“With The Marines at Tarawa” is the most terrifying World War II film I have ever seen. Every American who loves our country has an obligation to watch it. It’s real and it’s accurate.
You will go with our “boys” as they land on that island in the Pacific, risking their lives for 4 days under fire from Japanese snipers and soldiers hidden in almost impregnable bunkers.
It’s not a Hollywood movie. Marine Corps cameramen were with these Marines before the landing and during the battle. Their film is preserved in the National Archives.
It brings four days in 1943 alive for you. You’re on a destroyer headed for Tarawa Island and one of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific with young men determined to win the fight for the United States and help end the war. At 2 minutes and 54 seconds into this 20 minute film, they gather for a religious ceremony on board the evening before they head into combat. Many of the young men you see at that service were killed the next morning. Looking at their faces broke my heart.
The bombs and machine gun fire begin at 3:48. One after the other American destroyers fire at the beach and U.S. planes dive bomb fortified Japanese troops on the island. At 5:54, heavy machine gun fire from the Japanese hits landing boats loaded with Marines, headed for the beach. They jump into the water and wade toward the shore under constant Japanese gun fire.
In a terrifying scene at 9:45, Marines climb to the top of an almost impregnable Japanese bunker. Constant machine gun fire fills the air as bombs fall in front of them.
The dead bodies of young Marines lie on the beach near the end of the film and float back and forth in the water as the tide pushes their corpses around. This is the price these young Marines paid to save our country.
Today, the enemy we face is inside America. It’s Agenda 2025, Trump’s plan if he is reelected. Agenda 2025 creates a virtual dictatorship. It wipes out what these young Marines and other American soldiers fought to protect in World War II.
Agenda 2025 concentrates the government’s power in Trump’s hands, eliminating the balance of power between our 3 branches of government — the Supreme Court, the Congress and the Presidency —a system of checks and balances in the U.S. Constitution meant to ensure the will of the people prevails.
Now, we have to do our jobs. We have an undeniable obligation. Hands on our hearts, we have all pledged allegiance to “the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.” We cannot betray the more than 400,000 American soldiers who died for us in World War II and the 700,000 wounded in that war by voting for a plan that attacks the U.S. Constitution and the democracy our founders created.
Jodie Sinclair is an award-winning writer who holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University and resides in Bandera, Texas.
