What the Sea Remembers; What the Films of Midway Forget

Abstract

This article investigates how three films about the 1942 Battle of Midway (mis)represent the environmental impact of industrial warfare.  It exposes a long history in the American war film genre of practices that obscure the relationship between warfare and the environments in which it is waged and argues that by doing so, the films themselves enact a form of structural violence upon these spaces and their inhabitants, other-than-huma). As conflict and climate change converge, it calls for a more critical interrogation of the representational strategies of past conflicts, so that we might recognise and challenge those of current and future wars.