Okinawa

When the military photographers' battle footage gives out, there may be some more good war pictures on the order of Battle-ground. Until that happens, we will continue to get things like Okinawa.

There is no plot, but between the battle scenes, four sailors team up to swap patriotic cliches and stale jokes. But the boys are never too busy to suffer for their country. One burns his hands on hot shell cases after loosing his asbestos gloves, and another dies when the ship rams a submarine. It is not clear just why he dies since everyone else on board is, at worst, merely shaken up.

Since the dead man was over forty, his friends called him "grandpop" with many affectionate chortles. This is the general level of the film's humor. In fact, it is one of the funnier things in the show.

Pat O'Brien plays the lovable, irascible type of "old man" that is indispensible in nautical films. Pat's performance is not so bad as some of the others.

As in many of Okinawa's predecessors, the only thing that distinguishes it is ten miniatures of excellent combat film. Most of the shots center on Kamikaze attacks, and many times the camera catches a plane bursting into flame a scant fifty yards away from the ship. But this exciting ten minutes does not make up for the other fifty.