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'"
Report from the Aleutians," directed by
John Huston, follows the daily life of
American soldiers serving in the
Aleutian Islands, which extend in sequence off the shores of
Alaska.
Despite being cold, barren, and generally disagreeable, the
Aleutians held military bases of immense strategic value in the
Pacific theater of
World War II. The film describes the geographic importance of the islands, and provides a portrait of daily wartime operations, such as attack planning and bombing raids, that take place at the bases. Huston pays particular attention to life on the island of
Adak in the wake of the
Battle of Dutch Harbor, culminating in a first-person perspective of an actual American bombing run against the
Japanese.'
Public domain film from the
US National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/
3.0/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Report_from_the_Aleutians
Report from the Aleutians is a 47-minute documentary propaganda film produced by the
U.S. Army Signal Corps about the
Aleutian Islands Campaign during World War II. It was directed and narrated by John Huston.
In contrast to the other technicolor films made in the
Pacific war, Report from the Aleutians has relatively little combat footage, and instead concentrates on the daily lives of the servicemen on
Adak Island, as they live and work there while flying missions over nearby Kiska. The film opens with a map showing the strategic importance of the island, and the thrust of the
1942 Japanese offensive into
Midway and
Dutch Harbor.
Photographs of the pilots who beat the Japanese back at Dutch Harbor are passed before the camera. "There is no monument to these men. If you want to see their monument, look around you."
The American forces dug in at Adak Island, and there commenced daily bombing missions over the Japanese who had taken Kiska
...
The last twenty minutes or so of the film is taken from footage taken over a mission over Japanese positions...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adak_Island
Adak Island (
Aleut: Adaax) is an island near the western extent of the
Andreanof Islands group of the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. Alaska's southernmost town, Adak, is located on the island.
The island has a land area of 274.59 square miles (711.18 km2), measuring 33.9 miles (54.5 km) on length and 22 miles (35 km) on width, making it the
25th largest island in the
United States.
Due to harsh winds, frequent cloud cover, and cold temperatures, vegetation is mostly tundra (grasses, mosses, berries, low-lying flowering plants) at lower elevations. The highest
point is Mt. Moffett, near the northwest end of the island, at an elevation of 3,924 feet (1,196 m). It is snow covered the greater part of the year.
Adak, Alaska is its largest and principal city.
The word Adak is from the Aleut word adaq, which means "father"...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiska
Kiska (Aleut: Qisxa) is an island in the
Rat Islands group of the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. It is about 22 miles (35 km) long and varies in width from 1.5 to 6 miles (
2.4 to 9.7 km)...
The Japanese
No. 3 Special Landing Party and
500 marines went ashore at Kiska on June 6, 1942 as a separate campaign concurrent with the Japanese plan for the
Battle of Midway. The Japanese captured the sole inhabitants of the island: a small
U.S. Navy Weather Detachment consisting of ten men... The next day the Japanese captured
Attu Island.
...During
October 1942,
American forces undertook seven bombing missions over Kiska, though two were aborted due to inclement weather.
Following the winter,
Attu was liberated and Kiska was bombed once more for over two months, before a larger
American force was allocated to defeat the expected Japanese garrison of 5,
200 men.
On
August 15, 1943, an invasion force consisting of 34,426
Allied troops, including... 95 ships (including three battleships and a heavy cruiser), and 168 aircraft landed on Kiska, only to find the island completely abandoned...
Allied casualties during this invasion nevertheless numbered close to 200, all either from friendly fire, booby traps set out by the Japanese to inflict damage on the invading allied forces, or weather-related disease. As a result of the brief engagement between
U.S. and
Canadian forces, there were 28 American dead as well as four
Canadian dead, with an additional 130 casualties from trench foot alone. The destroyer
USS Abner Read hit a mine, resulting in 87 casualties...
- published: 24 Dec 2014
- views: 1145