Know Your Enemy: Japan

Know Your Enemy Japan is an American propaganda film directed by Frank Capra, commissioned by the U.S. War Department. Completion was delayed by disputes between the Hollywood producers and Washington. The original intention of the film was to prepare U.S. soldiers for war before deployment in the Pacific, though ultimately it never realized this purpose due to the wars abrupt end soon after its completion.

When the U.S. entered World War II, Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall made an official request to director Frank Capra for the production of a series of documentary films to be released to the general public and to be used for the orientation of American soldiers before and during deployment. Commissioned as a major and placed in charge of the 834th Photo Signal Detachment, Capra produced the film series Why We Fight, as well as other films, including Two Down and One to Go and Know Your Enemy Japan. Production on Know Your Enemy Japan began in 1942, and was troubled from the very beginning by the inability of the U.S. government to determine what exactly the foreign policy towards Japan should be. Frank Capra hired Joris Ivens to supervise the documentary in early 1943, but after Ivens delivered a 20minute preview, Frank Capra told Ivens that the U.S. Army not only disapproved of the approach Ivens had taken towards portraying the Japanese, but that they also had requested that he leave the production team. Ivens approach had been to treat the Japanese as openminded people being directed by a dictator, vilifying Emperor Hirohito. Allen Rivkin, one of the writers working on the script, commented that a large setback for the films production was the realization that we couldnt call Hirohito a war criminal because we knew we had to deal with him laterand it threw us into a tailspin. Thats why it took so long. ........

Source: Wikipedia