Flight from Ashiya

Flight from Ashiya is a 1964 film about the U.S. Air Forces Air Rescue Service, flying out of Ashiya Air Base, Japan. In this fictionalized film set in the early 1960s, a flight crews mission is to rescue a liferaft of Japanese civilians stranded in rough seas. It was based on the 1959 novel by Elliott Arnold.

MSgt Mike Takashima, Col Glenn Stevenson, and 1st Lt John Gregg, all members of the U. S. Air Force Air Rescue Service at Ashiya Air Base, Japan, set out to rescue the survivors of a Japanese ship wrecked in a stillraging storm. As they fly to the site of the wreck, each man recalls a part of his past Gregg remembers the avalanche caused in Europe when his H19 Chickasaw helicopter came too close to a mountain. The avalanche subsequently buried alive the group of people whom he was attempting to rescue. The accident has since caused him to fear flying solo. Stevenson, deeply prejudiced against the Japanese, recalls the reason for his hatred as a civilian pilot in the Philippines prior to World War II, he met and married Caroline Gordon. She and their infant son later died in a Japanese prison camp when they were refused medical supplies which were being saved for Japanese soldiers. Takashima, halfPolish mother, halfJapanese father, reminisces about his tragic love affair with Leila, an Algerian girl, when he was an Army paratrooper during World War II. He was unable to stop the blowing up of a bridge where Leila had run to look for him after learning that his unit was being withdrawn from town. Stevenson, Gregg and Takashima are the crew of the lead aircraft of a flight of two HU16s dispatched to rescue the Japanese civilians at sea. When one HU16 air rescue plane crashes while attempting to land in the treacherous seas, Stevenson refuses to jeopardize his plane for Japanese lives. At the last minute, however, he recalls Carolines dying plea not to hate he overcomes his prejudice. Takashima volunteered to parachute to the life rafts with rescue equipment. Stevenson and Gregg then land the plane at sea and rescue the survivors, but when Stevenson is injured in the landing, Gregg is forced to overcome his fear and handle the dangerous takeoff and the flight back to Ashiya.

Source: Wikipedia