Details

Release year: 1942

Storyline

December, 1941. With no hope of relief or re-supply, a small band of United States Marines tries to keep the Japanese Navy from capturing their island base.

Top credits

Directors

John Farrow

Writers

Cast

Brian Donlevy — Maj. Geoffrey Caton
Robert Preston — Pvt. Joe Doyle
Macdonald Carey — Lt. Bruce Cameron
William Bendix — Pvt. Aloysius K. 'Smacksie' Randall

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Awards

0 wins & 4 nominations

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Did you know

• Paramount began work on this movie before the real-life battle for Wake Island was over.

• In real life most of the survivors were sent to Japanese prison camps, but 98 civilian construction workers were held on the island to help the Japanese with their defenses. After the Americans conducted a successful air raid in October 1943, the civilians were machine-gunned to death. A lone survivor escaped and later carved a message on a coral rock on the mass grave where they were hastily buried. He was later captured and beheaded. When the island fell in 1945, the Japanese commander responsible for the massacre was executed.

• In a "History Channel" special, Wake Island: Alamo of the Pacific (2003), it claims that there were no survivors, when in fact there were.