Victory at Sea: Suicide for Glory (Episode 25)

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The Bottom Line The battle of Okinawa is briskly, briefly discussed in this episode of Victory at Sea 

Since 1952, when NBC first aired its 26-part Victory at Sea series of 30-minute documentaries about the U.S. Navy during the Second World War, it has been a staple of both broadcast and cable channels. Millions of viewers in the U.S. and elsewhere have seen at least a few episodes of writer-producer Henry Salomon's ode to the sailors and Marines who fought and often died fighting their German, Italian, and Japanese counterparts for control of the world's oceans.


Because battles on the air, land, and sea aren't scripted for the cinematographers as if for a Hollywood production, any major documentary about World War II is, in essence, a montage of shots and snippets of 35-mm film photographed by combat photographers stationed on different ships, aircraft, and military installations. There is actually precious little continuous footage of entire single naval battles; sometimes cameramen and their equipment were lost when their ships sank, or the censors snipped away too much material to preserve wartime operational security, or stored tins of film were destroyed by enemy air raids.

On Sunday, April 1, 1945, 15 days before the Soviets launched the final attack on Berlin, the last big air-land-sea battle of World War II began when units of the United States Army and Marine Corps landed on Okinawa, the largest island of the Okinawa islands which themselves are a part of the Ryuku archipelago. Supported by a 1,500-ship fleet commanded by Admiral Raymond A. Spruance and with thousands of carrier planes providing air cover, the first waves of the U.S. Tenth Army landed unopposed...at least on the beaches.

April 1, of course, is April Fool's Day, and the GIs and Marines participating in Operation Iceberg were about to be the recipients of a Japanese "trick." For instead of greeting the Americans with deadly fire on the beaches, the 120,000 troops defending Okinawa planned to draw the invaders into prepared kill zones inland, making the gaijinpay dearly for every inch of Japanese territory while waves of kamikaze suicide planes made deadly dives against Allied carriers, battleships, and other ships of the invasion fleet.

The resulting campaign, which officially ended on June 21, 1945, was one of the costliest battles of the war for both sides. The Japanese, whose Bushido code practically ruled out surrender in most circumstances, lost more than 100,000 men, while the Americans suffered 48,000 casualties, including 12,000 listed as killed in combat. These ghastly figures, in addition to those from past Pacific Island battles, were used to estimate the cost in both military materiel and human lives of an invasion of the Japanese Home Islands, which was tentatively scheduled to begin on Nov. 1, 1945. 


The conclusion: Operation Downfall, which would have been the largest amphibious operation in history, would have resulted in a million Allied casualties, with an estimated death toll of 250,000. (The Japanese casualty estimates were 10 to 20 times higher, based on data from previous campaigns.)

The 83-day Battle of Okinawa was one of the bloodiest campaigns in the history of the U.S. Navy. From April to June of 1945, more than 200 ships were hit by kamikaze aircraft, which had first been used against the Allies in the Philippines in the fall of 1944. The results of this desperate tactic were tragic for both sides; the kamikaze attacks caused one of every five Navy deaths during the entire Pacific War (5,000 sailors and Marines died in this campaign), 32 ships were sunk, and more than 2,000 Japanese aircraft and their pilots were lost, most of them before hitting their targets.

Suicide for Glory, the series' penultimate episode, gives viewers a brisk and brief overview of the Okinawa campaign, with an emphasis on the naval and air action while skimping on the land battle (which resulted in the deaths of war correspondent Ernie Pyle and the Tenth Army's commander, Lt. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., son of a famous Confederate Army general). It consists of carefully edited clips showing the various phases of akamikaze attack, including footage of U.S. destroyers serving as radar pickets, Grumman F6F Hellcats and Convair F4U Corsairs taking off to intercept the incoming bogeys, and horrifying shots of Japanese planes either hitting the ocean under heavy flak or - worse - hitting American warships.



Richard Rodgers' classic score, here arranged and conducted by Robert Russell Bennett, backs Leonard Graves' narration over the montage of combat footage in a precursor to later and more polished documentaries, such asThe World at War. Because Salomon and director M. Clay Adams rely so much on the music to move the narrative along, experiencing Victory at Sea is like watching an early version of a music video, albeit an informative one.

A cautionary note: don't expect the quality of the sound to be crystal-clear or earthshakingly amazing. The episodes were made at a time when television audio was monophonic, so even though they were recorded in what was then state-of-the-art RCA Victor sound (and RCA, by the way, was NBC's parent company), the quality of the audio signal isn't going to be up to par with even the cheapest home theater system.


Victory at Sea - Volume 25: Suicide for Glory Main Credits:
Directed by: M. Clay Adams
Written by: Henry Salomon and Richard Hansen
Narrated by: Leonard Graves
Musical Score: Richard Rodgers
Music Arranged and Conducted by: Robert Russell Bennett
Technical Advisor: Capt. Walter Karig, USN

Victory at Sea - Volume 1: Design for War

Victory at Sea - Volume 2: The Pacific Boils Over

Victory at Sea - Volume 3: Sealing the Breach

Victory at Sea - Vols. 4-6

Victory at Sea - Vols. 7-9

Victory at Sea - Vols. 10-12

Victory at Sea - Volume 13: Melanesian Nightmare

Victory at Sea - Volume 14: Roman Renaissance

Victory at Sea - Vol. 15: D-Day

Victory at Sea - Vol. 16: Killers and the Kill

Victory at Sea –Vol. 17: The Turkey Shoot

Victory at Sea – Vol. 18: Two If By Sea

Victory at Sea – Vol. 19: The Battle For Leyte Gulf

Victory at Sea – Vol. 20: Return of the Allies

Victory at Sea - Vol. 21: Full Fathom Five

Victory at Sea - Vol. 22: The Fate of Europe

Victory at Sea - Vol. 23: Target Suribachi

Victory at Sea - Vol. 24: The Road to Mandalay 


Copyright ©2012 Alex Diaz-Granados. All Rights Reserved. 

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