Great post, rlmorel.
Like you I read the book after seeing the movie in the early 50’s and it made a lasting impression. Every last one of those men chose to sacrifice for their country and thank God most survived the heroic action.
I always think of those men who were captured by the Japanese: Lieutenants Dean E. Hallmark, Robert J. Meder, Chase Nielsen, William G. Farrow, Robert L. Hite, and George Barr, and Corporals Harold A. Spatz and Jacob DeShazer.
Any death of young men in war is sad, but there seemed to me something particularly disturbing and sad about them, apart from the treatment by the Japanese.