Thank you Ken Burns!

A simple photo or a person talking about the war was very powerful.

Thanx to the Vets & the "Greatest Generation" too.

"May the joy of Christmas and the gift of being home to all who served
bring some peace." Al Mankowitz editor of the paper in Luverne, MN (Tom Hanks'
voice ..... very rough quote)

I think EVERY American needs to see this program!

The V-J Day stuff and the troops coming home tore me up.

Something about "may you have joy and peace every day for the coming year". Really good episode tonight. You really got the feel for how hard it was for the men overseas and the families back home.

I loved the story of the guy who was a prison on Bataan and in Japan who had thrown his dogtags into a mass grave at one point, causing the military to tell his family he was dead. When he was rescued and returned home, he called home from San Francisco. One by one, his sisters answered the phone, heard his voice and fainted. His dad had never believed he was dead.

telling a Japanese officer if you kill me I my spirit will haunt you every day.

What a fantastic documentary. :dem:

throughout this program. Some things I didn't know and some I had forgotten. I felt as if someone had punched me in the stomach.

... I was struck by the assertion... if I heard it right...that it was "official" US military policy to make *no distinction* between Japanese combatants and non-combatants during the lead up to the invasion of the Japanese home islands.

The invasion that never took place because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The rationale seemed to be that the Japanese gov't had 'militarized" the entire population, (including kiddies who were shown drilling with sticks) to resist an American invasion.

Said rationale preceded fire bombings of entire cities with loss of life in the hundreds of thousands. All pre-Hiroshima.

I thought only 'terrorists' made no distinction between military and civilian targets. If I heard correctly, that's quite a secret we've been keeping on ourselves all these years, no?

... were never a secret.

And sadly the atomic bombing of Japan saved millions of lives .....
both Allied and Japanese.

The point is we established a precedent.... choosing not to distinguish between civilians and combatants... that we now condemn when employed by people whose cause we don't like. Eg: Palestinians targeting Israeli civilians.

To say that a greater good is being achieved by targeting civilians... which seems to be what you're saying in effect ( if not outright),,,is to say precisely what apologists for suicide bombers proclaim. They regard all Israeli
as combatants... or potential combatants.

See what I'm saying?

#1 all war is evil & brutal

#2 I never wrote about the "greater good"

#3 The creation of the country of Israel resulted in the loss of the Palestinian homeland.
but I never touched that subject

... that it follows that all military tactics are equal in terms of their ethics and morality.





Also: how do you reconcile this:


>>>And sadly the atomic bombing of Japan saved millions of lives .....
both Allied and Japanese.>>>

with this:


>>>#2 I never wrote about the "greater good">>

Saving millions of lives is not a 'greater good'?





>>#3 The creation of the country of Israel resulted in the loss of the Palestinian homeland.
but I never touched that subject>>

I know. I'm simply using this as an *example* of an argument made commonly that distinguishes... or attempts to establish a moral distinction... between a style of warfare that targets exclusively military targets and a style of warefare that targets both military AND civilian targets.

That precedent was there long before America was ever discovered by the Europeans. That's how it's always been in all-out wars.

... attacking military targets and attacking civilians?

I can't place a war where civilians weren't targets. I think its a fallacy of history to believe that in wars, people are somehow excluded. Europe can tell many tales of this.

... the part that distinguishes it from what you describe... was that, according to Burns, the US Govt issued *brochures* to troops EXPLICITY directing the troops to ignore any distinction between military personnel and civilian personnel.

They were *both* fair game. In our era we commonly call this type of warfare "terrorism"... do we not?


In fact this, more than anything else, is the distinguishing *feature* of "terrorism".

To fight Japan was to fight every last Japanese, because they turned their civilians into combatants.

...It will come out next week.

Note: I live in Mobile
---

The War Within

Amazing how a stranger can dredge up so much within you.

Like many Mobilians, I’ve spent the last two weeks glued to Alabama Public Television, enthralled in Ken Burns’ The War. Like most who witnessed it, the World War II documentary series stirred memories, tales of family members and the donations they made to the war effort.

Of a maternal great grandmother widowed at the onset of the Depression with four children and how she worked during the war winding armatures in a defense factory.

Of a great uncle who served in the Navy and came home to shock everyone with an earring and tattoos.

Of another great uncle who fought with the Marines at Iwo Jima, caught shrapnel in his leg and then forever refused to discuss his experiences in the South Pacific’s meat grinder.

Of a grandfather who left behind a slot pitching for the Orioles organization to head to Europe. In newly liberated Paris, he dove for cover when the air raid alarm sounded one day, smashing open the bridge of his nose on a bunk’s metal rail and leaving a scar. The plane spotted overhead wasn’t enemy aircraft but a misidentified Allied plane and he later laughed when telling of the Purple Heart he received.

Tragically, I also recall another grandfather who fought fascism in that time only to spend his later years subscribing to periodicals claiming the holocaust as a hoax and describing the best form of government as “benevolent dictatorship.”

But I expected all of that as some of it arose when I saw the early September preview Burns and crew held in town.

Other things emerged as I watched these past weeks, reactions expected but still visceral.

The anger at the prejudice endured by Japanese-Americans and African-Americans.

The horror and intense outrage when reacquainted with the Japanese army’s Rape of Nanking and their treatment of American servicemen.

Even more rage and revulsion at the mechanized barbarism of the Nazi death camps.

However, one set of recollections was a complete surprise.

The testimony of Mobilian Maurice Bell brought back a time in my own life, early 1991 when I worked on a film crew shooting a movie for CBS.

The film centered the tragedy of the U.S.S. Indianapolis, a ship that delivered the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima then sunk by an enemy submarine. The Indianapolis crew floundered in the water for days afterward, their plight unknown due to faulty procedures in the Navy. Hundreds died from exposure, wounds and shark attack before being accidentally discovered by a passing plane.

We spent three weeks filming in various locales around the county, two solid weeks of which were spent aboard the submarine and battleship that are now museums on the Causeway.

The 16-hour workdays constructing sets provided good money but the glamour of the job quickly diminished when much of the time was spent tolerating various pretensions from the cast and crew.

I watched cast member and television tough man Stacey Keach physically mock a handicapped man, limping in an exaggerated gait across the set as the fellow hurriedly hobbled to his prop truck to save his job. Just as revolting was the laughter from the crew at Keach’s puerile antics.

I heard endless screaming, endured belligerence and tension from a combative, surly and uncommunicative director. In the middle of one of this prima donna’s episodes, I remember considering one of my best friends deployed at that moment in Operation Desert Storm, perhaps in the thick of actual battle alongside his Marine unit, perhaps dead or dying.

I thought to myself, “If we completely fail at this, all that will happen is CBS runs a repeat episode of ‘Murder She Wrote’ that night. Go tell my friend’s parents how important this movie really is.”

Rather than gaining insight and perspective from the story they were telling and the experiences of the actual Indianapolis veterans, my colleagues used the film to heighten their own sense of self-importance.

One of our last days of filming, Maurice Bell showed up on set. Someone had discovered the Indianapolis veteran’s presence in town and invited him to attend. The scene that day centered a hospital filled with survivors after their rescue.

As Bell wandered the room, he saw the actors and extras in their made-up wounds and sunburns. He just looked around and murmured, “They looked much worse than this. Much worse.”

Bell silently shook his head and shuffled away, seemingly in disbelief at the feebly attempted replication of genuine suffering and horror and the way some of our group seemed to feel as if they could in any way relate to what he endured.

Watching and listening to Bell recount those days in the water for Burns’ crew brought my own flashback, not to personal hardship but to presumption and unappreciated sacrifice.

And an unspoken promise never to forget.

Thanks.

Bless his heart for agreeing to go. Unless it had been a project done with real respect--like The War or another good documentary--the idea of a bunch of non-exhausted, non-desperate, non-bloodied men dressing up to re-enact a terrible, horrific thing would have been too much for most people who'd actually been through something like that.

And Stacey Keach can go to hell. What a turd.

...the first thing I thought of was his 1986 trial for cocaine trafficking in England. I had seen footage of his testimony and how he broke down sobbing like a child, "Please don't send me to prison!" Please don't send me to prison!" Ol' Mike Hammer wasn't such a tough guy then.

I wondered what would happen if I stood and started mocking him in front of the crew smooching his behind right then. It would have cost me my job but in retrospect, I wish I had.

The thought that a guy with a cleft palate could do that to someone else with an infirmity incensed me. I agree with you: what a turd.

except once. We sat watching Baa, Baa, Black Sheep together and he sat chuckling. I asked him what was so funny and he said that was exactly how it was. He never said more. None of my uncles or my dad and cousins, all of them vets of WWII ever spoke of what they saw or did. My cousin Forest was in Operation Marketbasket. I am sure he had stories but they never told them.

recorded for us all. Finished watching this last episode tonight, and choked up again at the Babe Ciarlo story, about how his mom refused to believe he was dead, and daily scanned the newspapers for his image, for evidence that he was alive--until finally, they brought his body home. Also, the Nazi concentration camp coverage was very moving. My favorite interviewees were Katharine Philips and Quentin the pilot (Aaronsen? Aamundsen?). Also gained even more respect for Sen. Daniel Inouye. Just a wonderful series.

When they said he died in Italy, that was too ironic for his mother.

I felt her pain in my heart.

Can you imagine sending your son to your homeland to fight your neighbor?

I know we saved Italy, but the thought of this is so moving to me.

Also I Loved Quentin and his wife...

He is an amazing person to have done what he had done!

He is so humble,

I'm glad he has had a great life.

I'm glad there is a thread thanking Ken Burns. I certainly thank him.

Some day, I'll get "The War" series and another that I'd really like, because spoke volumes, believe it or not- Burn's "(The history of) Jazz".

Between Howard Zinn's "People's History of the United States" and Ken Burns "War", I've learned much history this year- as it should have been for me growing up, as it should be for every youth growing up now.

Told me he felt good for about a year. then told me nothing more. it wasn't until about a year before he died, he told me more about his experience. I then figured out how much survivors guilt, he carried the rest of his life. He lost numerous friends and family.

George Bush and Dick Cheney to intentionally take this nation to war for no good reason . . . and that the Congress allowed them to do it -- and is about to do it again . . .

One I will watch again and again

Ken Burns, you are a true American patriot for your love of your country shines through everything you do

Burns is treading ground covered many times before, and sometimes better.

My dad served in Europe in the war, and said basically that this greatest generation stuff is just crap. As he said, there were all kinds of people in the war, some heroic, some totally cowardly, and everything in between. They dealt with the hand they received. So would any of us.

There isn't much new in this series, it is just packaged better.

Burns is best at the subtleties of racism, always a strong point for him, and at teasing out certain personal stories. Aside from that, this was pretty routine.