Response to critic who thinks "The Encounter" is a disaster.

Just want to clear up a few historical inaccuracies in this post.

1. "Nevermind the fact that no Japanese American has ever been found guilty of treason..."

Answer: The last person convicted of treason in the United States was Tom Kawakita, a Japanese American. Kawakita, born in California, went to Japan in 1939 when he was 18 to visit his grandfather. He stayed, never renouncing his U.S. citizenship. He was employed as an interpreter with a Japanese nickel company. He was never conscripted, but Japanese authorities used him as an interpreter in a prisoner of war camp.

He readily joined in the abuse of American prisoners, "going beyond any conceivable duty of an interpreter," according to the U.S. Supreme Court. He beat some, pushed another into a cesspool and forced the obviously ill into hard labor.

After the war, he re-registered as a U.S. citizen and returned home. His former victims, who knew him as "Meatball," spotted him and turned him in, and he was sentenced to death for treason in 1952. President Eisenhower commuted his sentence to life in 1953.

Kawakita v. United States, 343 U.S. 717 (1952)

2. ...or that they served in the MOST DECORATED US military unit of WWII (it's true; look up the book "Go For Broke!")

Answer: Most decorated FOR THEIR SIZE AND LENGTH OF SERVICE, after Hawaii Senator Akaka introduced legislation in the 1990s and Bill Clinton started handing out medals and upgrades like candy canes to Japanese Americans against the advice of the Pentagon's head historian, many years and miles away from the battlefield in complete defiance of American military tradition.


I like this episode. It reflects a lot of what Americans knew then about this history compared to what Americans know today, a history manipulated by ethnic activists and politicians that is far from the truth.

Problem For Collectors

As a collector who has all 43 Volumes of The Twilight Zone, I was taken back when I found out episodes: "An Occurance At Owl Creek Bridge", "The Masks" and "The Howling Man" were not included. These three together would have made Vol. 44, or in which ever sequence they could be placed. So now, I have episodes I already have included with the missing ones that should have been there to start with. However, I was told these predate the Volume series and everything's been done ramshackle, because not everyone is willing to pay the retail $900 for all episodes.
I'll give the content 5 stars, and if you want just a few episodes this the way to go. But, for collectors of the entire series it's sad they didn't stuff in those 3 episodes, with 2 being on "More Treasues of The Twilight Zone".

So-so overall

"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is really good - but it wasn't even a TZ derived show. It won an Oscar and other awards as a French short film, however. During the Civil War, a man is sentenced to death by hanging and has a nice fantasy on the way down.

"The Encounter" between hate-filled Marine versus repressed Japanese-American apparently was never in the re-run loop. Rather bad acting and somewhat silly premise. Only interesting for George Takei ("Sulu" from Star Trek).

"Where Is Everybody?" asks Earl Holliman. Possibly interesting premise but his continuous talking out loud gets tedious. Kinda lame ending.

DVD includes a short "pitch" film to be shown to advertisers, and a nice 1959 interview with Mike Wallace which might be the actual treasure.