D-Day and Midway

This week marks the anniversaries of two of the most important battles in American history. Monday, June 4, was the anniversary of the Battle of Midway, a naval battle in the Pacific Ocean in 1942 that was the veritable turning point of World War II. Yesterday, June 6, was the anniversary of D-Day, the landing of the Allied forces on the coast of Normandy in France in 1944.

A have written before about the Battle of Midway because it is usually overshadowed by D-Day in news reports. However, both battles seem to be fading from the minds of most Americans.  I guess that is only natural as the generation that actually did the fighting in WWII is disappearing.

Perhaps the best way to remember is through film although most films about WWII today are hard to watch. It is not just that they are violent and gory. There is violence in those films but nothing like what our children and grandchildren are exposed to in modern war films or even TV commercials.

In the first place, they are hard to watch because they are filled with blatant propaganda. After all, many were made during the war when Hollywood recognized its duty to support the war effort. Secondly, most of the epic films dealing with Midway or D-Day tend to focus on the admirals and generals who are usually played by prominent leading men. 

Only in the best films is the focus on the ordinary sailor or soldier. One thinks immediately of the great film classic, “The Best Years of Our Lives,” that was based not only on three returning servicemen but also on the families they returned to. Who will ever forget the sailor played by Harold Russell, a veteran who had actually lost both hands in the war.

Below are brief notices of three favorite films.

A Foreign Field. Two British war vets meet an American vet when all three return to Normandy on the 50th anniversary of D-Day. Old rivalries resurface, particularly when two of the men discover they are searching for the same lost love. Although filled with comic elements this film has a serious side especially at its very moving ending. The disparate band of survivors eventually finds common ground in the memory of what they lost on that fateful day in 1944.

This British film has an acclaimed international cast including Alec Guinness, Leo McKern, Jeanne Moreau, Loren Bacall, John Randolph, and Geraldine Chaplin.

A Walk in the Sun. D-Day was the largest amphibious landing in history, and “A Walk in the Sun” gives an idea of what such a dangerous undertaking such a landing must have been like for ordinary soldiers as they approached the beach, held on for dear life after the landing, and then set out into unknown territory.

The film was based on a novel by Harry Brown and directed by Louis Milestone, who earlier had done the classic film version of “All Quiet on the Western Front.” It is actually a depiction of a landing in Italy, and features the usual cross section of Americana: Dana Andrews as the solid, unemotional sergeant; Richard Conte as the wise-cracking Brooklyn boy; Lloyd Bridges as the mid-western farmer, and John Ireland as the intellectual, for example. It can be talky but the finale featuring an attack on an enemy machine gun post is a riveting cinematic climax.

Letters from Iwo Jima. Clint Eastwood made this film about Japanese soldiers defending the now famous island from an American amphibious invasion.  It was made in tandem with another film that viewed the invasion from the American side.

However, “Letters from Iwo Jima” can stand on its own as a story of ordinary soldiers facing overwhelming odds. Eastwood has depicted these Japanese soldiers are remarkably similar to their American counterparts. Now that I think of it, I guess all three films show that every war is a civil war, a war of brother against brother.

The film is in Japanese with subtitles.

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