''OBJECTIVE BURMA'' PROVOKED RAGE IN UK IN 1945

One well meaning movie that provoked rage among British Burma campaign veterans in 1945 was the Errol Flynn movie ''Objeective Burma'' which outraged British vets because the bulk of the ground fighting in Burma was done by British and Empire troops -although American flyers supplied and dropped Chindits behind Japanese ines.
But his movie-which Iactually enjoy watching when it frequently pos up on U.K. tv gives you the idea that Errol Flynn and his American paratroop brigade helped by a couple of Indian soldiers-sngleandedly fought and beat the Japanese.
There were angry letters in the British Press during 1945-46 when the movie was shown in the U.K by Burma veterans. So much so that later versions of the movie has an on-sceen introduction pointing out that the movie was dedicated to ALL those allied troops who had fought in Burma.

 

I can see that happening. However, you have to look at it from a step or two back. Pretty much ANY movie produced in Hollywood is going to have the Americans as the heroes. And the villain, no matter which country, is going to speak with either an Hispanic or a British accent. I've seen British-made movies where the Americans spoke nothing like we actually do here, and the Brits saved the day of course. In early 1945, my bet would be that the movie was filmed this way in order to help keep the patriotic fervor of the civilian population up, in order to keep war bonds, scrap-metal drives, and other war-effort support going.

 

In an example where Hollywood was diplomatically correct: the Stilwell Road movie documentary is on-line. 51 minutes long. Quite good. See: Stilwell Road - YouTube

- Thanks go to OpenFlix and CineVault.com - we are quite happy to accept very short advertizements every 15 minutes in order to have this wonderful resource freely available.

"Narrated by actor (and future U.S. President) Ronald Reagan, it focuses on the China-India-Burma front of the war. The Stillwell Road (named after American General Joseph Stillwell, whose idea it was) was an engineering marvel whose purpose was to truck supplies to the Chinese army fighting the Japanese in China. It started in India, cut through the almost impenetrable jungles and mountains of Burma, and ended in China.

Narrated by Ronald Reagan, a documentary about the construction of the Stilwell Road--originally called The Ledo Road--a 478-mile passage from Assam, India, to Ledo, Burma, during World War II. The road, which was built by 63,000 workers and cost $150 million, was used by the British, Chinese and Indian armies to transport supplies, troops and other essentials from India to Burma in order to keep the Japanese from overrunning the entire theater. Included is footage of the construction of the road itself and of Gen. Joseph "Vinegar Joe" Stillwell, the American general in charge of forces in the China-Burma-India area of operations and for whom the road was named."