This 1951 classic starring Van Johnson tells the true story of the U.S. Army’s 442nd Regimental Combat Team during WW II. They were the most decorated unit of its size in the history of the U.S. Army, a remarkable feat considering the unit was comprised entirely of Japanese Americans, many of whom came directly from the internment camps set up […]
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This PBS docudrama about the WWII experiences of Medal of Honor recipient Gino J. Merli uses actual war footage as a backdrop to Merli’s recollections delivered by an actor as a one-man play. On the night of Sept. 4, 1944, Pfc. Gino Merli was manning a machine gun during the Battle of the Bulge when the Nazis attacked in force. […]
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Called “an ingenious thriller” by The New Yorker, this 1965 film is based on the premise of an American intelligence officer being kidnapped and drugged by the Nazis in 1944, six days before D-Day. He is spirited to Germany, where he is made to believe he is recovering from amnesia in an American military hospital in 1949, after the war […]
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This isn’t the famous, fictional “From Here to Eternity,” it’s the fascinating, real-life story of WW II Marine Guy Gabaldon. A Mexican-American kid living on the streets of East Los Angeles, Gabaldon was taken in by a Japanese-American family who helped turn his life around. As World War II exploded, the nation turned on its residents of Japanese descent, forcibly […]
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This 1948 romantic comedy explores the stark reality of post-WW II Berlin. Directed by Hollywood legend Billy Wilder and starring Marlene Dietrich, John Lund and Jean Arthur, the film revolves around a congressional fact-finding mission to investigate the morale of the 12,000 U.S. troops occupying the city, who are described as “being infected by a kind of moral malaria.” A […]
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This 1952 movie is realistic, stark and unsentimental, but gripping and absolutely worth watching. It was filmed in the German cities of Wurzburg, Nuremberg and Mannheim, amid actual destruction and bombed-out buildings that remained from World War II. This also resulted in unparalleled accuracy in the uniforms, equipment, weapons and vehicles used, as most, if not all, were original and […]
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