tons of emotions to process, and for this viewer, it was enlightening to see a story of war that was fresh and riveting and profound, a drama that really stands time's test wonderfully.