Sands of Iwo Jima is a 1949 war film which follows a group of Marines from training to the Battle of Iwo Jima during World War II. It stars John Wayne, John Agar, Adele Mara and Forrest Tucker. The movie was written by Harry Brown and James Edward Grant and directed by Allan Dwan. It was produced by Republic Pictures.
It was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Leading Role (John Wayne), Best Film Editing, Best Sound, Recording and Best Writing, Motion Picture Story.
Marine sergeant John Stryker seems a martinet and a bully as he trains young Marines for combat in the Pacific war. In the end, as survival in the bloody battle of Iwo Jima depends on the lessons Stryker has drilled into them, his troops discover why he was so hard on them. Written by Jim Beaver
After his wife takes their son and leaves him, Sgt. John Stryker is an embittered man who takes his misery out on the men under his command. They're a bunch of green recruits who have a hard time dealing with Stryker's tough drills and thicker skin. Even his old friends start to wonder if he's gone from being the epitome of the tough Marine drill instructor to a man over the edge. Written by Alfred Jingle
John Marion Stryker is the ultimate Marine, a tough rifle squad leader who in 1943 is assigned a squad of new recruits saddled with three veterans and an old enemy of Stryker's from previous duties in the Far East. One recruit in particlar is a source of friction with Stryker, Peter Conway, whose father was Stryker's CO at Guadalcanal and who felt his son was too soft and cowardly to be a Marine. The squad grows more and more resentful at Stryker's increasingly brutal training regimen and his lack of sympathy for the varied personal problems of the recruits, but his determination to mold them into fighting men helps save their lives when the squad is landed at Tarawa in November 1943 and Stryker risks his life to blow up a Japanese bunker that has slaughtered Marines trapped at a log wall. The now battle-tested squad becomes more closely-knit and Stryker's relationship with the men warms as the squad eventually finds itself in the bloodiest island battle of the war, at Iwo Jima. Written by Michael Daly
