Red White Black & Blue | 2007
The "Cradle of Storms" is the nickname for Attu Island in the Aleutian archipelago. Off the Alaskan coast, between the Pacific and the Bering Strait, when the wind rises it provokes violent storms that sweep the thick snow on the coast up into the air. Yet it was in this no man's land of Attu that one of the bloodiest battles of the World War II was fought. In June 1942, the Japanese army occupied the islands of Attu and Kiska, as a first step in the plan to invade the northern United States. A year later, American troops readied themselves to take back the islands. On May 11, 1943, the seventh division landed at Massacre Bay. For the next ten days, the soldiers, bayonets drawn, engaged in hand-to-hand combat in heavy snowstorms. By the end, there were almost four thousand casualties. Two of the survivors, Bill Jones and Andy Petrus, return to Attu sixty years later to relive the battle that America has so carefully kept hidden. The island has become like an open air museum: 50 square kilometres covered in airplane debris, unexploded bombs and artillery posts. For Bill and Andy, who are both 90 years old, it is a painful and moving journey back into the past. As he accompanies them, director Tom Putnam uses the veterans' accounts, Japanese propaganda films and battle photos to reveal a hidden facet of World War II.