War beach4/12/2024 ![]() Stanley Kramer was well-known for releasing such “message” films as Judgment at Nuremberg, Inherit the Wind, and Ship of Fools. She is renowned for warning, “It could happen tonight by accident,” and with the onset of nuclear winter, “We’ll all freeze to death in the dark.”īut what about the book itself and the 1959 movie made from it? Recently, after watching a 2013 documentary called Fallout (produced by Rough Trade Pictures in association with Screen Australia and Film Victoria) that ponders these questions, I sat down with Karen Sharpe Kramer, widow of the producer-director of On the Beach. She went on to become both a pediatrician and a feisty anti-nuclear activist, an inspiration to others in the non-proliferation community and in the nuclear humanitarian initiative. The story’s effect on Caldicott, then a 19-year-old Melbourne medical student who’d just learned about genetics and radiation, was profound. On the Beach, first a best-selling novel and then a major Hollywood film, confronts the viewer with a number of questions: How would you behave if-in the aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse-you knew you only have a few weeks or months left to live? Would you carouse riotously, knowing the end is near? Deny that the entire thing is happening? Hope against all logic for a miraculous reprieve? Try to maintain a core of decency in the face of imminent death? Wish that you had done something long ago to prevent nuclear war in the first place? These words mark the reaction of a young Australian named Helen Caldicott to a story of the aftermath of mistaken nuclear war, in which those who never even took sides were faced with the slow advance of deadly nuclear radiation on their shores. Photos: Matthew Stevenson (1, 3, 4), U.S.“It frightened the hell out of me.Nikolai Stevenson’s Four Months on the Front Lines (American Heritage)ĭo you have more information about this location? Inform us! Source William Bartsch’s Victory Fever on Guadalcanal Shown here is where C Company, 1st Marine Regiment, commanded by Capt. To the right of the river Ilu in this picture is Lunga Point, where the Marines had their first perimeter, in August 1942. The battle is featured in the HBO mini-series, The Pacific. In the battle’s last act, the 1st battalion, 1st Marines enveloped the Japanese by crossing the Ilu upstream-about a mile inland-and attacking through the palm groves down to the beaches, where it cut off the retreat of the Japanese forces, who fought to the last man. The Ichiki Detachment, so named after its Japanese commander, came along the beach front from the east (the left side of the photograph), crossing along what had been Red Beach, and attacked the Marine perimeter dug in on the banks of the Ilu. Marines of the 2nd battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, were dug in along the river bank on the right (the west side). The Battle of the Tenaru was fought on August 20-21, 1942 at Alligator Creek where the river flows into the sea. That river is the Ilu, although Marine Corps mapmakers errantly labeled it as the Tenaru (which is further to the east). ![]() ![]() In the center of the photograph, you can see a river flowing into the sea. Under the wing of the aircraft, you can see the crescent shape of what was Red Beach, where American Marines landed on August 7, 1942. This aerial photograph captures well the landscape of the opening chapters of the American campaign on Guadalcanal.
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