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The Purple Heart
''The Purple Heart'' is a 1944 American black-and-white war film, produced by Darryl F. Zanuck, directed by Lewis Milestone, and starring Dana Andrews, Richard Conte, Don "Red" Barry, Sam Levene and Trudy Marshall. Eighteen-year-old Farley Granger had a supporting role. The film is a dramatization of the "show trial" of a number of US airmen by the Japanese government during World War II. It is loosely based on the trial of eight US airmen who took part in the April 18, 1942, Doolittle Raid on Japan. Three of the eight were subsequently executed and one later died as a POW.Dower 1987, p. 50. This film was the first to deal directly with the Japanese treatment of POWs and ran into opposition from the US War Department, which was afraid that such films would provoke reprisals from the Japanese government. Plot In April 1942, after a raid on Japan, eight American aircrew made up of the crews from two North American B-25 Mitchell bombers, are captured. Capt. Harvey Ross (Dana ...
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Lewis Milestone
Lewis Milestone (born Leib Milstein (Russian: Лейб Мильштейн); September 30, 1895 – September 25, 1980) was a Moldovan-American film director. He is known for directing ''Two Arabian Knights'' (1927) and '' All Quiet on the Western Front'' (1930), both of which received Academy Awards for Best Director. He also directed ''The Front Page'' (1931 – nomination), ''The General Died at Dawn'' (1936), ''Of Mice and Men'' (1939), ''Ocean's 11'' (1960), and received the directing credit for ''Mutiny on the Bounty'' (1962), though Marlon Brando largely appropriated his responsibilities during its production. Early life Milestone was born Lev (or Leib) Milstein near the Russian Empire's Black Sea port of Odessa, Ukraine, into a wealthy and distinguished family of Jewish heritage. In 1900, when Milestone was five, his father moved his household to the provincial town of Kishinev, capital of Bessarabia of the Russian Empire (now Chișinău, Moldova). Milestone's primar ...
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World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, ma ...
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Charles Russell (actor)
Charles Russell (March 31, 1918 – January 18, 1985) was a movie and radio actor who appeared in 17 movies between 1943 and 1950. He was also a television producer who worked in Hollywood and Australia. Acting Career Born in New York City, Russell made his debut in an uncredited part as a ball player in ''Ladies' Day'' (1943). His last film was ''Chinatown at Midnight'' (1949). He originated the role of insurance investigator Johnny Dollar in the CBS Radio series ''Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar'' in 1949, playing the role until being replaced by Edmond O'Brien in 1950. Russell married fellow 20th Century-Fox contract player Nancy Guild in 1947, and they had one child, a daughter, Elizabeth, in 1949. They divorced in 1950. Producer Russell moved into television producing working on shows such as ''The Untouchables'' and ''Naked City''. He worked for a number of years in Australia at the ABC. John Cameron, head of drama at the ABC in the 1970s, said Ryssell "was a man of great ...
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Torben Meyer
Torben Emil Meyer (1 December 1884 – 22 May 1975) was a Danish-American character actor who appeared in more than 190 films in a 55-year career. He began his acting career in Europe before moving to the United States. Early life Meyer was born in either CopenhagenAllan R. Ellenberger, ''Celebrities in Los Angeles Cemeteries: A Directory'', page 27, McFarland Publishing, 2001 or Aarhus, Denmark and began his career as a stage actor.Mette Hjort, Ursula Lindqvist, ''A Companion to Nordic Cinema'', page 408, Wiley, 2016 Starting in 1912 Meyer acted in 20 European silent movies, culminating with ''Don Quixote'' in 1926. He emigrated to the United States in 1927.Diane Kachar, David Goudsward, ''The Fly at 50: The Creation and Legacy of a Classic Science Fiction Film'' (Kindle), BearManor Media, 2015 Hollywood acting career Danish friends Benjamin Christensen and Jean Hersholt may have helped Meyer obtain his first roles in Hollywood films. For decades Meyer found roles playing ...
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Richard Loo
Richard Loo (October 1, 1903 – November 20, 1983) was an American film actor who was one of the most familiar Asian character actors in American films of the 1930s and 1940s. He appeared in more than 120 films between 1931 and 1982. Early life Chinese by ancestry and Hawaiian by birth, Loo spent his youth in Hawaii, then moved to California as a teenager. He graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and began a career in business. Career The stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent economic depression forced Loo to start over. He became involved with amateur, then professional, theater companies and in 1931 made his first film. Like most Asian actors in non-Asian countries, he played primarily small, stereotypical roles, though he rose quickly to familiarity, if not fame, in a number of films. His stern features led him to be a favorite movie villain, and the outbreak of World War II gave him greater prominence in roles as vicious Japanese soldiers in su ...
