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''Wake Island'' is a 1942 war film directed by John Farrow, starring Brian Donlevy, Macdonald Carey, Robert Preston, Albert Dekker, and William Bendix. It is a dramatization of the siege of Wake Island in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wake_Island December of 1941]], made less than six months after the end of the RealLife battle.

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''Wake Island'' is a 1942 war film directed by John Farrow, starring Brian Donlevy, Macdonald Carey, Creator/MacdonaldCarey, Robert Preston, Albert Dekker, and William Bendix. It is a dramatization of the siege of Wake Island in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wake_Island December of 1941]], made less than six months after the end of the RealLife battle.
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[[caption-width-right:350:Going down fighting]]

''Wake Island'' is a 1942 film directed by John Farrow.

It is a dramatization of the siege of Des Moines, Iowa--no, just kidding, Wake Island in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wake_Island December of 1941]], made less than six months after the end of the RealLife battle. Major Geoffrey Caton of the United States Marines (Brian Donlevy) bids farewell to his wife and daughter in Hawaii and heads off to command the Marine garrison at Wake Island, a tiny atoll at the far western edge of the American naval posts in the Pacific Ocean. He clashes with [=McCloskey=], the head of the civilian construction crew on Wake, who bristles at the idea that he should follow military orders. Among the Marines already on Wake are Privates Randall and Doyle (William Bendix and Robert Preston), two goofy cut-ups who are always getting into trouble. Randall is due to leave the island and the Marine Corps with the next clipper ship, whereupon he will marry his girlfriend Myrtle.

to:

[[caption-width-right:350:Going down fighting]]

fighting.]]

''Wake Island'' is a 1942 war film directed by John Farrow.

Farrow, starring Brian Donlevy, Macdonald Carey, Robert Preston, Albert Dekker, and William Bendix. It is a dramatization of the siege of Des Moines, Iowa--no, just kidding, Wake Island in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wake_Island December of 1941]], made less than six months after the end of the RealLife battle.

Major Geoffrey Caton (Donlevy) of the United States Marines (Brian Donlevy) Marine Corps bids farewell to his wife and daughter in Hawaii and heads off to command the Marine garrison at Wake Island, a tiny atoll at the far western edge of the American naval posts in the Pacific Ocean. He clashes with [=McCloskey=], [=McCloskey=] (Dekker), the head of the civilian construction crew on Wake, who bristles at the idea that he should follow military orders. Among the Marines already on Wake are Privates Randall (Bendix) and Doyle (William Bendix and Robert Preston), (Preston), two goofy cut-ups who are always getting into trouble. Randall is due to leave the island and the Marine Corps with the next clipper ship, whereupon he will marry his girlfriend Myrtle.
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* DownerEnding: The Japanese succeed in taking Wake Island, and wipe out the entire American garrison in the process.

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* LastStand: The garrison on Wake fights to the last man when the Japanese make their second attack. Caton leaves his command post and mans a foxhole, where he's killed along with [=McCloskey=].
* {{Narrator}}: Briefly at the beginning, where a narrator explains what and where Wake Island is, and at the end, where the narrator returns to promise revenge.



* LastStand: The garrison on Wake fights to the last man when the Japanese make their second attack. Caton leaves his command post and mans a foxhole, where he's killed along with [=McCloskey=].
* {{Narrator}}: Briefly at the beginning, where a narrator explains what and where Wake Island is, and at the end, where the narrator returns to promise revenge.
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It is a dramatization of the siege of Des Moines, Iowa--no, just kidding, Wake Island in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wake_Island December of 1941]], made less than six months after the end of the RealLife battle. Major Geoffrey Caton of the United States Marines (Brian Donlevy) bids farewell to his wife and daughter in Hawaii and heads off to Wake Island to command the Marine garrison at Wake Island, a tiny atoll at the far western edge of the American naval posts in the Pacific Ocean. He clashes with [=McCloskey=], the head of the civilian construction crew on Wake, who bristles at the idea that he should follow military orders. Among the Marines already on Wake are Privates Randall and Doyle (William Bendix and Robert Preston), two goofy cut-ups who are always getting into trouble. Randall is due to leave the island and the Marine Corps with the next clipper ship, whereupon he will marry his girlfriend Myrtle.

to:

It is a dramatization of the siege of Des Moines, Iowa--no, just kidding, Wake Island in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wake_Island December of 1941]], made less than six months after the end of the RealLife battle. Major Geoffrey Caton of the United States Marines (Brian Donlevy) bids farewell to his wife and daughter in Hawaii and heads off to Wake Island to command the Marine garrison at Wake Island, a tiny atoll at the far western edge of the American naval posts in the Pacific Ocean. He clashes with [=McCloskey=], the head of the civilian construction crew on Wake, who bristles at the idea that he should follow military orders. Among the Marines already on Wake are Privates Randall and Doyle (William Bendix and Robert Preston), two goofy cut-ups who are always getting into trouble. Randall is due to leave the island and the Marine Corps with the next clipper ship, whereupon he will marry his girlfriend Myrtle.
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[[caption-width-right:350:Going down fighting]]
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[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dcab5585_f2e2_4d75_9b86_27b92690ef52.jpeg]]


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* StormingTheBeaches: A villainous example, as the Japanese attempt this twice and succeed the second time.
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* ThePlace: Wake Island, a tiny, isolated atoll in the west-central Pacific. Flat and sandy and exceedingly unsuited for defending against infantry amphibious landings.
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''Wake Island'' is a 1942 film directed by John Farrow.

