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 December of 1941
, made less than six months after the end of the Real Life battle.
Major Geoffrey Caton (Donlevy) of the United States 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 (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 (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 World War II 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.
Tropes:
- Artistic License – History
- All the names were changed. The Real Life 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 Real Life 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
- As You Know: McCloskey helpfully says "You're a soldier and I'm a civilian!"to Caton, while refusing to follow Navy or Marine orders.
- Downer Ending: The Japanese succeed in taking Wake Island, and wipe out the entire American garrison in the process.
- The End: The narrator returns at the end to insist that "this is not the end" and promise "revenge" for Wake.
- Face Framed in Shadow: How Caton is framed as he tells Lt. Cameron of the death of his wife, killed during the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
- Fighter-Launching Sequence: We see the precious few fighter planes on Wake Island take off to meet the Japanese.
- Last Stand: 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.
- Old-School Dogfight: 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.
- The Place: Wake Island, a tiny, isolated atoll in the west-central Pacific. Flat and sandy and exceedingly unsuited for defending against infantry amphibious landings.
- 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.
- Stock Footage: Footage of the Real Life envoy Kurusu arriving in Washington; stock footage of naval ships firing guns.
- Storming the Beaches: A villainous example, as the Japanese attempt this twice and succeed the second time.
- Those Two Guys: Randall and Doyle, always goofing around together, sharing the same tent, sharing the same foxhole, usually getting into trouble together.
- Unfortunate Names: A Marine corporal on Wake is named "Goebbels". Randall and Doyle love to infuriate him by shouting "Sieg heil!" behind his back.
- Unreveal Angle: 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.
