Sydney At War

On the night of the 31st May 1942, three Japanese midget submarines entered Sydney Harbour and launched a surprise attack. A night of confusion and violence followed; by daybreak, 21 Allied sailors and 6 Japanese submariners were dead.

The Japan Foundation, Sydney is proud to present a special screening of Sydney At War – The Untold Story, with an introduction by director Claude Gonzalez and a Q & A session after the film. In this fascinating documentary film, survivors from both sides reveal their own stories, providing a poignant reminder that the echoes of this tragic event still reverberate today.

*Click photo to enlarge

When:	When: 6:30pm, 23 Wednesday February 2005 Where: The Japan Foundation, Sydney Multipurpose Room
Where:	The Japan Foundation, Sydney – Gallery
Cost:	Free, however bookings are essential
Enquiries/Bookings:	(02) 8239 0055 / reception@jpf.org.au

Sydney At War received a grant under the Japan Foundation Film Production Support Program 2003-2004 and premiered at the Sydney International Film Festival in 2004.

Interview with Claude Gonzalez

In the July 2004 issue of Across the Sea, Editor Catherine Maxwell interviewed Claude Gonzalez, writer, director and co-producer of Sydney At War – The Untold Story. The interview is reproduced below.

Where did you get the idea for this story? Did you have a personal connection or particular interest in this subject?

All cities have great stories. But this one always struck me as something that had really never been looked at in detail. We know incidents about the Cowra breakout, for example, or Darwin, and other war stories. But none related to Sydney Harbour. I became more and more interested over the years, but finally, it was a person who really initiated it - Neil Roberts. He was an able seaman aboard the Kuttabul [which was sunk] on the night of the attack. He’s a very compassionate man, who has never felt any regret about what had happened, or any bitterness. I took a lot of heart from what he had to say. A lot of the stories that I had read were very factual and I thought wouldn’t it be interesting to make a film that relied more on the emotions of people, that looked at two different cultures subtly, not with an edge of tainting or blame.

How did you go about tracing survivors in both Japan and Australia? Were they willing to share their stories?

I was very lucky to work with a very good researcher, who was able to help me to gather contacts in Japan. It was such an enriching thing because we could see that people were prepared to be open. They’d almost been waiting for me to walk through the door to release a lot of their emotions. And I found that a wonderful way to start a film, because often you begin with a lot of resistance. Documentary filmmaking is about trust. So establishing that trust in Japan was something that gave me a lot of hope.

And on the Australian side?

I was able to go through the Australian War Memorial and one of the survivors was also able to link me up with a lot of people. Through [the process of gathering contacts and information], I found a strong sense of what I wanted say about our own situation today and our own situation in the past. We need to create bonds together to move on, and the more we don’t face them, we put it off to another day, then the more we have to regret. A lot of the interviewees were very curious about each other’s cultures. ‘What do the Japanese think about us? Do they commemorate it like we do?’ and the Japanese would say the same thing.

There’s a lot to be said for speaking about these things - Japan also has a heavy heart because what happened over the decades and maybe it’s ready to speak about those things, so now we have to give it that voice. I think that this generation and the last generation have looked into the war years and they’re ready to speak about it. But it’s still a sensitive issue. And yet in Australia when we speak about it, we do it in such a flighty way. So we can learn so much from one another.

How did it feel to be able to talk to all these people who had experienced those events, on both sides and from a range of different perspectives?

A lot of the participants have had 62 years to think about what had occurred to them. Not a lot of them have been interviewed, or been asked their thoughts. It was as an emotional journey for them as it was for me.

I wanted to portray them in a manner which was very open for a lot of them, because in Japan there’s tatemae and honne*. There is a public side and there is a private side. I was very fortunate that these individuals were able to give over their private side for the good of the public. I’ve been very disheartened over the years by how Japanese are portrayed as stereotypes, and I really wanted to break away from that. I wanted opinionated people, people with passion and I never had to look further than the interviewees, because they had so much to say. And I felt responsible to tell their story properly, because a lot of the interviewees are 80 or 90 years old and feeling that their stories were not being passed on. Not everyone is in agreement with war, because of the human cost, and people in the film wanted that expressed. I hope that comes over strongly.

I think it does and especially on the Japanese side. You often hear from the Australian or the Allied side but the experience of the Japanese during World War II is often forgotten.

This great loss for the Japanese has never really been reflected on, because all the history [about the attack on Sydney] is really from an Australian perspective. So I reversed that, because the film plays with the idea of reversing our expectations. The Australians take us down the line of the storyteller, and then it slowly begins to reverse into a very emotive state that the Japanese find themselves in.

I always wanted to view sequences with a lot of light, because I was very tired of seeing the Japanese portrayed as the enemy, or the ones associated with guilt. There’s nothing to hide here, a lot of them are ready to speak. And with the Australians I filmed them against a more theatrical background because I really wanted them to be part of the narration of the film, ‘this is what happened to me’ and how it felt.

I found that overall the film generated a powerful sense of empathy, and the interviewees were presented in a very ‘human’ way that helps to challenge our preconceptions.

Fortunately a lot of the men and women, especially in Japan, were reflecting philosophically. So what they said, a lot of thought had gone into it and it had a lot of impact. When it was released, it almost created like an air around the film. Mr Ito [one of the interviewees], for example, was very truthful, saying the action wasn’t as successful as they were led to believe, it was very much a failure. And I thought that was very beautiful, because he’s a very proud man. And at the end he becomes very philosophical about the men, he talks about how ‘we sent these men out, but we knew that they probably would die and that made us feel terrible’. That’s such a strong quote for a man to reflect on over the years. I really found that quite challenging at the time to hear too.

What was the message you wanted to convey to your audiences in both Japan and Australia?

In the film I wanted to convey the idea that there wasn’t a good or a bad, that a lot of people were suffering pain, and it wasn’t belonging to one nation or another, we were both very similar in our loss. Militarists set us on this path, but there was a large human cost involved, and a lot of the time we don’t hear about the human cost.

It was also important to me to remind Australians that we’re a very compassionate race, just like the Japanese and that there are moments when we’ve articulated that. One of those moments was the cremation of the Japanese submariners and sending the ashes back to Japan. The ripples of that are felt today. All the interviewees felt a preciousness about how the Australians had gone out of their way, shown a form of compassion at the height of war. All of them were very aware that this had happened, and pay homage to not only the dead, but to the memory of the Australians’ act.

It really is a worthwhile film and I look forward to people in Australia and in Japan watching it, and not only appreciating the stories of all the participants, but also gaining deeper understanding of both our cultures and histories.