Victory at Sea
Produced by Henry Salomon
Written by Henry Salomon and Richard Hanser
Directed
by M. Clay Adams
Embassy Home Entertainment, 1952, 25 min. per episode, Video
NBC telecast Victory at Sea in 26 weekly episodes
from October 1952 to May 1953. This landmark documentary series covering the
naval history of World War II received several major awards, including Emmy,
Sylvania, and Peabody Awards. The documentary's score by renowned American
composer Richard Rogers became a best-selling record. Most of the archival footage
came from the U.S. Navy, but the series also used film from Japanese, British,
and German sources.
Two episodes, "Return of the Allies: Liberation of the
Philippines" (#20) and "Suicide for Glory: Okinawa" (#25), cover
the history of Japan's kamikaze attacks on Allied ships. The time spent on
kamikaze attacks in the Philippines and in Okinawa lacks proper balance.
Episode 19, "The Battle for Leyte Gulf," makes no mention of kamikaze
attacks, even though they were employed there first. Episode 20 on the liberation
of the Philippines includes only one minute on Japanese kamikaze attacks in the
Lingayen Gulf in January 1945, two months after the attacks started. The
kamikazes sunk 24 ships and severely damaged 67 others in the Philippines (Rice
2000, 80), but the series does not mention this. On the other hand, almost the
entire 25 minutes of Episode 25 on Okinawa deals with kamikaze operations.
The video's score, while stunning music, dominates the
narrative for long stretches at a time. The narrator will frequently not be
heard at all for over a minute or two while only the music tells the story
shown in the carefully selected, well-organized film clips. As a result, very
little history actually gets told in the sections on Japan's kamikaze
operations, with the narrator not mentioning specific dates, ship names, and
Japanese sortie bases. Other than "desperation and despair," the film
gives no explanation as to why the kamikaze pilots attacked American ships and
why the Japanese military leaders decided to make suicide attacks.
The narration in places tends to be overdramatic, sometimes
almost sounding close to American wartime propaganda. The documentary's film
clips focus on the American side, but Episode 25 does show a couple minutes of
Japanese footage of pilots before takeoff and kamikaze planes taking off. One
suspicious clip shows a Japanese pilot getting into a plane with
"KAMIKAZE" painted in capital letters next to a Japanese flag on the
side of the plane. Other documentaries do not show such a wartime clip, and I
have never seen any still photos where a Japanese wartime plane has a word on
its side in English letters rather than Japanese characters. Although Episode
25 shows spectacular kamikaze crashes, flaming planes hitting the sea, and
devastating damage after the attacks, it is doubtful that all of these film
clips relate to kamikaze attacks. The film never tries to describe the action
shown in a specific clip, so it is nearly impossible to determine what
specifically is being shown on the screen. Also, since Japan used conventional
bombers on the same dates as kamikaze planes, the Americans many times may have
not been able to tell the difference if they shot a plane down prior to
reaching a ship.
This World War II documentary series has much merit for its
extensive archival footage, wonderful music score, and broad scope, but the
sections on Japanese kamikaze operations do not provide any historical
understanding other than images of the attacks themselves and the damage
inflicted on Allied ships.
Source Cited
Rice, Earle, Jr. 2000. Kamikazes. San Diego: Lucent
Books.
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