"The War" (by Ken Burns) Part 5 of 7; Airing on PBS @ 7PM Central 9-30-07

pbs.org ^ | undated | PBS staff

[VOA]

Please see following posts for URL links to the
discussion threads for Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 of the series.

(VOA's boilerplate from prior threads)
All commentary regarding personal experience, family tales of WWII,
and critique of how Burns (and PBS) handles topics are welcome.

Hopefully the threads on the seven episodes will serve as
guides when this large documentary becomes required viewing in
high schools.
Comments on how Burns handled the documenatry (positive,
negative, or neutral) will come in handy when "the younger
generation" sees the series. Especially if Burns takes a
"Smithsonian" tact to some topics...leaving people to wonder
"who the good guys were" during the epic struggle.

[VOA]

Is it my imagination or does this series focus not on victory against
the Axis but on what an oppressive and unjust nation we were at
that time?

My guess is that PBS and Burns agreed to make sure no more than
20 minutes of real war events would pass before another segment to
remind us how awful the USA was. And that we had it coming.

It's also my wild speculation that Burns didn't undertake this
project (a large, tough one) until his sometimes-collaborator
Stephen Ambrose had gone to his reward. I suspect Ambrose would
have looked at this finished product and said "Ken, the millions of
civilians murdered by Hitler, Tojo and Uncle Joe after the war
all ended up D-E-A-D. Those are the real, indisputable victims!"

[muawiyah]

If the war had been held up only a short time as it turned out we'd had nukes to drop on Germany and the number of American casualties and deaths would have been dramatically reduced.

I know there are people who think all the death and carnage was some sort of requirement to be worked out existentially, but they are in error.

[WBL 1952]

This is total propaganda tonight making American Marines the bad guys. I said to heck with the other episodes because I knew the Director, Burns is a flaming anti-war liberal.

My father, who fought bravely on Luzon, Phillipines, would kick the living crap out of Burns for this travesty tonight.

[muawiyah]

Interesting response ~ I can only imagine your father thought the war a lark or something.

My mother's eldest brother served in Pelau ~ he said it was crap.

Turned out it was crap ~ a two year long battle with massive casualties for no discernible purpose.

Man didn't come back the same.

[centurion316]

If the war had been held up only a short time as it turned out

And who would have known this at the time? What if Germany had produced a nuke first? When you return from your trip to Neptune, let me know.

[Right_in_Virginia]

I agree with your post.

My Dad would have watched every moment of this ...I am glad he was spared this insult.

I was going to buy this series. Now not only will I save my money, but I will not waste my time watching one more minute of Mr. Burns’ great delusional adventure.

[muawiyah]

Joe Stalin knew. He was more worried about the Japanese program and actually had Sorge reveal the identity of a Japanese government spy in the Manhattan program to us (guy was English I believe).

The Japanese were almost as close to building nukes as we were and had construction underway on giant submarines that could carry planes close enough to the US to mount raids.

But that'd been on the West Coast ~ which was terribly underpopulated and undeveloped at the time ~ not a major threat to most Americans or their property.

Few extra billion bucks in the project, and we could have had those bombs earlier and been bombing Berlin in late 1944.

[wrench]

Thinly veiled anti war revisionism. Burns is the military’s equivalent of a “jock sniffer”.

[VOA]

The Joe Medicine Crow was a bit of sunshine.
Extending mercy and fulfilling the four requirements to be a cadidate
for chief...pretty good.

And totally consistent with the Indians (yeah, Native Americans)
my dad grew up with in Oklahoma.
I don’t know the number, but the Indian males sign up at a high percentage
for a military hitch...in war or peace.

[Snoopers-868th]

I have to agree with most of the negative posts. I was pretty fed up after the 2nd part but continue to watch. Tonight reached new lows. Thought I saw Kerry once or twice. The narration seems to be where the crap comes from not the Vets that are doing the talking.

