Using cargo nets, Doss' battalion was tasked with climbing a treacherous, 400-foot-high jagged cliff, nicknamed Hacksaw Ridge, to get to a plateau. Waiting for them were thousands of heavily armed Japanese soldiers entrenched in hidden caves and holes.
Real-life hero Desmond Doss saved 75 soldiers in WWII without firing a shot, as depicted in the 2016 biographical war film Hacksaw Ridge, directed by Mel Gibson. Despite some minor changes to the story, Hacksaw Ridge was praised by Doss's son for its historical accuracy.
About 2,500 Americans lost their lives and nearly twice as many Japanese troops. In the movie Hacksaw Ridge, they show Japanese soldiers killing wounded American soldiers. Is this portrayal accurate? Not only captured military prisoners, but also civilians.
E154: Tour of Hacksaw Ridge - WW2 Okinawa Battle Sites
Why didn't the Japanese cut the ladder in Hacksaw Ridge?
If the US took the time to put a mesh rope ladder up, they would leave enough forces to defend it. Any Japanese soldiers that came close enough to the ridge to attempt to cut it would have been gunned down.
Most characters in Hacksaw Ridge are real as it is a biographical film. Desmond is the central figure and his life experiences are faithfully depicted. Other characters in the movie are composites or represent multiple people.
At around the halfway mark, the fighting comes, and the film explodes into a kaleidoscope of horrors. To put it bluntly, Hacksaw Ridge contains some of the most gruesome and brutally violent mass battle scenes I've ever seen on the big screen.
The Japanese liked to target corpsmen and Army medics, as well as doctors. They knew if they hurt or killed someone with medical training, they wouldn't be able to help other wounded Marines or soldiers.
Hacksaw Ridge grossed $67.2 million in the United States and Canada and $113.2 million in other countries for a worldwide total of $180.5 million, against a production budget of $40 million. The film opened alongside Doctor Strange and Trolls, and was projected to gross around $12 million from 2,886 theaters.
Desmond Thomas Doss (February 7, 1919 – March 23, 2006) was an American United States Army corporal who served as a combat medic with an infantry company in World War II. Due to his religious beliefs, he refused to carry a weapon.
In doing so, the Allied forces had a foothold for the planned invasion of mainland Japan. However, the development of the atomic bomb led to the surrender of Japan, meaning the war ended only a few months after the successful capture of Hacksaw Ridge.
On May 4, 1945, Doss spent 12 hours single-handedly retrieving and lowering wounded soldiers from the battlefield to safety, down the edge of the cliff at Hacksaw Ridge. He tried to rescue both American and Japanese soldiers, though no Japanese soldiers survived.
Doss saved 75 men — including his captain, Jack Glover — over a 12-hour period. The same soldiers who had shamed him now praised him. “He was one of the bravest persons alive,” Glover says in the documentary. “And then to have him end up saving my life was the irony of the whole thing.”
Maeda Escarpment, a.k.a. “Hacksaw Ridge,” is now commonly recognized as part of Urasoe Castle Ruin. Urasoe City Office's website says that since the movie was released, many people have come to see the actual site where Pfc. Desmond Doss rescued 75 or more people May 5, 1945.
The movie was filmed in various locations in Australia, including Goulburn, New South Wales, Richmond, and Sydney Olympic Park. Some scenes were also filmed in the United States, including the Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina.
If you watch a World War II movie like Band of Brothers, you'll see medics sprinkling a yellow powder on wounds—that's sulfa powder, or sulfanilimade. The ubiquitous bandage packs given to soldiers in the war years were coated in it. By 1939, when Domagk was in Gestapo detention, it was used worldwide.
The POWs suffered frequent beatings and mistreatment from their Japanese guards, food was the barest minimum, and disease and injuries went untreated. Although the POWs finally received Red Cross packages in January 1944, the Japanese had removed all the drugs and medical supplies.
There was hand-to-hand combat on Hacksaw Ridge, but not the way it was depicted in the film. In the film, American and Japanese troops charge at each other with bayonets, knives, and the like as if they were on a medieval battlefield, and did not have accurate high powered rifles and machineguns at their disposal.
As usual on Okinawa, Japanese casualties were many times greater than the number of American lives lost. Upwards of 3,000 Japanese are believed to have died in the fight for Hacksaw Ridge.
Using cargo nets, Doss' battalion was tasked with climbing a treacherous, 400-foot-high jagged cliff, nicknamed Hacksaw Ridge, to get to a plateau. Waiting for them were thousands of heavily armed Japanese soldiers entrenched in hidden caves and holes.
Originally Answered: After watching "Hacksaw Ridge", my question is why didn't the Japanese just cut that rope ladder? This question has been answered in a documentary starring the actual Desmond Doss. The japanese didn't cut the rope because that was the only entrance to the battlefield.
Hacksaw Ridge, a 500-foot-high plateau, is in southern Okinawa. The plateau on top stretched about 4,200 yards from east to west. Its face was a crest consisting of a sheer rock wall that could only be scaled with ladders or special climbing gear.
