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Review: The World War II doc ‘Behind Bayonets and Barbed Wire’ attempts to re-create the horrors of the Bataan Death March

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It’s called World War II for a reason, but the attention paid to it today often concentrates on the European theater of operations. The documentary “Behind Bayonets and Barbed Wire” attempts to correct that imbalance, with mixed results.

A Chinese American production co-directed by Richard L. Anderson and Shen Haofang, “Behind Bayonets” is mostly straightforward and informational, filling us in on the story of American prisoners of war who surrendered after the defense of the Philippines failed in 1942 and ended up spending time in a savage Japanese prison camp in the city of Mukden (today’s Shenyang) in Chinese Manchuria.

A small handful of these survivors, all in their 90s, are still alive, and “Behind Bayonets” interviews them to good effect. Also of interest is the newsreel footage showing battles, prisoners and famous speeches like Gen. Douglas MacArthur promising “I shall return” after he was evacuated from Manila.

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But after MacArthur left on orders, and Gen. Jonathan Wainwright was left in command, about 88,000 American and Filipino troops surrendered to the Japanese, apparently the largest mass surrender in American military history.

The number was so large that the Japanese were apparently unprepared to handle that many. One solution was to march everyone, even the sick and wounded, 66 miles north to a POW camp in the north of the country called Camp O’Donnell.

Because this was a forced march, and because the Japanese attacked and outright killed prisoners almost at random, this event has become known as the Bataan Death March, with estimates of the dead ranging up to 15,000.

Where “Behind Bayonets” goes astray is in its decision to offer re-creations of the beatings and the killings that took place, with actors reenacting the memories of the interviewed men as well as episodes from books on the march, like Lester Tenney’s “My Hitch in Hell: The Bataan Death March.”

These re-creations, sad to relate, are awkward and amateurish and make the atrocities depicted seem less rather than more real.

Once the prisoners arrived at Mukden, things did not improve. The barracks were infested with rats and lice, some of the men were subjected to biological warfare, and the temperature was so cold burials couldn’t take place and bodies by the hundred were stacked in an empty barracks.

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Because this film has a Chinese component, time is spent emphasizing China’s importance to the Allies’ ultimate victory. “Chinese people fought long and hard for eight years,” type on screen tells us, adding that Chinese troops were responsible for 70% of Japanese killed, wounded or captured during the war.

Though the film’s re-creations are not stellar, the stories these men tell are intense. Because, for instance, they had to recite their prisoner numbers in Japanese every day, they all remember those digits to this day, more than half a century after the fact.

It is a chance to see and hear these men, old and infirm though they are, that provides “Behind Bayonets” with its strongest moments. Clear-eyed and resilient, they are not consumed by anger or bitterness (“I’ve mellowed just a little bit,” one man says with a laugh) and view things with enviable perspective.

“I see the good and bad in all of them,” another survivor says, and no one in “Beyond Bayonets and Barbed Wire” argues with that.

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No MPAA rating.

Running time: 2 hours.

Playing Laemmle’s Music Hall, Beverly Hills.

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