blanche-2 Carroll Baker stars with James Shigeta in "Bridge to the Sun," based on the book by Gwen Terasaki. Though I believe dramatic license was taken regarding the love story between Gwen and her husband, certainly there are many fascinating aspects of her experiences that were included.Gwen meets diplomat Hidenari Terasaki when he was in Washington, and they fall in love and marry in 1931, though I'm not sure that was the year the film gave. Terasaki was First Secretary at the Japanese Embassy and also a pacifist who wanted to avoid war. Didn't happen. When the war starts, he has to return to Japan, and though he doesn't want his wife put into danger, Gwen insists on going too and brings their daughter, Mako. In her book, they are repatriated via neutral Angola.Once in Japan, they face many hardships and Terasaki much criticism because his wife is an American. There is no food, and there is a lot of bombing. They receive an offer to stay somewhere in the country, and they go; they face betrayal and danger there too.If you have read or seen Dragon Seed, you have an idea of what the Japanese did to the Chinese. Absolutely horrible. They are no better to the Americans, who were used for slave labor when captured - they are seen working on the railroad tracks as Gwen heads out to the country. One can feel sympathy for the people, but not their leaders, who lied to them about how the war was going.Both Baker and Shigeta are very good. Shigeta's role is more difficult as he has to show the ravages of his stress and exhaustion, and he does a beautiful job. It's funny what your impressions are when you are growing up. I was raised Catholic and I seem to recall Carroll Baker was considered some sort of sex kitten. She really evokes sympathy here and gives a lovely, sincere performance. This is a poignant film, a tearjerker, about two people from two different cultures caught in an impossible situation. It's all the more poignant because the emotions are true.

bkoganbing 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.

writers_reign 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.

yenlo This 1961 picture seems somewhat forgotten today despite the fact that it is quite a good movie. An American girl played by Carroll Baker falls in love with a Japanese diplomat and marries him. After the attack on Pearl Harbor she finds herself in Japan with her husband and quickly learns the problems of being in a strange country with much different customs and ideals than she is used to. Then to make matters worse her husband's nation is of course at war with her native homeland.James Shigeta puts in an outstanding performance as Bakers Japanese husband who while in America acts very westernized. Once back in his homeland he acts much different and Shigetas job at this adds much to the film. The struggles of an interracial marriage are part of the story along with the horrors and hardships of being in a land that is becoming ravaged by total war being waged against it. In viewing this film you'll find yourself asking "How would I feel if I were in a foreign land with a wife or husband who was a native of that country and the nation of my birth was waging war on it". Who is the enemy? My spouses people or mine?