Oba: The Last Samurai

In 1944 the American army lands on Saipan. Captain Sakae Oba refuses both to kill himself alongside his superiors and to go into a prisoner camp; he takes his men and the local residents who make the same choice up into the mountains. When word comes that Japan has surrendered he treats it as propaganda and keeps up the guerrilla attacks, and the Americans give him the name Fox. Even the American commander charged with catching him comes in time to respect this stubborn enemy. Oba and those with him held out for five hundred and twelve days; the surrender came in December 1945, three months after Japan’s. Hideyuki Hirayama directed, taking his material from a book by Don Jones, a former American soldier. Yutaka Takenouchi plays Oba, with Toshiaki Karasawa, Mao Inoue and Takayuki Yamada in the cast. Toho released it on 11 February 2011.