Even when he saw his comrades get shot and fall, Hatch continued to document the battle.
“The troops who were on the so-called front line would say when you come up, 'What are you doing here, you don’t have to be here.' And I would say, 'Yes, I do, because the public has to know what we are doing," he noted. "And this is the only way they are really going to know is by seeing this film through the newsreels.'”
Special permission
President Franklin Roosevelt had to grant special permission for the public release of Hatch's film, which included gruesome and disturbing images.
“Nobody really had seen a down and dirty fight as the best way to describe it. Tarawa was really the first film that the public saw of in-close fighting. We had both our people and the Japanese in the same frame of film," Hatch stated.
Hatch’s footage is included in the documentary film With the Marines at Tarawa, which won an Academy Award in 1944.
It is also featured in director Steven C. Barber’s new documentary, Until They Are Home. The film chronicles efforts to find the remains of fallen Marines and bring them home, almost seven decades after the last shot was fired on the Pacific island.
"After the war, so many people would say to me something about 'How come you walked all over the battle field and never got hit?' I have no answers to why I wasn't shot," he said. "You take chances and hopefully you win. That is the way it goes."
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2013-11-25
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