[denydenydeny]

The constant identity politics are beginning to grate on me. It’s never enough just to report shared experience, everything must be filtered through a cultural identity. It’s never “In the war, I experienced....” It must always be stated as “As a member of X group, in the war I experienced...”

[stevem]

Watched parts of a couple of episodes. Saw the usual Japanese as victims in concentration camps story line. Nothing to watch after that apology crap.

I flipped to the series at a truly random time. The show was in the throes of Japanese internment. I thought it was the height of atrocious luck on my part, but I lost all desire to see more, and I managed to avoid melancholy over anything I might have missed. It struck me as a Ken Burns agenda piece. You can have my part of it.

[VOA]

The narration seems to be where the crap comes from not the Vets
that are doing the talking.

So far in this first viewing, I tend to agree.

As for the soldier/aviator comments, they are better, even if
it's just from the authenicity of hearing it straight from the
guys who actually there.

The segment on Joe Medicine Crow surely was a refreshing break
from the general "downer" tact that Burns has set for this series.

And I did hold my breath when the pilot read the letter in which
he was coming clean to his girlfriend about how awful his personal
war had become.
I actually breathed a sigh of relief when it was revealed he'd
not mailed it.

[billorites]

"The constant identity politics are beginning to grate on me. "

"

As a tenured faculty member of color,
I'm inclined to agree.

[VOA]

I flipped to the series at a truly random time. The show was in
the throes of Japanese internment.

I've done that a few times during all the four previous parts.

Maybe I'm dogging Burns a bit too much, but it seems that if
I had to go away to do a chore and came back 5, 10, or 30 minutes later
and tuned in...it's going to be another "American, The Biased".

Like I said, maybe I'm a bit biased.
I hope some group like The Media Research Center does a thorough analysis
of "The War" and let's me know if "It's Burns" or if "It's me".
with the realistic view of the series.

[Last Dakotan]

Victims of stupid military leaders and of a pointless and senseless war.

That seemed to be the sense of the entire episode.

[Snoopers-868th]

Actually, the letter to which you refer I thought was entirely plausable. There was another statement that I turned to my spouse and said. That is hind-sight observation. Can’t remember which one of the speakers it referred to.

[Belasarius]

Well, I don’t know what kind of experience you guys are looking for. We are living in a partitioned society and apparently its important to find veterans from every ethnic group and race so that the show appeals to everybody. Okay, fair enough, I can work around that. As I know from looking at my kids history text thats the way they write history now. I tell him I remember when Sojourner Truth wasn’t considered an important American historic character.

After watching a couple of these episodes now I guess I understand what the Mexican-American community was complaining about. They didn’t get their fair share of representation. If we are going to feature white, black, red, and yellow Americans we damn well better feature some brown. I’m sure there were a lot more people of Hispanic heritage in the U.S. military than Japanese. Its hard to believe that the PBS crew would screw up racial math since they invented it.

The “four towns” approach doesn’t really ring true to me. The woman, (researcher?) who appeared said that method wasn’t working for them so they decided to find some notable World War II survivors like Paul Fussel and hang the story on them, find out where they were from and then work the 4 town angle down from there. They just picked the home towns of their featured veterans.

I mean, its clearly a PBS product, but for all of that it doesn’t seem unwatchable. I’m fascinated by personal stories and memoirs and this does a pretty good job of bringing some pretty interesting stories to the screen. You guys complaing seem like you are really reaching to find something wrong with this.

[sneakers]

My dad would have been insulted as well.

What battalion was your dad in? My dad fought on Luzon as well.

[centurion316]

Paul Fussell is a well known anti-war leftist. He is no more the voice of WWII infantrymen than Elton John would be. Just because he served doesn’t mean that his distorted view of what happened has to be accepted.

The one good thing that Fussell has done in his miserable life is to collect and publish war poetry, primarily from WWI. Beyond that I have no use for him and his opinion. I suspect that he was a pretty poor platoon leader.