In the movie, the groundwork for his beliefs is traced back to an incident in his youth, in which he severely injured his brother Harold in a fight by hitting him in the head with a brick. Harold would recover fully, but the incident is depicted as playing a role in Desmond's aversion to violence.
'Desmond Hits Brother with Brick' Scene | Hacksaw Ridge - YouTube. In 1925 in Lynchburg, Virginia, young Desmond Doss nearly kills his brother during some roughhousing and vows to be a pacifist for the rest of his life.
While Smitty wasn't real, he was the embodiment of several soldiers who initially disagreed with Doss's objection to carrying a weapon. Before Hacksaw Ridge, Doss was the subject of the 2004 documentary The Conscientious Objector, featuring interviews from Doss, his brother, and fellow former soldiers.
Doss suffered a left arm fracture from a sniper's bullet while being carried back to Allied lines and at one point had seventeen pieces of shrapnel embedded in his body after attempting to kick a grenade away from himself and his comrades. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions in Okinawa.
None of the trainees in Basic Training have the proper haircut. Tom Doss never asked his former commander to write a letter that stopped Desmond T. Doss from being court-martialed.
'Desmond Hits Brother with Brick' Scene | Hacksaw Ridge
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.
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.
[1]Desmond Doss is credited with saving 75 soldiers during one of the bloodiest battles of World War II in the Pacific — and he did it without ever carrying a weapon. The battle at Hacksaw Ridge, on the island of Okinawa, was a close combat fight with heavy weaponry.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Desmond, Shaun and Rebecca believed that Lucy was a double-agent templar, but she was, in truth, a double-agent assassin. She started out as an assassin, and then bought into the Templar ideology and betrayed the assassin order by spying on Desmond while he attempted to retrieve the Pieces of Eden.
In addition to his Medal of Honor, Desmond Doss received a Bronze Star for valor with one Oak Leaf cluster (signifying he received 2 Bronze Stars); a Purple Heart with two Oak Leaf clusters (signifying he received 3 Purple Hearts); the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with three Bronze Stars, and beachhead arrowhead ( ...
In 'Dead Is Dead', we discovered that Ben Linus went to see Penny to kill her, as payback to Charles Widmore for the death of his own daughter. When he gets there, Desmond is there and asks him what he's doing there. Ben shoots him. We all remember this - he got shot through a grocery bag and no wound was visible.
The film switches to real photos and footage showing that Desmond was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Harry S. Truman for rescuing 75 soldiers at Hacksaw Ridge, as well as real-life footage of Desmond just before his death, recounting his experiences during the war.
Hiroo Onoda (Japanese: 小野田 寛郎, Hepburn: Onoda Hiroo, 19 March 1922 – 16 January 2014) was a Japanese intelligence officer of the Imperial Japanese Army who fought in World War II and did not surrender at the war's end in August 1945.
Doss spent a grueling 12 hours on Hacksaw Ridge, saving the lives of 75 people, including his captain, with his acts of bravery as a combat medic. Doss deflected enemy grenades and sustained injuries but remained at the top of the cliff, refusing to leave until all injured soldiers were brought to safety.
How many conscientious objectors won the Medal of Honor?
There have been three conscientious objectors who were awarded the Medal of Honor – the highest military honor in the US – without ever firing a weapon. One of those men is Desmond Doss, who has had his story translated to the silver screen in “Hacksaw Ridge,” a new movie directed by Mel Gibson.
The battlefield, located on top of a sheer 400-foot cliff, was fortified with a deadly network of Japanese machine gun nests and booby traps. The escarpment, nicknamed Hacksaw Ridge for the treacherously steep cliff, was key to winning the battle of Okinawa.
To defend the escarpment, Japanese troops hunkered down in a network of caves and dugouts. They were determined to hold the ridge, and decimated American platoons until just a few men remained. Much of the fighting was hand-to-hand combat and particularly ruthless. The Americans finally took Hacksaw Ridge on May 6.
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.
“Hacksaw Ridge,” a box-office hit with more than $150 million worldwide, had already shown its strength with Screen Actors Guild, Producers Guild of America and Golden Globe nominations, and it was deemed a stealth contender from the moment it premiered to a standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival in the fall.
The Japanese soldiers utilized underground tunnels and bunkers across the ridge which forced American troops to scale the cliff-like terrain to get to the enemy. Both sides bore heavy losses, but on May 6, 1945, the Americans gained control of Hacksaw Ridge.
