Trama

His ideals challenged by life as a conscript in war-time Japan's military, a pacifist faces ever greater tests in his fight for survival.

Part three of a trilogy. After the Japanese defeat to the Russians in the last episode, Kaji, the Japanese soldier and humanistic protagonist, leads the last remaining men through Manchuria. Intent on returning to his dear wife and his old life, Kaji faces great odds in a variety of different harrowing circumstances as he and his fellow men sneak behind enemy lines. Ultimately, he finds himself in the exact opposite position he held in the first episode: Then a labor manager, Kaji is now a prisoner of war, forced to work for the Russians, who do not seem to hold to the Communist ideals in which Kaji himself had put his faith.—nao209@nyu.edu

The Japanese troops are defeated by the Soviets and Kaji heads with three survivors to South Manchurian expecting to meet his wife. Along their crossing through the enemy line in the Manchurian land, other Japanese survivors join Kaji's group, but they need to fight against the Chinese militias and the Soviets. When they reach a Japanese village with women and one old man, a militia arrives in the place and Kaji and his men surrender to the Soviet to spare the women. The POWs are sent to a labor work camp and Kaji sees no difference between the treatment of the Japanese fascists and the Soviet communists, in which principles Kaji believed. He decides to escape from the camp to meet his beloved Michiko again.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil