WWII: La campagna delle Aleutine

During the war, Hollywood became an official propaganda arm of the US government. This unusual relationship meant that Hollywood could use its money and expertise to make high quality films...much higher than the military itself could normally make. That's why the likes of John Ford and Frank Capra made documentaries...very good ones at that. In the case of "Report from the Aleutians", the young but very successful John Huston helmed this project.

The film is about a portion of WWII that few would remember today. Believe it or not, war DID affect Alaska and some tough battles between Japanese and American troops occurred. This coincided, at times, with the attack on Midway Island....as the Aleutian attack was meant as a diversion...one that ultimately failed.

Using excellent footage of the day, nice narration (by the director's father, Walter) and an overall high quality of the project make this one worth seeing...especially if you are a history lover like me.

In recognizing Memorial Day, I decided to watch some wartime documentaries made by John Huston during World War II starting with this one which took place at the outpost of Adak concerning a bombing mission over Japan-occupied Kiska. Huston narrates with some additional voice overs by his father, Walter. Suitable mood music permeates most of the film which adds to the color footage's appeal. When the actual flying sequences are shown, one gets some sense of excitement though since dialogue is kept to a minimum and there are few explosions, it doesn't seem Hollywood-made to provide unbridled joy to victory. Worth seeing. Watched this on Internet Archive.

One of John Huston's contributions to the war effort. His engaging voice narrates the facts of being in the armed forces and stationed on one of the Aleutian Islands, which extend southwestward from Alaska. The narration begins with an unsparing look at the geography of the archipelago -- rough and volcanic, treeless, and a merciless climate.

By the time of this release, the Japanese had landed on Kiska, one of the outer islands, and had made a naval feint to distract the US fleet from a defense of Midway. The feint failed. The on-and-off conflict with the Japanese went on for some time, mostly consisting of our bombing their positions whenever the weather allowed. In the end, the US Army landed on the Japanese-held islands only to find they had folded their tents and silently stolen away.

The documentary is kind of stuck with a description of humdrum work in a dreary place, leading to an extended salute to the men who run the supplies in and out of Dutch Harbor, the engineers who drive the bulldozers. The men wear old-fashioned campaign hats, carry Springfield rifles with old-fashioned long bayonets, and some wear the broad-brimmed pre-war steel helmets.

We see the usual scenes. Mail call is a treasure. The food is awful -- powdered eggs and canned this-and-that. They play old songs on guitars and harmonicas. Everyone attends services by Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish chaplains. No booze, no women. However, the troops are cheerful and morale is high. Nothing can blunt the keenness of these gum-chewing boys in their parkas.

There are some finely done shots of airplanes taking off and landing -- P-39s, P-38s, P-40s, B-17s, B-26s, and B-24s. It's startling to see an airplane like the P-38, with its tricycle landing gear, plowing at speed through a foot of water and creating a moving fountain of gray that masks the airplane itself except for its dark nose which juts out ahead of the watery curtain.

The film ends with a bombing mission of nine B-17s over Kiska. It's no more alluring than life back in Dutch Harbor although far more dangerous. There are bursts of flak, and though there have been casualties on other missions, this one returns safely.

The Second World War ranged all over the globe, from Europe to Asia, the Atlantic to the Pacific, the jungles of New Guinea tot he arctic oceans around the Aleutian Islands. This short documentary concerns the last.

I didn't realize it was John Huston talking at first. Just as he grew n old age to resemble his father physically, here he sounds like him -- when it isn't actually Walter Huston talking. We get a lot of talk about soldiers in the miserable environment, with no girls, no picture shows, no girls, and even candy bars rationed. And no girls.

The copy that appears on Turner Classic Movies looks battered and worn. It also shows signs of its origins, having been shot in 16mm before being transferred to 35mm for theatrical release.

World War II was a conflict big enough to have some of its theaters forgotten, even among those who like learning about the subject. When I first heard about the Aleutian Islands campaign, it surprised even me. This was a series of battles fought on and nearby the aleutian islands, which is the island chain stretching away from Alaska into the Bering Sea and towards the far eastern part of Soviet Russia. This place was so remote and isolated from basically every other theater of the war that it's hard to believe its occupation posed a real threat to the United States, but Japan knew that whoever controlled these islands controlled Pacific transport routes. Additionally, having airbases on these islands would possibly allow for bombing raids on cities like Anchorage and various places in California. This documentary, directed by John Huston, forgoes a lot of emphasis on actual combat and instead focuses on what the lives of the men fighting in the aleutians were like. More specifically, it shows soldiers on Adak, an island in the aleutians which is relatively close to another island named Kiska. Kiska had been occupied by japanese forces and US forces on adak needed to build up a sizable number of planes and other materials needed to dislodge the invaders. We get to see how in this bleak environment, adjustments need to be made to the methods by which runways are built. It's infeasible to build them with concrete on a muddy island, so infantry are brought in to build runways with prefabricated steel planks that interlock with each other. Although the total area exceeds a million square feet, the men get it done in a day and a half. After this, footage is shown of American planes, both bombers and fighters, making landings on adak island. The large bombers, like B-24s and 17s, can absorb (as well as deal) a lot of damage, and are likely to bring their crews safely back to base no matter how many times they are hit, unless an explosive shell impacts a gas tank. One of the planes, a P-38 Lightning, makes a wheels up landing and slides into the runway, badly scraping the undercarriage. The pilot is killed and his funeral is then shown. We're told how nobody hates war more than a soldier, and any pilot on adak will gladly risk getting shot down over kiska if it means getting another letter from back home sent their way. Towards the end of the film, we see how officers plan a bombing attack on kiska. American bomber pilots are to proceed at a certain altitude to the japanese held island and rain explosive hell on them from the air. About a dozen Curtiss P-40 fighter planes are sent as escorts. The flight to kiska, a little under two hours, is apparently really boring as some members of the bomber crews play cards on the way there. Meanwhile, the guns on the planes are tested. Once over kiska, the bombers start dropping ordinance on enemy positions and blowing up hangars. Japanese resistance is not as bad as it could be, since they use no planes of their own to attack the bombers. America sends out 9 planes, and 9 planes get back to base. The rest of adak is happy and the mission is accomplished. Although this film has to do with ww2, I would think only those truly interested in the subject will be able to get the full use out of it. There's not much going on until the last 10 minutes or so (when the bombing attack starts), and Huston wanted to portray war for what it is 90% of the time: boring. Army officials actually fought Huston's decision to include scenes such as GI's standing around having cigarettes or opening letters, but he wanted to show the truth about what was going on in the north Pacific. What the film makes no mention of is the rather embarrassing event that followed around 2 weeks after it was released. American and Canadian forces eventually assaulted kiska with actual soldiers in order to completely eliminate the japanese presence on it; something that can't be accomplished from the sky. Unbeknownst to the two allies, japanese forces had deserted the island altogether days earlier, and there was no enemy to fight at all. Despite this, american and canadian forces repeatedly shot at (and in some cases accidentally killed) each other due to confusion and bad visibility on the foggy island. As a result, the two nations lost around 90 men while japan lost none. Overall, Report from the Aleutians is a mostly slow moving but important look into world war 2's only north american campaign.