Wake Island

The battle for Wake Island concluded just before Christmas of 1941 and news from the place was pretty sketchy. It would not be known until after the war ended exactly what happened on the place.

In many ways it was worse than what's shown here. With no help coming at all from the mainland USA or from Pearl Harbor which was licking its own wounds, there was an unconditional surrender declared. The construction workers who were building a base on the island when war broke out were all summarily executed as spies. The few Marines who did survive, survived in horrible captivity, probably made worse by the fact that America never tried to take the island back. When they had the overwhelming naval superiority, the Japanese were starved out, but so were the prisoners they had.

So with an incomplete story at best, the writers at Paramount had free reign to do an Alamo like story and proceeded to do just that. Brian Donlevy is a stalwart Marine Colonel who clashes repeatedly with Albert Dekker the head of the construction workers. Comic relief is provided by Robert Preston and William Bendix as a pair of tough marines who joke about Bendix's impending discharge which occurs right on the day of Pearl Harbor.

Bendix was nominated for Best Supporting Actor and while he's pretty funny in the part, when you consider he did a highly effective dramatic role in The Glass Key that same year, I'm wondering if the Academy put him up for the wrong film. He lost that year to Van Heflin for Johnny Eager.

Wake Island is a dated story, dated but entertaining. Maybe someone will do a film of the real story there, the horrible captivity of our prisoners, just like what they endured in the Phillipines.

Three plots are going on simultaneously in this movie. (1) The conflict between the Marines manning the small garrison at Wake Island and the no-nonsense Pan American construction crew preparing a berth for the Pan Am clipper. (2) The horseplay and bonding between Robert Preston (who must have had one of the longest careers as a supporting actor in Hollywood) and William Bendix as the Marine enlisted man who wants to unenlist so he can marry the delectable Myrtle. (3) Then there are all the Americans fighting against overwhelming Japanese naval and air forces.

This was one of the first war movies ground out after Pearl Harbor but it doesn't look especially hastily done. The Salton Sea location gives a good imitation of a flat, sandy Pacific island, which is pretty much what Wake Island was. The garrison was so tiny that only 47 enlisted men were available. The Marines and the Navy pilots fly F4F Wildcats, and this was crucial to the defense of the island. Most of them were destroyed on the ground or in accidents. But the few fighters available and the handful of relatively small caliber coastal defense guns inflicted serious damage on the first Japanese fleet, mostly by lying low until the invasion force was well within range. A second invasion attempt succeeded, after all the Wildcats were destroyed. The commander surrendered, along with the few survivors; they didn't sacrifice themselves to the last man as shown in the film. (What would that have accomplished?) But the movie was a great morale raiser at a time when the country desperately needed some morale raising.

The conflict in goals and styles between the Marines (all discipline and training) and the construction men (shabby, rough-and-ready improvisers) is, I suppose, designed to teach us that we all have to work together now that war is upon us. It's rather clumsily done. Albert Dekker as the construction boss is unnecessarily nasty and contemptuous, and Brian Donlevy as the commander of the Marine forces is the soul of patience and reason. The subplot gets the job done but it's something like having your kindergarten teacher beat the letters of the alphabet into you.

I rather liked the comedy relief provided by Preston and Bendix. Preston keeps trying to talk Bendix into reenlisting in the Corps but Bendix is determined to become a married civilian. Extolling Marine Corps life, Preston urges Bendix to close his eyes and think of what he REALLY wants. "All I see is Moitle," Bendix says. "No, no, no. Forget Myrtle. Close your eyes and put your hand over them and think -- now what do you really SEE?" Replies Bendix, "Nope. It's still Moitle." This is the kind of friendship you see only in the movies. They fall into fist fights at the drop of an insult, but are willing to sacrifice their lives for one another.

It is a bit tedious in parts. But the end, some hyperdramatic touches aside, sticks pretty close to the historical facts. No, we didn't mount a successful defense of Wake Island. How could we, with so few supplies and men? But, like Pearl Harbor, it was the kind of defeat that could almost be depicted as a victory, both honorable and inevitable.

And check out the cast! So many faces that were later to become so familiar, many of them uncredited. Dane Clark, James Brown.

It's worth watching, though there is little about it that's gripping. The photography is notable -- crisp, clear, sunny black and white, with the sun scintillating on the surface of the sea. And the war scenes are unusually well done for such an early example of the genre.

