Hell to Eternity

Leith Stevens was an American composer for radio and film scores. Born in Mount Moriah, Missouri, he was a child prodigy who was an accompanist for... Madame Schumann-Heink. During World War II, he was radio director for the Southwest Pacific Area with the Office of War Information. He was musical director of the War Production Board series Three Thirds of a Nation, presented Wednesdays over the Blue Network. Leith Stevens was born in Mount Moriah, Missouri on September 13, 1909 and died in Los Angeles, California on July 23, 1970 at age 60 from a heart attack he suffered after learning that his wife had died in a car crash. The music accompanying the film The James Dean Story was composed and conducted by Leith Stevens. An eponymous album containing this music was released by Capitol Records in 1957, the anonymous sleeve notes of which are worth quoting verbatim: The sleeve notes then go on to describe the music thus: ‘The film’s music is as unusual and exciting as the motion picture itself. Leith Stevens, the composer, captures a haunting reflection of the violent yet strangely understandable uncertainties of modern youth.
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Okinawa Island is the largest of the Okinawa Islands and the Ryukyu Islands of Japan, and is home to Naha, the capital of Okinawa Prefecture. The island has an area of 1,201.03 square kilometers . It is roughly 640 kilometres south of the rest of Japan. The island of Okinawa was the site of most... of the ground warfare in the Battle of Okinawa during World War II, when American Army and Marine Corps troops fought a long and bloody battle to capture Okinawa, so it could next be used as the major air force and troop base for the planned invasion of Japan. During this 82-day-long battle, about 100,000 Imperial Japanese Army troops and 12,510 Americans were killed, and in addition to these deaths, somewhere between 42,000 and 150,000 Okinawan civilians - approximately one quarter of the civilian population - were also killed. During the American military occupation of Japan , which followed the Imperial Japanese surrender on September 2, 1945, in Tokyo Bay, the United States controlled Okinawa Island and the nearby Ryukyu islands and islets.
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