I examined A Savage Christmas: Hong Kong 1941, the first in a three part series called The Valour and the Horror produced by CBC and the National Film Board of Canada which become very popular due to the controversy that surrounded it. The document uses original film and dramatization to depict what happened to Canadian troops at Hong Kong in December 1941 and the years following in a Japanese prisoners of war camp. Similar to any historical source the film does have a bias towards the Canadians and is quite clear since they utilized personal narratives as the foundation of retelling the events that occurred. Although the article makes assumptions and ignores important context, the documentary is still a valid source when used with caution as it does contain factual
There are a couple messages in the documentary that they are clearly trying to convince their audience of. The first is the Canadian government sent in untrained troops to fight in Hong Kong, knowing they had no chance win. The second point they make is the government has tried to cover up this part of Canadian military history. David J. Bercuson, a historian, has examined
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To have a movie include all the facts involved on the topic would mean a very long and most likely dry movie. There is also the issue of time; most individuals want to watch a movie from start to finish in one sitting while a textbook can be and usually is spread out for a long period of time. Savage Christmas while having historical content focuses on soldiers who experienced it to tell the story and therefore will have an extreme bias. Diary entries used in documentaries can include exerts about the government abandoning their troops by putting them in peril as that is a reasonable response from someone that experienced this traumatic event but you would not find something similar in a