A FEATURE SCREENPLAY · BASED ON A TRUE STORY

ANGELS
OF OKINAWA

The war was fought in the sky.
The men on the ground kept it alive.

Written by C. Gerard

Yontan Airfield, Okinawa, 1945 · National Archives / U.S. Marine Corps · Public domain

Historical War Drama · Okinawa, 1945

On Okinawa in 1945, a nineteen-year-old Marine aviation metalsmith who measures his worth by what he can repair is thrust into the little-known Giretsu raid on Yontan Airfield, where surviving the night forces him to confront the human cost of the war on both sides.

The Story

Donald Ray “Bud” Gerard goes to war believing his job will be simple: fix airplanes, send them back into the sky, and keep his hands clean of the killing.

At Yontan Airfield on Okinawa, the nineteen-year-old Marine metalsmith learns there is no safe distance from war. Corsairs and radar-equipped Hellcats return shot full of holes. Pilots disappear into the dark. Ground crews work until exhaustion because every repair may decide whether another young man comes home.

Then, on the moonlit night of May 24, 1945, Japanese Giretsu commandos crash-land among the parked aircraft with orders to burn the airfield from the ground. Mechanics, pilots, correspondents and clerks are suddenly infantry. In the chaos that follows, Bud sees what the weapons he helped build can do to a human body.

After the raid, the story refuses to end cleanly. A surviving Japanese raider moves south through a ruined island. Bud carries his own burden forward. And the enemy begins to look less like an abstraction and more like another young man with skilled hands, a mother, and something left unfinished at home.

“Nobody ever asks me for a story about the fixers.”
— Claude “Red” Canup, in the screenplay

THE PLACE WAS REAL

YONTAN AIRFIELD

The captured Japanese airfield became one of the most important Marine aviation bases on Okinawa — and the target of a one-way commando raid on the night of May 24–25, 1945.

U.S. Navy / Marine Corps image · Public domain

THE HISTORY BENEATH THE SCREENPLAY

The True Story

The screenplay is rooted in documented people, units, dispatches and events surrounding Marine Aircraft Group 31 at Yontan Airfield.

Bud Gerard’s age

Donald Ray “Bud” Gerard spent his nineteenth birthday in a foxhole on Okinawa while serving as a Marine aviation metalsmith.

24–25

May 1945

Japanese Giretsu airborne commandos attempted a one-way assault against American airfields on Okinawa.

Aircraft reached Yontan

One of the transport aircraft belly-landed on the field and disgorged commandos among the parked American aircraft.

70,000

Gallons of fuel burned

The raid destroyed or damaged aircraft and ignited a major fuel fire before the field returned to operation.

THE METALSMITH

Sgt. Donald Ray “Bud” Gerard

A Marine aviation metalsmith with MAG-31 / Marine Service Squadron 31, Gerard repaired the aircraft that carried other young men into combat. He returned to Mishawaka, Indiana, built a life, and rarely spoke about Okinawa.

THE WITNESS

S/Sgt. Claude R. “Red” Canup

A Marine combat correspondent and former sports editor, Canup documented the attack on Yontan and the men who experienced it. His wartime dispatches help form the historical spine of the screenplay.

Historical note: Angels of Okinawa dramatizes documented events. Dialogue, connective scenes and some character actions are dramatized where the surviving record is incomplete.

THE MEN INSIDE THE HISTORY

Characters

PFC / SGT · MARINE METALSMITH

Bud Gerard

Nineteen. Gifted with his hands, uncomfortable with praise, and more afraid of a bad repair than a bullet. Bud enters the war believing broken things can always be fixed.

S/SGT · MARINE

Bill Saxton

A builder’s son with humor to spare and an instinct for keeping the men around him human. Bill becomes Bud’s closest friend and witness.

MARINE COMBAT CORRESPONDENT

Red Canup

A newspaperman carrying a typewriter instead of a rifle. Canup understands that if someone does not write down the names, the war will eventually swallow them.

MARINE · THE STINGER

Sam Deacon

Rage has given him purpose. Deacon builds a weapon to answer what the war has done to his family — and discovers that revenge can leave a man with weight he cannot set down.

1ST LT. · VMF(N)-533

Maynard Kelley

A grounded pilot desperate to matter in a war happening around him. What he has left is a searchlight, a revolver and one night to prove that being grounded does not mean standing aside.

LT. COL. · “BLACK MAC”

Marion Magruder

Commander of the night fighters. Brash, funny and frighteningly competent, Magruder knows the real danger is not always the enemy — sometimes it is frightened men firing in the dark.

SGT. · GIRETSU

Ito

Nineteen. A skilled metalworker sent on a mission with no return flight. His path through the ruined island becomes the screenplay’s mirror image of Bud’s.

Research

The deeper the research went, the less fiction the story needed.

Angels of Okinawa grew from family history into an archival investigation: Marine personnel records, MAG-31 material, wartime dispatches, unit histories, photographs, operational records and the surviving accounts of the Giretsu attack.

Marine Corps Archives
Claude R. Canup collection, Okinawa photographs, dispatches and MAG-31 material.

National Archives
War diaries, operational records and Marine Corps photographic holdings.

Family Record
Bud Gerard’s service history, family recollections and surviving objects from Okinawa.

The goal is not to turn history into legend. It is to preserve the human details the official record could not hold.

THE WRITER

C. Gerard

Angels of Okinawa began with a grandson trying to understand the Marine Corps service of his grandfather, Donald Ray “Bud” Gerard.

Research into Bud’s wartime unit led to Yontan Airfield, the Giretsu airborne raid, Claude “Red” Canup’s reporting, and a larger story about the mechanics, armorers, clerks and ground crews whose work kept the air war moving.

The screenplay is a feature-length historical drama written from that research and from the fragments Bud brought home but rarely explained.

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ANGELSOF OKINAWA