Arthur Lubin was always a very good director of kids so it's no surprise that the two leads in this film are good especially Jon Provost.
But the story is flawed. It starts off fine - Provost is on a plane (he's on his own!) that crashes near Japan (most of the passengers die? Is that right?) He's rescued by a fisherman and his kid. When the cops turn up the kids worry that they've done something wrong and take off.
So the whole film is based on a misunderstanding. There's no good reason the kids go on the run, there's no danger, no threat. Japan is a friendly place - people are nice; they stop at one house and get food, and at another and have a bath. We cut back to the parents occasionally who are worried (Cameron Mitchell and Teresa Wright are wasted), then back to the kids who run around. One of them gets stuck up a roof.
It's like all the excitement is sucked out of it. You could have told the story from the parents point of view - them getting worried, following up leads, trying to figure out where the kids are, playing out some drama (it's on location in Japan, maybe one of them has issues with the Japanese or something). Or you could have told it from the kids POV only made it exciting - give them a decent reason to avoid detection (like they saw a murder and don't know who to trust), give it real stakes (like have someone after them who is bad).
This all feels pointless. The kids are great and there's some charming views of Japan - it was shot on location as part of that late 50s Hollywood Japan kick that included Sayonara, House of Bambo, Stopover Tokyo, The Barbarian and the Geisha. It flopped at the box office helping kill of RKO and Lubin's feature film career (though the direction is alright it's just the script).
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