Wonderfully offbeat film!

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

If I hadn't been laid up at home today, I suspect I never would have watched this movie when it popped up on TCM today, especially after seeing the highly unlikely beginning: tourist from Tennessee and sophisticated Japanese diplomat meet and fall in love at a reception at Japanese Embassy in DC.I'm so glad I stayed with it, a very good examination of cross cultural marriages and, as others have mentioned, a look at daily life in Japan in WW II.As a retired diplomat, who lived outside USA for most of my adult life, now back in USA, I'm so grateful to TCM for a review of film history and especially American cultural history.

The memoirs of the real Gwen Terasaki serve as the basis for Bridge To The Sun. Carroll Baker and James Shigeta would have troubles enough in an interracial marriage in the Thirties in America, especially Baker who was from Johnson City, Tennessee. But as America and Japan edge closer and finally go to war, this star-crossed couple has to make some choices that not too many others have to face.But Baker and Shigeta are soul-mates and that fact is what keeps them together despite the upbringings of both. For Baker she's a southern girl born and bred. She has an easier time of overcoming that than Ensign Nellie Forbush in South Pacific, but it's there.As for Shigeta he's a Japanese diplomat who thinks the militarists are leading his country down the wrong path. But he's also traditional Japanese who believes that the woman is most inferior. There's a great scene of dinner at their house in Japan where the women eat separately at their own table. Some political remarks are made and she commits the ultimate social sin of speaking up. That leads to a nasty quarrel. It reminds of the scene in Giant where Elizabeth Taylor speaks up in a political discussion to Rock Hudson's chauvinistic chagrin. Texans and Japanese have chauvinism much in common.Of course when war is finally declared Shigeta is shipped home and Baker takes their daughter and accompanies him. Her insights into the Japanese home front are the best part of the film and her life story.It's not true that Gwen Teresaki took their daughter back to America much less Tennessee. She would know better than to take a mixed racial child anywhere in Dixie. 'Terry' Teresaki did die young and Gwen enjoyed a long widowhood in life not dying until 1990. But not within a year of their departure. The real Teresaki became part of the Japanese new government under the occupation and he died in 1951 just before the occupation ended.Bridge To The Sun should have been done in color, but I'm supposing that was to allow that black and white newsreel footage to be integrated into the story. Baker and Shigeta are fine in the leads and the story is an eternal that while love can be on a rocky road, it finds a way if it's real.

This movie focused on the different customs and habits between east and west upon the relationship of love between American woman and Japanese diplomat in spite of the terrible relations between America and Japan before the misery of Pearl Harbbor in 1941 which was the great cause of firing more and more the drama of WWII and caused after that the Bomb exp loser of Herochima and Nakazaki in 1945 by turning America from second class to super class by playing with the fates of countries in different continents.This love story was Amerasian as a great field to see the varietal cultures as a preparing for globalization in the future by love and feelings before politics and economics to be the world in one place and field.This movie as (Love is a many splendor-ed thing) but the one difference between both That the first one took their accidents from politics and social subjects but the second one depended on humanity and feelings as the great gap between east and west forever.The best scene in this film the final scene by a great symbol at the ship when the American woman left Japan with her daughter and saying goodbye for her husband by taking the brilliant souvenir as an evidence of great love between them in spite of wars and political differences.

I saw this movie over 40 years ago on television, and it made such an impression on me that I am now trying to find this movie again. The book was written in 1957 by Gwen Terasaki and was also called Bridge to the Sun. The movie came out in 1961. This was a true story about an American girl who came to Washington, DC, and there she met a Japanese diplomat. They fell in love and got married very quickly. Then WWII broke out, and all Japanese were deported back to their country. Gwen Teresaki went with her husband to Japan. It shows all the differences between the two cultures, and how Hidenari Terasaki became a teacher to his wife, Gwen, about the customs of the Japanese. It's truly a beautiful love story as well as a realistic account of the difficulties of this interracial marriage. I really believe more should see this movie as it can open up your eyes as to the fact that all of us should live together in peace and get along. I will never forget this movie/life story! I wish the movie would come out again or be re-made as I believe it would help us all !