On November 13th, 1942 the USS Juneau was hit by a Japanese torpedo and sunk off the coast of Guadalcanal. Five brothers from Waterloo, Iowa who served on the ship were killed in the attack. The death of the Sullivan brothers helped reinforce the Navy’s polices about brothers serving on the same ships and influenced the other branches of the Armed Forces to do the same. Later, in 1944, the four Niland brothers fromTonawanda, New York seemed to be headed for a similar fate. Two of the brothers were killed in the invasion on Normandy just a month after the third went M.I.A. and was presumed dead. Sergeant Fritz Niland was sent home to his family where he served the balance of the war as an MP. These two stories, along with the approaching fiftieth anniversary of D-Day, served as an inspiration for screenwriter Robert Rodat to develop his incredible World War II epic. With the support of Mutual Film Company’s Mark Gordon and Gary Levinsohn, Rodat spent the next year assembling what would become Saving Private Ryan.