Comments by "Colonel K" (@Paladin1873) on "Wake Island Defenders or what happened after Pearl Harbor" video.

  1. The movie, Wake Island, does a credible job of reflecting the intensity of the fighting, though it has been reported that the Chinese extras employed to play Japanese soldiers kept falling down "dead" en masse every time the director yelled action and the guns started firing. He had a hard time convincing them that not all of the enemy could die. Some of them had to survive in order to capture the island. Apparently, this displeased them (small wonder). It's also worth remembering that, despite the implication of the movie's last battle scene, most of the men and their leaders did in fact survive the war. Of course, a valiant Alamo style death tends to stir the hearts and minds of Americans more effectively than the banal truth. Anger and revenge have their usefulness in wartime.
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  2. Quite true, but at least one movie made during the war did not change the names of the principal characters, and that was "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo". It remains an astonishingly honest film, full of depth, love, fear, bravery, and sacrifice. I still feel the pathos that movie evokes when I reflect on the horrific sacrifices paid by 250,000 Chinese civilians in the aftermath of the raid. Many decades later I watched a film of one of the Doolittle Raiders, who had returned to China to thank the people for their efforts. As he spoke and recounted the price in lives to his audience, he lost his composure and cried. Who woundn't be moved by such a scene.
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  3. Using the modern vernacular, one could say the Japanese got "woke" by Wake.
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  4. And it's a story worthy of remembering.
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  5. Aside from the excellent 1942 movie, Wake Island, starring Brian Donlevy, there is another way the defenders have been remembered and recognized. The Wake Island Device was created and authorized for any sailor or marine who was awarded the Navy or Marine Corps Expeditionary Medal due to service during the defense of Wake Island in the opening days of U.S. involvement in the Second World War.
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