 In a flashback it is told that on the day hostilities in the Pacific were finally ended, the "Kornblatt" was ordered to return to Pearl Harbor for the decommissioning of those crew members with sufficient discharge points.Steckler, assisted by Ensign Stan Wychinsky (Mickey Shaughnessy) and the remaining crew, attempted to get the "Kornblatt" back to the mainland, but Steckler got the ship stuck on a reef near an island occupied by a garrison of still-entrenched Japanese soldiers.Captured by those soldiers while exploring, Steckler was imprisoned for a night before his impending execution, only for the Japanese commander, Colonel Takahashi (Yuki Shimoda), to learn that the war really was over.