Whatever its flaws--stereotypes among soldiers, wartime propaganda using the Wake Island battle as symbolic of America's fight for freedom, weak comic relief--WAKE ISLAND is the kind of story Americans needed to hear during the height of WWII. It begins just before the Pearl Harbor attack when the men were losing their morale to fight against the Japs, then changes once American ships and servicemen are attacked in sneaky fashion at Pearl, to become a story of fighting men who want to avenge what F.D.R. called "a day of infamy".

Forcefully directed by John Farrow, it's a gritty, realistic war drama given occasional relief by ROBERT PRESTON and WILLIAM BENDIX as a pair of squabbling soldiers arguing over re-enlistment. BRIAN DONLEVY plays Maj. Caton with steely-eyed determination and a large male cast of upcoming actors and future stars fills the supporting cast: ALBERT DEKKER, MADONALD CAREY, ROD CAMERON, WALTER ABEL, DANE CLARK, PHILIP TERRY and FRANK FAYLEN.

Similar in content to BATAAN, which also told of American losses against overwhelming odds and had a downbeat ending, the true story of Wake Island is even more downbeat than the film hints. Brutal stories of torture at the hands of Japanese military awaited many who survived the assault on the small island in the Pacific. But that's something you can learn about at The History Channel.

Summing up: A reminder of what sort of films Americans were looking at during the height of WWII--you have to view it in that context.

This film was commenced before the battle finished. It tells how that small force of marines and civilian workers defended remote Wake Island for two weeks against the Japanese blitzkrieg early in the Pacific War.

Fictional names were used for characters, many of whom had real life counterparts especially Brian Donlevy as Major Caton (in reality, Major James Devereux). Other characters were inventions such as the bickering buddies played by Robert Preston and William Bendix.

Of course the filmmakers didn't know how the battle really ended because communication was cut, and the Japanese weren't working as technical advisors.

The scenes of the battle on the island were well staged although the film is a mixture of bathtub model effects, documentary footage of varying quality and every cliché Hollywood ever invented for military life.

Director John Farrow, Mia's father, was an Australian who joined the Royal Canadian Navy in 1939 on the outbreak of the war in Europe. He actually directed "Wake Island" while convalescing from illness. The film was released in August 1942 when he must have known that the fate of Australia hung in the balance.

The film exudes an iron-jawed heroic tone that 80 years later seems like typical Hollywood exaggeration. However those marines on Wake were as uncomplicatedly brave as the film depicts.

After Pearl Harbour, the Marine Corps expanded with the influx of thousands of highly motivated citizens, but the Wake Island garrison was made up of pre-war marines, professionals; being marines was their stock in trade. The defence of Wake (actually three islands: Wilkes, Peale and Wake) was remarkable, but if anything exemplifies the calibre of those men, it was what happened on Wilkes.

There is a line in 'Full Metal Jacket" when Gunnery Sergeant Hartman tells the recruits "The deadliest weapon in the world is a marine and his rifle".

The one hundred Japanese who landed on Wilkes may have agreed. Attacked by about half that number of marines led by Captain Wesley Platt, all the Japanese were killed through a combination of superb marksmanship and aggressive tactics. When Major Devereaux went around ordering his men to lay down their arms, Platt refused at first, exclaiming, "Marines don't surrender. Let us die right here". But he did obey the order; he was a marine after all.

The defenders didn't all die and most faced long years of harsh captivity. A brilliant documentary, "Wake Island: Alamo of the Pacific", told the true story through the eyes of veterans who returned to the island, a remarkable group of elderly men revealing the qualities of the marines who defended Wake.

In 1942 the film served a purpose. Today its importance could be that it will inspire people to find out what really happened, because history has a disturbing habit of repeating itself.

While nowadays this may seem quite indistinguishable from the many flagwavers rushed into production in its day, at the time WAKE ISLAND was very well received garnering 4 major Academy Award nominations (Best Film, Best Direction, Best Original Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor - William Bendix); true, the characters and situations are pretty stereotypical but even so, it is certainly well enough made and well-cast (Brian Donlevy, Macdonald Carey, Albert Dekker, Robert Preston, Walter Abel) to be remembered when WWII films are discussed. Once the Pearl Harbor attack gets underway, it becomes an engrossing and poignant depiction of men-in-war facing insurmountable odds; the downbeat ending was quite fresh at the time and seems to have led to a spate of similarly pessimistic WWII movies like BATAAN (1943), SAHARA (1943), THEY WERE EXPENDABLE (1945), etc.