Documentary: Navy Medicine at War: Final Victory
This is the sixth and last in a series of blog posts about US Navy medicine produced by the US Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery during the early 2000s.
This particular video is graphic and contains images of Japanese soldiers committing atrocities as well as explicit accounts in the oral histories of the POWs who were interviewed for this film. That said, I recommend it to those researching the Asian-Pacific War or who are interested in World War II naval history. Click on this image, which will take you to the Internet Archives where you can view the video.
Note: Around the 28:17 mark, there is a glitch, and you will see a black screen. Fast forward to 29:57, where there are additional oral histories. One of them is an oral history given by Lt. Walter Burwell, USN, who was a medical officer aboard the escort carrier USS Suwannee, CVE-27 the second ship to be struck by a kamikaze in October 1944. This is a very graphic account, but I encourage those interested in naval history to watch it. It is truncated, though.
Here are the other posts in this series:
Navy Medicine at War: Stepping Stones To Tokyo
Navy Medicine At Normandy D-Day
Pearl Harbor Oral Histories of Medical Personnel,
Bataan Death March and POW Oral Histories
Did you arrive here via a search engine? I am the author of the forthcoming book Heroes By The Hundreds: The Story of the USS Franklin (CV-13). In addition to writing about the bravery of the crews that saved her, I will discuss the lessons we can learn in leadership and decision-making, and the changes the US Navy made because of those lessons.
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-Glenn