Paradise_Road

Topic: “conflict brings out the best and worst in people” In the movie “Paradise Road” released in 1997, we see the horrific events which occurred in Sumatra internment camps in WWII. All the characters in the movie Paradise Road face major conflicts in the lives before the war, during the war and after the war. Paradise Road shows normal people and how the react/change due to an unforeseen conflict in their lives. We see married women give up everything in their past life, to become prostitutes in hope they will survive the war, Japanese civilians and soldiers being forced to do morally wrong tasks in the fear that they will be killed and certain people turn the attitude in the camp around by bringing hope to others. Conflicts don’t just bring out the worst in people, they also bring out the best and you see people to extraordinary things. When the ladies are in the internment camp in Sumatra, they are faced with many decisions to make about survival, but one of the main and most controversial ones would be when the Japanese soldiers select a group of women which they want to live in the Japanese houses with them and use them as sex slaves. A lot of the women are outraged and refuse this proposal but some believe it is the only way that they will make it through the war alive, and decide to go with the Japanese soldiers. These women are being unfaithful to their husbands back in their home land, for hot water, food, soap and other things that they believe they need to survive. These women would of never even considered doing something like this until they ended up in the internment camp, these women have changed from being very respectful an classy women, to prostitutes for the Japanese. Some people change for the worse when conflicts are put in front of them which is sad. The prisoner of war camps and internment camps in Sumatra were run by Japanese soldiers and Japanese civilians. These soldiers and civilians were forced to do brutal things to both women and female prisoners, not because of what they had done, but purely because of what nationality they were. Some of the brutal acts the Japanese acted on were, massacre’s of both women and children, not providing sufficient food and water, not allowing medicines in the camps, forcing them to live in harsh conditions in the middle of rainforests and torturing the innocent prisoners for no real reason.