‘Fragments of the Last Will’: You’ll need tissues for this WWII tearjerker

At the end of World War II, over half a million Japanese servicemen stranded overseas were shipped off to labor camps in the Soviet Union. Some of them wouldn’t make it back to Japan until 1956; many didn’t get that far.

Among the captives was a bespectacled linguist named Hatao Yamamoto, whose story is given a slick and sentimental treatment in Takahisa Zeze’s “Fragments of the Last Will,” based on a 1989 nonfiction book by Jun Henmi.

As played by the ebullient Kazunari Ninomiya, he’s a saintly figure with a heart big enough to warm even the frigid wastes of Siberia.

The story starts in 1945. When Soviet forces stage a surprise attack on the Japanese puppet state of Manchuria during the dying days of the war, Yamamoto is separated from his wife, Mojimi (Keiko Kitagawa), and children — though not before promising that they will see each other again.

This vow becomes his main source of sustenance as he endures the rigors of life in a Soviet prisoner-of-war camp. Fluent in Russian, Yamamoto is often called on to act as an interpreter, even as his moral rectitude makes him a frequent target for abuse by captors and comrades alike.

The war may be over, but old Imperial Army hierarchies still exist among the Japanese prisoners. Yamamoto’s insistence on preserving basic norms of decency earns him the animus of the wild-eyed Mitsuo Aizawa (Kenta Kiritani), a former sergeant, though he finds a potential ally in the cowardly Kenzo Matsuda (Tori Matsuzaka).

Their struggles are paralleled by the experiences of Mojimi, who never wavers in her conviction that her husband will eventually come back. But when not everyone is able to make the return journey, it’s left to the survivors to convey the final testament of a fallen comrade, which the film milks for maximum emotional impact during its shamelessly drawn-out final act.

Until that point, this attractively old-fashioned period drama is very watchable. Zeze’s approach isn’t subtle and he indulges in some overblown performances from his cast (Kiritani being the worst offender). All the same, it’s hard not to get caught up in the film’s sweeping narrative, with snowy Niigata making an acceptable substitute for Siberia — some dodgy CGI notwithstanding.

As people who lived through the war and its aftermath become increasingly thin on the ground, Japanese movies about that era — like the memories themselves — are getting fuzzier.

Zeze’s film was scripted by Tamio Hayashi, who also wrote the screenplay for Takashi Yamazaki’s more problematic “The Eternal Zero” (2013). Although it doesn’t share the latter’s revisionist slant, “Fragments of the Last Will” aims to be just as rousing, seeking to find the best of humanity in a period of history that exposed the very worst of it.

But the film’s protagonist is just a little too perfect. Presumably, camp regulations are the only thing preventing the prisoners from wearing “What Would Yamamoto Do?” badges on their lapels.

It’s hard to ignore the resemblance to Masaki Kobayashi’s three-part “The Human Condition” (1959-61), in which Tatsuya Nakadai plays another do-gooder, trying to preserve his humanity as he goes from Manchurian labor camp supervisor to Soviet POW. Compared to the moral complexity of Kobayashi’s film, this is tame stuff, but if you’re looking for heartwarming holiday viewing, you could do far worse.