Display MoreWar never changes but it's certainly interesting to see how its portrayal in the media does! The Wing Commander movie club found that while Go for Broke! certainly isn't some brilliant film that it was a pretty fascinating look at a war story that we don't know enough. The film itself is by the numbers–lots of shooting and characters learning dramatic moral lessons–but it's not quite like a Dam Busters or a Longest Day. It was fascinating to see actual Japanese-American veterans getting to tell their own story just a few years after it happened. !
Here's the movie's title, which as we noted in the previous post was the real motto of the 442nd Infantry Regiment. One of the movie characters explains that "it's Pidgin English for shoot the works" which… actually feels like a more arcane saying, but who knows! It definitely matches Wing Commander II's history of interestingly-named friendly capital ships.
But the most interesting part of the movie viewing is the one that remains mostly unspoken: how this United States government-funded movie was attempting to recontextualize the horrible then very recent history of internment camps for Japanese American citizens. The film occasionally refers to them as "relocation camps" but mostly avoids the subject altogether. Some years back I visited the former camp at Manzanar with Dundradal and found it to be one of the most uneasy places I've ever been. A desolate, lonely place hidden away from the rest of the population behind mountains and desert in California.
Wing Commander also did this story! In Pilgrim Stars, the attacks from Admiral Wilson and Captain Aristee prompt Confederation senators advise their constituents of Pilgrim ancestry to seek shelter at 'designated safe zones'. Upon learning this from Admiral Tolwyn, Commodore Bellegarde shoots back: "Why don't they call them what they are–internment camps?" Later, he watches a news report from Earth where we see that things aren't going well in these camps. (This seemed cartoonish in 1999 but today it feels like something you'd see on the news today.)
"Seen here in a Terran Six News exclusive, Marines try to quell the crowds, but their efforts are only marginally successful," the reporter said before her image returned. "The death toll in Spiritia stands at over three thousand. Nearly twenty million Pilgrims live there now, with just five hundred thousand Marines assigned to keep the peace. Reports of massive food shortages have already poured in from Spiritia and the other enclaves. Meanwhile, skirmishes continue to break out in and around the nearly ten thousand Pilgrim safe camps."
Bellegarde now studied the image of a university campus. Ancient brick buildings with signs identifying them as Library, Administration, Biological Sciences, Offworld Sciences, and Humanities and Fine Arts girdled an oval reflection pond about thirty meters across. The caption read: DESIGNATED PILGRIM SAFE ZONE: UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA, EARTH. A half dozen rifle-toting young men sprinted along the pond's perimeter, with an equal number of Marines in pursuit. The men took up flanking positions near the library and unleashed a vicious spray of conventional fire into the building's glass doors as the reporter narrated the action. "Many Confederation citizens are using the current crisis as an excuse to take the law into their own hands. Some seek revenge for the Pilgrim war, and they intend to get it. Marines who have been assigned to protect camps like this one in Central Florida have been accused of doing a less than adequate job. One Marine, Private Jacko Fistalis, had this to say."
The chiseled young grunt held his combat helmet in the crook of his arm, and stared self-consciously at the camera. "Couple my buddies from boot were on Mylon Three when it was attacked. Yeah, we gotta protect these people, but if a few Pilgrims buy it, well, it won't be on my conscience. They got it coming. Hey, Mom! Hey, Pop! You [BEEP]ing believe this? I'm on the [BEEP]ing news!" The grunt's ridiculous grin dissolved, and the reporter returned.You can read more about this rare appearance of a 'real' place in a Wing Commander story here. At the end of the book we learn that Karista Mullens is being sent to a Pilgrim internment camp on Mars. In Pilgrim Truth we learn that the Confederation has now made these camps mandatory in a vote "along partisan lines". This quickly causes even more problems, with the cost of the camps causing delays in food and cargo shipments and requiring the passage of a 'crisis tax'. Meanwhile, Tolwyn plots to expand the camps to imprison Pilgrims from their former homeworlds and enclaves. Towards the end of the story, Karista and her compatriots escape the camp on Mars to head to McDaniel's World.
Sully can't go for broke; he doesn't have any money!
