When Yamashita learns that his mother and sister have fallen victim to Hamada's profiteering schemes, he attempts to break out to seek revenge, but is caught.
[7][8] Due to the film's subject matter, the imprisonment of Japanese soldiers for committed war crimes and their mistreatment by members of the American forces, Shochiku shelved its release for three years.
[3][9][10] An article published in the Asahi Shimbun newspaper on 2 December 1953 stated that the studio board's decision had been made because of the film's anti-American content.
[3] Shirō Kido, head of the Shochku studios and war criminal, publicly declared that motion pictures were "a vehicle for the expression of emotion and not theory".
[6] Still, Prince joined in the canon that Kobayashi's film suggested that the depicted war crimes were "occasional rather than systematic" and that the Japanese prisoners were held unfairly, suffering from the oppression imposed by a foreign power.