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Shanghai
Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flowing through it. With a population of 24.89 million as of 2021, Shanghai is the most populous urban area in China with 39,300,000 inhabitants living in the Shanghai metropolitan area, the second most populous city proper in the world (after Chongqing) and the only city in East Asia with a GDP greater than its corresponding capital. Shanghai ranks second among the administrative divisions of Mainland China in human development index (after Beijing). As of 2018, the Greater Shanghai metropolitan area was estimated to produce a gross metropolitan product (nominal) of nearly 9.1 trillion RMB ($1.33 trillion), exceeding that of Mexico with GDP of $1.22 trillion, the 15th largest in the world. Shanghai is one of the world's major centers for ...
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Imperial Japanese Army
The was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor of Japan as supreme commander of the army and the Imperial Japanese Navy. Later an Inspectorate General of Aviation became the third agency with oversight of the army. During wartime or national emergencies, the nominal command functions of the emperor would be centralized in an Imperial General Headquarters (IGHQ), an ad hoc body consisting of the chief and vice chief of the Army General Staff, the Minister of the Army, the chief and vice chief of the Naval General Staff, the Inspector General of Aviation, and the Inspector General of Military Training. History Origins (1868–1871) In the mid-19th century, Japan had no unified national army and the country was made up of feudal domains (''han'') with the Tokugawa shogunate (''bakufu ...
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Wang Jingwei Government
The Wang Jingwei regime or the Wang Ching-wei regime is the common name of the Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China ( zh , t = 中華民國國民政府 , p = Zhōnghuá Mínguó Guómín Zhèngfǔ ), the government of the puppet state of the Empire of Japan in East China, eastern China called simply the Republic of China. This should not be confused with the contemporaneously existing Nationalist government, National Government of the Republic of China (1912–1949), Republic of China under Chiang Kai-shek, which was fighting with the Allies of World War II against Japan during this period. The country was ruled as a dictatorship under Wang Jingwei, a very high-ranking former Kuomintang (KMT) official. The region that it would administer was initially seized by Japan throughout the late 1930s with the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Wang, a rival of Chiang Kai-shek and member of the pro-peace faction of the KMT, defected to the Japanese side and fo ...
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Collaborationist Chinese Army
The term Collaborationist Chinese Army refers to the military forces of the puppet governments founded by Imperial Japan in mainland China during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II. They include the armies of the Provisional (1937–1940), Reformed (1938–1940) and Reorganized National Governments of the Republic of China (1940–1945), which absorbed the former two regimes. Those forces were commonly known as puppet troops but went under different names during their history depending on the specific unit and allegiance, such as Peacebuilding National Army (). In total, it was estimated that all pro-Japanese collaborationist Chinese forces combined had a strength of around 683,000. Provisional Government Originally, the Japanese did not allow Wang Kemin's Provisional Government of the Republic of China to have an army of its own and instead relied on a police force of 5,000 men for security. In May 1938 steps were taken towards forming an actual army for his gove ...
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Bomber
A bomber is a military combat aircraft designed to attack ground and naval targets by dropping air-to-ground weaponry (such as bombs), launching aerial torpedo, torpedoes, or deploying air-launched cruise missiles. The first use of bombs dropped from an aircraft occurred in the Italo-Turkish War, with the first major deployments coming in the World War I, First World War and World War II, Second World War by all major airforces causing devastating damage to cities, towns, and rural areas. The first purpose built bombers were the Italy, Italian Caproni Ca 30 and United Kingdom, British Bristol T.B.8, both of 1913. Some bombers were decorated with nose art or victory markings. There are two major classifications of bomber: strategic and tactical. Strategic bombing is done by heavy bombers primarily designed for long-range bombing missions against strategic targets to diminish the enemy's ability to wage war by limiting access to resources through crippling infrastructure or reduci ...
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North American B-25 Mitchell
The North American B-25 Mitchell is an American medium bomber that was introduced in 1941 and named in honor of Major General William "Billy" Mitchell, a pioneer of U.S. military aviation. Used by many Allied air forces, the B-25 served in every theater of World War II, and after the war ended, many remained in service, operating across four decades. Produced in numerous variants, nearly 10,000 B-25s were built. These included several limited models such as the F-10 reconnaissance aircraft, the AT-24 crew trainers, and the United States Marine Corps' PBJ-1 patrol bomber. Design and development The Air Corps issued a specification for a medium bomber in March 1939 that was capable of carrying a payload of over at North American Aviation used its NA-40B design to develop the NA-62, which competed for the medium bomber contract. No YB-25 was available for prototype service tests. In September 1939, the Air Corps ordered the NA-62 into production as the B-25, along with the ...
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United States Army Air Corp
The United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) was the aerial warfare service component of the United States Army between 1926 and 1941. After World War I, as early aviation became an increasingly important part of modern warfare, a philosophical rift developed between more traditional ground-based army personnel and those who felt that aircraft were being underutilized and that air operations were being stifled for political reasons unrelated to their effectiveness. The USAAC was renamed from the earlier United States Army Air Service on 2 July 1926, and was part of the larger United States Army. The Air Corps became the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) on 20 June 1941, giving it greater autonomy from the Army's middle-level command structure. During World War II, although not an administrative echelon, the Air Corps (AC) remained as one of the combat arms of the Army until 1947, when it was legally abolished by legislation establishing the Department of the Air Force. The Air ...
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