Wake Island | |
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Directed by | John Farrow |
Written by | W. R. Burnett Frank Butler |
Produced by | Joseph Sistrom |
Starring | Brian Donlevy Macdonald Carey Robert Preston Albert Dekker William Bendix Walter Abel |
Cinematography | William C. Mellor Theodor Sparkuhl |
Edited by | Frank Bracht LeRoy Stone |
Music by | David Buttolph |
Production company | Paramount Pictures |
Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 88 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $826,000[1] |
Box office | $3.5 million (U.S. and Canada rentals)[2][3] |
Wake Island is a 1942 American action drama war film directed by John Farrow, written by W. R. Burnett and Frank Butler, and starring Brian Donlevy, Robert Preston, Macdonald Carey, Albert Dekker, Barbara Britton, and William Bendix. The film tells the story of the United States military garrison on Wake Island and the onslaught by the Japanese following the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Wake Island was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Outstanding Motion Picture.[4]
The film shows how the Marines, after being pounded for days by Japanese aircraft, caught the Japanese invasion by complete surprise by unleashing a wall of fire that stopped the first attempt by the Japanese to land on the island. The next attack was successful in part because communications between the Marines had been cut, leading the Marine commander to believe his three hundred marines were being slaughtered by the over three thousand Japanese invaders. As a result of the fierce defense of the island and that a Japanese cruiser was sunk, Marines were beheaded on the way to Japan to work as slaves in the mines in Japan.