Description
Object description
Edition of US-produced wartime newsreel, featuring a test flight of the Hawaii Mars flying boats; unopposed amphibious landings on the Japanese Ryukyu islands, and continuing fighting on Okinawa and the opening of the Potsdam conference in Berlin.
Content description
'Huge flying ship "Hawaii Mars" in trial run'; views of a beached and stationary Martin Mars flying boat, with men standing on the wing for scale. Men stand and wave from the tailplane. Jeeps parked beneath the wings and driving round the aircraft. A much smaller two-engine flying boat (a Grumman Goose?) is pushed past the enormous aircraft. The aircraft is christened, as if it were a ship, with the breaking of a bottle of champagne against its nose, which bears the insignia of the Naval Air Transport Service. It slides into the water. The Mars takes off. In flight. Landing.
Content description
'Report from the Ryukyus'; tracked landing craft (one marked 2A5) of 2nd Marine Division head ashore at Iheya Island in the Ryukyu Islands chain. Marines come ashore unopposed. A Japanese civilian is coaxed out of a hiding place beneath a bridge. Shots of civilian islanders. A marine kneels with a young child, who is caked in mud and shaking. On Okinawa; Japanese bunkers are dynamited. A figure, apparently a Japanese soldier flushed out of his position by grenades, runs through undergrowth. The man surrenders and is searched. Wide shot, two flamethrowing Sherman tanks torch a cane field. View from the turret of a Sherman as the vegetation is torched. Wide shot of the fire. Marines watch the fires. A Japanese soldier emerges from a burning cane field with his hands up. Further shots of Japanese prisoners, including a group walking past in loin cloths. Okinawan civilians watch them pass. Wide shot with passing lorries. High wide shot of a prison camp. Japanese prisoners jump down from a lorry. The prisoners enter the compound. High wide shot showing several hundred Japanese prisoners.
Content description
'Truman, Stalin, Churchill meet in Berlin'; on board the United States Navy cruiser USS Augusta entering the port of Antwerp in Belgium; Truman waves. The Augusta berthing; in the foreground people wave to the ship. View towards the bow with Truman seated on the forward superstructure (on a bridge wing?). Close-up Truman. United States ambassador to Belgium, Charles Sawyer comes up Augusta's gangplank, followed by General Eisenhower and Admiral Stark. Eisenhower and Stark shakes hands with Truman. Truman and Eisenhower in conversation. Admiral William Leahy and Secretary of State James Byrnes. Truman and party disembark. At Brussels airport Truman boards his personal aircraft, a Douglas VC-54 transport named 'Sacred Cow'. At Berlin; US War Secretary Henry Stimson steps down from the aircraft. Secretary Byrnes is greeted by Soviet ambassador to the United States, Gromyko. Truman disembarks. Motorcade leaves the airport. Truman's motorcade tours the destruction of Berlin. Winston Churchill and Truman meet at Potsdam. Joseph Stalin with Truman. Interior conference room; Churchill shakes hands with Stalin. Clement Attlee (Deputy Prime Minister) and Anthony Eden (Foreign Secretary) are seen. Mingling delegates. Truman inspects troops and tanks of the 2nd Armoured Division. Elsewhere in American-occupied Berlin Truman speaks at a flagraising ceremony. He speaks of the hope that the organisation that delivered victory in war could likewise deliver a victory in peace. The flag is raised. Troops salute.
Physical description
35mm