It is a dramatization of the siege of Des Moines, Iowa--no, just kidding, Wake Island in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wake_Island December of 1941]], made less than six months after the end of the RealLife battle. Major Geoffrey Caton of the United States Marines (Brian Donlevy) bids farewell to his wife and daughter in Hawaii and heads off to Wake Island to command the Marine garrison at Wake Island, a tiny atoll at the far western edge of the American naval posts in the Pacific Ocean. He clashes with [=McCloskey=], the head of the civilian construction crew on Wake, who bristles at the idea that he should follow military orders. Among the Marines already on Wake are Privates Randall and Doyle (William Bendix and Robert Preston), two goofy cut-ups who are always getting into trouble. Randall is due to leave the island and the Marine Corps with the next clipper ship, whereupon he will marry his girlfriend Myrtle.

Barely a week after Caton's arrival, the United States enters UsefulNotes/WorldWarII with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Wake Island--alone, exposed, over a thousand miles from the U.S. Pacific Fleet in Hawaii that probably can't help anyway after Pearl Harbor, manned by a garrison of only 400 Marines and a squadron of only eight airplanes--is mortally threatened. Caton and his men manage to shock the world by repulsing a Japanese landing on December 12. However, Caton is well aware that it is only a matter of time before the Japanese will come again, in overwhelming force.

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!!Tropes:

*ArtisticLicenseHistory
** All the names were changed. The RealLife commander of the Marine garrison was USMC Major James Devereaux. The naval officer in charge of Wake was Commander Winfield Cunningham, while in the movie he's Commander Roberts.
** In real life the person corresponding to Maj. Caton, Devereux, had been at Wake since August, while the overall commanding officer, Cunningham, was the one who arrived just 10 days before the outbreak of war.
** In the movie Commander Roberts, CO on Wake, is killed in the first Japanese raid, leaving Caton to lead the garrison. In real life Commander Cunningham led the entire defense of Wake Island from beginning to end.
** Most significantly, the entire garrison fights to the last man against the Japanese. In RealLife Commander Cunningham surrendered the garrison after 1500 Japanese marines succeeded in landing and it became clear that further resistance was useless. The sailors and Maries captured on Wake suffered terribly in nearly four years of captivity but most of them survived the war. The same was not true of 98 civilian workers held on Wake by the Japanese to work as slave labor; they were all massacred in 1943 when the Japanese commander on Wake feared the Americans were going to retake the island.[[note]]In RealLife the United States instead left the Japanese garrison to starve, and they remained there until the end of the war.[[/note]]
*AsYouKnow: [=McCloskey=] helpfully says "You're a soldier and I'm a civilian!"to Caton, while refusing to follow Navy or Marine orders.
*TheEnd: The narrator returns at the end to insist that "this is ''not'' the end" and promise "revenge" for Wake.
*FaceFramedInShadow: How Caton is framed as he tells Lt. Cameron of the death of his wife, killed during the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
*FighterLaunchingSequence: We see the precious few fighter planes on Wake Island take off to meet the Japanese.
*OldSchoolDogfight: There are dogfights between the four American fighter planes and the waves of Japanese attacking them. The last American pilot is machine-gunned in the air by a Zero as he's parachuting to ground.
*{{Retirony}}: Randall is due to ship out and leave the Navy on Dec. 8, 1941, the day the war starts. (Wake Island is so far west it's on the other side of the International Date Line.) He is in the process of dictating a telegram to his fiancée when the telegrapher receives the alert about the attack on Pearl Harbor.
*LastStand: The garrison on Wake fights to the last man when the Japanese make their second attack. Caton leaves his command post and mans a foxhole, where he's killed along with [=McCloskey=].
*{{Narrator}}: Briefly at the beginning, where a narrator explains what and where Wake Island is, and at the end, where the narrator returns to promise revenge.
*StockFootage: Footage of the RealLife envoy Kurusu arriving in Washington; stock footage of naval ships firing guns.
*ThoseTwoGuys: Randall and Doyle, always goofing around together, sharing the same tent, sharing the same foxhole, usually getting into trouble together.
*UnfortunateNames: A Marine corporal on Wake is named "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels Goebbels]]". Randall and Doyle love to infuriate him by shouting "Sieg heil!" behind his back.
*UnrevealAngle: The framed photo of Randall's fiancée Myrtle. Doyle looks and cringes. He then turns the photo upside down. When Randall protests, Doyle says it looks better that way.

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