The Purple Heart (1944)

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According to the article "Hollywood's friends and foes" by Colin Shindler in the film history tome 'The Movie', "In 1943 20th Century-Fox made 'The Purple Heart', best of the anti-Japanese pictures. Written and produced by 'Darryl. F. Zanuck' . . . it was intended to strength public hatred of the Japanese at a time when it appeared as if the war in Europe were stealing all the headlines. The film was not finally released until 1944 when the US War Department was prepared to concede officially that the Japanese had indeed been torturing American POWS. Zanuck would have been quite prepared to wait until the end of the war to release his picture - so strongly did he feel about it."
In the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack and the WW II war in the Pacific, this movie is considered amongst others in film history as an anti-Japanese US war propaganda film.
The trial, as depicted in the film, was held at Police Headquarters in Shanghai, China on 14 October 1942. The eight men were condemned to death. Hallmark, Farrow, and Spatz were executed by a firing squad of the Imperial Japanese Army at sunset the next day. The remainder were given an Imperial commutation to life in prison. In 1943, Meder died of mistreatment and various diseases. The remaining four survived until they were freed upon Japan's surrender in August, 1945.
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