{"id":3791,"date":"2008-11-13T23:17:31","date_gmt":"2008-11-13T23:17:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=3791"},"modified":"2025-09-30T00:32:00","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T00:32:00","slug":"the-bridges-at-toko-ri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=3791","title":{"rendered":"The Bridges at Toko-Ri"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/a>\"Bridges_of_Toko-Ri\"<\/a>     <\/p>\n

Tonight I watched this 1954 movie, based on the novel of the same name by James Michener. I don't watch much TV, but a few days ago I saw this was on the Turner Classic Movie (TCM) channel, and DVR'd it. I had read the novel, probably when I was in high school. I remember my parents had it in hard cover.<\/p>\n

The story is about aircraft carrier pilots – especially one in particular, played by a very young-looking William Holden – in 1952 during the Korean War. And here's what struck me about the movie; it dwelt on the point that while their fellow citizens were living "normally", a few men were carrying the water for the country and the free world, in the Korean conflict. (Including my father, who like Holden's character was recalled to Korea, after participating in WW II.)<\/p>\n

Sounds familiar, right? While we mostly live pretty well, we're depending on a few noble men and women to carry the water for us in the very real War on Terror. We make very little\/no sacrifices, while they risk and sometimes lose their lives. <\/p>\n

This incongruity was one of the themes of the movie. The day before the crucial and frighteningly dangerous mission – to knock out the bridges – pilot Harry Brubaker (William Holden) walks out of the pre-flight briefing and into the mess room, where everyone is listening over the intercom to the San Francisco – LA Rams football game. "Van Brocklin drops back to pass…". Very surreal. I'm sure our men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan feel much the same way Brubaker felt. <\/p>\n

The movie ends with a very famous line, "Where do we get such men?"<\/p>\n

Where indeed. And in several ways a disturbing movie indeed. But in a good way, as we need to reflect on these things.<\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/span><\/strong> If you want to read about the movie, go here - a good summary, but a spoiler if you ever want to watch it. <\/em>The Bridges at Toko-Ri – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia<\/font><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Tonight I watched this 1954 movie, based on the novel of the same name by James Michener. I don't watch much TV, but a few days ago I saw this was on the Turner Classic Movie (TCM) channel, and DVR'd it. I had read the novel, probably when I was in high school. I remember my parents […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3791"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9212,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3791\/revisions\/9212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}